Git is a versioning control software which helps keep track of changes to plain text files. The popularity of git has been helped by the existence of products and services like Gitlab and Github which simplify some of the server-side operation of git. Git has a famously steep learning curve and it can be difficult… Read More »
Vagrant is a tool for quickly creating and starting virtual machines. One of the powerful features of vagrant is its ability to ‘provision‘ the virtual machines it creates. Provisioning involves connecting to the virtual machine and making any necessary installations or config changes. Vagrant can provision a virtual machine in a number of ways, and… Read More »
Phonetic algorithms assist in comparing and matching words by their pronunciation, rather than just their spelling. Early phonetic algorithms were introduced to help analyse US census data. Phonetic algorithms and other ‘fuzzy matching‘ techniques have since played an essential part in many activities including spelling correction, database record linkage and search recommendations. This post looks… Read More »
Machine learning and rules-based systems are widely used to make inferences from data. The two approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, and it is useful to have a grasp of both. Although not as hyped at the moment, rules-based systems do still have their place and it is worth understanding the distinction between these methods… Read More »
GeoJSON and KML are formats for storing spatial information. KML files are commonly found with Google Earth type applications, so it can be useful to convert KML to GeoJSON. The python library kml2geojson can be used to convert KML to GeoJSON. kml2geojson works as either a tool from the command line, or can be used… Read More »