SidesWays Blog

Just collecting some links for a side research project. These are related to eye-tracking, especially as it relates to research in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) community. An outgrowth of my involvement with BioStream ( www.biostreamtech.com ). The Eyes Have It: Eye Tracking Data Visualizations of Viewing Patterns of Statistical Graphics https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1803&context=gradreports saccadr: Extract Saccades via an Ensemble of Methods Approach https://cran.r-project.org/package=saccadr Webcam eye tracking close to laboratory standards: Comparing a new webcam-based system and the EyeLink 1000 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-023-02237-8

Found a list of holidays and customized it for company use. Thought some others might find it handy. https://github.com/davesides3/holidays

Some links for various eye-tracking options: Tobii (hardware, variety of markets including gaming, well-established) https://gaming.tobii.com/ iMotions (hardware, higher-end research, well-established) https://imotions.com/eye-tracking/ GazeRecorder (Webcam Eye-Tracking with an API GazeFlow) https://gazerecorder.com/ https://gazerecorder.com/gazecloudapi/  (embed in your own webapp) RealEye (Webcam Eye-Tracking on a study-based platform) https://www.realeye.io/ Hawkeye (iOS using TrueDepth camera, limited to latest iOS devices) https://www.usehawkeye.com/ Skyle for iPad (hardware, new in 2020) https://eyev.de/en/ EyeZag (camera-based, no longer accepting new customers) https://eyezag.com/ WebGazer.js (camera-based, browser, open source) https://webgazer.cs.brown.edu/ SeeSo (mobile eye-tracking) https://seeso.io/ https://visual.camp/ Useful: 10 Most Used Eye Tracking Metrics and Terms https://imotions.com/blog/10-terms-metrics-eye-tracking/ And a summary related to mobile games...

Although I use R extensively in my work, samples can't be shared because of non-disclosure agreements with my clients. For this reason, I'm starting to build a portfolio of samples of my own work with R for data analysis and other tasks. Since COVID-19 is in the news now and I have experience with clinicaltrials.gov from my work with a biotech startup ( www.biostreamtech.com ), it seemed like a good way to start. The source code can be found at:  https://github.com/davesides/covid_19_clinical_trials Some techniques used daily include: select to remove, order, rename columns mutate to add columns or modify values in columns filter to eliminate rows from a data frame arrange to order rows in a data frame group_by and summarize to pivot replace_na to replace NA with (typically) zeros read_tsv (csv, etc.) to read delimited files packages readxl and writexl to read and write Excel files Many more examples to come, but I wanted to post something as a starting point.

In these times of social distancing our monthly poker group wanted to find a way to meet virtually. Since we play many variations of poker (we've been meeting for about 25 years) we needed a solution that was flexible and also provides the interaction of a virtual BYOB happy hour. The solution we found will only work with a group that you trust and is based on the honor system. Don't consider this a competitor for PokerStars or another online casino. Here's what we tried this past Friday night that worked pretty well... (images blurred to protect the "innocent" 😉) We used Whereby (Pro Plan - $10/month) for the video group call supporting up to 12 callers comfortably. They offer a free plan if you want to try it out with up to 4 people (bridge, hearts or spades would work well with 4). This solution is very convenient since it does not require an install and we wanted to minimize technical support issues with the group. For the card table interaction we us...

Just some notes from my learnings around Git and AWS... Assuming you're not the one responsible for granting access to AWS CodeCommit in your organization and you receive three pieces of information, something like this: 1) ssh://git-codecommit.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/project_name 2) user: ABC123 3) Private Key (see below) The following article will be helpful: Setup Steps for SSH Connections to AWS CodeCommit Repositories on Windows After installing Git  consider installing software like Tortoise Git  for convenience. You might also want to install an SSH client like PuTTY . As part of the AWS instructions, you'll need to edit the config file in the c:\users\<username>\.ssh folder: Host git - codecommit .*. amazonaws . com User ABC123 IdentityFile ~/. ssh / codecommit_rsa and in the same folder, the codecommit_rsa file should contain the RSA key provided similar to the one below. Note that you might have to remove extr...

This past year or so I've been focused on my work with a startup company creating a 3D videogame (written in Unity) using eye-tracking technology to help those with Autism Spectrum Disorder improve social skills, emotion recognition, and eye contact. Check out the website for more detail ( www.biostreamtech.com ). A more established company in the "BioSoftTech" market is Akili Interactive . Now that the product is in clinical trials, I am moving to a part-time contract position and expect to be able to write more often here. I'm offering technical product/project management services too.