tbensky

6 ms·

1.
Show HN: I can't seem to text properly on an iPhone, so I built my own keyboard
3 points by tbensky 3mo ago|1 comments
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by tbensky 9mo ago
https://www.youhere.org : "Want to know who showed up?" is the tag line. It's an app-based attendance service for teachers/coaches/band directors/conference organizers, etc. I'm a teacher and i
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by tbensky 10mo ago
Hi! Thanks for trying it. The "slow sway" is part of the plan! It's so the oversized first row of a qwerty keyboard can show all possible letters on the top row. If it feels too much like a game, slow it down using the mai
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by tbensky 10mo ago
I have a lot of trouble texting, independent of the issues here. I'm just clumsy and can't seem to do it in any productive way. I'm working on this keyboard substitute with larger keys and split up keyboards: https:/&#x
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by tbensky 2y ago
One of my favorite retro projects in this real-time TRS-80 (Model I assembler and emulator that assembles and runs Z80, literally with each key press. Mind boggling how today's CPUs can emulate and entire 8-bit computer dev-process all
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by tbensky 2y ago
Uni. prof here/shameless plug: I developed a general education class for college students about the 'history of navigation' which includes the science behind navigation and why clocks and (accurate) timekeeping are needed for
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by tbensky 2y ago
I work on neural nets back in the mid 1980s, so I was somewhat familiar with their structure, backpropagation, squashing functions, etc. I wanted to get back into them, so I started by rederiving all backprop formulas by hand here https:&
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by tbensky 2y ago
Take a look at the Finch robot: https://www.birdbraintechnologies.com/products/finch-robot-2... . Version 2.0 has really evolved and is quite nice.
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by tbensky 2y ago
Back during the pandemic, hardware-based contract tracers were an idea. I built one using the ESP32; see https://github.com/tbensky/npct . In a nutshell, everyone generates a (non-centralized) hash for themselves based
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by tbensky 3y ago
Back in the early days of Linux (~1993) or so, I was trying to convince my workgroup in grad. school that Linux was a nice alternative for running our numerical simulations (in C). But I knew I had to get the graphics working, since no one
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by tbensky 3y ago
XRF=x-ray fluorescence. You shoot X-rays into a metal, typically the gamma rays from an Am-241 source. This causes atoms in the metal to fluoresce their own gamma rays that are a (somewhat) unique signature of the atom itself. So in sum, X
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by tbensky 3y ago
Hello and thanks for our interested. There's a paperback version here: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Time-Navigation-Tom-Bensky/... (same ed. as the Kindle version).
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by tbensky 3y ago
Happy to see this post on HN. As a college prof, I've spend many years studying the history of 1700s navigation and taking student groups to Greenwich to see and study H1 (H2, H3 and H4). I love these clocks and all of the stories be
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by tbensky 4y ago
I remember using Turbo Lightning. It was incredible. You type a word in some DOS program, and when you hit the spacebar, a beep would sound if the word was spelled wrong. Back then Peter Norton was all the rage, so if you typed "Norton
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Learn code using math (or the other way around)(codebymath.com)
2 points by tbensky 4y ago|1 comments
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by tbensky 4y ago
Hi everyone. I see a lot of neat web-based IDEs on HN for simple coding, like EndBasic, EasyLang, etc. I always like trying these out, but feel like they all lack a reason to use them--in other words, to keep me using them, I wish they&#x27
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by tbensky 4y ago
I like the clpfd approach too: :- use_module(library(clpfd)). go(L) :- L = [Vixen, Rudolph, Prancer, Dasher, Comet, Dancer, Donder, Blitzen, Cupid], L ins 1..9, % Vixen should be behind Rudolph, Prancer and Dasher,
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by tbensky 4y ago
I also would like to echo the thank you to Markus. His Power of Prolog videos have taught me so much about Prolog. His recent one on DCGs is incredibly eye-opening.
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by tbensky 4y ago
Fun exercise in Prolog too: https://www.codebymath.com/index.php/welcome/lesson/prolog-d... .
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by tbensky 4y ago
In the book "The lost art of finding our way" the author claims a big boost to not getting lost is to (simply) pay more attention to an outing as it evolves. It is indeed difficult to suddenly, half way through a trip (to a dense
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Build your own gravity driven mechanical clock escapement(github.com)
2 points by tbensky 4y ago|0 comments
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by tbensky 4y ago
I've been using Prolog on and off for 20+ years (I actually bought and used Turbo Prolog by Borland under MS-DOS). I have to confess though, I've never quite understood Prolog or what it's for. I've followed Markus Trisk
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by tbensky 4y ago
The Tau Prolog ( http://tau-prolog.org ) system (written in JS) is used here https://www.codebymath.com/index.php/welcome/lesson_menu#pro... to use Prolog as a way of teaching mathematical concepts.
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Contact Tracing with an ESP32(github.com)
1 points by tbensky 6y ago|1 comments
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by tbensky 6y ago
Yes, multi-threads of it...that would be scary!
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by tbensky 6y ago
THANK YOU for giving us Selenium. When I first ran my script and saw the browser pop up start "running on it's own," I was pretty wowed.
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by tbensky 6y ago
Ah yes, the genetric algorithm (GA). Well, in short, scheduling personnel is a very visible, policital, and important job. It affects people's lives, and has to be done farily and correctly. I did my best (by hand) for a few years (sch
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Frustration project: Automate data entry into PeopleSoft with Selenium(github.com)
96 points by tbensky 6y ago|50 comments
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Is taking attendance in college even possible?(youhere.org)
2 points by tbensky 7y ago|0 comments