Robin's Blog

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How to: add simple new commands to LaTeX to help with writing papers

Like a lot of academics, I write many documents in LaTeX – including almost all of my academic papers, and my PhD thesis! So, anything that can make my life easier is of interest to me. I was recently discussing this with a colleague (a co-author on a paper actually), and realised that lots of […]

Hacking the Worcester Wave thermostat in Python – Part 2

In the previous part we had established that the Worcester Wave thermostat app communicates with a remote server (run by Worcester Bosch) using the XMPP protocol, with TLS encryption. However, because of the encryption we haven’t yet managed to see the actual content of any of these messages! To decrypt the messages we need to do […]

Hacking the Worcester Wave thermostat in Python – Part 1

When we bought a new boiler last year, we decided to install a ‘smart thermostat’. There are a wide range available these days, including the Google Nest, the Hive (from British Gas), and the Worcester Bosch ‘Wave’. As we had a Worcester Bosch boiler we got the Wave – and it wasn’t much more expensive […]

Deprecating AutoZotBib

One of the most important things when developing software – particularly open-source software – is knowing when to stop working on something, relinquish responsibility and suggest that it should not be used any more. This is what I have recently done with AutoZotBib. For those who don’t remember AutoZotBib, it is a tool that I […]

Behind the paper: Are visibility-derived AOT estimates suitable for parameterising satellite data atmospheric correction algorithms?

This has been a bit slow coming, but I am now sticking to my promise to write a Behind the paper post for each of my published academic papers. This is about: Wilson, R. T., E. J. Milton, and J. M. Nield (2015). Are visibility-derived AOT estimates suitable for parameterising satellite data atmospheric correction algorithms? International Journal of Remote […]

Previously Unpublicised Code: PyMicrotops

Continuing my series of code that I’ve written in the past, and stuck up on Github, but never actually talked about…this post is about PyMicrotops: a Python library for processing data from the Microtops Sun Photometer. The Microtops (pictured above) measures light coming from the sun in a number of narrow wavebands, and then calculates […]

My 2015 Python life

My last post about my favourite ‘new’ (well, new to me) Python packages seemed to be very well received. I’ll post a ‘debrief’ post within the next few weeks, reflecting on the various comments that were made on Hacker News, Reddit and so on, but before that I want to post a slightly more personal […]

My top 5 ‘new’ Python modules of 2015

As I’ve been blogging a lot more about Python over the last year, I thought I’d list a few of my favourite ‘new’ Python modules from 2015. These aren’t necessarily modules that were newly released in 2015, but modules that were ‘new to me’ this year – and may be new to you too! tqdm […]

An easy way to install Jupyter Notebook extensions

I wrote a post a few months ago about a couple of useful Jupyter (formerly known as IPython) notebook extensions, and commented that they were a bit of a pain to install. Well, I’ve found a great way to get around that problem – an extension called nbextensions that will help you manage your notebook […]