I decided to update these for this election, and here's the result:
Just in case you didn't get the full picture, here is the same data plotted on a common scale:
So, whereas 10 years ago, we had a total of ~$58 million on the election, the
overwhelming amount of in support, this time, we had ~$662 million, an 11 fold increase!
The Cal-Access Campaign Finance Activity: Propositions & Ballot Measures source I used last time was still there, but there are way more propositions this time (12 vs 5), and the money details are broken out by committee, with some propositions have a dozen committees. Another wrinkle is that website has protected by some fancy scraping protection. I could browse it just fine in Firefox, even with Javascript turned off, but couldn't download it using wget, curl, or python, even after setting up all of the same headers, not just the User-Agent one. I would just get something like this:
The only catch is that this source was last updated two weeks ago, so it's not
the freshest data. Also, last time I had data for both contributions and for
money spent, but this summed page only has contribution totals, not spending
totals (the spending figures are still there)
But I figured it's good enough to get the big picture.
Also, here's the python code used to generate these plots (largely reused from
last time, so don't expect it to be pretty).
# Create contributions bar charts of committees supporting and opposing# various propositions on the California Ballot for November 2020# created by Paul Ivanov (https://pirsquared.org)# figure(0) - Contributions by Proposition (as subplots)# figure(2) - Contributions on a common scaleimportnumpyasnpfrommatplotlibimportpyplotaspltimportlocale# fun times! without this next line, I got a# ValueError: Currency formatting is not possible using the 'C' locale.locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,'en_US.UTF-8')elec="Nov2020"election="November 2020 Election"# This part was done by hand by collecting data from CalAccess:# https://www.sos.ca.gov/campaign-lobbying/cal-access-resources/measure-contributions/# proposition: (yes, no) cont={'14':(12810328,250),'15':(56320926,60905901),'16':(19926905,1172614),'17':(1363887,0),'18':(835064,0),'19':(37794775,45050),'20':(4829677,20471086),'21':(40184953,59379159),'22':(188937777,15896808),'23':(6917438,104405156),'24':(5907002,48368),'25':(13446871,10181122)}defcurrency(x,pos):"""The two args are the value and tick position"""ifx==0:return"$0"ifx<1e3:return'$%f'%(x)elifx<1e6:return'$%1.0fK'%(x*1e-3)return'$%1.0fM'%(x*1e-6)frommatplotlib.tickerimportFuncFormatterformatter=FuncFormatter(currency)yes,no=range(2)c=[(6.,.5,0),'blue']# color for yes/no stancec=['red','blue']# color for yes/no stancec=[(1.,.5,0),'blue']# color for yes/no stancea=[.9,.9]# alpha for yes/no stancea=[.6,.5]# alpha for yes/no stancet=['Yes','No ']# text for yes/no stanceraised,spent=range(2)title=["Contributed to","Spent on"]# reuse code by injecting title specificsfield=['Contributions','Expenditures']footer="""Total %s 1/1/2020-10/14/2020 (1/1/2020-10/16/2020 for Prop 15)Data from http://www.sos.ca.gov/campaign-lobbying/cal-access-resources/measure-contributions/2020-ballot-measure-contribution-totals cc-by Paul Ivanov (https://pirsquared.org)"""# will inject field[col] in all plotscolor=np.array((.9,.9,.54))*.9# spine/ticklabel colorcolor=np.array((.52,.32,.12))# spine/ticklabel colorcolor=np.array((.82,.42,.12))# spine/ticklabel colorcolor="gray"color=np.array((85.,107,47))/255# darkolivegreenplt.rcParams['savefig.dpi']=200deffixup_subplot(ax,color):""" Tufte-fy the axis labels - use different color than data"""spines=list(ax.spines.values())# liberate the data! hide right and top spines[ax.spines[s].set_visible(False)forsin["top","right"]]ax.yaxis.tick_left()# don't tick on the right# there's gotta be a better way to set all of these colors, but I don't# know that way, I only know the hard way[s.set_color(color)forsinspines][s.set_color(color)forsinax.yaxis.get_ticklines()][s.set_visible(False)forsinax.xaxis.get_ticklines()][(s.set_color(color),s.set_size(8))forsinax.xaxis.get_ticklabels()][(s.set_color(color),s.set_size(8))forsinax.yaxis.get_ticklabels()]ax.yaxis.grid(which='major',linestyle='-',color=color,alpha=.3)adjust_dict={'bottom':0.052,'hspace':0.646815834767644,'left':0.13732508948909858,'right':0.92971038073543777,'top':0.94082616179001742,'wspace':0.084337349397590383}# subplots for each proposition (Fig 0 and Fig 1)col=0f=plt.figure(col);f.clf();f.dpi=100;fori,pinenumerate(cont):ax=plt.subplot(len(cont),1,i+1)ax.clear()#p = i+14 #prop numberforstancein[yes,no]:plt.bar(stance,cont[p][stance],color=c[stance],linewidth=0,align='center',width=.1,alpha=a[stance])lbl=locale.currency(round(cont[p][stance]),symbol=True,grouping=True)lbl=lbl[:-3]# drop the cents, since we've roundedax.text(stance,cont[p][stance],lbl,ha='center',size=8)ax.set_xlim(-.3,1.3)ax.xaxis.set_ticks([0,1])ax.xaxis.set_ticklabels(["Yes on %s"%p,"No on %s"%p])# put a big (but faded) "Proposition X" in the center of this subplotcommon=dict(alpha=.1,color='k',ha='center',va='center',transform=ax.transAxes)ax.text(0.5,.9,"Proposition",size=8,weight=600,**common)ax.text(0.5,.50,"%s"%p,size=50,weight=300,**common)ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(formatter)# plugin our currency labelerax.yaxis.get_major_locator()._nbins=5# put fewer tickmarks/labelsfixup_subplot(ax,color)adjust_dict.update(left=0.13732508948909858,right=0.92971038073543777)f.subplots_adjust(**adjust_dict)# Figure title, subtitleextra_args=dict(family='serif',ha='center',va='top',transform=f.transFigure)f.text(.5,.99,"Money %s CA Propositions"%title[col],size=12,**extra_args)f.text(.5,.975,election,size=9,**extra_args)#footerextra_args.update(va='bottom',size=6,ma='center')f.text(.5,0.0,footer%field[col],**extra_args)f.set_figheight(20.);f.set_figwidth(5);f.canvas.draw()f.savefig('CA-Props-%s-%s-Subplots.png'%(elec,field[col]))# all props on one figure (Fig 2 and Fig 3)f=plt.figure(col+2);f.clf()adjust_dict.update(left=0.045,right=.98,top=.91,bottom=.12)f.subplots_adjust(**adjust_dict)f.set_figheight(6.)f.set_figwidth(16)extra_args=dict(family='serif',ha='center',va='top',transform=f.transFigure)f.text(.5,.99,"Money %s CA Propositions"%title[col],size=12,**extra_args)f.text(.5,.96,election,size=9,**extra_args)footer=footer.replace("/\n","/")#.replace("\nc", "c")#footer = footer.replace("\n", "") + "\n"extra_args.update(ha='center',va='bottom',size=6,ma='center')#f.text(adjust_dict['left'],0.0,footer%field[col], **extra_args)f.text(.5,0.0,footer%field[col],**extra_args)ax=plt.subplot(111)forstancein[yes,no]:abscissa=np.arange(0+stance*.30,len(cont),1)total=sum([x[stance]forxincont.values()])lbl=locale.currency(round(total),True,True)lbl=lbl[:-3]# drop the cents, since we've roundedlbl=t[stance]+" Total "+lbl.rjust(12)plt.bar(abscissa,[cont[p][stance]forpincont],width=.1,color=c[stance],alpha=a[stance],align='center',linewidth=0,label=lbl)fori,pinenumerate(cont):lbl=locale.currency(round(cont[p][stance]),symbol=True,grouping=True)lbl=lbl[:-3]# drop the cents, since we've rounded#ha = 'center' if i != 2 else "right" # tweek by hand to make numbers show upax.text(abscissa[i],cont[p][stance],lbl,ha="center",size=8,rotation=00)ax.set_xlim(xmin=-.3)ax.xaxis.set_ticks(np.arange(.15,len(cont),1))ax.xaxis.set_ticklabels(["Prop %s"%pforpincont])fixup_subplot(ax,color)# plt.legend(prop=dict(family='monospace',size=9)) # this makes legend tied# to the subplot, tie it to the figure, insteadhandles,labels=ax.get_legend_handles_labels()l=plt.figlegend(handles,labels,loc='upper right',prop=dict(family='monospace',size=9))l.get_frame().set_visible(False)ax.yaxis.set_major_formatter(formatter)# plugin our currency labelerf.canvas.draw()f.savefig('CA-Props-%s-%s.png'%(elec,field[col]))plt.show()
Looks like we can't inline audio for your browser. That's cool, just find the
direct file links below.
paul's habitual errant ramblings (on Fr)idays
pheridays: 3
2020-04-10: A week ago, I recorded a 5 minute audio segment of some stuff I've
been thinking about, but when I started to write it up I stumbled into and kept
dropping down a deep technostalgic hole.
The recording is just shy of five minutes long, you can also download it in
different formats, depending on your needs, if the audio tag above doesn't suit
you:
Jitsi - "Multi-platform open-source video conferencing"
OpenFire - "real time
collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source Apache License."
Extensible XMPP server, with plugins, like a Jitsi-based video meeeting one
claled OpenFire Meetings.
Though this is the fourth installment, the last time I recorded and posted a
rambling was back almost 8 years ago! In fact, it was
2012-08-03, so 7 years and 8 months, to the day.
Having control of your infrastructure is a longtime thread for me.
For starters - there's the bicycle. That's been my primary and preferred mode
of transportation for 30 years. As a kid, I was empowered by the sense of
freedom, independence, and self-sufficiency that came with a bike. All these
years later, I'm still a fan. You can see just how happy I am on a bike at the
top of this interview
,
thanks to a sweet photo that was taken by Robert Sexton right by the Golden Gate
Bridge at the end of the Lucas Valley Populaire in 2015.
Those of you who knew me back in college might remember how at UC Davis I ran my
own "pirate" internet radio station
- KPVL - with the cheeky tagline of "More broadcasters than listeners". (I say
"pirate" because it has not relation to the actual KPVL radio station). But
there are earlier remnants and traces of my efforts to exercise control and
build my own reality.
I think it was in 1999 that my brother Mike and I started using Redhat (6), then
Mandrake Linux 6.5, dual booting on a computer at home and I separately around
the same time I got myself an sdf.org account. Though I wasn't sophisticated
enough to have a constant internet connection in high school, I was lucky enough
to get an account on Robert Chin's laya.com server. The url was - p.laya.com -
it's long gone, but luckily, Archive.org has a copy from 2001.
Wow. I just took a look and so much came flooding back.
Here's the thing: April is an anniversary of sorts for me. Back in 1999, it
marks my first time breaking anonymity and pseudonimity and using my real name
on the internet. I've written about this before under the title of Publisher's
block ten years ago - just about half way
between now and then. This time, though, let me inline the piece I
linked to as proof
of the deliberate nature of my lack of anonymity.
An account of my life at 15, as I live it.
traces of my awareness of the world, I can look back at later
My first attempt at a memoir
My goal is to capture my many thoughts emotions, behaviors, incidents, and
acquaintances
and to arrive only at an exponential number of those,
hoping yet being afraid that it might be zero
making everything about me: one
I'm glad I can now reflect on the kind of kid I was, thanks to the amazing folks
who had the foresight to start archiving all of the web for The Way Back Machine.
I used that p.laya.com page as a todo list and notes for myself using a hipster
combination of the default file index listing with a FOOTER.html. It was
captured in 2001, I was in 17, but some of this was
written when I was 15 or 16 (I found contents from November 2000), I make
mention to my then freeshell.org account (it's now been ivanov@ since 2012). I
link to the source code of a MUD -
ftp://ftp.game.org/pub/mud/diku/merc/rom/tartarus/tartarus.tgz - which is a
broken link now, but I found a mirror over here:
which is amazing, because just a week or two ago, I was hanging out with
fellow SciPy 2020 program co-chairs Madicken Munk
and Gil Forsyth over video chat after one of
our meetings and I was happily reporting about how one of the
positive things to come out of the shelter in place for me is that "I've fixed
my mutt configuration and started using it again!" - but they both heard
"mutt" as "MUD" and got very excited by that prospect. So much so that we
all agreed that we'll have to follow up and actually follow through to build a
MUD. And I brought up how at some point in high school I was mildly active in a
pair of MUDs, and wanted to make my own, but never got around to it.
The last link I left for myself on there points to
pinkmonkey.com - a homeschooling resource - which is
probably handy for the parents with little ones these days.
Here's the most concrete infrastructure project I can find from then: I
collected bookmarks from my friends to share them. The "service" lived at
http://p.laya.com/bookmarks - and predates del.icio.us and pinboard. I
bet I "advertised" it in my AIM profile.
If you're curious, there's a link to the archive.org copy near the end of this
post, but I had this urge to show it to you much closer to its original glory.
Let me set the scene: It's Friday in April, the year is 2020, I'm running
Windows 10 on my work laptop in poorly connected home in California, where a
pandemic has most of the state's residents staying put at home for the several
weeks already, and I decided to make a screenshot using the tool du jour of
yesteryear
Netscape Navigator!
The timestamp on my bookmark website says I last updated it on: Thu Aug 30
20:14:14 PDT 2001
OldVersion.com tells me that the
latest release for Windows that Netscape 4.79 was released in November of that
year, and the closest antecedent version available is 4.72 (from February 2000).
I downloaded it and tried fiddling around with the compatibility settings, but
without any luck.
Then I tried 4.79, and nope, that didn't work, either. So then I tried Netscape
6.01 - release February 2001.
I happened to have Chrome running at the time because in Firefox I have
1500 tabs open -- fifteen hundred and seven! ;) -- whereas in Chrome it's
under 500, so I was trying to tread lightly. How do I know these numbers? For
Chrome I found an extension that allows me to copy into the clipboard all open
tabs' urls as plain text. It helpfully announces how many such tabs were copied.
In Firefox one of the webextension examples gives you a counter.
Do you remember the web without tabs? Time was, you wanted to visit another
webpage, you got two option: you navigate away from whatever you're looking at
now, or you hit Ctrl-N to make an new window. I think most people used one or a
few windows. But you were not gonna be crazy and open more than a dozen windows.
I would have, and probably tried but I couldn't. And session saving across
crashes or clean exits? Forget it! That what your history and bookmarks are for,
grasshopper.
But let's get back to the task at hand: this was the lower right of my screen...
and I decide to start taking screenshots of this journey, click it, and let
Windows 10 apply the compatibility settings, and then I'm faced with
the most improbable error message:
:)
WAT?!
I didn't think Chrome had any ancestry shared with the Mosaic super-tree, but
whatever - you can't exactly argue with software from 2001, and I have an
important screenshot to take...
So now I've quit Chrome, just in case, and going to retry....
no dice....
Damn, what could it be...I've got the Bloomberg Terminal open, I know portions
of it are built on Chromium browser technology (had to look it up if this was
officially stated somewhere - it
is).
Ok, so maybe that's what causing the false positive? I close that, and...
...
I hardly have anything open anymore ...is it VLC?
...
nope... Ok, what's left still open... Snipping tool I'm using to capture this
epic adventure, a few WSL Debian console windows... the voice recorder
that started this post... Task manager and Sysinternals' Process
Explorer
- where I was checking if perhaps somehow the failed attempt at running what was
probably a 16 bit version of Navigator 4.72 was still lingering somewhere...
SumatraPDF, Windows Terminal (Preview), gVim, and ...
Zotero?!?
BINGO!!!!!!!!!
Oh right - I guess Zotero uses XUL technology. I didn't really think much about
it, but Zotero did start off life as a Firefox extension, and the standalone version
came out later, makes sense that it would have grabbed a browser when it struck
out on its own.
At this point I had already sent Madicken, who works at NCSA where Mosaic, the
progenitor of Netscape hails from, the first two images... So I wanted to play
with fire a bit....
Now that I've closed Zotero - can I have Firefox 74 open while installing Netscape
6.01?
Rats! same error...
how about Chrome again?
oh yeah! Sweet. The world makes sense again.
Back to the setup.exe...
I scroll through the EULA - and randomly stop on this section:
By the way - here's a good idea I came across a few months ago: throw EULAs (End
User License Agreements) into some publicly indexed version control repo (I saw
folks using gists for just that sort of thing: here's the Netscape 6.01
EULA.txt)
Let the folks at Redmond host it.
Fine. I click next...
Interesting - there's a "Read Me" button... I do as I'm told, so I click it.
Yeah, I'm sure Yahoo! engineers are jumping right on that.
How did a Netscape site ended up redirecting to Yahoo...
oh right, so AOL bought Netscape (1999), merged with Time Warner in 2001, was
spun out again in 2009, after some rough times, and then purchased by Verizon in
2015. In the meantime, Yahoo acquired Geocities (1999) and shut it down in 2009
(yes, I'm still mad! All I remember was that it had some crispy banners,
one of which was a scan of a sweet pencil lettering I made of my nick at the time -
"ShadowKnight"). No one really cares what happened to Yahoo in the interim,
aside from some massive data breaches, until finally, Verizon bought Yahoo in
2017 and merged AOL and Yahoo into one division.
And indeed we can see what it looked like
originally.
This site has seen so many redirects over the years - it'd be a fun exercise to
go through all of the indexed versions of this kind of site to see how people
tried to preserve links. For example, I found out in 2010 it 301s ("Temporary
redirect") to http://www.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/ns6/relnotes/6.0.html which
then 302s ("Permanent redirect") to
http://www.propeller.com/eng/mozilla/ns6/relnotes/6.0.html - which was indexed
but happens to be a 404 ("Page not found") error page, at least in 2008.
But this wasn't what we came here for, so this yak can roam free among the
hills, the valleys, and the caverns of our minds.
... for now...
Where were we?
Oh right, we have to choose an install option. Back in the day I might have
clicked "recommended" here, but we're not back in the day, and who wants to play
life on easy mode? Let's go custom to see what the options are (I am a
control freak, after all)
and immediately get another pop up:
Whoa, let's pause here for a moment.
I am digging such a consent model. The installer is establishing trust: it
will not try to do anything behind my back and without my permission. I'm sure
it will never abuse that trust. As a 2001 user, I sure am glad that folks
involved with computing have such a well-develop sense of ethics. In 2001, the
Future is bright. Computing will be filled with transparency. Consumer software
and services will be built by folks with a strong moral compass. These are
people with principles. With the dot-com bubble burst, we've swiftly
inoculated tech from sleazy opportunists. It won't fall victim to the excesses
and greed rivaling Wall Street in the 80s...
Which reminds me - how is it that this brilliant video only has 277 thousand
views? Here's a excerpt:
Your users won't always understand just how much economic sense it makes to
sell them out. And you don't want to alienate them, that would drive down
their value.
By the way - the embed code I used above uses the youtube-nocookie.com domain -
which is still from the folks at Goolag, but does what it says on the tin and
doesn't issue cookies. Also, did you know there used to be a way to disable
those annoying related video links from popping up at the end of the video? It's
true. You used to be able to just append a rel=0 query parameter to not show
related videos. But the corporate
overlord bean counters didn't like that. They had to make sure that kids would
get glued to the site by feeding them progressively conspiratorial garbage
content. So that watching any video would nearly guarantee to pull them into the
black hole cesspool of maximally "engaging" "content". What was that quote about
users again? Ah yes:
Your users won't always understand just how much economic sense it makes to
sell them out. And you don't want to alienate them, that would drive down
their value.
Ok, so, in fairness, rel=0 query parameter still does something. It limits
the suggested videos to the channel they are from. That's good. But what
happens if we follow one of those links? First, we end up on the full youtube
site, so that means the cookies are back. Hurray for surveillance capitalism!
Also, the recommendations on the right are curated specifically for us, and not
limited to the channel the previous video was one. Goodbye, rel=0!
So I have to install Navigator, but I can unselect Mail, Instant Messenger, and
Spell Checker... I don't need mail, but whatever, let's just go with the
defaults.
Oh, look at all this wonderful bundled crapware. Just in case you had any doubts.
That last one made me throw up a little in my mouth.
I opt for just the classic skin - and it tells me that the total download size
will be 9959 K.
I thought about censoring this next screenshot, but 15 year old me wouldn't have
like that... What's in the shot is in the shot..
Alright, and when the installation finished here's what we're greeted with:
Did software in 2001 try to phone home? "activation.netscape.com could not be
found." sure seems so.
Yes, No, Cancel?
What if I cancel?
Alright, let's go for broke and get that retro look...
Remember all those redirects? Well the browser froze when I got overzealous,
clicked on "Interact" at the bottom there and chose to open chat... And on the
next load, it crashed... And again...
It just kept crashing...
In case anyone else gets stuck on the same issue ;) I got around this by using
the Profile Manager, where I had the option to start the browser in Work
Offline mode. Then I turn the "Work Online" option on after the browser loaded
(which you can do by plugging together that cute outlet pair on the bottom
left).
I do some ego surfing and go to my own site first.
http://pirsquared.org
I got too fancy with my unicode... But hey, this is totally functional.
I made this Loading gif via a screen capture tool and then it finally clicked that not
only did I not use Netscape 6 - I remember most everyone's experience was to
stick to the 4.x series, because it was so much more usable and not bloated with
nonsense, etc, etc.
Alright, but at least I got 6 to run on Windows 10 and that works...When it
doesn't crash, anyway... But I did get a error about youtube-nocookie.com...
(some of the time, at least)...
And then I
realized that I can't go to any site that has https... Because...
you know, the protocol that provides that 's' has changed over the years, and
our 2001 browser could do SSL 2 or 3 or TLS 1.0... But my website uses TLS
1.3...
I couldn't run to duckduckgo, either, since it redirects plain http to
the https endpoint and that also runs TLS 1.3... I couldn't even go to
archive.org to view my old site directly on the way back machine, because
archive.org run TLS 1.2 at the moment.
It's difficult to find any place that still runs such outdated standards...
I tried to search for just a TLS 1.0 test server - but didn't find anything
suitable... But then I happen to flip through the recent changelog for Firefox:
Cool - so now we know if we want to find TLS 1.0 and 1.1 website, we should
turn to the government of... damn a specific country wasn't specified...
But wait a minute... Firefox 74.0 came out on March
How did Mozilla release an update to a version of Firefox that was in the hands
of a bunch of users without... umn...what's the word I'm looking for here...you
know, that thing no one seems to think is a thing anymore... user consent?
How Mozilla released an update without user consent
This is the way consent ends
This is the way consent ends
This is the way consent ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
I'm late to the party - this has been going on for about three years - with
what I now recall was caused a bit of a splash back in 2017 (Drew DeVault
covers in "Firefox is on a slippery
slope").
But I didn't know the extent of it. Who has the time to pay attention to the way
in which all the software they use changes in anti-social ways.
Anyway, if you don't want the fine folks at Firefox to change your preferences
out from under you, I think you go to about:config and switch the app.normandy.enabled setting to false. And if you're interested in specifics
of how you've been a guinea pig: about:studies will tell you. And you can go
to about:preferences#privacy to disable them.
But I digress...
Let's wrap this up...
At this point, I used my 2020 browser to grab historical snapshot of my old
bookmarks site, stripping off the tastefully annotated Way Back Machine user
interface insertions, and serve it locally over http via python -m
http.server, making sure to change the URL bar to make a historically accurate
re-enactment. And now that you know how I got here, you can fully appreciate the
effort that went into this next screenshot:
So much so, that I couldn't resist making a video a scroll through :
The ongoing crisis has been a circuit breaker to our usual patterns.
I am taking advantage of this affordance to experiment with and establish
channels of communications that are not controlled by others.
I stepped out for a coffee refill and bumped into a large contingent of
Bloomberg folks I'd never met (Princeton office). I guess we have something like
90 people at the conference this year, and I made the usual and true remark about
how I go to conferences to meet the other people who work at our company. Then
after his tutorial concluded, Matthias and I bumped into Tracy
Teal, exchanged some stickers, and
chatted about The Carpentries,
Jupyter, organizing conferences, governance and
sponsorship models, and a bunch of other stuff.
Matthias was a good influence in trying to participate in the swag bag stuffing,
but it turned out we had almost an hour to kill maim (we decided injury's a
better fate than death for that hour). Luckily, we bumped into John
Lam and proceeded to chat away and entertain one
another. The swag bag stuffing was really fun - highly recommend it to everyone!
Smart people performing a task that allows for lots of banter and brief social
interaction turn while there's music and a chance to move around turns out to be
a good way to have time continue flying by. Too many people to name here, but
Scopz was there and we made terrible puns, as
usual.
After the swag bag stuffing party, reconnected with Tracy and we chatted some
more while walking around and picking up swag (mostly socks), joined by Gil
Forsyth who handed me Xonsh
sticker, bumped into Saul Shanabrook. Then
stopped by to say hi to Jess, a friend of Anna
Vu's, whom I only ever see at PyCon), and then
chatted with Scott Sanderson, met Hugo
Bowne-Anderson, and got to briefly greet
Jonathan Helmus.
I walked Matthias to his hotel, then went back to Butcher and the Brewer (again,
Matthias joined me for dinner there the night before), and wrote out the poem
you'll find below. After I wrote it, a bunch of my Bloomberg colleagues showed
up, and I ended up chatting for long time with John
Purviance. In keeping with tradition, though we
work at the same company, I met John by accident at a coffee shop during last
year's Pycon (he works in the New York office, whereas I'm in SF).
One day down, and it's already been a wonderful Pycon.
Pycon 2019
May 2nd, Pycon Cleveland Two, as well
The social wealth observed, created
not jaded, lots to say and listen to
Bring energy and silliness, too
My objective to subjectively inject
a crack and tear decorum fabric
be vulnerable
a buzzing bee
break up the swag bag stuffing monotony
walk the path, switch sides, talk trash
Great folks, give stickers, smiles, rehash
A splash of warmth, a squak, a "BAM!"
A nudge - we jam enjoying this team work
not work at all - a play - a sandbox
roles all clear yet much room left
to improvise
Devise a way to make us laugh
each finds their path
rocking forth and back
swaying fro and too
a rhythm of a train a-moving
Clapping celebration when we're done
"Hey-hey! We're done!" - a dinner earned
and well deserved - many socks collected
New people met and old friends reconnected
Tutorials and opening reception done
and now Pycon 2019's officially begun
Two weeks ago, Project Jupyter had our only planned team
meeting for 2018. There was too much stuff going on for me to write a poem
during the event as I had in previous years
(2016, and
2017), so I ended up reading one of the pieces I
wrote during my evening introvert breaks in Cleveland at PyCon a few weeks
earlier.
Once again, Fernando and Matthias had their gadgets ready to record (thank you both!). The video below was taken by Fernando.
Time suspended
Gellatinous reality - the haze
submerged in murky drops summed
in swamp pond of life
believe and strive, expand the mind
A state sublime, when in your prime you came to
me and we were free to flow and fling our
cares, our dreams, our in-betweens, our
rêves perdues, our residue -- the lime of light
the black of sight -- all these converge and
merge the forks of friction filled with fright
and more -- the float of logs that plunges deep
beyond the fray, beyond the keep -- a leap of faith
the lore of rite, with passage clear, let
fear subside, the wealth of confidence will
rise and iron out wrinkles of doubt
Commit to change and stash your pride
then push your luck, and make amends.
Branch out your thoughts, reset assumptions
then checkout.
The force of pulls t'wards master class
Remote of possibilities. Rehash the past
Patch up the present -- what's the diff?
There's nothing left -- except to glide -- and
soar beyond your frame of mind. try not to pry
cry, freedom, cry.
SciPy 2018, the 17th annual Scientific Computing with Python conference, will be held July 9-15, 2018 in Austin, Texas. The annual SciPy Conference brings together over 700 participants from industry, academia, and government to showcase their latest projects, learn from skilled users and developers, and collaborate on code development. The call for abstracts for SciPy 2018 for talks, posters and tutorials is now open. The deadline for submissions is February 9, 2018.
In addition to the general track, this year will have specialized tracks focused on:
Data Visualization
Reproducibilty and Software Sustainability
Mini Symposia
Astronomy
Biology and Bioinformatics
Data Science
Earth, Ocean and Geo Science
Image Processing
Language Interoperability
Library Science and Digital Humanities
Machine Learning
Materials Science
Political and Social Sciences
There will also be a SciPy Tools Plenary Session each day with 2 to 5 minute updates on tools and libraries.
Tutorials (July 9-10, 2018)
Tutorials should be focused on covering a well-defined topic in a hands-on manner. We are looking for awesome techniques or packages, helping new or advanced Python programmers develop better or faster scientific applications. We encourage submissions to be designed to allow at least 50% of the time for hands-on exercises even if this means the subject matter needs to be limited. Tutorials will be 4 hours in duration. In your tutorial application, you can indicate what prerequisite skills and knowledge will be needed for your tutorial, and the approximate expected level of knowledge of your students (i.e., beginner, intermediate, advanced). Instructors of accepted tutorials will receive a stipend.
After missing it for a couple of years, I am happy to be back in Austin, TX for
SciPy this week!
Always invigorating and exhilarating, Scientific Computing with Python
(SciPy)
has remained a top quality venue for getting together with fellow Pythonistas,
especially the academically-bent variety.
The following year, in 2010, at the first SciPy held in its now usual spot in Austin, TX,
each attendee got a bottle of delicious salsa!
Here are some oy my thoughts about attending this wonderful conference.
Conference Tips
bring a sweatshirt -- Yes, I know Austin's hot, but at the AT&T center, they
don't mess around and crank the air conditioning all the way up to 11!
join the slack group -- This year, there's a Slack group for SciPy: the
link to join is in a pair of emails with the titles "Getting the most out of
SciPy2017" and "Getting the most out of SciPy2017-UPDATED", both from SciPy2017
Organizers. So far at the tutorials slack has served as a useful back channel
for communicating repo URLs and specific commands to run, signaling questions
without interrupting the speakers' flow.
engage with others during the breaks, lunch, etc -- There are lots of tool
authors here and we love chatting with users (and helping you become
contributors and authors yourselves). Not your first SciPy and feeling
"in-your-element"? Make the effort to invite others into the conversations and
lunch outings you're having with old friends - we're all here because we care
about this stuff.
take introvert breaks (and be considerate of others who may be doing the
same) - I'm an introvert. Though I enjoy interacting with others (one-on-one or
in small groups is best for me), it takes a lot of energy and at some point, I
run out of steam. That's when I go for a walk, stepping away from the commotion
to just have some quiet time.
be kind to yourself (especially at the sprints) --
Between the tutorials, all of the talks, and the sprints that follow, there will
be a flurry of activity. Conferences are already draining enough without trying
to get any work done, just meeting a bunch of new people and taking in a lot of
information. It took a lot of false starts for me to have productive work output
at sprints, but the best thing I've learned about them is to just let go of
trying to get a lot done. Instead, try to get something small and well defined
done or just help others.
Stuff to do in Austin
The conference already has a great list of Things to do in
Austin, as well as
Restaurants, so I'll just
mention a few of my personal favorites.
Barton Springs Pool. Take a nice dip in the cool waters, and grab a delicious
bite from one of the food trucks at The Picnic food truck
park.
Go see the bats. The Congress Ave bridge in Austin is home to the largest
urban bat colony in the world. You can read more about this
here,
but the short version is that around sunset (8-9pm) - a large number of bats
stream out from underneath the bridge to go feed on insects. Some days, they
leave in waves (this Saturday there were two waves, the first was smaller, but
many people left thinking that was the entire show).
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
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.
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!
and then it finally clicked that not
only did I not use Netscape 6 - I remember most everyone's experience was to
stick to the 4.x series, because it was so much more usable and not bloated with
nonsense, etc, etc.
