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Mapping the IP Addresses in the GRIZZLY STEPPE Report

Mapping the IP Addresses in the GRIZZLY STEPPE Report

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the director of National Intelligence (DNI) issues a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) called GRIZZLY STEPPE [https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity] . The analysis attributes the security compromises during the 2016 election to Russian actors who used Russian civilian and military

Scraping Heroes of the Storm Competitive Information with Scrapy

Scraping Heroes of the Storm Competitive Information with Scrapy

I have previously written about my Glicko ratings of competitive Heroes of the Storm (HotS) teams [https://justjensen.co/rating-teams-in-heroes-of-the-storm/], and how I put that information into a SQLite database [https://justjensen.co/setting-up-sqlite-on-windows-10/]. Up to this point though, I have been entering all of this information manually. In order

Setting Up SQLite on Windows 10

I recently wrote a post on rating teams in Heroes of the Storm [https://justjensen.co/rating-teams-in-heroes-of-the-storm/] and used a regular CSV to store all the data for my ratings. To be honest, that worked perfectly fine although I have been hoping to do some more advanced analysis, particularly looking

Rating Teams in Heroes of the Storm

Rating Teams in Heroes of the Storm

As a side project, I decided I wanted to predict the winner of BlizzCon 2016 in Heroes of the Storm (HotS). Obviously the tournament just ended, but I still wanted to complete my ratings. If you just want to see them and skip everything else, click here. Also, please don't

Setting up Internet in a New Apartment

Setting up Internet in a New Apartment

I recently moved into a new apartment in New York City and decided this was a good time to set up a reliable and fast internet connection. Thanks to a mix of Ars Technica [http://arstechnica.com/], Google, and a short background as a lab manager that makes me far

Is the Michigan Left actually better?

I was recently visiting a friend in Detroit and I was curious about whether the 'Michigan Left' was actually the safer and more efficient solution that Michigan's Department of Transportation (MDOT) claims it is. If you haven't been to Michigan, > A Michigan left is an at-grade intersection design which replaces

Recreating FiveThirtyEight's Footer

FiveThirtyEight [https://fivethirtyeight.com]'s charts are some of the most memorable data visualizations in the world and several people have put a lot of effort into recreating their style. While FiveThirtyEight keeps their actual ggplot2 themes private, Max Woolf [http://minimaxir.com/2015/02/ggplot-tutorial/] and Austin Clemens [http:

Modelling a Day of Trips in 3D

In a Survey Design and Analysis course that I'm taking currently, we recently read a paper from Cynthia Chen et al. on "The promises of big data and small data for travel behavior (aka human mobility) analysis" (DOI: [10.1016/j.trc.2016.04.005](http:dx.doi.org/10.

MyKee Titanium Multi-Tool Key Review

Review Featured

MyKee Titanium Multi-Tool Key Review

Imagine this situation: you just sat down at your desk. You just got your new BB-8 [http://store.sphero.com/products/bb-8-by-sphero] in the mail that you had to order to your work address because your significant other said you 'couldn't afford it'. Unrelated, you also have your credit card

The Original Frank-Wolfe Algorithm in Octave (MATLAB)

I recently took a course in network optimization where we learned a variety of ways to solve the static traffic assignment problem (TAP). For one of our problem sets, we had to use the Frank-Wolfe algorithm in order to define the user equilibrium (UE) in a standard TAP. So why

How Loyal are Transit Users?

In marketing there is concept called brand loyalty [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_loyalty]. From the Wikipedia post I just linked: > Brand loyalty is defined as positive feelings towards a brand and dedication to purchase the same product or service repeatedly now and in the future from the same

HTTPS Finally!

For anyone who actually reads this, you may notice the little lock that is up in the corner of your URL bar next to the website name. Thanks to the wonderful Let's Encrypt [https://letsencrypt.org/2016/03/09/le-client-new-home.html] project, this site now uses HTTPS. They're about to

Bicycle Infrastructure Design Practice

Bicycle Infrastructure Design Practice

Recently I was going through downtown Chicago and I noticed a variety of different designs for the bike lanes around the city. While I love the efforts the city has made to becoming more bike-friendly, I noticed a lack of consistency between the signage, symbols, coloring, and layout of different

Illinois's Secretary of Transportation is Bringing IDOT into The Modern Era

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a talk/question and answer session with the current Illinois Secretary of Transportation, Randall Blankenhorn [http://www.idot.illinois.gov/about-idot/our-story/governance/secretary-of-transportation/index] . He was mostly speaking to transportation graduate students and academics at Northwestern University, along with some industry professionals.

Response Paper - Rethink the technical limits and boundaries of agriculture – how local can we make it?

Response Paper - Rethink the technical limits and boundaries of agriculture – how local can we make it?

Cover Photo: New York City Steady State Refurbished Buildings (Source: NYC (Steady) State Tumblr [http://nycsteadystate-blog.tumblr.com/image/33848438351]) I am currently studying to get a Master's degree and I am taking a course on sustainability at the moment. Every week the professor assigns us readings to do and

Response Paper - What does "water is the new oil" mean to you?

Response Paper - What does "water is the new oil" mean to you?

Cover Photo: Oil Barrel with Blue Water Drop (Oil Barrel Icon made by Freepik [www.freepik.com], edited by me) I am currently studying to get a Master's degree and I am taking a course on sustainability at the moment. Every week the professor assigns us readings to do and

Response Paper: Reflect on current energy direction & recent climate policy in U.S. – will technology be the solution?

Response Paper: Reflect on current energy direction & recent climate policy in U.S. – will technology be the solution?

Cover Photo: Ground Mounted Solar Panels (Source: Me) I am currently studying to get a Master's degree and I am taking a course on sustainability at the moment. Every week the professor assigns us readings to do and gives us a question to write a personal response about after the

Calculating My Carbon Footprint

Calculating My Carbon Footprint

Cover Photo: Reduce Your Carbon Footprint (Source: Me) As part of my sustainability course, we had to calculate our personal carbon footprint. The professor gave us three different websites to calculate it. I calculated my footprint using all three, and the details about how each site calculates personal emissions and

Response Paper: Why if there are so many examples of "eco-cities" do we still question their feasibility?

Response Paper: Why if there are so many examples of "eco-cities" do we still question their feasibility?

Cover Photo: Bosco Verticale in Milan (Source: Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosco_Verticale]) I am currently studying to get a Master's degree and I am taking a course on sustainability at the moment. Every week the professor assigns us readings to do and gives us a question to

Response Paper: What is sustainability and why is it so difficult to achieve?

Response Paper: What is sustainability and why is it so difficult to achieve?

Cover Photo: Generic Sustainable City (Source: sustain.northwestern.edu) I am currently studying to get a Master's degree and I am taking a course on sustainability at the moment. Every week the professor assigns us readings to do and gives us a question to write a personal response about after

Response Paper: Will Society "Collapse"?

Response Paper: Will Society "Collapse"?

Cover Photo: Lego Model of Bornholm EcoGrid Project (Source: SmarterCities Tumblr [http://smartercities.tumblr.com/image/46943544457]) I am currently studying to get a Master's degree and I am taking a course on sustainability at the moment. Every week the professor assigns us readings to do and gives us a

3 Years Later: Leatherman Skeletool CX Review

3 Years Later: Leatherman Skeletool CX Review

Back in my freshman year of college, I noticed that a lot of the engineering students carried knives or multi-tools. What a lot of people (myself included at the time) don't necessarily know is that carrying a multi-tool is actually really handy. While it's true that every now and then

A Long Trip on Deutsche Bahn AG

A Long Trip on Deutsche Bahn AG

I was recently visiting my girlfriend in Germany since she's there for the summer doing research in a small town called Marburg. Over the weekend we went on a trip to Prague (which was amazing), and were on our way back on Czech Airlines. The plane landed in Frankfurt 20

Travelling in Denmark with GoMore

Travelling in Denmark with GoMore

I was on vacation in Denmark recently, staying about an hour outside of Copenhagen. A good friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a couple years lives in Odense. While Denmark has a fantastic public transport system, the train trip is reasonably expensive: if I had a purchased a

Giving Up on Gas Tax

Giving Up on Gas Tax

I spent the weekend visiting Northwestern for graduate school, and ended up having an interesting chat with a professor about the gas tax and various other policy implications for the United States. The conversation started mostly because of Iowa's recent gas tax hike [https://justjensen.co/the-blue-paper-dots-latest-plea/]. He argued that