Pedal Driven Programming

Reviving fchart to Create Beautiful Astronomical Finder Charts

Austin Riba 25 Feb 2015 && [ astronomy, code, astrochallenge ] && 0 comments

I’ve spent a good deal of time in the last few days searching for a good library to draw star charts (finder charts) that I could use to integrate with AstroChallenge. While there are plenty of utilities to create star maps, they mostly consist of desktop software or websites that are not open source.

2015-02-25-creating-finder-charts-for-astronomy-using-fchart.markdown

Eventually I found fchart which resembled was I was looking for. A set of python scripts with minimal dependencies that would output star maps! This I could use.

GraniteMaps: Soquel Demonstaion Forest/Nisene Marks released!

Austin Riba 23 Feb 2015 && [ granitemaps, code, cartography ] && 0 comments

2015-02-23-granitemaps:-soquel-demonstaion-forest---nisene-marks-released!.markdown

Using Django and PyEphem to Determine the Location of White Fuzzies

Austin Riba 19 Feb 2015 && [ AstroChallenge, astronomy, code ] && 0 comments

I’ve been working on new project recently called AstroChallenge. While the details of what exactly AstroChallenge is will have to come later, rest assured, it has to do with Astronomy.

2015-02-19-using-pyephem-to-determine-the-location-of-white-fuzzies.markdown

One of the bits of information I’m interested in is whether a particular celestial object is visible in the sky or not. Given an observer’s latitude, longitude and elevation and an object’s right ascension and declination it becomes a straightforward calculation.

How Greece Came to Belong to the Greeks

Austin Riba 23 Jan 2015 && [ greece ] && 0 comments

I met Amalia at the Thessaloniki Pythess (Python) meetup (at which I gave one awkward english presentation) which had migrated to a lounge under the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. I thought the museum looked pretty cool, so I decided I would go the next day. I propositioned the group to see if anyone else was interested in joining me, Amalia was the only one brave enough to to say so.

2015-01-23-how-greece-came-to-belong-to-the-greeks.markdown

We spent a few good hours at the museum and various other historical points of interest around the city. While walking down some buzzing, narrow street Amalia told me a great story about how it is that Greeks came to find themselves in Greece:

An unexpected visit to Istanbul

Austin Riba 18 Jan 2015 && [ Greece ] && 0 comments

Here I am in Istanbul (not Constantinople) the city on the Bosporus, the ribbon of land separating Europe from Asia and the Black sea from the Sea of Marmara and thus the Aegean to the East. As my plane glided downward and spiraled towards the glittering city I thought about the Golden Fleece and if it had seen a similar view on it’s journey from Greece to Turkey 3 thousand years ago.

2015-01-18-an-unexpected-visit-to-istanbul.markdown

Creating nice looking topo maps for use in GraniteMaps

Austin Riba 11 Jan 2015 && [ cartography, code, granitemaps ] && 0 comments

The goal of GraniteMaps is to provide accurate and educational maps for people participating in outdoor activities, so a large part of the project is creating maps that are pleasing to the eye.

The map displayed in granitemaps is actually two layers: the “base map” and the trail layer. The base map is is responsible for displaying the details of the map’s area such as land boundaries, rivers/lakes, major roads and elevation. The trail layer is an overlay of the actual trails and points of interest.

Hello World! In AngularJS

Austin Riba 17 Dec 2014 && [ code ] && 0 comments

My coworker recently complained to me how hard it was to find a simple “Hello World” program in AngularJS. I did a google search and found that indeed, all the simplest examples still asked the user to set up a bunch of boilerplate, file structure, etc.

Here is the simplest Hello World in AngularJS I could come up with, and it still shows 2 way binding: