James A Campbell

@rtbecard

(he/him) Former bird dude, current fish guy; currently based in Berlin. I'm into ecology, stats, bioacoustics, and artificial light. Currently working as part of this ETN:

1.000 Folgt1.729 Follower419 Posts

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James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jul 13

I wrote up my solution for figure scaling in rmarkdown. `fig.width` and `fig.height` set the output size and the new `scale` parameter scales the figure contents. Paste the code for the option hook in the first chunk, and the scale parameter will be available in all the following chunks. #rstats

Plots with variable scale factors and constant size.

```{r, fig.width=2, fig.height=2}
plot(pressure)
```
```{r, fig.width=2, fig.height=2, scale = 0.5}
plot(pressure)
```

Image of output from rmarkdown figure scaling example

$```{r setup, include=FALSE} # Set chunk hook # This will automatically adjust the figure parameters for you knitr::opts_hooks$set(fig_scale = function(options) { # --- Store out_width # HTML and latex output require different units out_width <- switch(knitr::opts_knit$get("rmarkdown.pandoc.to"), # html requires pixels "html" = sprintf("%ipx", options[["fig.width"]] * options[["dpi"]]), # Latex requires inches "latex" = sprintf("%.fin", options[["fig.width"]]) ) # Calculate new fig width and height values fig_width <- options[["fig.width"]]/options[["scale"]] fig_height <- options[["fig.height"]]/options[["scale"]] # Store chunk options options$out.width = out_width options$fig.height = fig_height options$fig.width = fig_width # Return the modified options return(options) }) # Set figure scaling hook for following chunks knitr::opts_chunk$set(scale = 0.8, fig_scale = TRUE) ```$

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jul 13

Following up on this... I tried this in my own package, and it works wonderfully. Here, `last` is substituted for the length of the vector, and `fs` is the sample rate of the time series. Seems to work great, and its not clear to me if there is any problems that it might cause down the line.

Finally, indexing can be done with the special keywords fs and last. fs will be substituted fro the sample rate and last will give the final sample in the signal.
```{r}
# Extract last 0.5 seconds of data from the pressure channel
head(sig[(last-fs*0.5):last, "p"])
```
See ?Signal for a detailed overview with examples on how indexing works.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jun 27

I finally found a nice solution for scaling figures in rmarkdown: Setup a chunk options hook which dynamically sets the out.width, fig.width and fig.height options. fig.width=7, scale=0.8 now returns a figure 7 in wide, but the contents will be scaled down by a factor of 0.8. #Rstats

$Screenshot of codeblock: # Set chunk hook # This will automatically adjust the figure parameters for you knitr::opts_hooks$set(fig_scale = function(options) { # Calculate out_width out_width <- sprintf("%.fin", options[["fig.width"]]) fig_width <- options[["fig.width"]]/options[["scale"]] fig_height <- options[["fig.height"]]/options[["scale"]] # Store chunk options options$out.width = out_width options$fig.height = fig_height options$fig.width = fig_width return(options) }) # Set figure scaling hook knitr::opts_chunk$set(scale = 0.8, fig_scale = TRUE) # Set random seed for reproducible plots set.seed(1)$

Example chunk where fig.width=7 and fig.height=5

The resulting figure which has a width of 7 inches and the contents are scaled by a factor 0.8, so it matches well with rest of the document's text size.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jun 15

One of the more strange Amazon AI slop products I've found. People don't really put their chickens in hamster balls, right? ...the reviews for this are on the fence...

James A Campbell@rtbecard· May 23

Clicked on the article... Was definitely not expecting to discover that the time magazine website also has an integrated AI chatbot?! Do we really have to put a chatbot in literally everything?

James A Campbell@rtbecard· May 3

Simultaneously adorable and sad. I hope you find your little ewok 🥲.

Lost dog poster, featuring a photo of the cute dog alongside a photo of a very similar looking ewok (the teddy bear aliens from the planet moon endor in return of the jedi).

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Apr 21

This is actually insanely helpful.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Mar 4

This guy with a bachelor degree uploaded 120 research items back dated since Jan 2020, covering medicine, AI, engineering, physics, pop genetics ... All with the same awful AI template. Researchgate already felt stagnant... but i don't see how it can survive in the academic-AI-slop era.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Feb 27

as if wine weren't confusing enough... half the time when I google an issue, I just end up with search results relating to wine *tasting* 😔

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Feb 27

Here's my take on a Linux wrapper for Innovasea's Fathom Connect software. Seems to work fine on Ubuntu 24.04 for converting vdat files to csv. gitlab.com/RTbecard/fat... Shout out to @obrien.page for discovering that Fathom Connect works in wine. #AcousticTelemetry

Screenshot of the linked gitlab repository readme.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Feb 12

#linux users rejoice! OnlyOffice is FINALLY adding support for multi-page layouts. It's currently the #opensource office suite that has the best compatibility with MSOFFICE docx... but has never allowed you to view more than one page of a doc at a time (which was frankly, insane).

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Feb 3

I'm surprised R doesn't already have ternary operators... especially since they added anonymous functions somewhat recently. Here's my prettier --- but probably an awful idea --- take on the user-implemented ternary operator.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jan 28

Also, this panel is titled "top 15 AI methods" and includes PCA, logistic regression, and nearest neighbours!? I'm so confused...

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Dec 30

They calculated the AI CO2 training cost by dividing by the number of monthly queries. So the more total chatGPT queries, the "lower" the carbon foot print for AI writing. Pretty dumb metric in the context of climate change.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Dec 23

"...we occasionally have to mention specific concepts before properly introducing and/or defining them---we ask the reader to bear with us in these cases." It's always a pleasure to read papers where the author explicitly empathizes with the reader.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Dec 22

For the underwater noise folk. Oceannoise2026 conferende dates. Once again in Barcelona (pretty happy about that). 2026.oceanoise.com

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Dec 21

I've been patiently waiting for the right moment to try out the legal cannabis i grew over the summer... This is perfect👌

Screenshot of the youtube thumbnail for: world science festival --- string theory in 2037

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Dec 21

Their AI toolset comes with an AI detector... And also an AI detector bypasser!? The intended use-case of this platform is pretty transparent.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Nov 30

The Christmas season has officially started in Berlin. Tis the season.

Child swimming in dirt in front of refuse at the Swedish Christmas market in Berlin.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Sep 29

Is anyone old enough to remember how videogame piracy protection worked in like 1994? On my Amiga, to play "Indiana jones", I had to open the instruction manual to the stated page and read off a code. This is basically how the "new" 2-factor authentication works at Freie University (Berlin) now...

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Sep 25

Has anyone heard of "The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences"... reviewing job applications and this journal came up at least twice... Is this a sketchy predatory journal? Or is it a legit remote sensing journal with a weirdly specific name? #GIS

Cover image of the journal "The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences".

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Sep 9

Just discovered the subreddit r/AdamDriverCats

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Aug 25

My google newsfeed was already like 90% grocery store tabloids... But now it's AI boosted grocery store tabloid trash 😮‍💨

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jul 4

Last Aquatic Noise conf. post... Slide from John Potter's keynote. Like 9/10 ppl see only squares in this image... But in cultures where they live in round huts surrounded by round livestock fences, most of them can only see circles. Yes, I promise there are infact circles in this image...

John Potter presents an illusion where the shape you see, circle/square, is largely affected by your culture.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jul 4

A depressing closing, aquatic noise conference (Prague). #bioacoustics #academiclife Discussion on the confrnc's past funding from US agencies and how it's gone for the foreseeable future. Next conf will need to signif cut costs and there are discussions on alternate funding models.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jul 2

Best poster at #AN2025. Tillman Spellauge used lasers to measure the resonance frequency of superficial sensory hair cells on snapping shrimp. He showed the hairs are sensitive to sounds around 2kHz. This supports previous observations that they can hear *without* their statocysts (i.e. ears).

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jun 30

#AN2025 conference, Prague: William Wu just presented some underwater measures we made in the river Spree, Berlin. The spectrogram shows what a passing ubahn sounds like from the perspective of a fish in the Spree. #bioacoustics (Repost as i wrote the wrong last name for William the first time...🤦)

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jun 30

(1/3) Johannes Baltzer (i believe?) presents the most beautiful example of modal dispersion i have ever seen. A seimsic airgun recorded at a far distance. (See thread) #bioacoustics #AN2025

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jun 24

I know I'm out of touch from most of society with my hatred for all things AI... ...but if there is 1 place on the internet I expect to read/listen to human beings, it would be the fucking github documentation page for open source bioacoustic analysis software.

Screenshot of the birdNET github documentation page.

Screenshot showing an AI generated podcast interview (audio) on the introduction page of the birdNET documentation.

James A Campbell@rtbecard· Jun 20

If I wanted to reproduce this excellent figure (Bucker 1964) in my own paper, what would be the proper etiquette? Can I just remake a high-res version, then mention in the caption its a remake of Bucker 1964, or are there more complex copy-right issues here?