OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an invaluable resource for all kinds of geographic applications and research. This collection of voluntary geographic information provides highly detailed and semantically diverse data. For a recent paper, for example, I used OSM to derive local-scale public green availability in a nationwide analysis. At the start of the analysis, the question arose whether it was feasible at all to perform millions of spatial queries within an acceptable timeframe. After some testing, it became clear that the analyses I had in mind was feasible using a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. This, however, came with the need for some tedious setup – at least for this use-case. ...

LanguageTool Logo. Source: Wikipedia, © Dnaber - CC BY-SA 4.0 Back in school, if anybody had told me, some day I would become a published author I probably would have declared them crazy. What's more, if they told me, most of my written texts would have been in anything but German, I would have lost all faith in them. But here we are. 15 years later I was able to publish two papers already and ideas for the next few are already forming. What do you know…? ...

As a cyclist who prefers to ride during nice weather, I like to check the weather every so often. In Germany, the German Weather Service (DWD) provides freely accessible and up-to-date weather reports. However, since I do not like having to navigate a bunch of sub-menus on a website, I thought this might be an interesting small weekend programming project. So, in my long-running journey of creating overly complicated Bash scripts that make my life easier, I added this new contraption. The code can be found below and an up-to-date version will be available in my dotfiles repo over on GitHub. ...

As of 2021, the internet might be the single greatest source of knowledge that ever existed, especially for programming. Via any web search engine it is possible to find an answer to most of the questions one could come across when working on an R script. Good ol' copy and paste from StackOverflow. However, there are times when you just want to RTFM – read the freaking manual. Be it for really understanding what this one obscure parameter really does or for understanding the return value of a function. ...

It is no secret that satellite images allow us to see the full beauty of the Earth's surface from a birds-eye view. Especially with modern high resolution satellite imagery such as from the Sentinel sensors, the diversity of landscapes can be experienced by everybody. This is why, in my opinion, satellite images make for awesome immersive wallpapers. One perfect example is set by the ESA Copernicus Sentinels calendars collection. In 2021, the focus of these well curated monthly satellite image wallpapers be on the megacities of the world, home to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. And even more awesome is that they are provided freely available to everybody. ...

RMarkdown Tables are nice, but kinda suck… RMarkdown is a nice tool for creating automated reports. Heck, it is even suited for creating beautiful slides which I haved used in the past for my introductory R course. However, one thing I always hated when working with Markdown, and even further in LaTeX, is working with tables. More specifically, maintaining a neat layout and not descending into table chaos. Everybody who has worked with Markdown tables at least once, probably has encounterd this issue. ...

Today's the day… January 31, 2021. The day it all begins. Let's see where this will be heading… It's 2021. Why a blog? In the modern web, private websites and blogs seem to be a reminder of times that have passed, a relict from a long-gone era. It is dominated by centralized services that are designed to exploit humanity's greed for excitement and self-affirmation. For that we rely on single corporate entities. We trust them. And they have shown time and time again, that they should not be trusted. ...