fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
I haven’t found my passion… now what?
Tags: Development, Jobs, Education, College, Growth

I haven’t found my passion… now what?

What to do when you don’t know what you want

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. We’ve all had that quote shoved down our throats at some point during careers events or pep talks with well-meaning parents. Well, that advice is just great if you happen to be one of those people who stumbled upon their “passion” or “calling” early in life — you just don’t happen to be one of them. You’ve finished school, graduated from college, and you still haven’t got a clue what you want to do with your life. Umm… now what?

Don’t panic. I’ve been there. I had my existential crisis and came out the other side, but most importantly — I now have a job that I really enjoy. These are my lessons learned from navigating the job market when I still didn’t know what I wanted.
4 Videography Tips To Help You Shoot Like a Pro
By: Williams Nana Kyei
Tags: Videography, Tips, Blog, Photography, Video Marketing

The Emergence of Visual Contents

Content consumption has evolved rapidly over the last five years. There’s been a significant shift from written content to visual content, with the future moving towards video.

Social media, e-commerce, banking, retail, food, health, fashion, beauty, education, Agric, engineering and many other fields use video to tell their brand stories and market their services.

It only shows that videographers will be high on demand in the content marketplace. Digital marketing agencies are diversifying the way they conduct business online. Freelancers, on-demand services and the gig-economy are booming in recent times.

Go to YouTube and other video streaming social networks and you will realize how much this sector has turned many young people into a full-time career. Don’t you want to be paid doing what you love? From freestyling on the street, live food eating show, make-up tutorials, travel vlogging, internet marketing, online coaching, fitness training to playing online video games, videos has come to stay and it can only evolve with the advent of new technologies.

The emergence of video content in production, marketing, and even lifestyle activities calls for quality in videography. Great visuals attract attention and bring in more leads for your business.

To be able to produce great video content, here are 4 useful videography tips for a newbie, or an intermediate videographer to hone your skills.

Videography Tips To help you shoot like a Pro
Tonight’s comic wants to know if we live in a simulation.
Tags: Philosophy, Technology, Humor, Virtual Reality

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
2020 was a year of…
By: Jerine Nicole
Tags: Personal Growth, Learning, Self-awareness, Personal Development, Spiritual Growth

2020 was a year of…

learning

learning how to slow down

learning how to stop judging others

learning how to stop judging myself

learning how to stop following the traditional path

learning that there’s happiness in the present

learning how to appreciate

learning how to be grateful

learning about what I care about

learning about what I don’t care about

learning from my mistakes

learning to be the person I want to become

learning what I like

learning what I don’t like

learning what I love

learning what I don't love

learning how to understand others more in stressful times

learning to deepen my love for my partner

learning to deepen my love for my family

learning about who my true friends are

learning how to feel both the high and low emotions

learning how to respect others that disagree with you

learning to set boundaries for people that don’t respect you

learning to be around people that think like you

learning to stop being around people that don’t think like you

learning that there’s so much more to life other than what I’ve been told

learning that we’re all here for a reason

learning that we don’t need to figure everything out now

learning how to trust

learning how to get back up when life knocks you down

learning that there is always a way out

learning that there’s a reason that we’re going through what we’re going through

learn how to be more compassionate in every interaction

learning that it’s safe to get out of your comfort zone

learning that the lows is meant to teach us a lesson

learning that we are here to keep growing

learning that I will be okay no matter what.

What about you? What was 2020 for you?
You Can Create a Podcast like Joe Rogan
By: Denis Murphy
Tags: Self Improvement, Creativity, Podcasting, Podcasting Strategies, Podcast

You Can Create a Podcast like Joe Rogan

By being more direct and building for the long term.

If you look at Joe Rogan’s podcast titles or even podcast descriptions you can see how concise and to the point they are.

Usually, he just includes the name of the guest and a brief description of who they are.

Here is an example from YouTube for a recent episode with Matthew McConaughey.
Google Analytics Removes Service Provider and Network Domain Data
By: The Group
Tags: Google Analytics, Analytics, Google, Digital Marketing, Web Development

By Hannah Svendor | Originally published at c2experience.com

Did you happen to notice a sudden spike in visitors to your site this month? We did, too.

Earlier this month, Google Analytics stopped collecting data for Network Domain and Service Provider. This data was particularly helpful in rooting and filtering out fake traffic and getting a better picture of site users and engagement.

Many businesses regularly review this data for some classic signs of fake traffic, like 1:1 relationships between users, new users, and sessions, as well as 100% bounce rates, no registered session durations and single-page visits over multiple sessions.

Using Google Analytics filtering tools, we could then flag and remove these network domains and service providers to get a better view of site data.

Now, when reviewing this data, you’ll see “(not set)” where your network domain and service provider once were.

In addition to filtering out bots and other spam traffic, the change can also affect re-marketing and ad targeting campaigns based on audiences defined using these data points. It will also affect those who filter out company or internal traffic using ISP Organization or ISP Domain. IP-based filtering, however, still appears to be intact.

The change, coming seemingly in the dark of night, comes with no official announcement or statement from Google as of publication. However, the fine folks at 3 White Hats offer a workaround through Google Tag Manager.

More details can also be found through the analytics consultants at Click Insights.

And for those seeking to follow the community discussion on this topic, you can follow along with the Google thread here.

This post will be updated as new information becomes available.
Know Your Pipes and Filters
By: Piyush Kochhar
Tags: Filters, Web Development, Terminal, Linux, Pipes

Know Your Pipes and Filters

Pipes and filters are everywhere. Not just in your homes but also in the terminal.

Know your pipes and filters — Created by Piyush Kochhar

What is a Filter? ䷜

A filter takes input from one command, does some processing, and gives output.

Why filter data? 🗂

Filtering is useful when you want to extract specific information from large amounts of data. It doesn’t remove or modify any data; it just displays a subset of data on the screen. Sometimes we use pipes to filter complex data.

What is a Pipe? 🚰

The symbol ‘|’ denotes a pipe. It is a command that takes an output of one command and feeds it as an input to the second command. You can combine two or more commands and run them consecutively with pipes.

Syntax:

$ command 1 | command 2 |… command n

Suppose we have a sample.txt file with the following data:

Adriaens Dishman

Anna Tichner

Bank Guerro

Phil Cuniam

Reagen Dobrovolny

Cicily Veale

Coop Joysey

kendrick Liggons

micheal Fray

benn Cork

Micheal Fray

Let’s filter some data!

😸 cat : Displays the contents of the file.
An Evening with the Terrapin Family
By: Sam Ripples
Tags: Grateful Dead, Concerts, Music, This Happened To Me

An Evening with the Terrapin Family

Last Wednesday, I had the chance to see Phil Lesh and the Terrapin Family Band at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Photo by Mark Angelo from Pexels

Last Wednesday, I had the chance to see Phil Lesh and the Terrapin Family Band at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

I’ve been a Grateful Dead fan for the past seven years, since one of my best friends brought me to a festival to experience their music for the first time. But since Furthur broke up, I hadn’t seen Phil Lesh (the Grateful Dead’s bassist) play anything live.

Our first glimpse of Phil was during the opener, The Infamous Stringdusters. He came out for a rendition of “Wake the Dead” that felt way too appropriate for the show that would be coming that night.

The weather was perfect — not windy, but with a chill to the air that kept us all dancing long into the evening to keep warm. As they played, the musicians gathered in a tight circle around Phil, the nexus of the musical creation, and they all bounced energy and notes off of each other in a frenzy of musical ecstasy.

Photo by Suvan Chowdhury from Pexels

It was my boyfriend’s first Dead show, and he was nervous. He was convinced he’d be entering a world of drug-infested psychedelia, when the majority of the fans at the show were over the age of fifty and did nothing more intense than smoke a joint or two while we all wiggled to the music. He was surprised by how kind everyone was — stopping to shake his hand when they were introduced, people offering us hits off of joints and beers — and quickly fell under the spell of the fiddles.

I’ve since listened to the album that birthed many of the songs the Stringdusters played during that opening set and I have to say, I’m impressed. It’s been six years since I’ve seen them play at All Good and I was even more captivated by their music this time around. I danced so hard I hurt my hip! (Perhaps that means I’m getting old, but I refuse to tell myself that at 27.)

When Phil and the Terrapin Family Band took the stage, the crowd erupted into a confetti of cheers. Funny enough, the last time I saw Phil was also at All Good, back when Furthur was still together and he and Bob graced the same stage. Life had been different back then — I was on my first cross country road trip, for one, and I was mostly concerned with my friend’s opinions rather than the music at that time.

This time was different. I was fully dialed into the music, surrounded by friends and good vibes. Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.

Phil and the Terrapin Family Band opened with “Bertha”, which I found appropriate considering the Grateful Dead had played it at their seminal Red Rocks show back in ’78.
When to Stop Writing Error Programs & Start Effective Coding.
Tags: Software Development, Programming, Error Handling, Programmatic, Coding

The dark side of the programming is very powerful. This won’t allow you to write the program which is free from the ERRORS.

MOOD to CODE

MOOD is the state of feeling which helps in creation and destruction.

Photo by 贝莉儿 NG on Unsplash

When you are in the mood of upset, close the laptop and move to the place where you feel like you are the only best left in this world, spend little time and just stop thinking about thinking of solutions to the existing problems which results in new problem leads to error code eventually.

CODE-CHILDREN-TIME

The actions of kids, keeps us away from the stress.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

The best part of human life is ones childhood. It is the only phase where you don’t plan for what to do. Planning is good , but a plan to planning is not good at all and that won’t make a sense at all.

There will be the time of depression due to some irrelevant moments you have encountered which is the right time to do the things in wrong. So, immediately checkout the place to children and observe their movements, immediately you feel light and you will breath normally.

Walk Before You CODE

Coding is like walking on water.

Photo by Tegan Mierle on Unsplash

The more you walk, the more you code. Whenever you struck in a logic to be figured out, immediately off the place and take a walk. While you walking, keep thinking only about the logic. You will find many different paths for solving the problem. When you sit and you will stick.

So, walk to make.

To CODE with LOVE

When you love, you care.

Photo by juan pablo rodriguez on Unsplash

You will be possessive over the one whom you love and care. The love principle applies to the every programmer left on the earth. You have to love your code at any cost. The code will be as hard and as beautiful as your loved one. Treat your coding lines with much respect which gives you the fruit you haven’t tasted yet.

Read before you CODE

Reading makes you to know thyself.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Yes, the programmer must read more. You have been surrounded by lot things which always keeps you away from thinking. So, read more to imagine and to think too. Judge yourself when you walk over the book. Each letter you read is counted in building the strength of the mind, which helps to get ideas for either creating creations or inventing the inventions.

Game and CODE

Games increase the mental strength.

Gaming is one of the most common habits of a programmer. The gamer is the one who takes the right decisions in right time even the time that do not favour him. The gamer mind is filled with the way of multidimensional thinking . The gamer matters for correct and reliable code. So, play games to write the hard core programs.

Debugging is finding the bug and knowing its existence is not an accident.

Happy Coding Guys !!
Letters from the CEOs — Vol. 6
By: Main Street Hub
Tags: Culture, About, Growth, Leadership, Customer Experience

A year ago in this space, we wrote about kicking off an effort to “[take] user-centered design to a new level in the company, prototyping and building a series of new experiences for our customers and internal teams — from Sales to Customer Success to Content — that are going to help us continue to raise the bar.” In each letter since, we’ve discussed the progress of those initiatives, from testing to release, and now we have the early results.

The first quarter of 2017 was our most successful quarter ever. We achieved our highest-ever customer satisfaction and sales — results that represent the best performance in our industry by far — and as a result, we saw huge growth in the number of customers we serve.

If we continue to execute, we are set up to have an absolutely enormous year.

Here’s how we got to this point: radical customer centricity. Living each of our values every day. Relentless focus on a goal over an extended period of time. Understanding what we wanted to achieve with that goal. Formulating hypotheses for how to get there. Testing those hypotheses. Being honest about what worked and what didn’t. Adjusting course based on the results. Testing again. Scaling the winning ideas, not our favorite ones. Doing it again.

That last part is critical. No organizational advantage persists without an unremitting devotion to extending that advantage. Now is not the time to lean back. It’s the time to lean in.

This posture is not only necessary to ensuring that we continue to excel as a company. It’s the responsibility we have to our customers. We have a unique opportunity to be a kind of company that has never existed before. A lasting, purpose-built technology company for local businesses. A company that helps them with the things they know are critical, so they can stay focused on the things they love. Now more than ever, we are in a position to deliver on that promise. So let’s go for it!

And as we continue to execute, we continue to open up new opportunities for us to deliver for our customers. An example of this is our new customer experience, which, through our investment in one-of-a-kind small business branding and content creation tools, has provided the foundation on which we can do some exciting new things. We’ll have more to say on that in a future letter, but here’s what one of our customers had to say about it, when she got an early peek in one of our latest tests:

Let’s go!
7 Green Flags That You Must Notice on Your First Date
By: Shruti
Tags: Psychology, Relationships, Life, Love, Dating

7 Green Flags That You Must Notice on Your First Date

There definitely are good things about the person sitting across the table.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Do you feel like your dating life is in a bit of a slump? Does it feel like everyone who asks you out has only red flags? Are you always on the look for those small green signs that will tell you the person sitting across the table is a keeper or not?

Well, it’s completely normal for you to do so. We all at one or another time in our lives have been there and done that.

The way your date is chewing the food with their mouth open or spilling food everywhere or being rude to the staff of the restaurant you are in surely is a red flag and maybe you’ve even had bigger red flags than that in your past first dates like they are boring you to death or they can’t stop talking about their past relationships or have a weird obsession with cat outfits.

But have you considered the thought that you might be ticking off on red flags so much that you are missing out on the good stuff?

In other words the green flags. There definitely are good things about the person sitting across the table. So, to make you understand it better, here are 7 green flags of dating that you should be aware of :
Chatting with a Data Expert From Google, Christina Stathopoulos!
By: Terence Shin
Tags: Machine Learning, Google, Interview, Data Science, Careers

Chatting with a Data Expert From Google, Christina Stathopoulos!

A Googler, Adjunct Professor at IE Business School, guest lecturer, public speaker, and thought leader!

Image provided by Christina

Introduction

The same way that I write articles to share my advice and opinions for others to learn from, I personally like to reach out to others to hear about their story, advice, and wisdom to learn from them as well!

Christina Stathopoulos is actually one of the first few people that recognized my writing and shared one of my articles back in March! Since then, she has selflessly provided me with guidance and support around my career and data analytics in general.

And so, I thought it would be extremely valuable to give Christina an opportunity to share some of her experiences and wisdom with the rest of you!

If you want to learn more about Google, data science, data science AT Google, or some invaluable career advice, keep reading.

With that said, I introduce to you a Googler, Adjunct Professor at IE Business School, guest lecturer, public speaker, and thought leader, Christina!
The best way to get a nervous person to try something new
By: Mckinley Valentine
Tags: Life Lessons, Psychology, Relationships, Life, Advice

The best way to get a nervous person to try something new

Hint: It’s not, “tell them it’s easy and they’ll pick it up no problem”

Photo by Nigel Msipa on Unsplash

I’ve noticed that if someone wants you to try badminton or a party game or trivia or whatever, and you tell them “I’m not good at sports/boardgames/improv” or whatever it is, 9 times out of 10 they will respond, “Nah don’t worry, it’s easy, you’ll pick it up.”



And if you insist, “No, seriously, I’m REALLY clumsy / bad at thinking on my feet” or whatever, they’ll double-down: “It’s basically impossible to fuck up, you’ll be fine.”



THIS IS THE WORST THING YOU CAN SAY TO A NERVOUS PERSON TRYING SOMETHING NEW.



The more you sell how easy it is, the stronger you’re sending the message “you will look like an idiot if you fail at this. I am incapable of imagining how someone could find this difficult. They would have to be some sort of clueless baby.”

The way to encourage someone is to say “yeah, you probably will fuck up, everyone does at first, it’s normal.”



Don’t try to convince them they’ll be good at it (they won’t believe you). Try to convince them it’s normal to be bad at it and no one will judge them for it.



(If they’re not actually interested in trying the new thing, the way to not be rude is to ask them with the specific context that trying it would be doing you a favour, because it would. Don’t wheedle, or try to convince them they’ll love it, or phrase it in any way like you are trying to do them a favour because you just know they’ll love it so much if they give it a go. You’re allowed to ask people favours! especially friends! but you’re not allowed to act like it’s for their benefit not yours.)
The Last Room
By: Sethuraj Nair
Tags: Poetry, Impressionism, Art, Literary Impulse, Van Gogh

The Last Room

Free-Verse inspired by the painting “Bedroom in Arles” by Vincent van Gogh

“Bedroom in Arles”, Vincent van Gogh 1888

And at dawn

I dreamed of death.

Waves of supreme

silence crawled up

the bedstead to nestle

in my absence

where I’d stashed

the thorns of sobs

in the stoic folds

of last night’s sheets.

I stirred upright

and glimpsed

myself perched

on the chair beside,

moaning me and

the night drained,

face to the window

and eyes elsewhere,

waving off my

parting ghost.

‘The Lord is my

shepherd,’ I hummed

to give the dream

its theme

and lay listening

to my footfalls

leading off

to the corner,

to the mirror.

An eager scramble

of fingers groped

and clawed

at my face vanished

with its masks.

An orphaned pair of

lips were heard

swilling down

all the seas’

water in long

gasps and gulps

and flailing fright,

swathing screams

in pursed disbelief.

The floorboards

kept peeling

the last of greens

and sent it painted

on feet untrained

in farewell dances.

From round the spongy walls

arose clinks of meeting toasts,

guffaws of the ones gone

before, their cheers straining

at the time-ground rust.

I wrenched opened the door

to breathe a laughter

into the pulsing dark,

and regarded the clouds

that reeked of gods,

until was stubbed out

and buried alongside

a charred bolt of lightning.
4 Ways to Deal With Disappointments
By: Hapsari Listya
Tags: Self Improvement, Social Media, Psychology, This Happened To Me, Disappointment

4 Ways to Deal With Disappointments

Please do not share it on your social media.

Credit by Chermiti Mohamed @ Pexels

When was the last time you disappointed?

Are you disappointed with someone?

Or are you disappointed because of unexpected moments?

It’s so easy to disappoint with everything. You have high expectations for something, alas, sometimes things can’t go well as you expected.

Ammy Bellows, Ph.D. explained more about disappointments:

Disappointment results from thoughts and expectations being out of line with reality. Your expectations and hopes for others may be too high for the situation at hand.

You expected your partner would give a birthday surprise party. You waited until night, and your partner even didn’t give any gift since they forgot your birthday.

You expected you would get a promotion soon. You have given your best works for the last few months. You always said yes when your boss asked you to work late. The day came when your manager chose to promote your colleagues instead of you.

You planned to hike the mountains with your friends and everything prepared perfectly. Alas, this pandemic is coming and make all of you can’t go anywhere. You have to refund your plane ticket and work remotely for the last few months. You missed your friends but can’t do anything since the government has strict rules about traveling — although it’s only traveling within the country.

Sounds familiar?

Yes, a lot of people call 2020 a year of disappointment. People lose their job. We can’t meet our family member who lives in a different city—a lot of canceled plans.

We get disappointed for different reasons.

A lot of people share disappointments on their social media. They thought others would sympathize with them. Albeit, others could use social media to bully you. They are mocking you because you become too dramatic.

Again, hate worsens the situation.
Phrases, Acronyms and Abbreviations for 2018
By: Sarah Cooper
Tags: Acronyms, Humor

Tweet = A posting made on the social media site, Twitter

Twat = A bad tweet

Sitch = Situation

Sitchuache = Situtation, or, Situation with someone who has a mustache

AG = Jeff Sessions

OG = Ice T.

POC = Person of Color

POC = Point of Contact

POC POC = Person of Color Point of Contact

Hundo P = 100%

Hundo PP = The chances the pee tape exists

Deets = Details

WOC = Without Cheese

WCW = Woman Crush Wednesday

MCM = Man Candy Monday

TBT = Throwback Tuesday, Throwback Thursday, Throwback Today since everybody does this everyday anyway

BLM = Black Lives Matter

BLM = Blue Lives Matter

BLM = Bureau of Land Management

MAGA = Make America Great Again

MAGATS = People who want to Make America Great Again

MASA = Make America Safe Again, or what slaves called their owners

MSM = CNN

Far Right = Alt Left

KMP = Keep Me Posted

KMF = Kill Marry Fuck

I’d KMFer = I’d Kill to Marry that Fucker, or, Zac Efron

YOGAing = Being annoying

YODAing = Out of order, say things, you must

Yodeling = Performing at Walmart

NSFW = Not Safe for Work

SFW = So Fucking What

NAIC = New Asshole in Charge

GOAT = Greatest of All Time

GOATEE = Greatest Goatee of All Time

F/U = Followed Up, Fucked Up

OMW = Will leave in an hour

ICYMI = Another chance to ignore the same thing

IMHO = In My Humble Opinion, or, I’m a Ho

AF = As Fuck

AFF = Asking For a Friend

AFAF = Asking For Abercrombie and Fitch

BAE = What a GOAT baby says

LIT = Living in Texas

LMBAO LAMBO = Laughing My Black Ass Off in my Lamborghini

FOMO = Fear of Missing Out

JOMO = Joy of Missing Out

MOOMOO = What to wear when missing out
Narcissists Have 2 Types of Interests in Their Children
By: Alen M. Vukelić
Tags: Life Lessons, Abuse, Psychology, Relationships, Mental Health

➤How narcissists perceive their children

The only time when narcissists would want to see their children succeed is if they were to gain direct benefit from it. It could be financial wealth, but would much rather prefer something that enhances their personal status, like power and influence. As said earlier, they don’t see their children as individual people, they see them as an extension of themselves. A reward given to their child is a reward given to them.

That is not to be confused with the pride parents feel because of their child’s achievements in life. When the parents genuinely rejoice in another’s success — and when that someone also happens to be their child. The genuine appreciation to see someone fulfill their dreams and ambitions — it’s not that.

It’s more like winning the lottery.

Narcissists believe the whole world functions like they do. That everyone is on the lookout to take advantage of someone else. A constant predator and prey game, where all you do is hope you get to be the predator more often than the prey. And if you succeed in doing so, then you had a good life. A reptilian brain kind of existence in which their own children are only part of the play.

There’s no deeper understanding of what it means to pass on life to another human being. And not the slightest clue that their children exist independently. A lack of empathy inhibits their ability to relate any of their actions to an outcome. All that goes wrong is unrelated to them. Circumstances and other people are responsible for everything that goes wrong in their lives. However, all success, be it the result from their actions or someone else’s — like their child’s for instance — is based on their merits alone.
Sojourn South
By: Background Noise Comics
Tags: Civil Rights, Travel, Humor, Racism, Comics

Bonus length comic!

When you travel, you bring your baggage, but leave without your preconceptions and fears.
Migrating ~600 files to TypeScript
By: Andre Rabello
Tags: Migration, JavaScript, GraphQL, Typescript

Start converting

First step, pick a file and replace its extension with .ts . You will immediately notice a bunch of tslint errors about missing types. Now the goal is to get rid of all the errors.

Imports

Let’s start with the beginning of the file that usually contains imports. We can split them in three different groups:

imports from third party libraries;

imports from other project files;

type imports (in case you were using non-TS types, like Flow).

Import from 3rd-party libraries

In case the library doesn’t provide TS types along with code, you should install them from @types if they exist. It’s a community managed repo that has types for most common libraries in npm . For example if you use lodash , you can install TS types with npm i -D @types/lodash or yarn add -D @types/lodash

If the package is not popular enough to have @types , you have 3 options:

contribute to the community by submitting a Pull Request; create a local .d.ts file that defines the module; just use tsignore until there is one.

Option 3 provides the least benefits, you just disable type checking for that library which defeats the purpose.

Option 2 is a nice temporary fix, for example: foo-library.d.ts

define 'foo-library' {

function Foo(): string;

}

If you’re familiar with its API you can cover just the necessary cases for your code to function and be type checked :)

Import from project files

The simplest way is to use tsignore until it is converted to TS. Don’t forget to come back later and remove it once the imported file is converted. That way you can focus on one file at a time, but if some imported files are really easy and simple to convert you can also just go convert them first. That depends on complexity but generally we would have a more iterative/progressive approach and focus on a few files at a time.

Another option is to start inwards, from files that have no dependencies up the tree. That’s not always the best approach as you’ll change context/domain pretty frequently, but is definitely helpful for the “utils” kind of files.

Import types
Bittersweet
By: Brenda Karl
Tags: Life, Memories, Love, Truth And Life, Loss

The taste of a life well-lived.

ponbee.com

Sometimes nostalgia hits me right in the gut.

It covers me with waves of memories so potent that I can barely catch my breath. It could be the sight of an old tractor sitting in a field, the smell of biscuits baking, or the soft call of a whip-poor-will.

When I was a child, a memory was a happy thing. Last summer’s vacation, a sleepover, what I got for my birthday. Now, memories tend to be more bittersweet.

People say that bad memories cause the most pain, but actually, it’s the good ones that drive you insane. ~Kid Cudi

The memory of my Grandma standing in the kitchen whipping up her famous biscuits brings a smile to my lips but a sharp pain in my heart.

The sound of a congregation singing Amazing Grace fills me with inspiration while bringing me to tears because it’s all I remember about my Grandpa’s funeral.

The memories I cherish of my adult children as babies are precious to my soul, but they leave me with a sense of longing. I would never wish them to stay children forever, but maybe I could travel back in time, watch them while they sleep, or hold them just one more time?

The love that began at the tender age of 19 for my now ex-husband was innocent, pure, and blind. Thirty years later, to learn he lead a double life taints the images I hold in my mind and leaves me sifting through memories trying to distinguish truth from deception.

A heart that’s broke is a heart that’s been loved. ~ Ed Sheeran

So much of my life hasn’t turned out as I had hoped. There have been good times — moments filled with such joy, I thought I would burst. Then there were seasons of grief so strong I felt part of my soul died and the other part continued only to mourn its loss.

Peaks and valleys, joy and pain, love and loss, bitter and sweet. Both are necessary, and neither can be denied. They are the taste of life.
The Definitive Guide to Conda Environments
By: Matthew Sarmiento
Tags: Technology, Software Development, Data Science, Towards Data Science, Programming

Where Environments Live

When you create an environment with Python’s venv module, you need to say where it lives by specifying its path.

% python3 -m venv /path/to/new/environment

Environments created with conda , on the other hand, live by default in the envs/ folder of your Conda directory, whose path will look something like:

% /Users/user-name/miniconda3/envs # Or .../anaconda3/envs

I prefer the approach taken by venv for two reasons.

1️⃣ It makes it easy to tell if a project utilizes an isolated environment by including the environment as a sub-directory.

my-project/

├── conda-env # Project uses an isolated env ✅

├── data

├── src

└── tests

2️⃣ It allows you to use the same name for all of your environments (I use “conda-env”), meaning you can activate each with the same command.

% cd my-project/

% conda activate conda-env

💸 Bonus: This allows you to alias the activation command and stick it in your .bashrc file, making life a little bit simpler.

⚠️ Note: If you keep all of your environments in your Conda’s env/ folder, you’ll have to give each of them a different name, which can be a pain 😞.

So, how do you place environments outside of your Conda’s env/ folder? By using the --prefix flag instead of --name when creating an environment.

% conda create --prefix /path/to/conda-env # Or use -p

⚠️ Note: This makes an environment called “conda-env” in the specified path.

It’s as simple as that. However, placing environments outside of the default env/ folder comes with two drawbacks.

1️⃣ conda can no longer find your environment with the --name flag. Instead, you’ll need to pass the --prefix flag along with the environment’s full path. For example, when installing packages, which we’ll cover in the next section.

2️⃣ Your command prompt is no longer prefixed with the active environment’s name, but rather its full path.

(/path/to/conda-env) %

As you can imagine, this gets messy quickly. Like this doozy, for instance.

(/Users/user-name/data-science/project-name/conda-env) % # 😨

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. You just need to modify the env_prompt setting in your .condarc file, which you can do with a single stroke.

% conda config --set env_prompt '({name}) '

⚠️ Note: This will edit your .condarc file if you already have one and create one if you do not. For more on modifying your .condarc file, see the docs.

Now your command prompt will only display the active environment’s name.

% conda activate /path/to/conda-env

(conda-env) % # Woohoo! 🎉

Last, you can view a list of all your existing environments.

% conda env list # conda environments:

#

/path/to/conda-env

base * /Users/username/miniconda3

r-env /Users/username/miniconda3/envs/r-env
Haftalık Sosyal Medya Özeti: 9 Aralık — 15 Aralık 2019
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Is homework really necessary?
By: Cal Pla
Tags: Education, Homework, Schools, Students, Education Reform

Photo by Mary Taylor from Pexels

Does homework really benefit the students? One great and known example is the schools in Finland. Schools in Finland are known for having little homework, long holidays, and overall spending lesser time in school but still ending high up on the global rankings.

In this article, we take a look at some of the benefits and disadvantages of homework.

Homework takes away free time after school

Students are already studying for hours in school, tiring them out. The time after school(and school can end late into the day) is a chance for them to have a rest and take part in non-academic interests. However, having homework forces students to do school work again, and sacrifice their limited time for rest and other activities. While some are fine with this, others may then lessen/give up their sleeping hours so that they can cram both homework and their extra activity. Lack of sleep in teens has negative impacts such as concentration difficulties, impact on mental well being, and poor decision making. Having so much to do after school may also stress students out, which can influence performance at school, mental well being and life in general.

Not every student can have a good homework experience

Students from low-income families that can’t afford devices to do the homework or a comfortable environment at home may find homework difficult to handle. They may also not have proper equipment such as stationary, table and chairs, or even proper lighting. They have a big disadvantage compared to others.

however…

Homework gives students a chance to recap what they did in school

Sometimes learning a topic just in school is not enough. The number of hours for each subject is limited, classmates may be a little distracting, and new information can take a while and some practice to settle in. Having homework lets students have more time to understand what they learnt in school, and practice it while some time has passed. It allows them to do it at their own pace, and research more on it if they wanted to.

Homework can teach students to be responsible

Students can learn to discipline themselves and finish their “important” tasks before they move onto doing something they like to do after school. They can figure out how and why they need to prioritize their tasks that needs to be finished, to hold back and do what they want to do for fun after. Students can learn the consequences of not completing them, while still in school, and will be useful later in life when they start to work.
Tree Of Time
By: T.S. Narkissa Luna
Tags: Creative Writing, Poetry, Life, Death, Time

A tree born of sad fate,

Weakened hope,

Changed in the glimmers

Grown for the thought of more,

Battles to be ready.

—

It knows the blood to be its water,

The bodies of the dead —

The fertilizer,

And the faces of hanged dead —

Its sun.

—

A ghost born of the before,

Itself was the being of the past,

Where death was far and in spares,

When laughter and songs —

Could be heard from the streets.

—

Growing and thriving,

Its thorns rode cycles of life,

Bleeding the skies of its frosted fog,

Taking its breaths in stride,

Living when they’ve died.

—

Standing,

It reminisces as it falls asleep,

The past was beautiful as the present,

Where even the moments are liquid,

Passing time with the waves of its leaves.

—

Branches grown, and far

It continues to see life,

Salvaging with its quietness —

Normalcy of what seeped back into earth.

— —
Revenge
By: Robert Bush
Tags: Short Story, Satire, Fiction, Microfiction, Elephants

Revenge

Remember/forget prompt 21st August

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

The poacher had given up. It was too difficult; all the do-gooders protecting the elephants.

One day an elephant burst through the bush and crushed him.

Taking his last breath he saw the elephant’s broken tusk and remembered taking her calf.

The elephant’s eyes spoke — she hadn’t forgotten either.
One Stop Shop
Tags: Funny, Humor, Cartoon, Dentistry, Comics

Written by

Almost famous cartoonist who laughs at her own jokes and hopes you will, too.
p-Value and Power of a Test
By: Ashutosh Nayak
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, P Value, Data Science, Statistics

p-Value and Power of a Test

Explaining p-value

We have all used this is in our stats classes: the null hypothesis is rejected if p<0.05. This short blog is about an explanation of p-value, and how it is connected to the confidence interval and power of a test.

p-value definition (from stats 101/Wikipedia)

p-value is a probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the results actually observed, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct. (difficult to make sense of easily)

Try another method

The null hypothesis is the description of a world we want to check (giving a coupon increases sales or not). In this world, we believe that giving a coupon does not increase sales. We collect samples of data (hoping it is representative of the population) and get our statistic (mean, variance, median, etc). p-value is the probability that the world we wanted to check, throws out the number we got from our sample collection. More explanation in the Figure below.

Figure 1. Explaining p-value

p-value just tells us if our null hypothesis is true or not so that we can reject it or we fail to reject it. However, we should not be satisfied if p < alpha (generally 0.05) and we should consider Type I and Type II error. Type I error (=alpha) is the probability of rejecting the Null hypothesis when it is true. Type II error is the probability of accepting (or fail to reject) the null hypothesis when it is false.

Limitations of p-value

p-value does not give the probability of how true the null hypothesis was. It just gives a binary decision on if it can be rejected or not p-value does not consider how precise the effect is (as it assumes we know the sample size, does not tell much about sample size)

Type I error can incur opportunity cost but Type II error could be more harmful. Consider medicine development. Rejecting a drug that could have worked makes the company lose money on its investment. However, accepting a drug that does not work puts peoples’ lives at risk. I remember Type I and Type II error as producers' risk and consumers' risk. Thus the power of a test is also important (power of test = 1-Type II error = probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is false). More on the power of a test in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Power of a test

The confidence interval is also calculated from alpha. The confidence interval is interpreted as: (1)if we collect 100 samples (and create a confidence interval for a statistic for each of the sample), the frequency of these confidence intervals which will contain the true value of the statistic (e.g. population mean) tends to be 1-alpha. (2)When we calculate one confidence interval, we say that in future experiments, the true statistic value will lie within that confidence interval (which is equivalent to doing multiple replications now a discussed in (1)).
Daily Scrum Stand-Up Tips I’ve Learned as An Engineer Moonlighting As Scrum Master
By: Tremaine Eto
Tags: Technology, Communication, Management, Business, Agile

How I Got My Scrum Master Experience

For years now, my scrum team at my full-time job has experimented with the traditional concept of a paid scrum master leading the daily stand-up meeting; instead, we rotate the role of scrum master amongst ourselves.

It’s an interesting and fair solution (to us, it didn’t make sense from a conflict of interest and even time management standpoint to have our product owner be the scrum master every single day) — in my opinion, it’s nice in that it allows each of us to improve our soft skills in terms of running efficient meetings and also in terms of communication.

If you also implement this, you can take ordered turns, or you can do something like what we do and randomly choose. We actually found an animated randomized wheel tool online that we spin to select the lucky scrum master for the sprint; it adds a fun ceremony to kick off every sprint on a positive note.

As I’ve been at my company for years, I’ve thus been scrum master quite a bit of times. As a software engineer, it’s actually very illuminating being on that side of the experience, and so here are some general tips I’ve gathered over time.
Musical Theater Reviews by Donald J. Trump
By: Page Barnes
Tags: Politics, Hamilton, Satire, Humor, Donald Trump

Unbeknownst to most of America until the “Hamilton” dust-up this week, our President-Elect is a renowned theater critic. After careful research, I was able to locate a collection of some of his most memorable reviews. Unsurprisingly, he’s quite opinionated.
How is climate change affecting Pakistan?
By: Danyal Huq
Tags: Data Visualization, Danyal Huq, Climate Change, Pakistan

Created in Excel and refined in Illustrator

A scatter plot depicting the change (in technical terms known as an anomaly) in both average monthly temperature and precipitation, as I was curious to see the effect of global climate change on my country, Pakistan.

I chose displaying it in a scatter plot as it shows - at a glance - how many months fall in which quadrant, and how large the change is relative to each other.

Anomalies in temperature is in absolute numbers, degrees Celsius, as opposed to percentage change, because popular discussions of climate change talk about limiting global warming by 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. To give this number some perspective, an earth that is 5°C hotter than pre-industrial average would become near inhabitable, and currently there is already 1.5°C warming in the climate system (Dunlop, I. A. N., & Spratt, D. 2017).

It is interesting to see that October has lost nearly all its rainfall compared to the base period, as well as how the colder months (October to March) have experienced the largest rises in temperature (with November as an outlier).

About the data

The data is available on the Climate Change Knowledge Portal of the World Bank Group from 1961 to 2016 for Pakistan. It can be found here: https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/download-data

You can read more about the impact of climate change in the report DISASTER ALLEY: CLIMATE CHANGE CONFLICT AND RISK, found here: https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/
Towards The Apathy Of Those Who Knew
By: Anthi Psomiadou
Tags: Spirituality, Life, Nature, Self, Soul

The fallen leaves under the trees,

another autumnal step on the cycle of seasons;

just a point of a wise periodicity.

The daylight covered up the stars,

but they’ll reappear;

just a snapshot within a wise alternation.

Everything is vibrating, nothing rests.

Yet, nature never seems tired;

an ongoing procedure of self-nourishing.

The Law of Rhythm is indisputable.

All things rise and fall. Again and again;

omnipresent evidence that death doesn’t really exist.

Having chosen to live in Reality,

my job is to keep my consciousness impenetrable

by the excitement of the rise and the disappointment of the fall.

My job is to keep in mind the Laws,

and not to be enslaved by a permanent desire

for what I don’t phenomenally have in every “now”.
Her Story (Part 1)
By: Danna Reich Colman
Tags: Short Story, Poetic Prose, Speculative Nonfiction, Love

Her Story (Part 1)

I look at you — all around your face — and then I stop at each feature, one at a time, while you watch me looking at you.

“You’re so pretty,” you say, and I look away and feel myself blush.

I look back to your eyes and mine immediately soften, and I notice yours softening, as well.

I watch your lips move as you tell me you want to kiss me, and we’re both imagining our lips touching at any moment.

Neither of us wants the other to notice, but we can’t help it, and we look at each other like we’ve never wanted anything as much as this kiss.

I stop breathing as your eyes follow mine to your hand resting on the seat between us, and I think about what it will feel like in mine.

There are fewer and fewer boundaries between us, and the intimacy of sharing all our thoughts has made me want you more every time we speak.

Companion Pieces: