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Learning AI if You Suck at Math — P3 — Building an AI Dream Machine or Budget Friendly Special

The gurus of India often say that it takes 40 days for any practice to get established in your system. So if you start meditating, you will only understand its impact on your life if you have been committed to it for at least 40 days. Any lapse in the 40 days, and you increase the probability of not installing that habit properly into your life. I’m a reflection of what is often referred to as the ‘revolving door’ culture in the professional world. I started my career with a job… After a few years, I got out to become an entrepreneur — succeeded at times, failed at times… I then returned to the workforce for a brief stint of two plus years, and now I’m back to being an entrepreneur. And yes, I’ve just completed my first 40 days of being an entrepreneur. These 40 days have been tough… I initially applied for jobs and work assignments at the same time. I thought I should keep both options open. I interviewed with a few companies, but eventually got disillusioned with the work culture they perpetuated… The reasons why I left the workforce only became clearer. Soon I changed my script… I started approaching the same companies with a proposal to be a consultant instead. This arrangement seemed to work better for some organisations — they don’t have to pay you a fat salary and you don’t have to be their slave from 9–5 (or 9–8 in some cases)…a win-win for all. But, during this process, I realised one thing: No matter how much experience you have, and no matter how large a body of work you have built, every time you talk to a new company or a new client, you have to prove yourself all over again. Being a writer, my work is all over the internet, and I have plenty of ready samples to show…. Still, each time, I’m asked to do a new sample piece of writing. And I’m not complaining…because I realize that when you take the brave step of starting all over again that’s exactly what it takes, the guts to start from ground zero…to prove yourself on the very basics of your expertise. The reason for this is largely because you are now building a new set of relationships, and working with people who are not familiar with your work ethic. I recently met a potential client, a highly established entrepreneur in his own right, who questioned if I really did feel all the struggles of an entrepreneur. He asked me if I could write about entrepreneurship with the same sharpness and depth like seasoned entrepreneurs…considering I had just left the workforce. Well, to him I’d like to say, the fact that I can start all over again is a reflection of my entrepreneurial spirit… I’m not afraid to try once again, and I’m not afraid to fail once again. And now that I have completed my first 40 days of being an entrepreneur, I can safely say the seeds of entrepreneurship have been planted too… The same feelings of uncertainty — emotional and financial, the same feelings of apprehension before you start a new project with a new client, and the same sense of liberation and responsibility that comes from knowing that you alone are responsible for your next success. I’m happy to have got the chance to start all over again, and I’m happy I’ve survived the first 40 days of being an entrepreneur… I don’t know what the coming days, months or years hold in store, and where my career will take me next, but for now I am definitely an entrepreneur! Thanks so much for taking time out to read my post. You add more energy to my pen… If you like my blog, you can… PS: Leave a comment Press the heart button and recommend it Share it with your own network Follow me to read my latest posts

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Photo Credit: quotefancy.com I am the CEO of my life. I decide whether to wake up at 6 or an hour before work. I decide whether to go jogging or to scroll the endless Facebook feed. I decide whether to eat or skip the breakfast. I decide whether to follow my passion or do the work I don’t love. I decide whether to stay calm or to get anxious on others fault. I decide whether to forgive and forget or to hold a grudge against people. I decide whether to eat organic food or canned food. I decide whether to walk a few minutes or to get a cab. I decide whether to read a book or to waste time at a party. I decide whether to cherish the relationship or to cheat on her. I decide whether to move on or to get depressed after a breakup. I decide whether to sleep 8 hours or to watch Netflix all night. I decide whether to correct my mistakes or to feel bad for being bad. So do you. Believe that you are 100 percent responsible for everything that happens in your life. We are the CEOs of our own lives — Dan Ariely in his latest book . Payoff

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Everyone is a CEO

Project is a keyword that has substantially appeared in our working life. No matter you are with a large multi-national company, or a medium-sized design studio, managing projects with efficiency and keeping budgets in control are two crucial factors for project managers to constantly taking care of. With new , we are having tons of project management tools varied from full-features project management monster to simple zen products that aim to tackle specific niches. With so many players in the market, we find Streamtime an interesting contender to be talked about. management technology is an automated project management software that manage projects, teams, and tasks. It was founded by Aaron Green in New Zealand and has undergone several changes of its product since the launch of 2002. The ease of use, intuitive interface, and elegant product design provide a brand new experience of being organized when it comes to the topics of project management and workflow. Streamtime Features Auto-schedule tasks based on estimated time and deadlines Create and plan jobs quickly: pick staffs, estimate hours, and set deadlines Visual indicators to track project progress and budget Convert project plan to job quotation in on e click Drag and drop task manager to arrange to-dos between staffs on the team schedule Automated time entry when to-dos are completed iOS and Android apps available Pricing Streamtime’s pricing model is extremely simple: $15/user/month. There are no other pricing schemes you need to waste time to compare and tryout. Just as their product design, you can find simplicity everywhere on Streamtime. Design Streamtime’s interface design was like no others. Its dashboard is clean and feature-less. On the contrary of contemporary design trend, texts on Streamtime are oversized. It’s clean and simple, but the spatial alignment is definitely not the best role model of the minimalistic design. However, all the elements live in harmony with one another throughout entire Streamtime product. Besides graphic design, the UX design of Streamtime is fabulous. It takes away many redundant features that most people never used but have been included in most of the modern project management products, and only focuses on the things that make project management simple and easy to use. In another word, it does not compete with other competitors on the volume of features, but redesign the process to make project management an easier practice that everyone on the team won’t find it difficult to adopt. With their efforts to redesign Streamtime into a better and easy to use project management product, Streamtime has won a Pinnacle for Digital Applications in the AGDA Design Awards last year. (Check out their offical blog post ) here Getting started Before jumping on board, Streamtime has developed an intuitive tutorial process for every user to get used to its interface and workflow with ease. When you first time login to Streamtime, it will greet you with a visual friendly sample project which you can start playing around. The training process won’t take you much time to understand how Streamtime works, and it shows that they care about customers and wish to promote the redesigned Streamtime workflow and let you experience the best of it. The greeting page also include basic tutorials of its core features that you can explore and learn. Most of the tutorials are accompanied by video clips that you can view and learn in a simpler way. Because Streamtime redesign its workflow and its general use cases are different from ordinary project management tools, tutorials are crucial for first time users to know what Streamtime is about and what it can offer them to change their workflow and enhance productivity. Streamtime has done a great job to explain and showcase the difference in its greeting tutorial, so every beginners can learn Streamtime without being scare away by hundreds of features writing in jargons that they have never encountered before. Since it’s extremely easy to setup your Streamtime work space to get started with your first project, the learning curve of your team members to adopt Streamtime will by low and the adoption time will be short also. Workflow As a project manager or designer, there is high probability that you want the workflow/admin side of your job as hassle-free as possible, so you can focus on the most important task: doing your job better and start making money! In the traditional workflow, when there is a project request, you meet with your client to discuss about the project scope and details in several meetings. Then you’ll send a follow up email with them to offer a project plan, list of items that need to complete, and a quotation. Streamtime has implement this workflow in a intuitive and clear-defined pipeline for project managers to working with their team members and clients. First of all, you need to create a new job with budget in Streamtime. Then you will need to decide to charge your clients by your team members’ hourly rate or by a set price. After all are set, you can start listing tasks to the project plan and assign different team members, estimate hours, and set deadlines to each task. Both project and task have budget options, which allows you to setup and track the cost of each task and keep everything under control. When the project and tasks are created, you can transform your project plan into a beautiful quotation for your client to review. You can directly send the quotation to your client or download the PDF file. Luckily, if your client agree with your proposal and the project kickstarted, Streamtime provides clear visual indicators for you to track your team’s progress, and let you know that whether your project in on-time or on-budget. To-do Streamtime is a visually focused product, so their to-do list must be something unusual and eye-catching? Definitely! Streamtime has an innovative to-do list: a drag and drop weekday calendar view which is enriched with large texts and colorful boxes. Above the date line is the . Tasks can be manually added or automatically scheduled based on estimated time and deadlines in the project. Today’s to-dos are colored from bottom to top by priority, and you can increase or decrease the size of each task box just like adjusting the shape in Photoshop, if you want to adjust the estimated time of the task. todo area On the other hand, below the date line is the . You can drag a task from the todo area and drop the task box in the done area when you complete your tasks. When the task is done, Streamtime automatically logs the time you have worked on the task to the project, so you won’t need to waste your time filling out separate timesheets. done area The visual calendar is an amazing way of mapping out daily as well as weekly tasks on the schedule and help you to keep organized of the time and budget. The view feature allows for realistic targets for jobs to be managed rather than just planning without executing. As for team management, Streamtime creates a drag and drop Team Schedule for you to see every member’s tasks in one clear view. You can review your team schedule and evaluate the capacity of output. To manage your team’s time and resources, you can drag and drop tasks between members for task reallocation, as well as edit each task for new deadline. The visual way to see all members’ schedules enables better job distribution and time tracking, boosting efficiency and project management. Integration Streamtime integrates with , a New Zealand based accounting platform. You can turn your project plan into invoices and bill your clients with a few simple steps. Xero Streamtime has reintroduced a better way to manage working blocks rather than small snippets of time which might wasting our time in the end. If you are with small or medium size creative companies that consistently looking for an effective way to plan jobs, manage progress, teams and tasks, and run analytics to spot opportunities, Streamtime is a good prospect for you to consider adopt. You can start a 14 days trial . here

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A Review of Streamtime, an Intuitive Project Management Tool

Image taken from raspberrypi.org In my , I gave an overview of the current state of Swift on the Raspberry Pi platform. In this post, I will try highlight how to set up a pleasant development environment to write Swift code on the Pi. previous post One of the biggest pains right now when writing Swift code on any Linux platform is the lack of a real IDE. Sure, you may hate Xcode but go start typing your program in Nano on the command line and you will see how real misery feels. You get a lot of these since you do not have compiler warnings at write time The first step for a good development experience is a good IDE and the best Swift IDE for Linux right now is…. Xcode. What!? But Xcode does not work on Linux. How do I install it on the Pi? Well, you don’t, and frankly, you would not want to write code on the Pi. It is a slow computer and running it with a monitor and keyboard is unnecessary. So where do I write my code? On your Mac of course, where else dummy. The first thing you need to do is setup a headless Pi. There is a really nice tutorial on how to do that on the . The tutorial is written for Raspian and I recommend using Ubuntu for the Pi since the SPM works there. I first ran my Pi with a keyboard and monitor and did the initial setup and connected it to my WiFi . Once you have the Pi connected to your router you can start controlling it by from your mac. First, you need to find the IP address of your Pi on the network. I do that using nmap which scans devices in your network that listed on port 22 (ssh port). Raspberry forums network SSH To find your Pi, you need to replace the 192.168.6.0 part with your local address space. Once you have it, connect your mac through ssh. ssh {your-pi-username}@{you-pi-ip-address} And there you go, the sky is the limit now. Try to build and run your first Swift script remotely on the Pi. // Create the scriptecho "print(\"hello from swift\")" >> hello.swift // Run itswift hello.swift This is all fine and dandy but what are you still doing on the command line? Go fire up Xcode and begin some serious development! We will create a program that will switch on and off an LED connected to the Pi if you press the return key on your Mac. To switch nicely between the two environments we will use the , which is a system-agnostic dependency manager for Swift. It runs fine both on OS X and on Linux and it will be a vital part that will enable us to develop code on the Mac and run it on the Pi. Swift Package Manager // create the project foldermkdir led-blink// go to the foldercd led-blink// initialize the swift project using SPMswift package init --type executable You should now have the directory structure and main.swift file generated by SPM. Edit the Package.swift to include the . GPIO swift library import PackageDescription let package = Package(name: "led-blink",dependencies: [.Package(url: "https://github.com/uraimo/SwiftyGPIO.git", majorVersion: 0)]) Now fetch the library using the command: swift package update You can now use SPM to generate an Xcode project for you! Do this using the command: swift package generate-xcodeproj Open the generated Xcode project and build it (cmd+B), so the compiler knows about the SwiftyGPIO library. Voila, you can now use Xcode to develop your program, having access to all those sweet like code completion, syntax highlighting, compiler errors, documentation and more. tools Open the main.swift file and add the following code: import SwiftyGPIOimport Foundation // Get a dictionary of all the gpio pinslet gpios = SwiftyGPIO.GPIOs(for: .RaspberryPi2) // Get the pin that you connected the LED to. Remember to set the right pin number, for me it was 27guard let ledGpio = gpios[GPIOName.P27] else {fatalError("Could not initialize the gpio")} // Set the pin direction to .OUT and turn it offledGpio.direction = .OUTledGpio.value = 0 // Read user input from keyboard and switch the LED on/off each time the user presses the return key print("Press return to switch the LED on/off. To quit type exit")while let userInput = readLine(strippingNewline: true), userInput != "exit" {print("Switching LED")ledGpio.value = ledGpio.value == 0 ? 1 : 0} Ok, the program is completed. The only thing left to do is to build and run it on the Pi. To do this, you will need to copy the project you created on your mac to the Pi. There are a couple of solutions how you might do it. For one, you could create a GIT repository and host it on Github. Then you would push the changes from your mac, and pull them on the Pi. Another option is to use SCP to copy the folder. scp -r {path-to-project-folder-on-mac} {your-pi-username}@{you-pi-ip-address}:{path-to-folder-on-pi} Once you copied the project, you can ssh to the Pi and go to the project folder. The folder has all the files there but you still have to build it using the compiler on the Raspberry. swift build Should create an executable which you can then run and marvel at your work! Here is the masterpiece I’ve created in action. Raspberry Pi controlled by a MacBook Pro Conclusion: Developing for the Pi is not that painful once you can use your familiar environment on the Mac. Using this technique you can develop your programs faster using Xcode. The workflow looks roughly like this: Write code on Mac -> Copy to Pi -> Build and run on Pi This process can easily be completely automated but I just didn’t have time to do it. Using this setup I plan to use Xcode to develop a server application, run it on the Pi, and control LEDs with my iPhone. Fingers crossed.

Blink

Fetch

Setting up a Swift development environment on Raspberry Pi

6 steps to validate your business idea CREDIT: Pinterest Do you have a million-dollar in your mind and don’t know to proceed? Whether it is worth, investing time, money and effort? business idea HOW This is the question that haunts many and stops them from working on their business idea. The reason behind this is lack of insightful data available online to guide one through the steps. That’s where my motivation comes from to write this blog. entrepreneurs In this blog, you will figure out things if you have a great new business idea. WHAT to do, HOW to do, WHEN to do and WHY to do CREDIT: Imgrum The above image distinguishes a from . Guys stop being a , think of a new business idea, do a set of exercises or validations before taking a decision on whether to move forward with the business idea or not and make a business out of it. Here are 6 early steps you can take if you have a great business idea in mind: wantrepreneur entrepreneur wantrepreneur 1. Explore the WHY and Define the WHO : The first step is to think about the reason behind the business idea. Why did the business idea pop up into your head? What is the problem it is trying to solve? Deep dive into finding the actual problem and stating it. Does the problem exist for everyone? or Just you? Define the for which it exists. Those people are your . Validate the existence of the problem by talking with them. Whether they have experienced it or not? If yes often? If you can’t clearly think of the problem it tries to solve, or your don’t consider it as a real problem, either change your or Think of a new problem to solve. market segment target customers HOW target customers target customers I am writing this blog to solve the I asked my buddies, whether they have faced this problem or not? Is it actually a problem? For example: problems faced by entrepreneurs (WHO) in validating their business ideas (WHY). (problem validation) For in-depth understanding of the concepts explained in this step kindly click on the following link: Chapter #1 : A Unique Way to Problem Identification and Validation 2. Search for existing solutions: Search for existing solutions. Search the internet, discuss with friends, colleagues etc. Check how effectively the solutions have been implemented, whether they solve the problem or not, if yes then how efficiently? If you can’t find any implemented solutions, explore the behind it. Don’t proceed to the next step until you have discovered the . WHY WHY I searched for solutions online, but couldn't find any of the available solutions solving the problem effectively. I went through many blogs, articles, websites but each one of them i.e. structured, user-friendly and comprehensive framework . For example: lacked the very basic thing (ineffective implementation) 3. Define the WHAT: This is the step in which you come up with a solution. Framing your solution depends on the result of the above step. Think about what form your solution will take, Will it be a product? Service? What will be the key features of the product? At this stage just think of features necessary to solve the problem at hand. Note down the features defined for each one of them. Create a basic layout of your product will look, with key features embedded. Be ready for changes, as the next step involves going out and exploring the market. with the WHY HOW I figured out that I will write a blog for a start. I have defined my product here. With time, as I get more and more feedback, I will shape the journey of my product. For example: 4. Do Market research: After you have the figured out, get out of your comfort zone, go out and explore the market out there. This is the most important step in the whole process as it defines the practicality of your product’s success. WHAT Talk with your , pitch them your business idea, show them the , ask how much they would pay for it? Whether they would recommend it to their friends/relatives or not? potential customers wireframes Check out your , their , market hold, products and compare it with yours. Talk with start-up founders, investors, take their advice and feedback. competitors market share Also analyze the present and future trends of technology, government rules and regulations, investments and other limitations in your play-field. After this step, you will have a clearer idea about your product should be. Incorporate all the feedbacks captured in this step to shape the WHAT WHAT. 5. Figure out the HOW: After passing through all the above phases, you have pretty much everything figured out. One thing that remains is figuring out the HOW. You have the requirements from above phases, state them all down in this step. Figure out of the initial funds, and of building product, of making money, of product timeline. (Basically figuring out the ability and time required) the HOW much and HOW HOW WHO HOW WHAT 6. Build and Test: We haven’t built anything until now. This is the step where we start to build the product. We build the here. Build, test it on real customers, derive learnings and iterate. There are many ways in which you can build and test an . You can find many articles online on it, choose the technique that best suits your case. This step marks the end of validation phases, of the business idea . MVP MVP One thing I want to quote here: “Build in Phases, Release early, Learn early”. I am doing research in finding the actual reason behind the high attrition rate after the Ideation phase. Kindly fill in the survey and help me complete it. Thanks a lot And with that, I will close for the week. I am open for suggestions and feedback on the technical details of the blog. Also you can join my group “ ” to . You can comment here to share what you think. I am little confused about the content of my next blog, I think you guys can help me with that. :p PushStart validate your Business Idea in seconds I got motivation to write about this from the readings of , , , , , , , , and from the blogs of , , , , , , Nir Eyal Eric Ries Dan Norris Sangeet Paul Choudary steve blank Sujan Patel Dan Pedersen Erik Devaney Derek Andersen Matter The Startup Startup Grind Startups Co The Mission Mashable Techcrunch , Inc.com , The Verge and Wired . Also Hey, if you like what you just read, please this resource by hitting the green “ ” icon, it on so that other people may also stumble upon this. like Recommend share Twitter or Facebook You can always contact me personally on , , or over . on to get access to more such blogs in future. Linkedin Twitter Facebook Mail Follow me Medium

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Came up with a great Business Idea? What Next?

you are interviewing some guy for an IT role and she says that he doesn’t get that of “ because everybody knows there are no datacenters in the ”. Imagine going to the cloud sky Everybody knows that in is just a name. cloud cloud computing However, it’s surprising how many people have a similar idea. You chat with someone in IT about “ ” and she says something like “ doesn’t make any sense. Code has to run on a server”. serverless Serverless I understand changes a lot. Sometimes names are not very transparent. And we cannot chase the latest buzzword. Many companies/organisations were still dealing with virtualisation when the cloud came. Then without pause, containers seemed to be the hottest thing. technology “I don’t have time for ‘serverless’, whatever that mean”. So here it comes a three minutes read on the topic. What is serverless? There is . no easy definition of serverless But you’re busy, so I’ll cut to the chase. You develop functions. Small pieces of code. independent We are not talking about static pages or mobile only or single page applications. You develop code for the back-end. Yes, your code is going to run on servers. But you’re not going to install or configure those servers. For you, it will be as if there are no servers. Your code is going to run on servers. But you don’t see them In fact, , that probably will run on servers. But you don’t care about the servers, nor containers. your functions are going to run inside containers You deploy . functions Then, why the buzz? We’ve been deploying packaged applications for 15 years or more. And now that we have containers, we deploy containers without problems. Why develop in terms of functions? Why the buzz? Pancakes… For three reasons: With serverless you have “virtually” unlimited scalability. You no longer have to decide how many servers you are going to dedicate to something. Your provider creates as many “function instances” as you need, and destroy them when they are not needed. With serverless, you pay per use. Real use. Not the server up and idle. You pay per code being executed. With serverless you are encouraged to think small and independent. My program is not ‘hello world’!!! Yes, I hear you screaming. “If I only create functions, how the hell am I suppose to do something useful? ’” You know how to create applications, maybe even microservices. How are you supposed to create a full application from functions? There are . multiple options But you should know serverless works well in both edge cases: API endpoint that operates on parameters, query the database and return content. Specially well with . other offerings Event driven or message driven . applications for big data I don’t want to be trapped in AWS You don’t have to. All the major providers have a similar technology: , , , . AWS Google Microsoft IBM There is even an Apache project called (based on code from IBM) Openwhisk OK, this may be interesting. What now? Serverless is still evolving. You may want to wait. It is going to be huge. You may want to do some side project. . Play If you liked this entry, you may also like Switch off your servers .

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“Serverless” in three minutes

Working with Python is a bliss in itself, most of the times. I have been involved with Python for more than two and a half years now, and for most of that time I hardly had any issues until I had to work with spreadsheets. Python has easy to write syntax and dynamic style, which is why it is a great language for beginners to start with. But the benefits do not end there. Python can, and is used in many big products, such as the framework . Django . Other examples are BitTorrent, Google App Engine, and Ubuntu Software Center. Even the core functionality of YouTube is written in Python. Django powers social media apps such as Instagram All these examples testify to the robustness and usefulness of Python. Being a great scripting language, developers prefer to use Python in scenarios where they have to play with and manipulate data. In my experience of working in a product based company, I have come across projects that require the data collected from products to be reported back to the clients. This requires fetching data from the database and manipulating it into a presentable form, which is generally in a spreadsheet format. Having some experience with Python, I decided to apply this to making spreadsheets. These are tips for those who work with an abundance of data and want to harness that using spreadsheets. I have come across a multitude of issues as a developer and would like to share some of those here, and how you can work your way around them. There are many third-party packages available to work with spreadsheets using Python. Some of them are listed at: _A website for people who need to work with Excel files in Python_www.python-excel.org Python Excel You may know that Microsoft Excel provides two file extensions for spreadsheets, one is and other being . The former corresponds to files for Microsoft Excel 2003 or earlier, and the latter is for the newer versions. .xls .xlsx The first problem that arises in working with spreadsheets using Python is because of these two different extensions. The package supports the extension of Excel, and supports the extensions of Excel. xlwt .xls openpyxl .xlsx I will be demonstrating how to use the package for working with spreadsheets. You can install this package using the following command on terminal or command prompt (Prerequisite: must be installed on your system. For installation instructions of , visit ) xlwt pip pip this link pip install xlwt Note: This article uses xlwt==1.3.0 After the installation is complete, open a text editor to create a new file and give it any name you like; I am giving it the name . excelScript.py Inside the script, write the following code: import xlwt def main():book = xlwt.Workbook()sheet = book.add_sheet('Sheet 1')book.save('Sample.xls') if __name__ == '__main__':main() The code above creates a blank Excel file with the name , containing a single sheet named This was an example of simple file creation. You can run the script above using “Sample.xls” “Sheet 1". .xls python excelScript.py in your command line. To write data to the Excel sheet, change the code to the following: import xlwt def main():book= xlwt.Workbook()sheet = book.add_sheet('Sheet 1') # sheet.write(r, c, <text>)  
sheet.write(0, 0, 'sample')

book.save('Sample.xls') if __name__ == '__main__':main() This will write on row and column. Keep in mind that the package This way you can write into your Excel file and create as many sheets you like. Run this script using the command “sample” zeroth zeroth xlwt reads row and column indices starting at zero. python excelScript.py in your command line. This is a common way to write to Excel using the package where you can merge the columns or rows. You can give it styling also. The following code demonstrates how to do so: xlwt import xlwt def main():book= xlwt.Workbook()sheet = book.add_sheet('Sheet 1') # sheet.write\_merge(r1, r2, c1, c2, <text>)  
# For styling add  
# xlwt.easyxf('align: horz center, vert center')  
# add the above after <text> as 6th argument to write\_merge

sheet.write\_merge(0, 1, 0, 1, 'sample 1', xlwt.easyxf('align: horz center, vert center')) book.save('Sample.xls') if __name__ == '__main__':main() This will merge columns (0, 1) and rows (0, 1) to make a single column and write into it which will be both horizontally and vertically center aligned. does the styling for you. If you open the file, you will see that the previously written sample is gone. “sample 1” xlwt.easyxf xls For information on more methods provided by you can read the documentation . xlwt here Please note that if you use _xlwt_ and if a file with the same name exists then it will be replaced. The procedure above is good if you want to create a new file, and if you are working with an older format of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. .xls However, this package has its limitations as you can only create rows and columns in the older versions of Excel. Similarly, you can write only these many rows and columns using this package. If you have more data to write than this, then unfortunately this package cannot help you. You will have to use another Python package called . 65536 256 openpyxl _Edit description_openpyxl.readthedocs.io openpyxl - A Python library to read/write Excel 2010 xlsx/xlsm files - openpyxl 2.4.2 documentation You can read more about how to use to work with Excel files in of this article. openpyxl part 2 Continuing with the package, I found that it is very easy to create new files. But what if you already have an existing file and want to append new data to the existing file. In such a case the package does not comply. Instead, you have to work around this. Note that if you have a file then you cannot use , which does support data appending into already existing files, because that is incompatible with older versions of Excel files. xlwt .xls .xls xlwt .xls openpyxl For the fix I am going to explain, you need two more Python packages. Namely, the package for reading the Excel file, and the package to make a copy of the Excel object into the object so that you can write into it. xlrd xlutils xlwt To install these packages use the following commands: pip install xlrdpip install xlutils The following procedure can be applied to append data to an existing file using . In the file, change the code to the following: .xls xlwt excelScript.py from xlutils.copy import copyimport xlrdimport xlwt def main():rb = xlrd.open_workbook('sample.xls') wb = copy(rb)  
sheet = wb.get\_sheet(0)  
 
sheet.write(5, 5, 'sample 2')  
sheet.write\_merge(3, 4, 3, 4, 'sample 3', xlwt.easyxf('align: horse center, vert center'))

wb.save('sample.xls') if __name__ == '__main__';main() When you run this script using the python excelScript.py command, and open the Excel file created, you will notice that was written to previously present there and and also added to that file. Voila! This is the functionality we needed. But how did we achieve this? “sample 1” .xls “sample 2” “sample 3” were Here is what happened. First you read using the package and saved it into a variable in an object format. Then you copied that object into a variable using the method of package. This means that at that moment, both variables & contain the same object data. Now, we access the first sheet of Excel using the index and store its object data into variable , and now you can use all the functional capabilities of the package to finally save your Excel sheet with the same name as before, “sample.xls” xlrd rb wb copy xlutils rb wb zero sheet xlwt “sample.xls”. If you have carefully followed then you may have figured out that we really didn’t append data to an existing file. Instead what we did was to copy the data of the existing file into memory using , then writing it to a new Excel file using the method of package, and then writing the new data into that new Excel file, while saving it with same name as before so that it can be overwritten. xlrd copy xlutils I am afraid there isn’t a more elegant way to achieve this if you are working with older files. .xls The story doesn’t end here. This was all about working with files but what if you wanted to do the same thing but this time you have got files to work with. In such a case, you are in luck because you can work with . You can read more about it in of this article. .xls .xlsx openpyxl part 2 Hope you found this useful! See you in . part 2 Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed reading this and would like to read some pieces of life through my eyes, please visit . here

BitTorrent

Instagram

YouTube

Working with Spreadsheets using Python (Part 1)

we were already using with some not-so-practical helpers. TL;DR; fetch I found out about a while ago when I was looking for what to use to do requests on React apps. Coming from and Angular this was something I’ve never had to worry about because I would just use what the library/framework provided, and be happy with it. **fetch** HTTP jQuery I get really excited about anything that pushes the web further and makes it better. And particularly with , there are many reasons to get excited about: **fetch** A nice API. In your face XMLHttpRequest ! Request/Response primitives and opaque responses **'no-cors'** Streams Stream readers & cloning Headers class Cache control No-credential requests **same-origin** You can read about them in depth in . Jake’s post Adopting fetch It is JS we are talking about, you gotta use the latest stuff, right? Jokes aside, after trying it out for a little bit with some PoC’s, I got the perfect opportunity to use it at work. I was starting a new project and thanks to the , I could already use it safely on those browsers that don’t have support yet or will never have it. Great! Github’s polyfill Native API cons Now is a native API, and thus it's not its job to provide a library-like interface, with helpers and shorthand methods. After some time of using it, I ended up with a bunch of helpers. Like these: **fetch** And this is how every request looked like: You could say there’s nothing wrong with it, but it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to start another project and straight up copy my file. Neither I liked having a bunch of helpers, which is not bad at all, but I knew I could do better. **fetch-utils** So I shared my concerns with and he was like “yo I got the same problems!”. After discussing for a while some ideas and wrapping our heads around, we started to write a library. Nico And that’s how we ended up with . trae Cool, but… Cool but, how does it compare to axios ? Not only a lot of people asked that but we also did it ourselves. Being kind of the default HTTP library it surely influenced us. Going through its code helped us a lot to understand the needs and internals of an HTTP library and to improve and polish some of our own ideas. If you want to read well organized, written and documented code check it out. I must admit, I even am a secret fan of . Matt But uses internally. If you haven’t yet, check out to learn more about and what are the improvements over . axios XHMLHttpRequest Jake’s post fetch XHMLHttpRequest Besides that, , like , is just an HTTP library. And, I would say it’s a nice one. So If you are excited like us about and want to use it, and at the same time want to have the goodies of a library, give try. trae axios I might be biased here but, fetch trae trae, what does it even mean? After going from , , to famous dogs and even names we settled up with something simple and even funny, It in Spanish, and we felt like for a library that's all about fetching data it was a good fit. Hermes Charon Huginn and Muninn messenger pigeons trae**.** means brings What’s next? There are some items on the list, but regarding the library itself we like its API and think, even though young, it’s already mature enough to say we won’t make big breaking changes to it. to-do That doesn’t mean aren’t going to make improvements. We are using on a daily basis, and are looking for new ways to make it better. I even have the, , idea of building a dev tools extension with a on it. trae maybe not so crazy bunch of cool stuff We are very open about contributing, so feel free to ask anything or even submit a pull request if you find something to improve. Conclusion Whenever you find a way to improve your workflow take it a step further and make something out of it, whether it is a library, a small module or a tool. You will learn a ton in the process, and what’s even better you will help many other people. OSS FTW!!!

BUNCH

Mozilla

Trae, another HTTP library

[Image: Shuttertock] How to break through the innovation gridlock regardless of your organizational shape, size, or available resources. When Richard Branson of media, entertainment, food, fashion, retail, and healthcare startups that “small businesses are nimble and bold and can often teach much larger companies a thing or two about innovations that can change entire industries,” this serial entrepreneur knew what he was talking about. It was 2014, and the group was pulled together to “thrash out” inspiring visions for the next three decades of business. told an audience Whether they’re coming up with new products that meet their customers’ needs, joining forces with their competition to gain economies of scale and make significant breakthroughs, or approaching uncharted marketplaces, small to midsized firms are the very cornerstones of innovation in today’s business world. Unfortunately, they don’t always know it. In fact, too many of them assume innovation is only for the big-and-rich organizations that have deep pockets and unlimited resources. This is a fallacy. In fact, innovation doesn’t have to break the bank nor does it require unlimited human resources to happen. In fact, sometimes it starts with a single employee — a reality that not all organizations fully leverage. With , innovation starts with a shiny red box, $1,000, and everything an individual needs to launch an idea. Working with the innovator, Adobe shows him or her how to come up with the idea, test it with real consumers, and turn it into a new Adobe product. Adobe’s Kickbox program “We want more disruptive innovation and less planned innovation. To do this, we had to let go,” said Kickbox Founder Mark Randall. “We thought, what if we removed the obstacles that are stopping people from innovating? What if we gave them the resources? There are no rules or constraints. The approach to innovation in Kickbox is giving people the permission to go do it.” In one example of Kickbox in action, a senior software development manager came up with the idea of creating video stories that sync images and music with mood and emotion. Through Kickbox, this new mom and a team came up with an idea that would transform personal memories into digital stories. It would sync photos and audio into videos that can be customized with mood and emotion. She said reception to the idea has been fantastic. “I was surprised at how willing upper management was to give us support, even when the product was in its infancy.” The good news is that you don’t have to come up with a revolutionary invention to be innovative. Many innovations coming out of today’s organizations are just small wins that slowly help the company make incremental moves toward achieving its overall mission. In other words, don’t assume you have to spend millions of dollars and allocate hundreds of hours of manpower to creating the “next best thing” that will knock everyone’s socks off, only to watch that dream take a backseat (much like an overly ambitious New Year’s resolution) as everyone refocuses on their day-to-day responsibilities. BREAKING THROUGH THE GRIDLOCK So how can companies break through this innovation gridlock and come out winners? The key is to leverage your firm’s “nimble and bold” qualities to always be innovating. And don’t assume you have to come up with the next iPhone, medical miracle, or manufacturing breakthrough to be innovative. A fairly nebulous term defined at its simplest as “ ,” innovation assumes different shapes depending on the organization, people, and processes involved. the introduction of something new Clif Bar is a good example of how innovation doesn’t require big-company resources or even a physical location. It does, however, require devoted inventors, a true customer need, and a willingness to put the time and effort into making a product that people will actually like. Starting in their , the company’s founders began baking their own protein bars because they didn’t like what was on the market at the time. Needing fuel for their long bike rides, they originally marketed their creations to fellow athletes. Fast-forward to 2017 and Clif Bars (and its since-extended product line) graces the shelves of Target, Walmart, and many other mainstream online and offline retailers (not just those targeting athletes). own kitchen back in 1990 So how do you do practical innovation regardless of company shape or size? You can kick off the process with this 3-step exercise: . Yes, we know you’ve probably heard this one before, but it’s important when you talk about innovation — an area where the words “But we’ve always done it this way and it has worked,” can quickly derail even the most innovative ideas. When you think out of the box you invite new ideas, brainstorming, and collaboration, all of which support innovation. By keeping an open mind and exploring options that you’ve never considered before, you can start the innovation train rolling in the right direction. Start thinking out of the box . Go beyond “the introduction of something new,” and figure out what innovation really means to your organization. Come up with your own definition of innovation Is it: Implementing new ideas? Creating dynamic products? Responding to customers’ changing wants and needs? Improving existing services? Finding new avenues for business growth? Adapting in a challenging marketplace (or to changes in your environment)? Changing your current business model? Developing a culture that’s focused on continuous innovation? Finding business partners to collaborate with to come up with new products and/or services? Some other measure? These are just a few ways that you can define innovation, but you get the idea. The important point here is to come up with your own picture of what innovation looks like within your organization and then start taking the necessary steps to put it into action. . Talking about innovation doesn’t make it happen. Brainstorming new ideas don’t make them come to life. And hashing out the details of a “future” plan doesn’t mean it’s ever going to come to fruition. To create the greatest impact, you need to actually put the innovation into action by addressing these questions: Go beyond lip service and put innovation into action How do I design my customer interactions? How do I design my new service or product? Who can I work with (both internally and externally) to help make this a reality? What internal and external resources do I have at my avail? Who is going to pioneer this innovation and see it through to the end? And finally, how will I quantify the success of this innovation? REMEMBER, INNOVATION HAS NO END POINT Innovation isn’t just about coming up with the next, cool product. It has no end point, and it includes everything from how you take your product to market to how you serve your customer to how you come up with effective pricing solutions. All of these activities fall under the broader contexts of innovation and go well beyond the very narrow “cocktail napkin” approach to innovation. By adopting this mindset, organizations not only become more competitive and customer-friendly, but they can also become more profitable. The latter is a particularly important point in today’s business world, where thinner and thinner margins — and the need to do more with less — are challenging companies to find more innovative ways to generate revenues. Pretty much every business that’s surviving today — and that will survive for the long haul — will have to be competitive and innovative across all segments of their workflows. From hiring and compensation to selling to market strategy, positioning, and branding; all of these elements are part and parcel of innovation. In fact, as I survey the business landscape right now, I can tell you that all companies that are “surviving” are leveraging innovation in some way — whether they know it or not. For some companies, of course, the urge to innovate comes quite naturally. A maker of highly-engineered products, for example, is always on the lookout for the next best product introduction and spends much time and money honing its existing offerings. This commitment to continuous innovation can be applied in pretty much any setting. All companies have the same opportunities to innovate, and particularly when they are pushed to do so by forward-thinking personalities, leaders, and/or owners. Those that are succeeding in competitive markets (e.g., those that are commodity-driven, for example, and that have been hit hard by online sellers on both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business segments), tend to follow some basic principles, which are: . In other words, why are you here and what purpose does your company serve? The purpose-driven organization has a much better chance of succeeding than the one that’s just selling something to people. Apple and Google are two good examples of firms that are well known for their innovative and creative strategies — not all of which are focused on product development. Tight focus on purpose . Think beyond just creating a product to your intrinsic value proposition, be it to serve your customers better, save the planet, or some other core value. Through this exercise you’ll be able to create an identity and a true purpose that, in turn, dictates your firm’s position in its industry. Willingness to go beyond the basics . Having a value proposition in place also helps organizations answer questions like “How am I going to serve my customer?” “How am I going to price my products and services?” and “How can we create a better execution model for success?” Solid value propositions . Companies must also consider their core competencies, and then turn those advantages into capabilities or differentiations that will be used to build out a platform for innovation. You may have a great vision and terrific partners, but if you can’t create a service platform then you’re not going to be able to develop a profitable model. Vision of a profitable model . Last but definitely not least, innovation requires a support group that includes suppliers, customers, and other business partners. This is particularly important in today’s business environment, where companies rely on suppliers to deliver quality products; their employees to sell, deliver, and support the products being sold; and their customers to put the products to work out in the field. By continually nurturing that ecosystem, companies can innovate effectively on a regular basis. Nurturing ecosystem This combination of purpose, platform, and ecosystem can be leveraged effectively across all innovation models, and by companies of all shapes and sizes. Build out innovation based on these guiding principles and use it to develop customer-centric innovation that truly differentiates your organization and helps it stand out in the marketplace. You’ll be glad you did. Copyright © 20167 by Faisal Hoque. All rights reserve. Serial entrepreneur Faisal Hoque is the founder of Shadoka , which enables entrepreneurship, growth, and social impact. He is the author of Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation, and Sustainability (McGraw-Hill) and other books. Use the Everything Connects leadership app for free .

Adobe

Apple

How To Make Practical Innovation Sustainable

Welcome to the next installment of Creative Coding Basics. You can see previous tutorials . here This time I’m going to take you through a handy bit of algebra that creative coders use all the time: Sine and Cosine — in Javascript and . Math.sin() Math.cos() All the code and libraries for these tutorials can be found here: https://github.com/GeorgeGally/creative_coding If you’ve been following along, do a new git pull to get the latest code. Sine wave osciallation Let’s start with Sine waves which are great to build oscillators. will always oscillate between the values of -1, 1. We multiply this by an amplitude variable to get an oscillating wave effect. Instead of adding speed_x to change our particle’s x-value, we increment an angle variable and pass it through Math.sin() Math.sin() like so: var ctx = createCanvas("canvas1"); var ball = {x: 0,y: h/2,speed_x: random(1),speed_y: random(1),size: random(10, 50),colour: rgb(0),angle: random(360)} function draw(){ctx.background(255);ball.angle += ball.speed_x;ball.rotation += 2;ball.x = w/2 + Math.cos(radians(ball.angle))*w/2;ctx.fillStyle = ball.colour;ctx.fillEllipse(ball.x, ball.y, ball.size);} To get the sine wave effect from this tutorial’s header, we use our usual particle code and oscillate our balls’ y position (ie. move it up and down) while moving the ball left and right: var ctx = createCanvas("canvas1");var number_of_balls = 10;var balls = [];var radius = 200;ctx.lineWidth = 1;ctx.background(0); // push a ball and it's values into the arrayfor (var i = 0; i < number_of_balls; i++) {addBall(i);} function addBall(i){var ball = {x: random(w),y: random(h),speed_x: random(1,4),speed_y: random(1,4), size: 2,colour: rgba(255, 0.8), }balls.push(ball);} amplitude: random(h/10,h/4), angle_x: random(360),angle_y: random(360) function draw(){moveBall();drawBall();} function moveBall(){ for (var i = 0; i < balls.length; i++) {var b = balls[i];b.angle_x += b.speed_x;b.angle_y += b.speed_y;// move } b.x = w/2 + Math.sin(radians(b.angle_x/5)) * w/2; b.y = h/2 + Math.sin(radians(b. )) * b.amplitude; angle_y } function drawBall(){for (var i = 0; i < balls.length; i++) {var b = balls[i];ctx.fillStyle = b.colour;ctx.fillEllipse(b.x, b.y, b.size);}} By oscillating the ball’s x value as well, we can create some interesting effects like this: Change the ball’s x-speed and to get some interesting effects The most common thing I use Math.sin() and Math.cos() for is to draw things in circles… It’s pretty simple. Using our same particles code, we just create an angle variable for the particle and then use to get the x position and to get the y position. We multiply this by our radius and walaa… we have circular movement… Math.cos(angle) Math.sin(angle) var ctx = createCanvas("canvas1");var number_of_balls = 5;var balls = []; // radius of our circle var radius = 200; for (var i = 0; i < number_of_balls; i++) {addBall();} function addBall(){var ball = {x: 0,y: 0, size: random(10, 50),colour: rgb(0), }balls.push(ball);} speed: random(1), angle: random(360) function draw(){ ctx.background(245, 1);moveBall();drawBall();} function moveBall(){ for (var i = 0; i < balls.length; i++) {var b = balls[i]; } // move the angle to rotate the balls b.angle += b.speed; // plot the balls x to cos and y to sin b.x = w/2 + Math.cos(radians(b.angle))*radius;b.y = h/2 + Math.sin(radians(b.angle))*radius; } function drawBall(){for (var i = 0; i < balls.length; i++) {var b = balls[i];ctx.fillStyle = b.colour;ctx.fillEllipse(b.x, b.y, b.size);}} Ok, we have circular movement, now let’s get the balls moving on a circle… Pretty easy, we simply change our function and draw an ellipse twice the size of the radius: draw() function draw(){ctx.background(245, 1);ctx.fillStyle = "black"; moveBall();drawBall();} ctx.HfillEllipse(w/2, h/2, radius*2); Notice I’m using a new ellipse drawing function I’ve made, is exactly the same as fillEllipse(), it’s just a higher resolution version, meaning, we get smoother edges. I usually use this for larger circles to make them look better, but be warned, don’t use it for everything or you’ll have performance issues. HfillEllipse(), this And then we’ll also need to alter our function to take into account the individual ball’s size, so that the balls are rolling on the circle… pretty simple to do, we just add half the ball’s size to the radius: moveBalls() function moveBall(){ for (var i = 0; i < balls.length; i++) {var b = balls[i];// move the angle to rotate the ballsb.angle += b.speed; } b.x = w/2 + Math.cos(radians(b.angle))*(radius+b.size/2);b.y = h/2 + Math.sin(radians(b.angle))*(radius+b.size/2); } And boom, we have this… Balls on a ball! Say, we wanted to distribute the balls evenly on the circle… we could just use a formula like so: ball_number/total_number_of_balls * 360; I’ve made a function for this: function distributeAngles(me, total) {return me/total * 360;} Creative coding, is often, just a combination of simple concepts, to make something slightly more complicated. We now have all the tools we need to create something a little more complicated like this: We have two sets of particles, and out and an inner set. I’ve put these in objects called inners and outers. Note I’ve added an empty array called particles to each object — so we can store our particle var ctx = createCanvas("canvas1"); // create two objectsvar inners = {count: 3,radius: 220,speed: random(2)/100, }; particles: [] var outers = {count: 3,radius: 100,speed: random(-2)/100, }; particles: [] And now we can add our particle values. Notice I pass the whole object into the addParticle() function, which makes it easy to access it’s values. We then work out the angle values of the particles using the same method as we did above. Note we don’t really need to work out the x and y values as we’ll do this on each loop iteration later: for (var i = 0; i < outers.count; i++) { } addParticle(i, outers); for (var i = 0; i < inners.count; i++) { } addParticle(i, inners); // pass in the objectfunction addParticle(_i, _object){ var _angle = radians(distributeAngles(i, _object.count)); var particle = {x: 0,y: 0,speed: _object.speed,angle: _angle,radius: _object.radius} _object.particles.push(particle); } Ok, here comes the final part of the puzzle. Notice that each inner particle is connected to every outer particle. So we loop through all the inner particles for each iteration of the outer particles, like so: // draw and move particles for (var i=0; i< outers.count; i++) { // move the outer particles for (var j=0; j< inners.count; j++) {// move inner particle// then connect it to the outer particle} } So let’s put it all in a function. Note that we add canvas.width/2 to the x values and canvas.height/2 to the y values. We then draw a line from the inner particle to the outer one: function drawLines(){ for (var i=0; i< outers.count; i++) { var outer = outers.particles[i]; outer.angle += outer.speed;outer.x = w/2 + Math.cos(outer.angle) * outer.radius;outer.y = h/2 + Math.sin(outer.angle) * outer.radius; for (var j=0; j< inners.count; j++) {  
  var inner = inners.particles\[j\];  
  **inner.angle += inner.speed;  
  inner.x = w/2 + Math.cos(inner.angle) \* inner.radius;  
  inner.y = h/2 + Math.sin(inner.angle) \* inner.radius;  
  ctx.line(inner.x, inner.y, outer.x, outer.y);**  
} } } And that’s it. We’re done. Happy coding. As usual the full code is available on my github: https://github.com/GeorgeGally/creative_coding Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/radarboy3000/ Follow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/radarboy_japan And like my Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/radarboy3000

Waves

Ball

Math.sin and Math.cos — The creative coder’s best friend

We’re in the trenches now. Only one month in, of is showing its first signs of challenge. our MVP adventure launching 12 new products this year As expected, the challenge is not technical, it is systemic. When you choose to take on such a big challenge off what amounts to part-time focus, every move and decision you make teach something new, lest you find yourself lacking focus by doing a little bit of everything – and by extension, nothing. must In that regard, we’ve got Learning Afterburners on, and every day feels like it brings along two days worth of insights. I’ve graduated two freelance clients this month, which opened up time to put even more love into growing my favorite AI (we added 1M users in Q4 2016!) and take the MVP challenge trough its next iteration. startup Sensay Idle Recap In January, we got started building Idle only to scrap the code and have it built by a third party (without going into detail, Mubs had to step away). It’s close to completion now but we’ve decided that as part of the challenge, Idle will stayed benched until it reaches a higher level of product polish. Based on initial demand, Idle is a valuable piece of social technology and it would be best to deliver a polished version of that rather than focusing on answering whether the product has any potential at all (which is the goal of each MVP after all). clearly In short – Idle has all but self-validated before being built, and thus it is being placed outside of the challenge. What’s important is that we know Idle Thus its role in our challenge is complete. should be built. It will be useful to build a business model mapping out Idle’s growth over the next year and deciding on a launch date now that we can expect from it. Tier 3 performance or better We’ll be setting up all of the marketing infrastructure after Version 1 is complete. For now, we’re polishing the app and focusing on building a useful product experience. The next step while we work on making the MVP feature complete is to set it up with waiting list functionality. This way we can enable the inbound interest we are seeing to take action by sharing Idle with their networks while securing early (free) access to the app. Spousal Inspiration In the meantime, something really cool happened last week. My wife took . Given my level of involvement actually building and supporting her in validating her venture, I figured I would throw that into the challenge. She’ll own one of the MVPs. The perfect learning opportunity. Alicia her first steps towards entrepreneurship That leads up to the meat of the update, which introduces MVP #2: . CakeMyBake MVP #2: CakeMyBake.com My wife is a certified accountant, . a damn good one at that When she decided to leave her job at a top accounting firm, the goal was to explore and get up to speed on the ways she might leverage technology to solve problems in the accounting world and elsewhere. In the middle of this soul-searching, she finds herself a talented amateur baker. A hypothesis formed; whether her baking was worth any money given the raving feedback she has received from coworkers or family members. Developing the idea further gave birth to , a marketplace helping bakers sell homemade cakes and pastries to foodies in their neighbourhood. CakeMyBake The model she seeks to build would behave similarly to other on-demand marketplaces. She would build a supply of home bakers in a given city and match that supply to local demand for homemade baked goods. The value proposition is pretty strong on both sides, but what matters when building marketplaces is liquidity. Liquidity is another way to describe equilibrium between supply and demand. The only way your marketplace has any chance to become liquid is if the markets it brings together are initially fragmented. Fragmented markets make for great marketplaces. In the case of CakeMyBake, I asked how fragmented the market of buying and selling homemade baked goods was, and replied with hard evidence. Alicia She showed tens of local Facebook group posts by home bakers showcasing their goods and matching comments of interested buyers. Interested, I took the weekend to put together a working prototype. Alicia worked on building out our Instagram page and identifying early Supply opportunities in Montreal, the first city CakeMyBake will launch in. One week later, this second MVP is showing strong signs of healthy market fit. A few more steps are left to give this thing a preliminary thumbs up. Notably, Alicia was successful in building supply. She started by listing her own baked goods and then new signups began to trickle in. Her next task is to prove she can match demand against her supply. Her hypothesis is that she needs more supply to create an attractive browsing experience for new visitors. She judges direct-linking to products to be secondary compared to building a brand. She’s learning quick. 🚀 Recap February is showing another big opportunity to learn and apply techniques we’ve picked up over the years. I haven’t had many opportunities to build marketplaces from the ground up. Unless you can offload your supply really quickly (ie. digital products), there’s sales cycling and logistics to think about in the long run. But thinking about an on-demand homemade bakery you can order from your phone sounds really cool. This is also true of enabling home bakers to sell more efficiently and offer local communities access to delicious treats available right down their street. So for now, much of our progress can be summarized as: MVP #1 is nearly feature complete, has been demand-validated; will not be reported on until ready to launch My experiment inspired 40 new subscribers my own wife to take action. entrepreneurship and MVP #2 CakeMyBake was ideated and launched in one weekend. It currently counts 6 suppliers and 20 listings. The was created grew by 330 followers in its first 7 days of existence. With a followerbase heavily skewing in Montreal. Woah. Nicely done. CakeMyBake Instagram account Another MVP is in ideation, but I need to prepare to bucker down on Idle once it’s ready. It might make sense to stop production and focus on building asset revenue first. Maybe Q2 should be about doubling down on existing MVPs It’s interesting to consider that the model might be healthier if we build for three months then execute for three months. It reduces our shots to 6 per year, but we come out with a more polished portfolio at the end of the year. Food for thought. Enjoying the read? Support me by clicking the ❤️ button. This way, more people can discover this story and follow along. is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

12 MVPs in 12 Months – Idle Progress, Spousal Inspiration & MVP #2

Testing async API calls using Jest’s mocking features Jest is a great JavaScript testing framework by Facebook. It’s often used for testing React components, but it’s also a pretty good general purpose testing framework. In this tutorial I’ll give a quick and simple demo of it’s mocking capabilities for testing async functions. This article was also published on my own personal blog. Purpose of mocking Mocking async function (like API calls) instead of testing with a real API is useful for a couple of reasons: It’s faster: you don’t have to wait until the API response comes in and you don’t have to deal with rate limits. It makes your tests ‘pure’, i.e. whether they fail or pass depends only on your code, and not on the data that the API returns. It’s easier in the long run: no need to first login or set some state before you can start testing a certain endpoint. Setting up Jest Configuring Jest , but to get started quickly I’m using the official starter kit by Facebook, . This comes with a working Jest configuration out of the box! isn’t all that difficult create-react-app Install the create-react-app and create the app: yarn global add create-react-app create-react-app mocking-with-jestcd mocking-with-jest/yarn start This should open a browser window with a spinning React logo. Now start the Jest testing environment: yarn test You should see something like this: Congratulations, you’ve now got Jest up and running and are ready to start writing some tests! Adding the API We’ll be using for the making the API requests. Rest.js works well in the browser and Node.js. rest.js yarn add rest Create a new folder in the folder and add the file with the following code: api src github.js Then also add with the following code: request.js You’re now ready to make API requests using: . Let’s test this quickly in the browser. Replace the original contents in the file with the following code: github.getUser(‘vnglst’) App.js Use to open up a browser and see the result. You should see a simple list with my profile data. It works! yarn start Writing tests We’re now ready to write some tests. Let’s first try to unit test the function . Create a folder and in this folder a file with the following code: getUser __tests__ github.test.js Start Jest using and you should see the following error message: yarn test What’s happening here? It turns out that using our function in a Node environment (which Jest is using to run the tests) makes our request fail. So even though our function works in the browser, it fails in our tests! Would could try and fix this, by adding a header when we’re running this in a Node environment, but mocking would now be a better solution. Let’s set this up! getUser User-Agent Creating a mock Create a folder __mocks__ and in this folder a file (this will be the mocked version of request.js in the parent folder): request.js The mocked function expects a (i.e. ) file in a folder __mockData__. I’ve used my own Github username and data as an example here, but you can add as many example data as you need for your tests: userId.json vnglst.json To let Jest mock the request module, you have to add the following line to file: github.test.js jest.mock(‘../request’) Now the simple unit test should pass and you’re ready to write more complicated tests! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and feel free to ask me any questions. You can find me on Twitter as . The source code of this tutorial can be found here: @vnglst https://github.com/vnglst/mocking-with-jest This tutorial is based upon the by the creators of Jest (and their example is probably better 😂). Be sure to also check out their other examples. async example BONUS: testing using async/await If you’re using the you can also use async/await to write your tests. This definitely makes your tests easier to write and more readable: create-react-app

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API testing with Jest

Koen van Gilst

If you are here reading this article then you have come a long way in working with spreadsheets using Python. But if you are here directly then I would recommend you to go over of this article which will give you insight from the beginning on this topic. part 1 Here we will discuss use of the Python package for creating spreadsheets in the format. As I discussed in , that if you have lots of data to work with and many clients to report that data to, then knowing your way around both and (older and newer Microsoft Excel versions respectively) formats is a great skill that can come in handy lots of times. openpyxl .xlsx part 1 .xls .xlsx The package is a Python library for reading and writing Excel files_._ openpyxl 2010 xlsx/xlsm/xltx/xltm _Edit description_openpyxl.readthedocs.io openpyxl - A Python library to read/write Excel 2010 xlsx/xlsm files - openpyxl 2.4.2 documentation Yes, you read that right you can , and data using only one single package. You can install this package using the following command on terminal or command prompt (Prerequisite: must be installed on you system. For install instructions of visit this ). read write append pip pip link pip install openpyxl After the installation is complete, open the text editor to create a new file and give it any name you like; I am giving it the name . excelScript.py Inside the script write the following code: import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.Workbook()book.create_sheet('Sample Sheet')book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() The code above creates a blank Excel file with the name , containing a single sheet named This was an example of file creation. Run this script by executing “Sample.xlsx” “Sheet 1”. .xlsx python excelScript.py on your command line. When you open this file you will see that instead of one there are two sheets created in the file. This happens because when you make an object of the method of the package, it creates a sheet called by default on calling that method. .xlsx Workbook() openpyxl “Sheet” If the sheet names don’t matter to your work then you can start using this sheet directly and you don’t need to create another sheet. If your work requires only the use of one sheet and you can start writing data directly to this sheet. Later, I will be showing you how to remove that default sheet from your file. To write data to Excel change the code to the following: Sheet .xlsx import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.Workbook()book.create_sheet('Sample') # Acquire a sheet by its name  
sheet = book.get\_sheet\_by\_name('Sample')

# Writing to sheet  
sheet.cell(row=1, column=1).value = 'sample'

book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() The code above will write on the row and the column. Keep in mind that This way you can write into your Excel file and create as many sheets you like. Run the script above using “sample” 1st 1st openpyxl reads row and column indices starting from one. python excelScript.py in your command line. You can give it styling also. The following code shows you how to do so: import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.Workbook()book.create_sheet('Sample') # Acquire a sheet by its name  
sheet = book.get\_sheet\_by\_name('Sample')

# Writing to sheet  
sheet.cell(row=1, column=1).value = 'sample'

# To set alignment of text inside cell and text wrapping  
sheet.cell(row=1, column=1).alignment = openpyxl.styles.Alignment(horizontal='center', vertical='center', wrap\_text=True)

# To make font bold or italic  
sheet.cell(row=1, column=1).font = openpyxl.styles.Font(bold=True, italic=True)

book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() This will write _“sample” o_n the row and column. It will be both horizontally and vertically center aligned. For information on more methods provided by you can read the documentation . 1st 1st openpyxl here You can also merge cells, just like we did , in . The following code shows how to achieve merged cells using : using [xlwt](https://medium.com/@i_tarun_gupta/380a120387f#.mi52gnqdu) openpyxl openpyxl import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.Workbook()book.create_sheet('Sample') # Acquire a sheet by its name  
sheet = book.get\_sheet\_by\_name('Sample')

# Merging first 3 columns of 1st row  
sheet.merge\_cells('A1:C1')

# Writing to sheet  
sheet.cell(row=1, column=1).value = 'sample'

book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() The code above demonstrates how to merge cells when you know the exact designations of the cells to merge. I knew the designation of the column of the row which is , and the designation of the column of the row which is . In this case, I merged them directly using the method of . 1st 1st A1 3rd 1st C1 merge_cells openpyxl This was of the methods to merge cells using . Here is the demonstration of the method: one two openpyxl 2nd import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.Workbook()book.create_sheet('Sample') # Acquire a sheet by its name  
sheet = book.get\_sheet\_by\_name('Sample')

# Merging first 3 columns of 1st 3 rows  
r1 = 1  
r2 = 3  
c1 = 1  
c2 = 3  
sheet.merge\_cells(start\_row=r1, start\_column=c1, end\_row=r2, end\_column=c2)

# Writing to sheet  
sheet.cell(row=1, column=1).value = 'sample' book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() This method comes in handy when data is written dynamically to the Excel file. If you are not sure of the exact designations of the cells to merge then you can use this method. This will merge the columns of rows and make it into a single cell. 1st three 1st three When merging cells always keep in mind that you need to write the value into the first column of the merged cell otherwise the value will not reflect in the excel file. You can still apply styling to a merged cell in the same way demonstrated. Now coming to the part of deleting that extra sheet that is created by default on calling the method of . This is how it can be done: Workbook() openpyxl import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.Workbook() book.create\_sheet('Sample')

extraSheet = book.get\_sheet\_by\_name('Sheet')  
book.remove\_sheet(extraSheet)

book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() Here we acquired the sheet named in object form using method and stored in the variable and then removed the sheet by calling the method on the variable. “Sheet” get_sheet_by_name() extraSheet remove_sheet() extraSheet This was all about creating a new file, writing to it, merging cells, and styling it. Now, you might be wondering how to read and append data into file using . .xlsx .xlsx openpyxl First of all let’s look at reading an file using . Just as writing, you can use to open an existing workbook: .xlsx openpyxl openpyxl.load_workbook() import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.load_workbook('Sample.xlsx') book**.**get_sheet_names()# ['Sheet2', 'New Title', 'Sheet1'] print # Get a sheet to read  
sheet = book.get\_sheet\_by\_name('Sheet1')

# No of written Rows in sheet  
r = sheet.max\_row

# No of written Columns in sheet  
c = sheet.max\_column

# Reading each cell in excel  
for i in xrange(1, r+1):  
    for j in xrange(1, c+1):  
        print sheet.cell(row=i, column=j).value if __name__ == '__main__':main() The code above will print all the written cells in the Excel file. The loop starts from instead of because starts indexing from . for 1 0 openpyxl 1 You can also read cells using the designations of the cells: # prints 1st row, 1st column directlyprint sheet['A1'] # get a range of cellscells = sheet['A1:C1'] for cell in cells[0]:print cell.value I selected because creates a tuple of tuple and all the cell objects are stored at index of the tuple hence, . cells[0] sheet['A1:C1'] oth cells[0] Finally, let’s see how to append data to file. The following code demonstrates this process: .xlsx import openpyxl def main():book = openpyxl.load_workbook('Sample.xlsx')sheet = book.get_sheet_by_name('Sample') sheet.cell(row=5, column=1).value = 'Appended Data'

book.save('Sample.xlsx') if __name__ == '__main__':main() The process is very simple indeed. I just loaded the existing file into an object and saved it into variable by calling the method on file. I then grabbed the sheet by calling the method on the book object. .xlsx book load_workbook() “Sample.xlsx” “Sample” get_sheet_by_name() Now, I can simply start appending data to the sheet in the same way when creating a new file. All those methods that are available at the time of creation of file are available now. Finally, when you are done writing data to the file don't forget to save the file by calling the method. save() Additionally, don’t forget to use a code beautifier when coding and try to follow PEP8 standards to make the code more readable. Use PyLint before going live. This will help you maintain a coding standard in your project. The journey does not end here. This was just the basics of how to read, write and append data to or files. You should explore these packages more and make your algorithms according to your requirements depending on the form in which you want your data to be represented inside Excel. .xls .xlsx Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed reading this and would like to read some pieces of life through my eyes, please visit . here

Working with Spreadsheets using Python (Part 2)

The Forrest Four-Cast: February 5, 2017 Each new year brings many many new changes to — and change is a good thing. Ten of the tweaks that we are most excited about for SXSW 2017 include: March Magic in Austin . We have significantly improved the functional and flexibility for all SXSW badgeholders for 2017. Learn about all the new opportunities for learning and connecting via . New Badge System Enhances Your Investment this short video . The 10 category winners for the square off against each other on the afternoon of Monday, March 13 to determine the best / most impresive startup at this year’s event. Best of the Best at the Super Accelerator SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event . One of the new tracks for SXSW 2017 is (March 11–16), which explores all the positive (and negative) impacts when the media and technology intersect. Media 2.0: The New “Journalism” Track Journalism . Scheduled March 12–14, investigates how immersive entertainment and other experimental strategies are redefining the ways in which audiences absorb narrative content. Narrative Next: The New “Experiential Storytelling” Track this new track Stay longer in the week to attend more content in the , , , , and tracks. Also remember that you will likely find more hotel options in the timeframe. More Tech-Focused Content on March 15–16. Brands & Marketing Intelligent Future Journalism Social Impact Startup Village Tech Industry Wednesday, March 15 and Thursday, March 16 **The Next Four Years: “Tech Under Trump.”**On Wednesday, March 15 and Thursday, March 16, that cover how the policies and politics of the new administration will strengthen and weaken America’s ever-evolving technology sector. attend 18 sessions . What was once a smaller / separate event now becomes part of the larger whole as the SXSW Health Expo becomes a part of the giant , March 12–15 at the Austin Convention Center. The SXSW Health Expo Goes Big SXSW Trade Show . Scheduled March 16–18 at the Austin Convention Center, the features dozens of local, national, and global brands. Debut of the SXSW Marketplace first-ever SXSW Marketplace . Formerly known as the Deweys, the moves to the evening of Monday, March 13. This celebration of top tech do-gooders from across the United States and around the world is FREE — no badge needed to attend. New Day for the SXSW Community Service Awards SXSW Community Services Awards . For 2017, emerges as its own event. Your SXSW Interactive, Music, Film, or Platinum badge will still get you in — or if you only want to attend this portion of SXSWeek. SXSW Gaming Breaks Away SXSW Gaming purchase a SXSW Gaming Wristband before the end of the day on February 10 to save $100 on the walkup price for SXSW 2017. Then via the SXSW Housing Department. Buy your badge book your Austin lodging Hugh Forrest tries to write four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts generally cover technology-related trends. When not attempting to wordsmith or meditating , he serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW in Austin.

10 Cool Changes for SXSW 2017

An Open Letter to JavaScript Leaders Regarding No Semicolons

The illusion of control keeps our minds occupied. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/michael-jackson-officials-threaten-to-close-munich-shrine-to-singer-after-fights-between-rival-fan-10433411.html Let’s start by looking at what happens when someone dies. We keep a lot of their important possessions in order to hold on to that person. We are seduced by the artifacts of a life once real. We often get lost in the illusory world of ritual. We do this to ‘keep’ a part of them with us, or the feelings of completeness we once had. But alas, they are dead. No longer here. Harsh reality. We cling to artifacts and ritual—which are effectively illusions of control. This is not said to trivialize tragedy or the vast importance of ritual, but we see a lot of manufactured ‘realities’ that continue on for decades, without much practical consideration or humility. I feel a bit the same about process artifacts in software development processes. I consider process artifacts to be the general menagerie of written, sketched and designed media produced to eventually create working software—or the internal documentation of our ideas that lead to something real. Process artifacts are great. They are necessary. Thinking through big ideas on paper is much less expensive than thinking in code or raw . We need schema designs, information architecture workflows, wireframes, UI designs and more. Yet consistently lost on management and executives is that building software is not the same as building an office park. An office building has a specific number of floors, parking spaces, toilets, light fixtures, etc. Software, by contrast, is totally organic, malleable, it stretches and shrinks, spreads broad and thin, consolidates narrow and deep. Software is called “software,” not “documentation.” There are only two important artifacts from a software process , and . Everything else is just the of software; the discourse surrounding the potential manifestation of a concept into digital/device form; a narrative the construction of hypothetical software that could possibly materialize in a certain way. 1) automation 2) working software idea about Our wholesale inability to recognize the organic nature of building software, combined with an inability to accept the temporal and insignificant nature of artifacts, generally results in an abundance of documentation—very simply because artifacts make us feel safe, predictable, and in-control. Artifacts are a bit like celebrity shrines. A strange thing about celebrity shrines: the celebrity doesn’t care or notice because they’re dead. Shrines and memorials really just make us feel safe and in-control, that somehow we have power over the organic and mysterious nature of life itself. The shrine exists only as a declaration about our reality, not actual reality. Similarly, our software doesn’t care about our excess artifact creation, because there is just no conduit between excess artifacts and working software. perceived Great artifacts are precisely tactical, yet allow for the mysterious unknown that comes from building a software system. , and underlying their simple manifesto lies a deep understanding of the nature of organic systems. Appropriate amounts of artifacts can only be generated by a humble group that understands the finite boundaries of their knowledge and foretelling abilities. The Agile folks knew this Absent this fundamental faith in an ability to achieve without a facade of concrete certainty, the two toxic phenomena that I see most are 1) executive dissonance, and 2) artifact queueing. Executive Dissonance This is the difference in expectations between executives and high-performance employees. Most likely, your executive team stopped doing actual work a long time ago. They now spend their time selling product, creating partnerships, evangelizing, and raising money—all important things. They can’t raise money without certainty, or at least the facade of certainty. This is where artifacts plays a crucial role. It makes perfect sense. Executives need to remember that just because they convince investors that artifacts are real, predictable and important, artifacts do not always manifest into actual product. Many artifacts (particularly written) are of little use to any high-performance employee. It’s much better to say, “I really need fantasy artifacts in order to raise money or secure this partnership, but next week I want to sit down with all of you to learn how we can tactically build to get from A → B. Please tell me how I can help accelerate, inform and be a part of your organic process (instead of pointing to pretty colored paper while declaring delivery dates).” Artifact Queueing Next to executive dissonance, we have artifact queueing. If we are correct to assume the unpredictable nature of building software, and that artifacts make us feel warm and safe, then the natural effect over time will be artifact queueing—i.e. producing vastly more artifacts and assets than can be built. This is a particularly toxic practice, primarily because it completely ignores two things 1) the realistic throughput of a system, and 2) that small periods of time change everything—i.e. next week we might have vastly different assumptions about product, market, people and finance—assets produced this week may have no purpose and be completely misinformed next week. If we can’t build it, then we want to talk about it. Our dev team is cranking for the next two weeks on important stuff, but our business team and UI designers have free cycles, so let’s get them producing high-fidelity assets together. And let’s make sure we have lots of meetings with management and executives to discuss hypothetical things that are anchored by a faulty view of predictable reality. The scenario above might be a bit dramatic, but it’s incredibly common. This is why Agile, Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, and various ‘first-in-first-out’ or batch-constraining systems became popular. Quite simply, declaring software systems as predictable is actually insane, and forcing this fallacy on teams filled with technical, high-performance and creative people is horribly wasteful and corrosive to morale and productivity. Just keep it moving. Keep producing your artifacts, but keep in mind they just represent ideas, not real software. The more artifacts you create, the more artifacts you get. Your high-performance employees know this, and are probably tired of wasting their time.

Documentation is a bit like people dying.

Many challenges I deal with in the work place revolve around bringing users to register, purchase items, sign up, or some other web form that the client wants to improve. There is one particular web form that hasn’t been touched since its creation — every website does it the same (with some variation) without any evolution in the user experience, appointments. booking Disclaimer: This concept I’m about to present only works well and has been researched with offices, such as dentists, doctors, car maintenance, etc. What we have today. There are two ways a booking form works today. Find a date on the calendar, view available times, and if none of those work for you, keep clicking through the each date that is available until you find a time that works for you. Credit to Elikan The second most common calendar format gives a weekly view. Credit to Patrick Monkel Obviously these paradigms works great since they are still with us today — however what if we take a look at it from the upside down? Doing some research. After booking appointments for myself over the phone, I came to a realization and decided to ask to listening to coworkers and friends booking appointments when they actually needed them so it was more natural —there was one commonality amongst all of them, the majority of conversations followed the pattern below: Business: When would you like to make your appointment?Customer: As soon as possibleBusiness: How about Tuesday at 2PM?Customer: Do you have anything in the morning?Business: I have a morning 8AM in two weeks.Customer: Let’s do that. What happened here? we can break it down into three points: Business offers a time → customer states timeframe → business gives future date. People have a general idea of what their schedule will be, even when it is in the , they know they are available during lunch time, or only after hours, so why do we have to scroll through days or weeks finding a time that works for us? future The solution. Reverse the way people work in appointment forms by having users select their time frame first, then selecting a date and exact time. I tested two different ways of selecting a window of time. Want to make a guess at which performed better? Variation A & B performed better naturally, it’s much easier for all age groups to understand, plus you can select two different time frames for example morning and night. The final result? Variation A With this design, you can see it is a hybrid of our new design and the week view that already exists today — however the week view presented here removes days that do not have times as you can guess by the dates across the top. With this design we solved the issue of finding dates far in the future that fit our schedule, and easily finding days that the time frame we would like. Even if the next appointment in the Morning is six months down the road, that will be the first date to show up, saving us from scrolling for weeks and months on end. I encourage other designers to test this format and improve upon it, show me what you come up with and results on how it pans out with your user base! Thanks for reading ✌🏻 Find me elsewhere, Find me on , , , or check out my website at Twitter Facebook instagram mattscorner.io

Appointment Web Forms

Why is everyone so bored? It was all our fault. Mea culpa. We vastly underestimated how bored people are on Twitter and how many people will post on Twitter about being bored. It all started a couple of days ago when I learned about a powerful new mechanism to potentially increase customer awareness called “ ” and thought I’d give it a shot. social listening Why? One of the main problems startups have is to get noticed in the noise of online chatter. T is no exception here. It is quite tough to compete for attention with the frequent Trumpisms, the Superbowl (Go Raiders! ), Memes, Gifwars, a lot of online communication of 2017 that is shaped by . enqyu bots talking to each other So in order to get seen, I figured, it would be sensible to automate one headcount in the social media team and run a bot on my own. Implementing the bot from python was not hard and is actually quite straightforward. After quickly outlining the process, the team in the innovation lab connected the different parts and we rolled with it. #weekendhackathon As the good citizens we wanted to be, we thought we were following the Twitter guidelines by offering a service similar to this: Sunday afternoon we had the system ready to go live for a first test run. As is focused around geo-spatial aggregation we needed to identify the location of the tweeters and then create a custom event notification for this specific user. Similar to this one. drop!in When we were looking at the candidates during the model building we noticed that some of the tweeters had not put in a proper location. So, in good engineering practice, we defined that in this case the system should reply with a default link to the app. (Hint : Big Mistake) From our calculations and the sample data before we estimated that the default case should occur only in roughly 5% of cases when we can not establish the location of the user. Then we set the system live. Within a few minutes we had informed several users about the app but not a single event. Bummer. Apparently our fail-safe option has become the new normal. Sheeeeet! Why are so many people tweeting about being bored on Twitter ! WTF! Overall roughly 40+ Tweets went out when the app was greeted with a lovely error 261 “ Application cannot perform write actions”. Twitter shot down the app restricting write access within no time. Well deserved, I suppose. But the solution proves immensely powerful already and thus was a big success. For us this is clearly the way forward for the application and once the app gets reinstated we will remove the default option as, it is agreed, that it does not add value and surely does not add a “whoa ! This is amazing effect” rather than a “WTF SPAM MONSTER!! BRRRGH!!!” . And surely this is something neither Twitter nor we want. Maybe we move from “I am bored” to the search keyword “event suggestions”. But I keep this for another post what will happen here. Which keyword would you be using? Thank you for coming here. Please let me know if you liked the write-up :

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive February 5th, 2017

@daniel-jeffriesDaniel Jeffries

@daniel-jeffriesDaniel Jeffries

@ritikabajajRitika Bajaj

@dineshbob10Bob

@chang2301David Chang

@piotr.gorzelanyPiotr Gorzelany

@jneeraj0807Neeraj Joshi

@gonfvaGonzalo Fernandez

@i_tarun_guptaTarun Gupta

@gillchristiangChristian Gill

@faisal_hoqueFaisal Hoque

@radarboy3000George Gally

@eyaltoledanoEyal Toledano

@vnglstKoen van Gilst

@vnglstKoen van Gilst

@i_tarun_guptaTarun Gupta

@hugh_w_forrestHugh Forrest

@WebReflectionAndrea Giammarchi

@wbelkWilliam Belk

@oneuxdesignerMatthew Talebi

@jsemrauJ. Daniel Semrau

@daniel-jeffries
Daniel Jeffries

@daniel-jeffries
Daniel Jeffries

@ritikabajaj
Ritika Bajaj

@dineshbob10
Bob

@chang2301
David Chang

@piotr.gorzelany
Piotr Gorzelany

@jneeraj0807
Neeraj Joshi

@gonfva
Gonzalo Fernandez

@i_tarun_gupta
Tarun Gupta

@gillchristiang
Christian Gill

@faisal_hoque
Faisal Hoque

@radarboy3000
George Gally

@eyaltoledano
Eyal Toledano

@vnglst
Koen van Gilst

@vnglst
Koen van Gilst

@i_tarun_gupta
Tarun Gupta

@hugh_w_forrest
Hugh Forrest

@WebReflection
Andrea Giammarchi

@wbelk
William Belk

@oneuxdesigner
Matthew Talebi

@jsemrau
J. Daniel Semrau