## r4nd0m paw0rd

March 14, 2017

Let’s take it easy this week. What about we generate random passwords? That should be fun, right?

## Comparing GPSes (yet more GPS data)

February 3, 2015

In a few other entries, I’ve toyed with GPS, either getting or parsing the data with Bash, assessing or using the GPS data. However, when we use GPS, we suppose that the precision varies by brand and model&mdashsome will have greater precision—but our intuition tells us that two GPS devices of the same brand and model should perform identically. That’s what we’re used to with, or at least expect from, computers. But what about USB GPS devices?

So I got two instances of the same model+brand GPS. Let them call them GPS-1 and GPS-2. Do they perform similarly?

## Un peu de caviar, s’il vous plaît

April 12, 2011

There are times when you must hide information from a document without changing its appearance and layout. I’m not talking about plain censorship, I meant like when you have to submit a paper to a journal or a conference anonymously while required to follow stringent layout guidelines. It may suffice to set a background of the same colors as the text, but if it does the thing in print, it doesn’t work so well with PDF where you can still select the text (and I did a blog entry using this behavior a while ago).

There’s a censor package for $\LaTeX$ but it doesn’t play well with whole paragraphs, and it messes out the layout if you select more than just a word or two. This week’s entry proposes a simple $\LaTeX$ macro to do nice (but not weapon-grade) “censoring”.

## Cats, Pharaohs, and the Golden Ratio

December 8, 2009

Certain numbers keep showing up in nature. The Golden Ratio,

$\phi \approx \displaystyle\frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2}$

is one of them. It shows up in cats, sunflowers, and Egyptian pyramids.

## Suggested Reading: Zen Cat

January 24, 2009

Judith Adler, Paul Coughlin —Zen Cat— Rodale, 2003, 112 pp. ISBN 0-8759-6923-2