Posts by Year

2023

The Most Harmful Inventor in History

less than 1 minute read

It is difficult to surpass the magnitude of the damage caused by two particular inventions, and both were created by the same man

Back to top ↑

2022

Helping people online

less than 1 minute read

How to overcome the communication limitations of the internet and actually help people

Back to top ↑

2021

The evolution of US gun violence

1 minute read

Our acceptance of violence today stands in striking contrast to Americans’ horror at the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre

Git: Dynamic identity

less than 1 minute read

A great example of when to use the gitconfig includeif directive

Back to top ↑

2020

Data problems

less than 1 minute read

9 things to check with a new data set.

Back to top ↑

2019

How to create a healthy society

less than 1 minute read

Move fast and break things is an abomination if your goal is to create a healthy society

How to be Black

less than 1 minute read

A satirical guide to race issues

Git: Stash tips

1 minute read

Annotate or summarize your stashes, and more

Back to top ↑

2018

Git: Snapshot

less than 1 minute read

Using the git stash save command

Git: LFS Track

less than 1 minute read

Adding a new type of large file to your repository

Git: LFS Pull

less than 1 minute read

Addressing git checkout fails

Git: LFS Prune

1 minute read

Tidying up your local git LFS cache

Git: LFS Clone

less than 1 minute read

How LFS integrates with git

Back to top ↑

2017

Pandas: Options

less than 1 minute read

The get_option, reset_option, and set_option functions.

Pandas: Speed up merges

less than 1 minute read

Specify the key column of the merge as the index of your dataframes, then join instead of merge

SQL: UNION v UNION ALL

less than 1 minute read

UNION removes duplicate records, whereas UNION ALL does not

Jupyter: High-res plots

less than 1 minute read

Via the InlineBackend.figure_format configuration option

Mac: Emoji

less than 1 minute read

The characters palette

Python: Private variables

less than 1 minute read

Follow the convention of putting two underscores at the beginning of the variable’s name

Python: Lambdas as lexical closures

less than 1 minute read

A function that remembers the values from the enclosing lexical scope even when the program flow is no longer in that scope

Nix: SSH pipes

less than 1 minute read

Execute half your command locally and half remotely

SHAttered

less than 1 minute read

Deliberately cause a SHA-1 collision

Tmux: List Sessions

less than 1 minute read

Using the ls or list-sessions command

PSQL: Sleeping

less than 1 minute read

Using the pg_sleep function

Back to top ↑

2016

Hello World!

less than 1 minute read

My first post

Back to top ↑

2007

Minnow Telescope Finds Massive Planet

8 minute read

Since ancient times, mankind has studied the sky and wondered what the ‘wandering stars’ (planets) might be. In the last two decades, we have found hundreds ...

Back to top ↑

2006

Back to top ↑