Did you know about homogeneous coordinates? I had to use them while programming something and it turns out they're pretty interesting, at least for nerds. They are a mathematical concept for dealing with spaces that contain points at infinity, and have other useful properties. In fact, Euclidean spaces are a …
Should I repay my student loan early?
I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow from 2007 until 2012. As a Scottish resident, and with parents earning under a certain threshold, I was entitled to a student loan from the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) managed by the Student Loans Company (SLC). Put simply, SAAS …
First Detection of Gravitational Waves!
tl;dr: we have detected gravitational waves! Read our paper in Physical Review Letters here!
Update: we hosted a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session over the past few days. The reception was incredible and we tried to answer as many questions as we could. Take a look at our …
Euclidean zoning
When I first stumbled upon this blog post, the catchy title made me think of geometry and some cool application it might have to town planning. Instead, it turns out that "Euclidean" actually refers to the fact that the technique, presented in the blog post, originates from Euclid, Ohio. In …
Online Labbooks for Scientific Research
Over at my workplace, the Institute of Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow, we undertake lots of experimental research (primary physics) and produce lots of data. For the most part, this data is saved on individuals' computers (centrally backed up but only accessible to that user), a shared hard …
Actually, No Gravitational Waves
Update: only a year after this article was published, we did in fact discover gravitational waves!
My previous two blog posts regarding the BICEP2 results talked about the possibility of gravitational waves having been detected. It turns out that the results were found to have some problems when given some …
Real time updating slideshow with webcam photos
I recently hosted a Halloween party and I thought it would be a cool idea to have my Raspberry Pi set up to take photos every few seconds and display them in some sort of slideshow. After a few hours of tinkering with my Raspberry Pi and Camera Module (technically …
A Handy Tool for Cleaning Up Disorganised Backups
During my recent trip to Germany, I took a whole bunch of photos with my smartphone. While I was out there, I experimented with a different operating system on my phone. Since my regular contacts from home were communicating with me using different channels (email, WhatsApp, etc.), I could afford …
Sonos-Like Synchronised Streaming
37 Days
I've just finished watching the BBC three part series '37 Days'. It is about the 5 weeks leading up to the First World War, and is portrayed from the British, German, Russian, Austrian and French sides. The drama is primarily set in the Cabinet Room of the British government, and …