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  1. June 1st, 2017

    We had another biannual Jupyter team meeting this week, this time it was right nearby in Berkeley. Since I had read a poem at the last meeting, I was encouraged to keep that going and decided to make this a tradition. Here's the result, as delivered this past Friday, recorded by Fernando Pérez (thanks, Fernando!).

    June 1st, 2017

    We struggle -- with ourselves and with each other
    we plan -- we code and write
    the pieces and ideas t'wards what we think is right
    but we may disagree -- about
    the means, about the goals, about the
    shoulders we should stand on --
    where we should stand, what we should stretch toward
    shrink from, avoid, embrace --
    a sense of urgency - but this is not a race
    
    We can't erase the past
    but we have built this future present
    There's much to learn, to do...
    
    Ours not the only path, no one coerced you here
    You chose this -- so did I and here we are --
    still at the barricades and gaining ground
    against the old closed world:
    compute communication comes unshackled
    
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  2. November 9th, 2016

    Two weeks ago, I went down to San Luis Obispo, California for a five day Jupyter team meeting with about twenty five others. This was the first such meeting since my return after being away for two years, and I enjoyed meeting some of the "newer" faces, as well as catching up with old friends.

    It was both a productive and an emotionally challenging week, as the project proceeds along at breakneck pace on some fronts yet continues to face growing pains which come from having to scale in the human dimension.

    On Wednesday, November 9th, 2016, we spent a good chunk of the day at a nearby beach: chatting, decompressing, and luckily I brought my journal with me and was able to capture the poem you will find below. I intended to read it at a local open mic the same evening, but by the time I got there with a handful of fellow Jovyans for support, all of the slots were taken. On Friday, the last day of our meeting, I got the opportunity to read it to most of the larger group. Here's a recording of that reading, courtesy of Matthias Bussonnier (thanks, Matthias!).

    November 9th, 2016

    The lovely thing about the ocean is
    that it
    is
    tireless 
    It never stops
    incessant pendulum of salty foamy slush
    Periodic and chaotic
    raw, serene 
    Marine grandmother clock  
    crashing against both pier
    and rock
    
    Statuesque encampment of abandonment
    recoiling with force
    and blasting forth again
    No end in sight
    a train forever riding forth
    and back
    along a line
    refined yet undefined
    the spirit with
    which it keeps time 
    in timeless unity of moon's alignment
    
    I. walk. forth.
    
    Forth forward by the force
    of obsolete contrition
    the vision of a life forgotten
    Excuses not
    made real with sand, wet and compressed
    beneath my heel and toes, yet reeling from
    the blinding glimmer of our Sol
    reflected by the glaze of distant hazy surf
    upon whose shoulders foam amoebas roam
    
    It's gone.
    Tone deaf and muted by
    
    anticipation
    each coming wave
    breaks up the pregnant pause
    And here I am, barefoot in slacks and tie
    experiencing sensations
    of loss, rebirth and seldom 
    kelp bulbs popping in my soul.
    
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  3. Jupyter's Gravity

    I'm switching jobs.

    For the past two years I've been working with the great team at Disqus as a member of the backend and data teams. Before that, I spent a half-dozen years mostly not working on my thesis at UC Berkeley but instead contributing to to the scientific Python ecosystem, especially matplotlib, IPython, and the IPython notebook, which is now called Jupyter. So when Bloomberg reached out to me with a compelling position to work on those open-source projects again from their SF office, such a tremendous opportunity was hard to pass up. You could say Jupyter has a large gravitational pull that's hard to escape, but you'd be huge nerd. ;)

    I have a lot to catch up on, but I'm really excited and looking forward to contributing on these fronts again!

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