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I am making another push in 2021 to get my content out in the world and meeting users where they are. See how I plan to execute. Platforms # waylonwalker.com Twitter DEV hashnode Medium LinkedIn Anchor Markdown # My content is written in markdown, all markdown. I find that markdown does a really great job at getting out of the way and letting ideas flow onto the page. I am never fussing with fonts and formatting while physically writing posts. Not that I don’t spend way more time than I need to tweak these things on my own personal site where everything gets posted. Articles # Much of what I create is inside of short articles that get posted to my personal site waylonwalker.com. These will get cross-posted to DEV, hashnode, Medium. I have made cross-posting a bit easier for myself by posting the markdown for each article next to the post on my personal site. Add.md to any post and there is the source. Should I be giving my articles to Medium?? Personally, I am not a fan of the bait and…

Recently I automated starting new posts with a python script. Today I want to work on the next part that is editing those posts quickly. Automating my Post Starter Check out this post about setting up my posts with python 🐍 Enter Bash # For the process of editing a post I just need to open the file in vim quickly. I dont need much in the way of parsing and setting up the frontmatter. I think this is a simple job for a bash script and fzf. change to the root of my blog fuzzy find the post open it with vim change back to the directory I was in bash function # For this I am going to go with a bash function. This is partly due to being able to track where I was and get back. Also the line with nvim will run fzf everytime you source your file which is not what we want. Lets setup the boilerplate. Its going to create a function called ep, track our current directory, create a sub function. Then call that function and cd back to where we were no matter if fails or succeeds. boilerplate Creati…

Gitui is a terminal-based git user interface (TUI) that will change the way that you work with git. I have been a long-time user of the git cli, and it’s been hard to beat, mostly because there is nothing that keeps my fingers on the keyboard quite like it, except which comes with some great ways to very quickly walk through a git project. installation # Go to their [releases]https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui/releases) page, download the latest build, and pop it on your PATH. I have the following stuffed away in some install scripts to get the latest version. install latest release run # It opens blazing fast. Quick Commits # Sometimes I edit a number of files and want to commit them one at a time, this is painful in the git cli and my main use case for. shows unstaged changes at the top, staged changes on the bottom, and a diff on the right. Navigate with hjkl # By default, uses arrow keys, but simply copying vim_style_key_config.ron to your config directory will get you vim-like ke…

In python data science/engineering most of our data is in the form of some sort of table, typically a DataFrame from a library like pandas, spark, or dask. DataFrames are the heart of most pipelines # These containers for data contain many convenient methods to manipulate table like data structures. Sometimes we leverage other data types, namely vanilla types like lists and dicts, or even numpy data types. What is Kedro unfamiliar with kedro, check out this post Sometimes datasets are not tables # There are times when our data doesn’t fit nicely into a DataFrame. Lucky for us Kedro has pickle support out of the box. Pickle is a way to store any python object to disk. Beware that pickle files coming from an unknown source can run malicous code and are considered unsafe. For the most part though when you read and write your own pickle files they are a good tool to consider. See more about pickle from python.org. Cataloging Pickle # I may have a dictionary that describes some cars. In the…

Changing conda environments is a bit verbose, I use a function with fzf that both lists environments and selects the one I want in one go. Conda # I have used conda as a virtual environment tool for years now. I started using conda for its simplicity to install packages on windows, but now that has gotten so much better and it’s been years since I have run a command. I’m sure that I could use a different environment manager, but it works for me and makes sense. What environment manager do you use for python? Conda environments are stored in a central location such as and not with the project. They contain both the python interpreter and packages for that env. Conda create # Conda environments are created with the command. At this point, you will need to name your env and select the python version. After running this command you will have a directory with a base python install. It will not be active yet. List environments # Before activating an environment I often want to list the envir…

Replacing text based on whats in the current search register is a quite handy tool that I use often. I believe I picked this tip up from Nick Janetakis, check out his YouTube channel for some amazing vim tips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP_ckZ30gbs If there is one thing that I Like most about vim it’s the ability to hack on it and make it work well for you. Replacing text in vim # Vim can often be a bit verbose, but that’s ok because we can hack on it, and make our own shortcuts and keybindings. For instance, finding and replacing text requires using a command at the vim command-line. Replacing foo with bar looks like this, the final g means all of the foos, not just the first one on the line. making it better # I have a keybinding in my that will allow me to search for a pattern with the usual character, page through them as normal with and, but when I press it will populate the replace command for me so that all I need to do is type out the new text. Note on the # In command mod…

What does it take to create an installable python package that can be hosted on pypi? What is the minimal python package # setup.py my_module.py This post is somewhat inspired by the bottle framework, which is famously created as a single python module. Yes, a whole web framework is written in one file. Directory structure # setup.py # name # The name of the package can contain any letters, numbers, “_”, or “-”. Even if it’s for internal/personal consumption only I usually check for discrepancy with pypi so that you don’t run into conflicts. Note that pypi treats “-” and “_” as the same thing, beware of name clashes version # This is the version number of your package. Most packages follow semver. At a high level its three numbers separated by a that follow the format. It’s a common courtesy to only break APIs on major changes, new releases on minor, and fixes on patch. This can become much more blurry in practice so checkout semver.org. py_modules # Typically most packages use the arg…

I do much of my work from tmux, I love it so much that I want to setup some functionality that puts me in tmux even if I didn’t ask for it. Bash Function # Bash function to check if the shell is in a tmux session. Using the bash function # I often open up vim to do some quite edits, but before I know it I have several splits open and I need access to another shell utility, but I forgot to start in tmux. This function makes sure tht I start in tmux everytime. Using to ensure vim is opened in tmux. I am not quite sure if this is proper use of the and, let me know if you have a better way to do one thing if returns true and another if it returns faslse.

If you are like me, you have created a macro or two that is pure glory, and you forget how you made it after a day or so, or you immediately want to store it away as a custom keybinding. As with most things with vim, it’s easy to do once you understand it. Creating a Macro # One of the earliest things we all learn to do in vim is to create macros, custom sets of functionality stored in a register that can be replayed later. To create a macro, get into normal mode, then type followed by a letter that you want to store the macro under. Note: a common throw-away macro register is q because it’s easy to hit qq from normal mode to start recording. Replaying a Macro # Macros can be replayed using followed by the letter that you stored the macro under. Registers # Registers are nothing more than a single character key mapping to a value of some text. As you,, or create macros in vim, it automatically stores text into these registers. When you hit paste it’s simply pasting in the default regis…

Web browsers are a black hole of productivity. I try to use them as little as possible when it is time to focus. I try to use,, or with ipython, or –help at the command line as much as possible. What about that time I am trying to see what my online friends are posting on their sites? I used to used google reader quite heavily before that was taken down. Newsboat # I am going to give a terminal rss reader a try for a bit and see how that goes for me. I have really struggled to get into an rss reader since google reader died. installation # I installed with the reccomended snap for Ubuntu. Adding feeds # super simple Running help for newsboat directed me towards their config files at the bottom. I just need to edit its urls file. The Urls file is just a list of urls to rss feeds. Adding mine in allowed me to see all of my posts. Config # I took most of my config from a blog post that I found by Evan Travers. It set some sane defaults to the reading width and vim keys. GUI Browser # No m…

As projects grow patterns that worked early on break and we need to change things to make the project easier to work with, and more welcoming to new developers. git # Before you start mucking up a project with wild commands at the terminal check that you have a super clean git status. We may make some mistakes and need a way to undo 100’s files and git makes it really easy if you start with a clean history. If we are ready to begin work we should see a response like this. It would also be wise to do this inside of a branch. The minute you try to do something wild in your working branch someone will walk by and ask you to do a five-minute task, but your deep in refactoring and haven’t left yourself a clean way back. grepr # Time for the meat of this refactor replacing text across our project. I often will pop this bash function into my terminal session and tweak it as needed. This function is called for then. It will recursively search for a given pattern inside your working directory,…