StuartCW

What I learned this month - February 2021

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 20:21:00 +0000

What I learned in February 2021

xonsh

Xonsh is a Python-powered, cross-platform, Unix-gazing shell language and command prompt. The language is a superset of Python 3.5+ with additional shell primitives that you are used to from Bash and IPython. It works on all major systems including Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows. Xonsh is meant for the daily use of experts and novices alike. The Xonsh Shell

Mermaid Diagrams

“Diagramming and documentation costs precious developer time and gets outdated quickly. But not having diagrams or docs ruins productivity and hurts organisational learning.

Mermaid addresses this Catch-22 by cutting the time, effort and tooling that is required to create modifiable diagrams and charts, for smarter and more reusable content. Mermaid, as a text-based diagramming tool allows for quick and easy updates, it can also be made part of production scripts (and other pieces of code), to make documentation much easier. With Mermaid less time needs to be spent on making diagrams, as a separate documentation task.”

mermaid - Markdownish syntax for generating flowcharts, sequence diagrams, class diagrams, gantt charts and git graphs.

Chartist

“CHARTIST - SIMPLE RESPONSIVE CHARTS You may think that this is just yet an other charting library. But Chartist.js is the product of a community that was disappointed about the abilities provided by other charting libraries. Of course there are hundreds of other great charting libraries but after using them there were always tweaks you would have wished for that were not included.” - Chartist - Simple responsive charts

Font Awesome

“Get vector icons and social logos on your website with Font Awesome, the web’s most popular icon set and toolkit. Font Awesome

Thought Asylum

ThoughtAsylum is a web site created by Stephen Millard which contains all sorts of automation code primarily for Mac based productivity software.

Tadpole

“The ThoughtAsylum Drafts Library, also known as TADpoLe, is a collection of JavaScript for working with the Drafts application.” - ThoughtAsylum Drafts Library I used the export action to post this content directly from Drafts.

Optic

https://github.com/opticdev/optic#try-optic

Swift By Example

Will I get around to reading this?

Ambergris

Although the properties of ambergris have been known for centuries–and also its uses as medicine, condiment, aphrodisiac, and perfume–its origins remain somewhat mysterious, and are still the subject of study and debate…

Passing the sniff test: Is this large collection ambergris? via [@macdstuart](https://twitter.com/macdstuart
Ambergris whale estimating selling and buying ambergris blocks grey amber from spermwhales found around the world.(ambergris)
The origin of ambergris

What I learned this month - January 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 20:21:00 +0000

What I learned in January 2021

Etymology

Destiny vs Fate vs Weird

Someone asked what is the difference between fate and destiny. As I have mentioned before, similar words in English often came into the language and different times from different languages as I will explain:

Destiny

This is the easiest word to trace it’s from the Latin word destinare “make firm, establish” (like destination). i.e. “that which has been firmly established,” as by fate and is usually a positive meaning.

Fate

The word “fate” and also the word “weird” is related to the idea of “The Fates” being, usually three, female beings who rule the destiny of gods and men. They appear in many European mythologies. Also know as Norns in Norse mythology, in Greek Moirai and the Roman Parcae. They were often depicted as weavers of a tapestry on a loom, with the thread dictating the destiny each person. Once the cloth of your life is woven then there is no way to change it. It is your fate. Fate is from the Latin word “fatum” a “prophetic declaration of what must be, oracle, prediction,” thus the Latin word’s usual sense is “that which is ordained, destiny, fate,” literally “a thing spoken by the gods,” originally from the past participle of fari “to speak”. It’s often used in a bad or negative sense: I.e. “bad luck, ill fortune; mishap, ruin; a pest or plague.”

Weird

The original word in English for “fate” was “wyrd” as in Shakespeare’s weird sisters, the three fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. In the theatre they were portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in Shakespeare”s play “Macbeth” and especially in 18th and 19th century productions of it, which led to the adjectival meaning “odd-looking, uncanny” (in 1815); “odd, strange, disturbingly different” (in 1820). The world “wyrd” comes from the Proto-Germanic “wurdiz”, from the Proto-Indo-European “wert-“ (“to turn, wind”) which is the origin of the name of the Norns, urðr. This is related also to the turning of the spinning wheel that the Fates use to spin the thread of your life.

Fatal

Finally, another related word is “fatal”. We use it to describe something like an injury or illness that brings death but the original meaning is that this was the fate that brought you to your death. Thus a fatal injury.

Making Your Own Alexa

This YouTube video was really inspiring as it brought together many tools.

https://youtu.be/re-dSV_a0tM

Projects

Radiation Counter

Radiation Counter attached to my Raspberry Pi. I found the serial port Geiger Counter that bought in 2011 and resurrected it. I also found a Linux Python script for it which I hacked a bit to be able to save the readings in JSON files. I’m planning on reading this with another program and feeding them into a RRD file and from that making graphs which I post can post to Twitter. After that I think I’ll download the tweet archive for the radiation counter account that I made and see if I can put all the historical figure into RRD.

Home Network Monitoring

I didn’t know this command:

sudo arp-scan -l -r 3
Interface: eth0, datalink type: EN10MB (Ethernet)
Starting arp-scan 1.9.5 with 256 hosts (https://github.com/royhills/arp-scan)
168.3.1    30:f7:72:b5:0a:19       Hon Hai Precision Ind. Co.,Ltd.
168.3.9    70:73:cb:b3:49:cc       Apple, Inc.
168.3.10   ec:fa:bc:5d:c5:bd       (Unknown)
168.3.12   00:25:4b:04:5f:fb       Apple, Inc.
168.3.17   00:11:32:3b:f6:73       Synology Incorporated
168.3.11   50:02:91:ea:9e:dd       (Unknown)
168.3.25   70:73:cb:b3:49:cc       Apple, Inc.
168.3.16   7c:ab:60:69:c0:65       (Unknown)
168.3.27   0c:fe:45:c8:e8:48       Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.
168.3.35   00:04:20:07:92:f4       Slim Devices, Inc.
168.3.37   bc:c3:42:6c:65:c0       Panasonic System Networks Co., Ltd.
168.3.15   6a:ad:b9:dd:79:13       (Unknown)
168.3.7    64:b5:c6:b4:da:42       (Unknown)
168.3.32   8c:85:90:89:71:52       (Unknown)
168.3.31   b2:70:0e:35:44:72       (Unknown)
168.3.41   da:f0:d6:f2:19:4d       (Unknown)
168.3.19   22:6b:95:93:04:18       (Unknown) (DUP: 1)

packets received by filter, 0 packets dropped by kernel
Ending arp-scan 1.9.5: 256 hosts scanned in 6.466 seconds (39.59 hosts/sec). 17 responded

Personal Analytics

Great Podcast: I love the story of Django.. #299 Personal search engine with datasette and dogsheep — Talk Python To Me — Overcast He talks about my passion for personal data collection. SQLite, JSON, data sources that you can tap into, Python.
TODO: YouTube

Interesting Stuff

If you want to set goals or change your life in anyway, I really recommend this guy: YouTube
@OpenAI has trained a model that can create new images - you just describe them in English. 🤯 DALL·E: Creating Images from Text
The Art of Negotiation: YouTube I’m tempted to say after listening to this guy for a while that a good voice trumps good looks..
I really enjoy this guy’s videos. I would suggest watching all three of these but this episode is outstanding. After crossing Wales in a straight line, he tries to cross Norway in the straight line. Totally crazy. YouTube
Pretty amazing thread about how Amazon AWS started: https://twitter.com/danrose999/status/1347677573900242944?s=21
I really enjoyed Amanda Gorman’s poem at the inauguration YouTube I looked at quite a few of her other performances and was again reminded of the power of words.
Co-Pilot of the plane that went down in the Hudson River tells his story: https://youtu.be/qr5SxnDom7g
Stumbled across this history YouTube Channel: YouTube
How car seat laws have impacted the birthrate. Spoiler it is a bigger hassle/expensive to drive 3 kids vs 2 kids. 447. How Much Do We Really Care About Children? — Freakonomics Radio — Overcast
Some good leadership lessons here: 8 reliable lessons for unreliable times — Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman — Overcast
this was interesting when he got into talking about skills-domain-field… My Favorite Things: How to Find Success No MATTER What Your Interest Is! — The James Altucher Show — Overcast
wow if this really works https://twitter.com/mashable/status/1353034007517171712
Very inspirational and detailed story how a guy built his own business: How I accidentally built a Podcast API business : Listen Notes
Mozilla Engineer Track: https://twitter.com/Gankra_/status/1046438955439271936
The origin of the Beatles track “Dear Prudence” - YouTube

To Try

Linux & Raspberry Pi Tools

n³ The unorthodox terminal file manager.
- Raspberry Pi terminal based activity monitor GitHub - PierreKieffer/pitop: Raspberry Pi terminal based activity monitor

tldr jq     

  A command-line JSON processor that uses a domain-specific language.
  More information: <https://stedolan.github.io/jq>.

  Output a JSON file, in pretty-print format:

      jq . file.json

  Output all elements from arrays (or all the values from objects) in a JSON file:

      jq '.[]' file.json

  Read JSON objects from a file into an array, and output it (inverse of `jq .[]`):

      jq --slurp . file.json

  Output the first element in a JSON file:

      jq '.[0]' file.json

  Output the value of a given key of the first element in a JSON text from `stdin`:

      cat file.json | jq '.[0].key_name'

  Output the value of a given key of each element in a JSON text from `stdin`:

      cat file.json | jq 'map(.key_name)'

  Output the value of multiple keys as a new JSON object (assuming the input JSON has the keys `key_name` and `other_key_name`):

      cat file.json | jq '{my_new_key: .key_name, my_other_key: .other_key_name}'

  Combine multiple filters:

      cat file.json | jq 'unique | sort | reverse'

  Output the value of a given key to a string (and disable JSON output):

      cat file.json | jq --raw-output '"some text: \(.key_name)"'

To Learn

https://datasette.io/
How to write a simple slack bot on PythonAnywhere
Find out how to use a different template on GitHub Pages.
Slack API

Blogs

New https://martin.kleppmann.com/

Tools

TabNine
Vim

Tools Used to Make This Page

iOS

Textastic
Working Copy

Services

GitHub Pages
Hover Domain Hosting

TODO

TODO: A shortcut or script that will make a nicely formatted insert from a raw YouTube URL
TODO: Look again at Python JobLib https://joblib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/persistence.html

What I learned this month - April 2020

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 13:49:00 +0000

What I learned in April 2020

Python

DeepDiff to find out what changed between data structures.

from deepdiff import DeepDiff

def compareLists(l1,l2,sortby=None):
	l1.sort(key=sortby)
	l2.sort(key=sortby)
	
	changes=DeepDiff(l1,l2,ignore_order=True)
	print(changes)
	
	if 'iterable_item_added' in changes: 
		addedItems=changes['iterable_item_added']
		for addition in addedItems:
			print("New:",addedItems[addition])
		
	if 	'iterable_item_removed' in changes:
		missingItems=changes['iterable_item_removed']
		for missing in missingItems:
			print("Missing:",missingItems[missing])
	
l1=[10,20,30,40]
l2=[10,20,30,40,50]

compareLists(l1, l2 )

Results

{'iterable_item_added': {'root[4]': 50}}
New: 50

Shell

ShellCheck

Finds bugs in your shell scripts.

ShellCheck

Nginx

Logs

/usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.17.7/logs

Settings

/usr/local/etc/nginx/

To Learn

How to write a simple slack bot on PythoAnywhere
Find out how to use a different template on GitHub Pages.
Slack API

What I learned this month - March 2020

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 13:49:00 +0000

What I learned in March 2020

Another Meta Learning Experience

https GitHub pages. I updated the DNS and tinkered around with the Github settings to enable https. I’m still not sure about what exactly multiple A records achieve but it seems to be working now.. at least on Safari.

Python

Arrow: Better dates & times for Python

Arrow

Arrow is a Python library that offers a sensible and human-friendly approach to creating, manipulating, formatting and converting dates, times and timestamps. It implements and updates the datetime type, plugging gaps in functionality and providing an intelligent module API that supports many common creation scenarios. Simply put, it helps you work with dates and times with fewer imports and a lot less code.

Python Anywhere

How to upload and download content
Testing .htaccess This is kind of old school but how do you know if your .htaccess is setup and working? A simple test is adding redirect and see if it works.

To Learn

How to write a simple slack bot on PythoAnywhere
Find out how to use a different template on GitHub Pages.

What I learned this month - November 2016

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 13:49:00 +0000

What I learned in November 2016

Beacon Technology Standards

What I learned this month - March 2015

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Github Pages

Force an update.

git commit -m 'rebuild pages' --allow-empty

What I learned this month - June 2014

Sun, 01 Jun 2014 12:00:00 +0000

What I learned this month

Bro

https://www.bro.org/index.html

“Bro is a passive, open-source network traffic analyzer. It is primarily a security monitor that inspects all traffic on a link in depth for signs of suspicious activity. More generally, however, Bro supports a wide range of traffic analysis tasks even outside of the security domain, including performance measurements and helping with trouble-shooting.

The most immediate benefit that a site gains from deploying Bro is an extensive set of log files that record a network’s activity in high-level terms. These logs include not only a comprehensive record of every connection seen on the wire, but also application-layer transcripts such as, e.g., all HTTP sessions with their requested URIs, key headers, MIME types, and server responses; DNS requests with replies; SSL certificates; key content of SMTP sessions; and much more. By default, Bro writes all this information into well-structured tab-separated log files suitable for post-processing with external software. Users can however also chose from a set of alternative output formats and backends to interface directly with, e.g., external databases.”

Linux

getent hosts

bash -u

I should have know this, but bash -u finds undeclared variables for you.

What I learned this month - March 2014

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Shell Scripting

This is Mac specific. This converts your Safari history to JSON.

plutil -convert json ~/Library/Safari/History.plist -o ~/History.plist.json

What I learned this month - December 2013

Sun, 01 Dec 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Shell Scripting

Not exactly something learnt this month but something I had to look up again. How to password protect a ZIP file from the command line.

zip -P password myzipfile.zip filetobezipped

What I learned this month - October 2013

Tue, 15 Oct 2013 12:52:00 +0000

Shell Scripting

You can grep inside gzipping files directly using zcat. See below:

find . -name “acc*.gz” -exec zcat “{}” +

grep “error”

This is especially useful for grepping logfiles that have been compressed.

StuartCW

What I learned this month - February 2021

What I learned in February 2021

xonsh

Mermaid Diagrams

Chartist

Font Awesome

Thought Asylum

Tadpole

Optic

Swift By Example

Ambergris

What I learned this month - January 2021

What I learned in January 2021

Etymology

Making Your Own Alexa

Projects

Radiation Counter

Home Network Monitoring

Personal Analytics

Interesting Stuff

To Try

Linux & Raspberry Pi Tools

Web Development Tools

Programming Language Learning Aids

Miscellaneous Links

To Learn

Blogs

Tools

Tools Used to Make This Page

iOS

Services

TODO

What I learned this month - April 2020

What I learned in April 2020

Python

DeepDiff to find out what changed between data structures.

Shell

ShellCheck

Nginx

Logs

Settings

To Learn

What I learned this month - March 2020

What I learned in March 2020

Another Meta Learning Experience

Python

Arrow: Better dates & times for Python

Python Anywhere

To Learn

What I learned this month - November 2016

What I learned in November 2016

Beacon Technology Standards

What I learned this month - March 2015

Github Pages

What I learned this month - June 2014

What I learned this month

Bro

Linux

bash -u

What I learned this month - March 2014

Shell Scripting

What I learned this month - December 2013

Shell Scripting

What I learned this month - October 2013

Shell Scripting