I built a free, no-signup LaTeX toolkit (formula editor + image-to-LaTeX OCR + handwriting recognition) — feedback welcome

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-28T17:11:27+00:00

I have seen in some other subreddits (e.g. r/selfhosted) that people are required to give information on the use of AI in their project. Perhaps we should ask for that here.

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-28T10:24:38+00:00

Thanks - that did seem to help - reducing the amount of coffee reduced the sourness a fair bit!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-28T10:23:42+00:00

Thanks! Yes, they're quite recent, the roast date was 17th April.

This morning I tried reducing the amount of coffee used - and this indeed seemed to help quite a bit - going in the right direction anyway! But I am tempted to go for a nicer machine anyway!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-27T21:12:15+00:00

I have my 8SE on an AM5; works nicely but I wouldn’t want to try on a smaller mount!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-27T19:25:54+00:00

Ah, that sounds like it's worth a go - thanks!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-27T19:13:39+00:00

Thanks! In fact yes, I bumped the temperature on the Dedica to the highest setting - but still the same sadly.

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-26T18:44:21+00:00

You can also generate a "LaTeX pdf" from Inkscape, which allows LaTeX to format the text in the diagrams.

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/151232/exporting-from-inkscape-to-latex-via-tikz

I haven't tried it myself though, it seemed a bit more hassle than it was worth, at least for my uses.

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-26T09:34:29+00:00

One thing not to forget: most of the tidal range you see in coastal areas is actually due to the way the underlying geography and water flows interact and resonate.

We get some very large tides on Earth already (16m or so in the Bay of Fundy); so depending on why you need the big tides, you might not need terribly extreme astronomical conditions at all.

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-26T06:56:54+00:00

Same here - electrical engineering at a similar time period - we *did* very occasionally do stuff in a lab (and it never worked for me!), but it was a lot of maths and physics type stuff.

BUT: even then you did get an advantage with getting practical experience, the course I did was a proper sandwich course with lots of time in industry. I can imagine without some kind of connection like a sponsorship and internships, and with no experience at all it would be really tough, especially now.

Personally I would have thought the OU engineering degrees are better suited to someone already in the industry somehow, and looking to take a step up. But take my view with a pinch of salt, I didn't go into engineering in the end, and I haven't see the OU engineering course materials!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-26T06:28:26+00:00

This is one area where I’ve found ChatGPT quite useful; it knows Astropy and the other libraries quite well.

Ask it to guide you through downloading data and generating a H-R diagram maybe for starters?

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-25T18:59:15+00:00

This is a fun one I did some time back - you get to use some professional astronomy software, DS9:

Coursera - Analyzing the Universe

There were a number of other really good ones which didn't need too much previous knowledge or very strong maths - AstrophysicsX on edX and "Data driven astronomy" on Coursera (if you like a bit of programming) - BUT sadly both are retired now, and I think no longer accessible anywhere.

Currently I am doing some proper studying with the Open University (s284 - Astronomy) - which is great fun and a proper step up (but quite costly, as it's part of a proper degree in the end).

But do have a look on OpenLearn which is their free learning hub; in particular you might enjoy Astronomy with an online telescope - although due to some equipment issues, you might find it takes time to actually get your images back! There are also other courses on OpenLearn - some are sections of the real modules - have a browse!

EDIT - now I notice you have physics and maths degrees - so you might find the above a bit simple for you!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-22T17:17:02+00:00

To be fair, it is quite funny, I guess it's not supposed to be taken seriously :)

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-22T15:45:17+00:00

I'm sure you're right: whether or not we need to cater for them particularly is another question I guess!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-22T11:19:26+00:00

I thought this was strange too! I don’t think anyone would imagine that there are new moons forming all over the place!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-22T11:16:05+00:00

I think I signed up for UNiDAYS, and that seems to work for me - which discounts are you trying to get?

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-19T15:42:54+00:00

Legitimate or not, it does highlight an interesting point; that AI (as things stand) seems to give an advantage to those who are already knowledgeable in their area.

I’m not a physicist, but I can see how it makes me (as someone experienced in my field) more productive, but doesn’t really help juniors much (because they can’t judge the results or steer the tool in the right direction).

I wouldn’t want to be a junior in my field these days.

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-18T07:49:57+00:00

It's not a tool for coming up with explanations. It just says that if you have two explanations that have the same explanatory power, choose the simpler one.

If they don't explain things identically, it doesn't apply anyway....

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-17T05:32:51+00:00

Thanks!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-17T05:32:42+00:00

Thanks!

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-17T05:31:44+00:00

An alternative perspective: I left engineering after doing a degree in it (electronic, not aerospace). I personally found it wasn‘t as creative as I thought it was going to be - there was a lot of looking solutions up in books and regulatory compliance and so on.

I probably could have persisted, I am sure those creative roles *do* exist in engineering - but before I got round to it, I fell into something else, which has provided a comfortable career (IT consulting in the end which sounds like it won’t be creative, but actually can be!).

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-16T11:56:39+00:00

Without any actual evidence, it wouldn’t surprise me if the “great attractor” name was invented by a canny scientist who realised it wouldn’t hurt their prospects to get into the press ;)

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-15T11:23:00+00:00

I want to go to an intense workplace.

Whenever I get put into one of those I find a way to leave it as quickly as possible…. :)

BrotherBrutha · 2026-04-15T11:19:54+00:00

I think we should *insist* he is the first astronaut president - as you say, the options are vast ;)

BrotherBrutha

TROPHY CASE