My Thoughts

Posts

  • Watches » Feb 4, 2015

    Things learned today:

    • Not too much to include today. On watches:
      • Need a spring bar tool or a small flathead screwdriver to remove a strap.
      • End pieces are little metal flaps used for a flush finish. They make it hard to remove a spring bar.
      • Never try to undo the middle part of a metal band because you won’t get it back together.
    • BeautifulSoup: Easy to use, example script to retrieve URLs below. 

    from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import requests

url = raw_input("Enter a website for extraction: ")
r  = requests.get("http://" +url)

data = r.text
soup = BeautifulSoup(data)

for link in soup.find_all('a'):
    print(link.get('href'))

  • Quantopian, Jekyll, Boggs, and Body Language » Feb 3, 2015

    Things learned today:

    • Playing around with Quantopian for next month’s contest.
      • Using fetcher for live trading is difficult, and doubly so for the contest. You need a pre-function to adjust the start date on the CSV, otherwise it will only work in either backtests or live trading.
      • It is possible to create an algo based on a data feed from Quandl.
    • Exploring the possibilities of Jekyll some more.
      • Customized the footer, learned about layouts (HTML templates in the _layouts folder).
      • Learned how to remove file extensions from a URL (Stick multiple index.html files into folders).
      • Based on Josh’s design, created an archive page and added Google Analytics.
      • Also followed his advice to shorten blog post URLs (Jekyll docs).
      • Modified index.html to display content of posts on the front page because I like it more.
    • Found a subreddit on body language. Interesting techniques:
      • Using rapport tests such as glancing at watch or touching hair. Mirroring gestures for rapport.
      • Diffusing dominance respectfully by circling behind speaker to change the subject.
      • Infographic on psychological space, sharing object of attention to build rapport.
      • Book recommendation: What Every Body is Saying
    • Reading about the life of JSG Boggs, an artist who creates counterfeit bank notes as art.
      • A historical and more fraudulent comparison is Emmanuel Ninger.
      • Art appraisals are generally not worthwhile unless it is a large value. Bonham’s offers free appraisals. Otherwise look for galleries selling comparable art pieces.
    • Enable spell check for markdown in Sublime Text.

  • Web Scraping » Feb 2, 2015

    Things learned today:

  • Welcome » Feb 1, 2015

    Welcome to my new blog inspired by John. It is a collection of things I learn each day for personal use.

    Things learned today:

    • How to create a blog with Jekyll and how to host said blog on GitHub Pages.
      • Needed to create a new repo, install jekyll there, and create a new branch (gh-pages).
      • Will need to both build and commit (to correct branch) with each post.
      • Unordered lists need a space after the bullet point in markdown.
    • How to use Build System in Sublime Text, configured with Chrome to replace View in Browser.
    • From patio11:
      • SheetJS is a pretty cool way to make .csv imports easy.
      • GenerateData can be used to generate random datasets easily.
      • OSS projects should have commercial license fees instead of donations.
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