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Space Engine Zen
Space Engine is an absolutely jaw dropping space exploration experience for free. Being able to see what a lunar eclipse looks like from the surface of the moon, explore the surface of Pluto using the latest observations from the New Horizons spacecraft, and seeing accurately modeled solar systems for exoplanets are just the tip of […]
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2020 top 10s
Hot on the heels of my long neglected 2019 top 10’s list is my list for the long year of 2020: Top 6 books (out of 7 read): This year I have a lot of digital games played because pandemics don’t play well with in person board game activities. Top 10 Steam games (out of […]
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2019 top 10s
I had been sitting on a top 10 ranking of things all last year and decided to post it now, if I was going to post a 2020 top 10 list as well. So here’s the top books and games I enjoyed for 2019: Top 5 books out of 13: Top 10 digital games […]
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Recommendation Systems with Python: steam_augury
*** For those just interested in the code and running it, you can find it off my github here: https://github.com/ScottBurger/steam_augury I’ve been interested in recommendation systems for a while and I thought I’d try my hand at a new implementation in Python. My previous version, built in R, leveraged lots of data pulled from […]
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Attribution Modelling with Google BigQuery and R: Credit Where Credit is Due!
Tonight I had another great speaking opportunity, this time at the lecture series Machine Learning for Enterprise Operations hosted by Grid Dynamics: The slides presented on how to use Google BigQuery with R to see how marketing channel attribution credit is shifted through the use of various statistical models can be found below: […]
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Time to buy an AC unit in Seattle yet?
Yesterday was hot. Like really hot. According to reports, a new hottest June 12th in Seattle was recorded at 95 degrees (35 C). This is roughly how it felt walking outside briefly yesterday for me: Many in other parts of the US where it regularly gets that hot in the summer will laugh from […]
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How About a Nice Game of Chess?
I had the fantastic opportunity to give a talk about the history of chess computation before a showing of the indie film Computer Chess. This was done in collaboration with Science on Screen, a series that hosts lectures related to a topic before a science-themed movie. For those interested, the slides from the talk can be […]
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How Interested In This Thing Am I Really?
It’s obvious that my previous blog posts show that I’m a little obsessed with tabletop board games at the moment. Like all people waist deep in their hobby, I’ve been having to steady myself multiple times in the Amazon shopping cart thinking “hmm…am I really interested in this game, or is it just that I’m […]
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A War of the Ring (with data)
War of the Ring is about as close to getting the entire Lord of the Rings experience in a single board game. It’s a masterpiece of theme and well designed game play mechanics where there’s never a dull moment. For such an epic game, I’m dedicating an entire blog post to the first over-the-board play […]
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When Will the James Webb Space Telescope Launch?
My love of space and exploration throughout my life has been driven a lot by cool space missions and those impressive pictures you see of far distant galaxies. In particular, images form the Hubble Space Telescope really helped to drive my interest in the universe. I had been watching with great interest the launch of […]
SVBlog
The intersection of data science, cycling, games, and stuff
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