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After a small change in my son’s schedule, I wanted to keep everything consistent while making it easy to share. That kicked off a small calendar-planning tool with a few requirements: a clean, printable calendar view, no paid app or subscription for a one-off need, and a way to subscribe or export the calendar so it stays visible across all of my devices. Background I first looked at Apple Calendar, but its printing options are limited and a presentable, readable calendar was non-negotiable. Fantastical would cover everything I needed, yet I was not keen to buy a license for a one-off need. I also considered using something like InDesign with scripting to build a polished calendar, but that felt like overkill and would have required learning additional tooling and writing a fairly complex calendar builder. Google Calendar had similar printing limitations. Given all of that, building a small software package felt like the right choice: I could script the visuals and color coding, export to ICS, and control schedule changes via versioned JSON files. ...

This article shows how to use Xcode scheme pre-/post-actions (Build and Run) to observe how your app creates and mutates defaults, by logging changes outside the app process. What are Defaults? In Swift and macOS development, defaults (via UserDefaults and the defaults CLI) are the lightweight persistence layer for user preferences, feature toggles, and other small pieces of state that need to survive app relaunches. They sit between in-memory settings and heavier storage options, letting you read and write simple values keyed by domain so the same code works in app code, Xcode schemes, and shell scripts. Because defaults are global to a domain, careful naming and clean-up are essential to avoid collisions and stale settings during development. ...

As a data science lead, I see it as my responsibility to guide junior data scientists on training and professional development. The field is broad, and I often see two common profiles: those with strong mathematical and statistical foundations but limited software engineering experience (e.g., object-oriented programming, unit testing, CI/CD), and those with solid computer science backgrounds but less exposure to the mathematical side. To make informed recommendations, I regularly complete courses and exercises myself and make a habit of daily practice. In this post, I review DataCamp’s Machine Learning Engineering course, which I recently completed. ...

Integrating Python-based machine learning models into iOS applications can be challenging, particularly when converting models into a Swift-compatible format. This example will demonstrate a simple image classification task using the Fashion-MNIST dataset and CoreML conversion tools. The goal is to illustrate the effort required to deploy small-to-medium complexity ML models within iOS applications. The demonstration is based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) built with PyTorch, but the concepts apply broadly to other Python-based models as well. ...

One of the key benefits of modern editors like NVim, Vim, or Emacs is the rich plugin ecosystem. After years with Vim, I switched to NVim and was immediately impressed by its plugin landscape. The Lazy plugin manager—available for NVim > 0.8—quickly became my favourite. Lazy simplifies plugin discovery and management. It offers an intuitive interface and powerful commands that make it easy to add, remove, or update plugins. ...

Setting up a robust data science development environment takes time, and it’s a process that’s rarely ever finished. If you’re the type who likes to get the most out of your tools, you’ll likely enjoy tweaking, optimising, and layering your workspace with productivity enhancements. That might mean refining your Python setup to easily manage multiple language versions and dependencies, or expanding your text editor with plugins for linting, code suggestions, unit test execution, and CI/CD integration. ...

What are .dotfiles? Dotfiles are hidden configuration files on Unix-like systems. Their filenames start with a dot (.), making them hidden by default. They store preferences and settings for programs like shells, text editors, and version control systems. Many modern Linux applications follow the XDG Base Directory Specification. This guideline recommends placing user-specific configuration files in ~/.config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME). Using this standard reduces clutter in home directories and simplifies managing configurations across systems. ...

Why Swift? Data science is dominated by Python and R, with some usage of Julia, Scala, Java, and C++. While Swift may not be the most popular choice, it offers several notable benefits—especially for developers already invested in the Apple ecosystem. Key Advantages Performance Considerations As a compiled language, Swift often runs faster than languages like Python or R. This can be especially beneficial when handling large datasets or complex computations. ...

Vim provides a wide range of functions for file formatting, starting with basic features such as reindent. VimL Implementation Creating a function within Vim to process the file is likely the most straightforward approach. The primary purpose of this function is to pass the filename to an external command for formatting. Leveraging the rich ecosystem of Python formatting tools available from the command line allows the function to efficiently and consistently format files, tapping into powerful, pre-existing solutions for code aesthetics and standardization. In effect, the role of the function is to pass the filename to the call below: ...

Background For a computer, an image is collection of interpretable instructions that amount to a visual representation. Raster images are composed from using pixels, containing unique colours, whereas vector images keep track of points and equations that join them. In \(\LaTeX\) PGF/TikZ is used to generate vector graphics from algebraic descriptions. TikZ is mostly used to conveniently draw various scientific figures. ChatGPT is capable of generating computer code in majority of popular languages. I wanted to test how far I can get with ChatGPT generating illustrations using TikZ. ...