Jonathan Dobres

A useful custom keyboard shortcut if you want your VS Code workspace to feel a little more like RStudio.

A personal remembrance of a good man.

With the iPhone 11, Apple makes a change that permanently ruins its camera.

Gorgeous autumn colors at one of New England’s historic sites.

Packing a canvas with non-overlapping circles is easy, until it isn’t. Herein, we learn the difference between an easy solution and a fast solution.

It’s surprisingly easy to create a set of custom comparison operators that mimic compound inequality formulas, which can potentially save you some typing and make your code more readable. Let’s have a look at the R features that make this possible.

Maps make for some fun data visualizations, but should be used with care. Here I investigate several different ways of mapping and visualizing the same dataset.

In which we learn some of the inner secrets of Hadley Wickham’s venerable R package.

So you want to be a data analyst, huh?

In which we learn about the Time Lord’s true nature by way of the human being he might have been.

Doctor Who gets mushy as it attempts to answer the question, “Why art?”

I invite the internet’s rage and kick off a personal Top Ten list of Doctor Who episodes with ‘The End of the World’.

There comes a time in every young man’s life when he must tear his website down to its foundations and rebuild it from scratch. Fun!

A tool I created to help with monitor burn-in and other “stuck pixel” issues. Now with a twist ending!

A quick exercise in how to improve your data visualizations.

The long and winding road of how I learned to type.

What a quantum space hole does to your brain, and why it makes for a great game.

A semi-exhaustive look at Boston’s weather.

Did you know that “dice” and “data” share the same Latin root? You’ll learn a lot more than that after reading this post.

3D is nothing but the vast wasteland of 2011.

The prides and pitfalls of data visualization.

A Science-to-English explanation of my first-ever publication.

On how to communicate clearly, and the reason I do what I do.

Skinner gets a bad rap these days, but there’s no denying that the man was on to something.

Buyer beware. Always check the typography.

You’d think posts about vision science would be less rare on this site, given that it’s my job.

An old game with a fresh twist.

Light the torches. Move the stick up and to the left to go in. Who says video games can’t teach you anything?

In which my statistical prowess in confirmed, and hearts are warmed.

Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like swine flu, am I right, folks?

Alan Turing didn’t build machines because he was gay. He built them because he was Spock.

Mega Man 9, like all great games, builds a complex experience out of a simple premise. Jump, shoot, die. Repeat until enlightenment is achieved.

A slice of the Boston Marathon, as told through Photoshop.

Some new wallpapers.

My annual attempt at fund raising.

I bow to your superior comedic timing.

Ultimate X-Men, Colossus, Northstar, and the pros and cons of each.

My renewed obsession with the X-Men unleashes a torrent of buried memories.

The story of two tools for programmatically generated art, and where the two meet.

The trials and tribulations of Apple’s Mighty Mouse

On the difference between fantasy fulfillment and videogames.

Zeldman has some interesting thoughts on the neutral option often seen in opinion scales. Here’s my fifty cents.

Reclusive rocker Sly Stone in a recent, rare public appearance.

Don Herbert, better known as TV’s Mr. Wizard, passed away yesterday at the age of 89.

Murderball just might be the best documentary ever.

A brief summary of the Jabbour NYC subway map, and some thoughts on Boston.

A visual announcement.

Some kids dreamed of being astronauts. Me? I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic.

A letter to an inanimate object.

Sorry, no summary. Read it in full.

iTunes adds a surprisingly powerful new feature to its already impressive arsenal of awesome tools.

A trip to Washington yields mediocre photos and lasting impressions.

In this episode, Jon receives a very special award.

Retrievr!

An old Magic: the Gathering project is rediscovered.

Games you can play with the Internet.