David's blog

Err and err and err but less and less and less

David's blog

Err and err and err but less and less and less

homeR: an R package for building physics

For the past few weeks we’ve been very busy here at Neurobat with the analysis of field tests results. In the process of doing that, we had to implement several functions in R that relate to building physics. We thought it might be useful for the community to have access to those functions, so we […]

Saikoro game engine in Lisp

Here at Neurobat we consecrate one day per sprint as a *Lab Day*, i.e. a day when, not unlike what Google does, we are free to work on whatever we want. Today was Lab Day and I took the opportunity to brush up my Lisp skills by writing a game, inspiring myself heavily from Conrad […]

Pomodoro + Workrave = Well-being

I’ve been a big fan of the Pomodoro Technique for almost a year now. No, I don’t go as far as actually having a ticking timer in my office in front of my co-workers, and I don’t necessarily plan the day in advance, but I do try to break up my work in 25-min iterations […]

Converting Sweave/R plots for inclusion in Word/OpenOffice

Just a quick note to myself: When you use Sweave and produce high-quality plots in both EPS and PDF formats, you sometimes want to include them in Word or OpenOffice documents. You can’t directly include PDF files, and you can only include EPS files when they have a preview, which Sweave will not do by […]

Git and Scientific Reproducibility

I firmly believe that scientists and engineers—particularly scientists, by the way—should learn about, and use, version control systems (VCS) for their work. Here is why. I’ve been a user of free VCSs for a while now, beginning with my first exposure to CVS at CERN in 2002, through my discovery of Subversion during my doctoral […]

Thou shalt save energy

I’m not sure anyone else is saying this, so I will: I think **there is a clear and unambiguous scriptural mandate to reduce our current energy consumption**. Now before you dismiss this post, this author and this blog as just another bible-thumping fanatic, remember that in certain countries, certain political parties profess strict adherence to […]

Neurobat, day one

Yesterday marked my first day as Chief Technology Officer at Neurobat AG, a young company formed in Switzerland to industrialize and market advanced building control algorithms, such as the ones commonly researched and developed at my former laboratory, the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory at EPFL. This also marks the end of almost three […]

Resources for building simulation

About two weeks ago I posed the following question on the Bldg-sim mailing list: Where can I find a list of publications relevant to the field of building simulation? I’m particularly interested in refereed journals and books. The ensuing thread has been extremely helpful, in particular Shanta Tucker who pointed me to the IBPSA website. […]

DB4ALL: reformatting the mess that Internet has become

I always try very hard to keep my posts within the main topic of this blog, namely computers in the context of building automation and simulation. Occasionally I fail, like for today’s post. I’d like to tell you about a software company co-founded by a friend and fellow Toastmaster of mine, David Portabella. The company’s […]

Software engineering best practices in academia

As you might know, my primary background stems from the field of academia and research, but over the past years my interests have focused increasingly on software engineering. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear to me today that if I had known what I know today about software, I would without doubt have been […]

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