Why Your Mean Is More Stable Than Your Standard Error Suggests
7 mins
If you have ever taken dozens, hundreds or millions of measurements and marveled at how steady your average seems this short blog article may shed some light on the effects causing this. While naive statistics tell us the standard error should shrink with more samples, real-world measurements often don't behave so cleanly. We explore why your mean can appear surprisingly stable, even when standard deviation or error bars suggest high uncertainty, and what role correlated noise plays in this apparent contradiction. Taking a look at the limits of traditional assumptions like white noise and sample to sample independence, we take a peek how phenomena like drift and flicker noise distort common statistical tools - and when they lead you to under- or overestimate your actual uncertainty. We mention why Allan deviation is an essential tool for uncovering the true nature of your data and how blindly trusting standard error can mislead both your interpretation and reporting precision.
Pros and Cons of Centralized Authentication Providers
30 mins
From passwords and 2FA to national digital IDs - modern authentication systems shape how we access our digital lives. This short blog article explores the evolving landscape of authentication, comparing internal login systems, external identity providers like Google or Facebook, and government-backed IDs such as ID Austria. It breaks down the security benefits and trade-offs of each, highlighting how user convenience, centralization, and trust intersect in critical ways. Whether you're a developer, system administrator, or privacy-conscious citizen or user, understanding the hidden risks and advantages behind each model is essential. Learn why decentralized logins offer isolation but fall short in usability, how SSO simplifies access but raises the stakes of a breach, and why government IDs offer high-assurance security—at the cost of privacy and compartmentalization. This article equips you with the insights needed to choose the right approach - or to combine them wisely.
Managing Your Academic Library with Zotero and Apache mod_dav
9 mins
Tired of hitting storage limits on Zotero’s cloud or worrying about copyright restrictions when syncing your research PDFs? This practical guide walks you through setting up your own WebDAV server using Apache on FreeBSD, empowering you to store and sync your academic attachments privately, securely, and without extra subscription fees. Discover why Zotero remains the most versatile open-source reference manager, supporting powerful full-text search, tagging, and seamless integration with LaTeX workflows. Whether you are a professional researcher or just want to keep track of publications about your interests - as soon as you start archiving hundreds of papers and want to keep an overview this solution may be interesting for you.
Utilizing matplotlib plots in LaTeX documents via pgf export - and how to automate it
5 mins
Creating visually consistent and automatically updated figures in LaTeX can be a frustrating task - especially when external plots break your carefully crafted layout. This article presents a streamlined workflow for integrating matplotlib plots directly into LaTeX documents using the pgf backend. With just a bit of Python and a clever Makefile, you can generate publication-ready figures that match your documents fonts, scaling, and style perfectly - no more mismatched labels or manual re-exports. Whether you are preparing a thesis, research paper, or technical documentation, this guide shows you how to build an efficient and reproducible figure pipeline. It covers every step: setting up your Python scripts, writing a clean Makefile for automation and including pgf figures in LaTeX with minimal hassle. Perfect for researchers, students, and LaTeX enthusiasts aiming for professional, maintainable document workflows.
When Simplicity Dies in a Container: Why Docker May Be Overkill on a Single Server
10 mins
Docker is praised for its portability and reproducibility - but does it actually simplify anything for small-scale deployments? This critical article explores how containerization, often touted as a silver bullet, can introduce unnecessary complexity, obscure logs, fragment configuration, and increase operational overhead when all you're running is a handful of stable services on a single machine. From tangled networks and ephemeral volumes to questionable security defaults and brittle image updates, the article challenges the assumption that Docker is always the right tool. For sysadmins who value clarity, control, and long-term maintainability, it argues that the native power of traditional Unix tools may offer a cleaner, more transparent path - without the scaffolding.
Exploring the RadiaCode 102: A Powerful Pocket Gamma Spectrometer
14 mins
Dive into the fascinating world of radiation detection with the Radiacode 102, a compact and capable gamma spectrometer featuring a CsI(Tl) scintillator and digital readout. Unlike traditional Geiger counters that only measure radiation intensity, the Radiacode provides detailed spectral data - allowing you to identify specific isotopes like Potassium-40 or Cesium-137. This article introduces the physical principles behind the device, compares it to Geiger detectors, and demonstrates how it brings professional grade analysis to hobbyists, educators, and field researchers alike. Whether mapping environmental radiation via smartphone and GPS, performing lab-style fixed source analysis, or automating data collection using Python and USB, the Radiacode 102 shines in both mobile and programmable applications. Explore its real-world capabilities, app integration quirks, FreeBSD USB configuration tips, and learn how to visualize your own spectra - complete with logarithmic plots and isotope fingerprints. A must-read for citizen scientists, educators, and anyone curious about what quietly glows in our world.
Understanding Standard Deviation vs Standard Error: What’s the Difference?
2 mins
If you’ve ever glanced at a statistics report or scientific article, you’ve likely seen both terms - often side by side, and often misunderstood. This short post untangles the difference, giving you the tools to know whether you're talking about how spread out your data is, or how precise your mean estimate really is. Whether you're brushing up for data analysis or just curious, this post offers a short explanation of these two core concepts - and why confusing them can mislead your interpretation. A perfect refresher for students, researchers, and curious minds alike.
Converting a simple Jupyter LabBook or Diary to static HTML in a very crude and simple way
8 mins
This article walks through a simple, dependency-light approach to convert Jupyter notebooks into static HTML pages using Python and a shell script. With inlined images, clean output, and zero JavaScript bloat, the method is perfect for solo researchers who want long-term accessible documentation without setting up full-blown platforms like JupyterBook or mkdocs. The presented mini-solution shows how to automate conversion, resize and embed photos, build a simple index and deploy notebook archives effortlessly. Whether one is documenting experiments, maintaining an engineering diary, or just prefering timeless, static web output - this mini guide offers a robust and minimalistic solution that stands the test of time and costs near zero effort.
The Web Is for Everyone, Not Only for Humans
11 mins
The internet was born as a place of open exchange - a decentralized space where information could flow freely between humans and machines alike. But in recent years, this vision has faded behind paywalls, anti-bot defenses, and corporate silos. This article revisits the foundational principles of the web - from the stateless beauty of HTTP to the semantic depth of HTML - and defends the right of machines, scripts, and individuals to explore, remix, and reuse knowledge. Whether it's an AI compiling a knowledge graph or a hobbyist scraping environmental data for new insights, the web thrives on reuse - not restriction. But as politics and profit increasingly gate what was once open by design, we risk silencing not just users, but entire ecosystems of digital creativity. This piece is a call to remember: the web was made to be read by anyone - including machines.
A Rant from the Old Forge: On the State of Software Development
6 mins
Once upon a time, building software meant writing code, compiling it, and running it - on any platform, with minimal fuss. In this sharply opinionated piece, a veteran developer reflects on the simplicity and elegance of past development practices, where tools were lean, dependencies rare, and source code reigned supreme. Today’s software world, by contrast, is tangled in dependency hell, plagued by fragile build systems, bloated binary blobs, and unnecessary complexity. With passion and precision, this article challenges the modern obsession with packaging and platform-specific toolchains, calling instead for a return to sane, portable, long-lived software practices. A must-read for anyone who's ever sighed while waiting for npm install to finish.
