Articles

Excel: How to calculate distances between longitude / latitude co-ordinates

26 February 2017 by marty

Here's a blast from excel past, it was actually one of the more interesting projects I worked on. We were designing food waste recycling plants for the food manufacture and retail industries. The task was to calculate the most efficient solution ofhow many recycling plants to build and where to build them based on the waste arising of each shop more »

Tags : ordnancesurvey os excellongitude latitude convert

Integrate an OLED screen into your Raspberry Pi 3 project or case

21 February 2017 by marty

RaspberryPi

Logitech K375s Wireless Keyboard review

21 February 2017 by marty

RaspberryPi

I've had my Surface Pro 3 now for a while but have not fully commissioned it as my everyday computer as I've been struggluing to integrate it into my setup. As my ageing gaming rig is nearing the end of it's life I've been reluctant to let it go and have been Verdict - Great Love the key feel nice and light wakes my Microsoft Surface Pro more »

Musing of the day 22-Feb-2017

21 February 2017 by marty

Misc

I love an analogy, there's nothing better than pushing your explanation across the line with an unequivocal corresponding example in everyday life. I think I've crossed the line this time though, I'd been asked to rate the presentation I'd just been given on a subject outside of my specific skill set; I responded that it was tricking given how more »

Tags : xfactor analogy musing

Free LetsEncrypt secure SSL server certificate install tutorial for Raspberry Pi

18 February 2017 by marty

RaspberryPi

For me being SSL secured has always been the benchmark as having a bonafide website. That little green padlock next to your websites URL doesn't really mean much for a blog, but I always wanted one. At the start of last year I started thing about trying to get one. Ever being a skinflint I wanted to pay nothing for it, but logic overcame more »

Tags : SSL https letsencrypt apache certificate

Power On, Off & reset switches for a Raspberry Pi 3

11 February 2017 by marty

RaspberryPi

It's a bit of an onnoyance for Raspberry Pi owners all over not having hardward buttons to turn you pi on and off> You can't blame the RPI Foundation - it doesn't come with a case and they are trying to make the board as cheap as possible. It is still puzzling me that there are no tutorials out there to give you both, more »

How to make an clock for a raspberry pi with an OLED display

10 February 2017 by marty

RaspberryPi

My dream RaspberryPi project that I am slowly chipping away at is to create the ultimate alarm clock. It is a slow burner though as at it's inception I had none of the skills I needed to pull it off. I've now amassed all of the technical skills to pull it off and I'm just left with finalising the design and finding the time and the parts (not a more »

Tags : OLED display raspberrypi GPIO python

Convert trendline equations into formulas in Excel easily

8 February 2017 by marty

Excel

We've all been there, you've created a graph in excel, needed to smooth or extrapolate the data so have resorted to doing a quick and dirty trendline. 1 2 =trendlineparse("y = 2.6948ln(x) - 0.4039 ",2) Public Function TrendlineParse(Eqtn As String, Optional xVal As Variant = "eq", Optional xType As Variant = 0) As Variant 'Function more »

Tags : trendline graph parse graph

How to run a python script as a service / in background / as a daemon

2 February 2017 by marty

RaspberryPi

So you've written a killer python script and you want to run it in the background as a service because when you close the terminal window/SSH session it kills it. I originally worked it out when I wrote my Twitterbot app, and was going to write it up seperately then but it took me so long to get it running in the background and I tried so may more »