As I am a bear of very little brain, these are notes to myself on my slightly shonky process for creating animated TreeMaps in R. The aim is to end up with something like this: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/animated-tree-map.mp4 Generate the images Getting the data is left as an exercise for the reader (sorry!). This loops through the data and generates a separate image…
Continue reading →
More yak-shaving for my MSc. A book I read was discussing data pipeline problems. How so much of the work of ETL is cleaning up crappy data and reformatting it to something useful. We should be going to the source of the data, the book suggested. Rather than wasting time cleaning - get better at production. Or, as it pithily put it: Whenever I see a generic quote like that, attributed to an…
Continue reading →
Nine weeks ago, I got my first does of the AZ vaccine. Yesterday, I received my second. Despite all the dire warnings of overloaded websites and limited slots, the booking process was boringly anticlimactic. I entered my NHS number, date of birth, postcode - and was then given a choice of locations. I picked one, and was given a range of times. I picked one for a few days hence and my wife - on…
Continue reading →
Into the woods, it's time to go, I hate to leave, I have to go. Into the woods, it's time, and so I must begin my journey. I live near the ancient Abbey Woods. Site of the derelict Lesnes Abbey, full of flowers, trees, and eternal mysteries. A tattered parchment map fluttered into my hand promising adventure and enlightenment deep in the heart of the woods. This is Lore of the Wild an…
Continue reading →
Bomb-throwing suffragettes. The pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men's rights activist. Forget feel-good heroines: meet the feminist trailblazers who have been airbrushed from history for being 'difficult' - and discover how they made a difference. Here are their stories in all their shocking, funny and unvarnished glory. It is a cliché that well behaved women seldom make history. …
Continue reading →
I've worked on some big product launches. Every time there's a major update, developers have to think about which features to port over and which to drop. Sometimes it is easy. Analytics show no one is using this feature? Drop it. Sometimes it is hard. It's a moderately well used feature, but complicated to get running on a new environment. If you keep it - that's a huge extra cost, for…
Continue reading →
English is a stupid, irregular language. But at least it doesn't needlessly ascribe gender to inanimate objects. However, I think this is a weakness when using 2nd Person pronouns - especially in fiction. Most literature is written in the 1st person ("I opened the door") or the 3rd person ("She picked up a fork"). But very occasionally, mostly in interactive fiction, authors use the 2nd person …
Continue reading →
One of the frustrating things about computers is their limited input options. A "standard" PC keyboard only has about 100 keys. Sure, some have some bonus buttons for controlling the machine, but it is becoming clear that there simply aren't enough buttons to efficiently program computers. Most programming languages have the concept of relational operators. How does variable X compare to…
Continue reading →
Murder makes unlikely allies. On the eve of the planet Ileri's historic vote to join the Commonwealth, the assassination of a government minister threatens to shatter everything. Private investigator Noo Okereke and spy Meiko Ogawa join forces with police chief Toiwa to investigate - and discover clues that point disturbingly toward a threat humanity thought they had escaped. A threat that…
Continue reading →
ACTORS! ACTING! Here's a quick summary of the film: "I AM ACTING!" "YEAH! WELL I AM ACTING LOUDER THAN YOU!" "OH? REALLY? JUST LOOK HOW GOOD I'M ACTING!" It's a relentless argument between two gormless gargoyles. Yes, the director is very clever in using lots of long and unedited shots. And, gosh, isn't the aspect ratio quirky?! Hey, isn't that... you know... the actor from the thing...? …
Continue reading →
What if Red Dwarf were given a big budget and re-made "Backwards"? I'm only teasing a little bit! It is impossible to do a good Time Travel story. The closest I've experienced is "This Is How You Lose the Time War" which, similar to TENET, has sort-of-spies chasing each other through time. Most sci-fi movies are an excuse to advertise the prowess of the special effects team - and TENET is no…
Continue reading →
As part of my MSc, I'm getting a few lessons in technologies I'm not familiar with. I've found some of these lessons extremely confusing - even when I'm proficient in the language. Here's an example of a coding fragment from one of the tutorials in the R language. Let me explain everything that I think is wrong with it. barplot(H, names.arg =M, col=“blue” xlab ='Country', ylab="Population") so…
Continue reading →
