Close to 2 years ago, I had an idea for a mobile application that allowed users to store, submit, and manage tax reimbursements in foreign countries. For 2 years ago, I on and off worked on this idea and had a functioning version on my phone - and for nearly all that time, I never felt like the application was ready to release to potential users - and it doesn’t look like I’ll ever get it there. ...
I re-deployed 8 Red Squares, a site that allows you to play through the 8 Queens Puzzle on different sized boards. Future enhancements I’d like to add are Timer (for each segment), and total running time until the users solves n=8. Better mobile support (board size 9 and 10 don’t handle small screens well). Foundational solutions checklist, e.g., if a user wants to find all possible arrangements (excluding symmetries and rotations). ...
Site is accessible here, and the accompanying GitHub repository can be accessed through that site as well. It is based on a Google Alerts RSS feed, built every ~6 hours with Jekyll and GitHub Actions. Monthly commentary will be included on that site in the future. Immediate next steps are to add in more news aggregators as sources, to try and get articles that are missed. I would like to integrate Google Scholar as well, but it does not appear they offer an RSS feed or any simple method. Article display filtering is currently done on a keyword basis, which has been working fine, but would like to move to a classifier model. ...
I started to post SNAP performance indicators from the USDA in machine-readable format, aggregating and cleaning the data from the many PDF tables. This repository includes quick-access to cleaned, FIPS-linked CSV long-format tables of yearly state reported indicators for Application Processing Timeliness, Program Error Rates, and Case and Procedural Error Rates (coming soon). USDA Descriptions as follows: Application Processing Timeliness “measures the timeliness of states’ processing of initial SNAP applications. The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 entitles all eligible households to SNAP benefits within 30 days of application, or within 7 days, if they are eligible for expedited service.” ...
If you’ve got the framework installed, and just want to deploy the static pages, skip to below. Note - my first time doing this, but it works. You can always deploy directly to Observable. Observable Framework is not supported on Windows, according to an issue in their GitHub. (Update Mar 2024: Observable Framework is now supported on Windows). To use it, you need to use WSL. If you want to use it through WSL, then the following still applies. Fortunately, it is very easy to do. Steps I had to take to do this: ...
The choices to make origami sunflowers are few. I adapted the simple Lotus Blossom design from Origami-Instructions.com with an additional small square of brown paper, allowing for a very simple sunflower design that holds up against other designs that have more complicated multi-sheet folding, are hexagon-based, or require glue. Instructions With the Blintz base, place a sheet of brown paper within the corner folds into the center. ...