While I have some writing momentum, I’m going to take a stab at a series on teaching some web scraping. My plan is to do this through some case studies of increasing complexity. Let’s get some preliminary stuff out of the way first. If you’re reading this on Medium, you’ll be missing out on the codeContinue reading “Web Scraping, Part 1: Web Scraping Basics”
On Web Scraping
Web scraping is the art of programmatically extracting content from the web. For those entirely unfamiliar with the concept of web scraping, consider this example. It was theorized that doctors who received payments from the medical industry prescribed differently than those who did not. If your doctor is recommending some random drug, it’d be good toContinue reading “On Web Scraping”
Tracking Personal Finances
I spend a few hours every month, neurotically tracking personal finances for me and my family. At the end of every month, I go through each of our accounts and move each transaction to a spreadsheet that holds every penny, aggregated by category, organized into balances, and that shows how we’re doing month-to-month. I’ve been doingContinue reading “Tracking Personal Finances”
ProjectSHERPA: a startup retrospective
Over several years, while fully employed, some friends and I built a startup with whatever time we could scrape together. ProjectSHERPA was an imagining of what the tech recruiting marketplace could be – a data-enabled web platform for finding, screening, and recruiting entry-level technology talent. Virtually everyone in the space agrees that finding and recruitingContinue reading “ProjectSHERPA: a startup retrospective”
Better Babies
When I was a baby, my parents did flash cards with me – tons of flash cards, hundreds a day, for several years. They started this with me when I was 2 months old, and continued on until my younger brother was born. Though many baby experts suggest avoiding flash cards, or at least timingContinue reading “Better Babies”
Can Yelp Reviews Predict Real Estate Prices?
I took a Data Science class in my MBA program, and I was recently re-reading our final project write-up. The assignment was to take a complex data set, do some analysis on it, and show the results. My group decided to focus on NYC real estate. We boldly set out to try to use subjectively important variablesContinue reading “Can Yelp Reviews Predict Real Estate Prices?”
I Type Faster Than You
The average person types around 40 words per minute (WPM). I type about 130-140 WPM (proof). Sometimes, and this might sound weird, I feel in the zone and can type significantly faster – closer to 160 WPM. I attribute this to my piano background and a childhood playing video games. Sometimes I’ll sit at theContinue reading “I Type Faster Than You”
Don’t Look at My Baby
My daughter, Riley, was born about a month ago. Months before that, our families were already asking for pictures – of the ultrasounds. (An AVG Technologies study found that 1 in 4 unborn babies has a digital footprint.) Now that we’re in the heart of babydom, the photo requests are piling up. So, we neededContinue reading “Don’t Look at My Baby”
A Side Project
My track record for posting here has been pretty poor the past 2 years. It’s tough to find time to write something interesting, let alone think up something interesting to write. I want to try and write more, as, dammit, I have interesting stuff to say! Or if nothing else, I can come back hereContinue reading “A Side Project”
Plumbing and Coding
I’m in a new home (actually, I’m not – I wrote this post a year ago and for whatever reason failed to hit ‘publish’ on it), and I want to get water from point A to point B. It seems easy enough – the sink is over here, it has water; the fridge is overContinue reading “Plumbing and Coding”
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