My civil name is Martin Baláž and I can be often find under the alias @sesquideus. Everywhere. Unless it is an impostor.

• I am an astronomer and software engineer by both profession and passion. I like to think I am carefully balancing between physics, applied mathematics and programming.
• Currently I work as a pipeline developer for METIS, Mid-Infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph in the A*V team at the University of Vienna.
• In my semi-free time I am also the software lead of the AMOS project at Comenius University and I cannot get myself to quit working for the education NGO Trojsten.

Most of my previous work revolved around meteors, as I did both my masters and PhD in meteor science.

In my semi-free time I am still the software lead of the AMOS project, a network of automated meteor camera stations. This requires a lot of different tools:

• AMOS client, a persistent C++/Qt application that controls the collection of meteor data at remote stations. It communicates with a custom board over serial port, starts and stops the camera and sends periodic heartbeats and collected data to the central server C++/Qt
• AMOS server, the central website which manages the meteor sighting database and housekeeping data Python/Django
• wololo, a script for local backup of meteor data and converting video formats Python
• asmodeus or All-Sky Meteor Observation Detection Efficiency Simulator, a virtual meteor observatory that was used in my master thesis for determination of meteoroid flux and selection bias effects. Python, also ported to C++/Qt
• vasco, a virtual all-sky corrector plate for all-sky cameras Python/PyQt6
• vamos, a virtual meteor video simulator Python
• ubi, a kernel density estimation framework for arbitrary metric spaces, which was the core of my dissertation thesis. There it was used to find the probability density function of incoming meteors. C++

Since the beginning of my bachelor's I have been a part of the NGO Trojsten, which organizes multiple competitions and events concerning mathematics, physics, programming and puzzle hunts. I have authored over 200 problems for the physics correspondence seminar FKS and the real-time physics competition Náboj physics, and contributed to the backend as well.

• dgs is an automated document compositor / templating system. Written in XeLaTeX, make and Python, it also makes heavy use of jinja2 templating and pandoc. Used by both FKS and Náboj physics and also to publish handouts and homework sheets for students, although it can handle virtually any documents in a highly structured form.
• multiple simple simulations that were used in correspondence seminars
  • gravity, a 2D solar system simulator (in Slovak) JavaScript
  • phase-portraits, a simulator of simple physical systems and their phase portraits (in Slovak) JavaScript
  • rocket, a 2D simulator of a rocket (in Slovak) JavaScript
  • spectre, a minimalistic simulator of electromagnetic spectra (not yet finished) JavaScript

• scalyca, a minimalistic framework for console applications Python
• argparsedirs, a microscopic enhancement to argparse that enables using directories as inputs Python
• physics-fields, a package for evaluating scalar and vector fields Python
• astroworkshop, a simple website for the annual Astroworkshop for students at Comenius University Python/Django