enjalot

The math is often behind me, I just try to visualize what I can. So I don't know how interesting this would be to you, but these folks are pretty good at math and trying to figure out what's going on in the latent spaces: https://transformer-circuits.pub/

I hadn't seen it, looking at the API it seems like it could be pretty straightforward to drop it in and see how the projections look.

Author of the project here. Definitely appreciating the supportive comments. I'd be happy to answer questions folks have and am very interested in what kind of data folks end up visualizing with it!

some tutorials i've collected recently * https://mode.com/sql-tutorial/sql-joins/ * https://github.com/NUKnightLab/sql-mysteries * https://selectstarsql.com/ * https://sqlbolt.com/ * https://www.craft.do/s/VzvaPiNX6jvxX5

one thing I love about DuckDB is that it supports Parquet files, which means you can get great compression on the data. Here's an examples getting a 1 million row CSV under 50mb and interactive querying in the browser: https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/bandcamp-sales-data?c...

the other big thing is better native data types, especially dates. With SQLite if you want to work with timeseries you need to do your own date/time casting.

We are hosting a d3 meetup online Thursday 8/27 (tomorrow) more info here: http://meetu.ps/e/Jh8GY/1kwFr/d

Mike Bostock will be doing an AMA at the end if you have burning d3v6 questions (though you can expect some more documentation on upgrading to come very soon!)

I'll also plug our other two speakers, Mike Freeman and Amelia Wattenberger who are amazing d3 educators & authors.

It's exciting that this is the first big online d3 meetup since the pandemic put a stop to in-person events, and as a consequence of being online anyone can participate!

clearly it's the sophons.

(reference to the Three Body Problem, an awesome book)

it is alacart and baked in at the same time! This article breaks down the API in graleater detail. https://medium.com/@Elijah_Meeks/d3-is-not-a-data-visualizat...

All of the functionality in d3 is split up into smaller modules that can be required independently.

I think this article does a great job breaking down the d3 API and answers your question in detail “D3 is not a Data Visualization Library” @Elijah_Meeks https://medium.com/@Elijah_Meeks/d3-is-not-a-data-visualizat...

I think this is why it is necessary to fund "searching for problems" research. We don't need to solve the 1970s vision of computing, we need to solve the 2020s vision of computing, whatever that may be.

Don't forget that programming languages get more abstract and hence more powerful with fewer lines of code. RealTalk has functions you can call to get the physical location of a piece of paper and being based on Lua makes it much more expressive than C++. You can keep digging down levels of abstraction but the interesting parts of this system are extremely accessible.

It is a general purpose computing platform, with lots of utilities for programming in a physical space. All of the surface area becomes a display, you can render using inches instead of pixels.

In it's early stage there are still many utilities and performance improvements it needs before it can replace your MacBook pro, but it is tangibly exciting to actually work collaboratively rather than stare at a screen at the same time as someone else is staring at a different screen.

The magic moment is in how different it feels to compute with your whole body in a social environment. It really does make a screen feel like a cage that has trapped your mind.

I was pointing out the repeated use of "guy" by the parent. It implies that only men work at the BigCo. Certainly the use of guy is cultural, but it derives from a male dominated work culture.

(also I used the wrong "there"...)

is it still all guys their?

I would advise your grandma to go to the genius bar at an apple store, just like I might advise you to go to legalzoom or some other easily approachable service for business and accounting.

The point isn't to start the most successful company ever its to just be able to function and do what you want to do (programming). By your analogy your grandma is willing to navigate a confusing and dissorienting world to get what she wants (probably facetime with her family) but you are just going to sit around waiting for someone else to hand you what you want without any effort on your part to learn something new?

You dont need partners, you just need a business checking account and an LLC so you can invoice companies. I recommend waveapps for creating and managing invoices btw.

Sorry if my tone is a little tough but I read so many defeatist comments in this thread and it depresses me that so many smart individuals willing to do so much good for the world arent willing to invest some of their talents (like relentless google searching and asking questions on forums) in taking care of themselves.

This problem has been weighing heavily on my mind since reading The Second Machine Age. The first thing I've read that gives me some hope for finding a solution is Rushkoff's "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus"

I highly recommend reading both books, because more perspective is needed to think abouy this than just "what machines can and cant automate"

I think your second point is the real open question that should be explored deeper. Your first point however is harmful and patronizing. If you can find coding answers on stackoverflow you can certainly google for information on opening an LLC and a business checking account. There is no need to bring in business partners, you can contract an accountant and even an attorney without compromising anything and just paying for advice.

Just doing one thing all your life is not an excuse for not taking care of yourself. Developers know how to brush their teeth and feed themselves, and they know how to navigate really complex abstractions, they can certainly learn the basics of incorporation and contracts.

i made a visual explanation/exploration tool about pinyin: http://enjalot.github.io/pinyin/

Pinyin really helped me learn Chinese. RIP

fair enough!

Does this mean you intend to update your existing examples in place? It might be nice if you forked them with v4 instead to create a defacto upgrade guide.

I know many tutorials reference your examples and it might create more confusion if they are updated in place.

I suppose it depends on how much you want to keep supporting v3, but I'd argue its worth keeping the old knowledge base intact for a while.

A lot of Chinese students learn to read and write English perfectly but can barely speak it because of the way it is taught in Chinese schools. Learning to speak requires practice speaking as well as hearing, and there arent enough teachers who can speak fluent English to set an example. Try learning Chinese sometime and see what its like.

I've noticed a more general trend where white people assume those who don't speak like them are stupid. this will end up hurting them as the world grows more connected and more people from different backgrounds end up in the same place.

I've got a few d3 + maps tutorial videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI_sHchSmdCDH0ooOKSWS... Starting at #4 in the series I show how to use d3 + mapbox (basically Leaflet) and then d3 + mapbox-gl. Each video has associated blocks

Creator of the project here, I was pleasantly surprised to find this on the front page! I'm glad people are finding the tool, it's been useful to many people I know.

I want to make it useful to more people, so please join us on chat: https://gitter.im/enjalot/building-blocks

Hi, I'm the creator of this. Would you mind giving me some more detailed feedback at enjalot@gmail.com? I'm actively working on making the first run experience better. I consider it "functionally complete" for my Kickstarter audience, who weren't coming at it from a blank slate. Now I need to make it easy for people to adopt who are new to the tool, and even new to d3!

One of the design principles I'm wrestling with is that I want the home page to be where you go to create a new block, minimize the friction for all users. The problem is that most people expect a home page to tell them what a project is about. My existing solution is clearly failing to strike the balance, so I'd like to find out how to do that.

thanks!

Yeah, the purpose of this tool is to cut out the command line, which is a sin to many advanced developers but a blessing for many beginners. A big part of my motivation is to be able to teach people d3 without having to teach them about the entirety of the internet, client-server model, web servers. Just let them start playing with d3, see the fun stuff for themselves and then be motivated to learn all the other things once they're hooked.

I do hope it is a useful tool for many advanced developers who want to quickly put an idea out there with minimal friction. I know my personal blocks output has sky rocketed since I've launched it, and I'm no stranger to the command line.

Thanks for the constructive criticism! 1. You got it spot on, I wanted to keep a tight coupling with bl.ocks.org. Personally I spend most of my time in side-by-side mode which is probably indicative...

2. This one is a struggle, I want the width to stay 960px so that the end result is more likely to be compatible with bl.ocks, but this might be too patronizing.

3. Yep...

4. Yeah, I'm still working on this. I do think a tutorial is necessary for all the ways this can improve a person's workflow. Also, a lot of people will start with d3 here (I use it to teach, and expect others will too).

5. I've definitely paid attention to those, trying to take the good parts but stick to some firm design principles (mainly, code in blockbuilder should work 100% the same in bl.ocks.org AND when you clone it locally).

Thanks again for this comment. Please shoot me an email at enjalot@gmail.com or hit me up on twitter if you have more ideas/questions!

thanks! I'm shifting my focus to blockbuilder.org because it's compatible with bl.ocks.org, the defacto standard for sharing d3 related code examples. I've applied a lot of my learnings from tributary to this new project, and hope it will exceed tributary's most advanced features eventually!

I have a kickstarter project that's surpassed it's funding goal to support the development of a not-yet-existing open source project. Im 99% sure it succeeded because I'm already entrenched in the community it is targeted at, which doesn't help the diversity angle. It is encouraging for me because it allows me to dedicate myself exclusively to open source for the remainder of the year.

I wont link to the campaign but the repo is here: https://github.com/enjalot/building-blocks

There is one such framework: http://derbyjs.com/ It's been in development for about 3 years, so it certainly has a cost to implement. It is being used in production by Lever (YC) to ship very usable enterprise software.

There is even a TodoMVC example being submitted for Derby: https://github.com/derbyjs/todomvc/tree/master/examples/derb...

Another nice thing is that the templating engine can be used client-side only if you want: https://github.com/derbyjs/todomvc/tree/master/examples/derb...

this is custom d3.js + AngularJS