“Whale in Space: NASA COVID-19 Space Apps Challenge”

During the last weekend of May 2020, NASA, together with the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), hosted the NASA COVID-19 Space Apps Challenge.

I have a hard time letting a good hackathon slip away — and always with the NASA Space Apps Challenges, a large number of different challenges were proposed.

This time, however, I wanted to try something new, something different. Instead of taking on one of the more data-oriented, scientific challenges, I decided to go with “The Art of It All”.

“The Curious Case of Switzerland's Languages”

I’ve been lucky to get around in this world a little bit over the years and had the chance (and still do!) to meet people from numerous different backgrounds. Generally, when I tell people I’m from Switzerland they think of mountains, cheese, chocolate, and hiss at the insanely high prices. Often, I get asked: “Actually, what is your native language?” Well, there is a short answer and a long answer. This article is the extended version of the long answer to that question — it’s complicated.

“Writing AWS Lambda Functions in Rust”

I have recently started digging deeper into Amazon Web Services (AWS), and particularly into serverless lambda functions. After a few successful experiments with Python, I started wondering how hard it would be to get this stack running with Rust. Turns out, it wasn’t too hard after I had overcome a few of the initial hurdles which mostly consisted of figuring out how the different parts work together under the hood. This article is intended to serve as a guide on how to write serverless AWS lambda functions in Rust and how to deploy them onto Amazon Web Services.

“I Built a Robot to Beat a Friend at a Mobile Minigame”

About two weeks ago before calling the day a night, I have challenged my Chinese friend (Nicole, 你好!) to play a minigame called “Jump” (跳一跳) with me. It used to be a popular game that is integrated into the WeChat messaging app, with one simple goal: touch the screen just long enough to charge up a jump to reach the next platform. You fall off, you lose. Well, I lost. I lost every time. So instead of going to bed that night, I started working on “a solution” that would ultimately mutate into a robot that uses image recognition to finally make me win the game.

“What Developing Selfie2Anime Taught Me”

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on Selfie2Anime.com together with Nathan Glover. Selfie2Anime is a free and open source online service that leverages the power of Generative Adversarial Networks, allowing its users to transform their selfie into an anime-style character.