How-To - Just Jensen

Just Jensen

Sign in Subscribe

How-To

A collection of 13 posts

Making Population Density Maps with Rayrender in R

How-To Featured

Making Population Density Maps with Rayrender in R

On Mastodon recently, I came across some really cool work from @terence@fosstodon.org which used Rayshader in R to create a great population density map of Canada. terence (@terence@fosstodon.org)Attached: 1 image Today’s population density map is Canada. #rayshader adventures, an #rstats taleFosstodon The reason I

Reporting Data 102: Auto-Emailing Reports with Python, MJML, and Gmail

How-To Featured

Reporting Data 102: Auto-Emailing Reports with Python, MJML, and Gmail

Relying on humans with busy schedules to spend time each day sending recurring emails is going to lead to missed emails and errors. Automate them instead!

Reporting Data 101: Turning around Reports Quickly with RMarkdown and LaTeX

How-To Featured

Reporting Data 101: Turning around Reports Quickly with RMarkdown and LaTeX

I happen to have a lot of knowledge working in R and LaTeX left over from the days when I thought I would be an academic, so when I needed to automate a weekly report, they fit the bill.

Leaving Cmder for Alacritty: 2020 Edition

Leaving Cmder for Alacritty: 2020 Edition

Since about 2017, I've been using Cmder almost daily as my console emulator of choice. There were a few key reasons why I gravitated towards it, and why it has stuck around for so long, but few issues have now led me elsewhere. Would I still recommend Cmder? After so

How to Scrape WMATA's Real-Time Train and Bus Movement Data

How-To Featured

How to Scrape WMATA's Real-Time Train and Bus Movement Data

Most large transit agencies have research groups whose full time job it is to analyze operational data, but they often face strict restrictions publishing data. With historic records of real-time data though, academics and nonprofits can perform their own creative analyses.

Using Parks and Transit in QGIS to Orient Local Readers

How-To Featured

Using Parks and Transit in QGIS to Orient Local Readers

A little while back, there was a report from NYCDOT called Bus Forward. While I worked on some of the analysis in the report, one thing I noticed was that the analyst behind the maps included parks, despite them having little to do with bus speeds. Thanks to this report,

Using pgRouting to Calculate Transit Catchment Areas

How-To Featured

Using pgRouting to Calculate Transit Catchment Areas

In order to show the effects of a grid vs loop and lollipop road network, I downloaded the GTFS files for Ride On bus here. These are simply txt files, with routes, stops, schedule information, and some other details. For this visualization, I also needed a routable network loaded into

Setting Up Scoop as a Windows Package Manager

How-To Featured

Setting Up Scoop as a Windows Package Manager

MacOS has Homebrew. Linux has APT. Windows sort of has OneGet. I dual-boot Linux on my desktop, but unfortunately that doesn't seem too feasible on my Surface Book. Since there's a whole bunch of software that is difficult to keep up to date (think 7-Zip), I wanted to have something

Setting Up SQLite on Windows 10

I recently wrote a post on 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 into rating players. While

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, Google, and a short background as a lab manager that makes me far too confident, I

Recreating FiveThirtyEight's Footer

FiveThirtyEight'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 and Austin Clemens both created their own versions of the real theme. As Reddit

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.

Installing a Strain Gauge

Recently in lab for my Mechanics of Solids class, our professor decided we should all know how to put a strain gauge on aluminum in case we ever need to use one for research or in our professional lives. A strain gauge works by measuring the change in resistance due