HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

mharrison

106 karma · joined April 1, 2011

submissionscomments
mharrison··on Timsort, the Python sorting algorithm
Tim the enchanter!
mharrison··on Applied Machine Learning Is a Meritocracy
Have seen jobs where PhD is "required". (Many data scientists tend to push this view as they feel it protects them and gives them elevated status).

Am also in the middle of training a group of future data scientists. The company is having issues hiring, and believe it is easier to train SME's in data science than the reverse.

mharrison··on How to Version-Control Jupyter Notebooks
Really enjoying jupytext. I do a bunch of my training from Jupyter and it has made my workflow better.
mharrison··on Commuting by bike – tips and tricks
Nice commute! (I used to ride almost the exact same path about 20 years ago)
mharrison··on A Gentle Visual Intro to Data Analysis in Python Using Pandas
That's interesting as the Spark api was inspired by Pandas
mharrison··on The Economics of Writing a Technical Book
Do you publish on Amazon? If not, you are leaving a lot of money (relative to leanpub sales) on the table.
mharrison··on The Economics of Writing a Technical Book
This sponsoring is cool. I wonder if they would work with self-published books.

Writing a book is a huge effort (I'm the author of a couple Python books, one of which is on the current Python Humble Bundle). From speaking with (many) other Python authors, most would do better financially self-publishing. There are few titles that sell very well from publishers (they do 2nd, and 3rd versions), but these would probably do even better if they were self-published.

Of course, there are other reasons for publishing. (People really want their name on an animal book). One of those reasons is that a book is a really good business card. This is especially useful for consultants or when looking for a job. "Why yes, I do know about ...., in fact, I wrote a book on it".

I could blame quite a bit of my business (I do consulting and corporate training) on writing books.

mharrison··on The forgetting curve explains why humans struggle to memorize
You have probably never noticed but most modern cars have a small arrow by the gas dial that points to the side of the car where you fill up.
mharrison··on Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful keyboard controls
Seen Divvy, never tried it. I'll have to look into it.

This might be what I'm looking for http://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.grid.html

mharrison··on Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful keyboard controls
This is pretty cool. Is there anything similar for OSX? The corner specification would come in handy on 40inch 4K monitor

(Currently using Hammerspoon, but use qtile on Linux)

mharrison··on 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)
As a self published author, the best way to support me is to review on Amazon or share on social media :)
mharrison··on 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)
I appreciate that. Thanks!
mharrison··on 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)
Hence, when I'm doing a corporate training, this material takes about three days to cover.
mharrison··on 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)
Yeah, these slides were for a long conference talk that introduced the basic syntax of Python to developers who weren't familiar with Python.

(List) comprehensions are super cool, as are generators, decorators, etc, but there just wasn't enough time to cover that. Plus, as you say most code is boring, and you can get by with the material in this deck.

mharrison··on 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)
Just noticed this on my commute home (author of slides).

This is an old and condensed version of corporate training that I run. Typically the training runs for some 4 days. If you want a more modern version of this material (that you can submit your PR's to), check out my Python 3.6 reference[0].

If you have any questions, fire away, and I'll do my best to answer them.

[0]- https://github.com/mattharrison/Tiny-Python-3.6-Notebook

mharrison··on Typing Practice for Programmers
Keep practicing. I've used an ergodox for about 4 years with the Norman layout. I am still proficient at qwerty on laptop style keyboards.

Though I'm not a musician I assume it is similar to playing two different instruments.

mharrison··on Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
Cool. What is the monitization strategy? Affiliate from Datacamp?
mharrison··on Begin LaTeX in minutes
I have written all of my books (Treading on Python, Pandas, etc) in restructuredtext. I have tools that convert said markup to epub and LaTeX[0].

There is some learning curve, but you can get LaTeX out of rst from docutils, Sphinx, or my tools.

0 - https://github.com/mattharrison/rst2nitrile

mharrison··on Two years after LASIK eye surgery
If you are noticing more floaties it could be a sign of a retina tear, which would lead to a detachment (not fun see my other comment). Might want to go get an eye checkup.
mharrison··on Two years after LASIK eye surgery
I had a retina detachment earlier this year. My retina had torn and scarred on the bottom of my eye and decided to detach while I was out of the country. Recovery has been ok and I have 20/30 vision on that eye .... But that is with staring at the letters for long enough until my brain has averaged the letter out (the letters actually narrow and widen). I now have a permanent pinch in the middle of my sight due to the retina not lying down perfectly flat. I will have to deal with this as my doctor says this will not heal. It is not fun. If I wear corrective lenses my eye tries to merge two images that aren't the same size.

Anyway I'll stop ranting. One of the signs that you might be having tears (precursor to detachment) is an increase of floaties in the eye. Also nearsightedness (yes for to the eye shadow you have a higher chance of detachment), and light flashes. If you are noticing more floaties you might want to get out checked out.

mharrison··on Outlier Detection at Netflix
It seems like this is an area where Statistical Process Control would shine. Did you consider using that?
mharrison··on Emacs IPython Notebook
At one of my clients I basically live in jupyter and emacs. One of my issues with jupyter is that I'm often in a mode where I'm doing development and some analysis. The browser client is pretty good for analysis but rough for development. Emacs is much better for development. Though this mode has a few rough edges, it appears to be coming along quite well.
mharrison··on Show HN: My Desk Chair
If you have access to a 3d printer (to make the cases) you won't save much by going through massdrop. It is convenient though (says someone who has bought one from two different drops).

Another ergodoxer ordered his own parts and they weren't much more than massdrop

mharrison··on Show HN: My Desk Chair
Love me my ergodox with about a for of separation between the halves. I call it Star Trek position.
mharrison··on DataHand
As an owner of the ergodox, I appreciate the efforts and iteration here. Sadly, the ergonomics of most non-split keyboards are hardcoded to a magic number. With the ergodox, I currently have the halves about a foot apart and really enjoy typing that way. (I have also "tented" the halves in the past).

I agree that the ergodox is not perfect and the thumb clusters could be improved, I'm just not sold that the butterfly does that.

Here's an old post with my initial impressions of the ergodox [0]. I need to add an update, but I have since purchased a second unit for home and have been typing with the "Norman" layout since day 2.

(BTW, massdrop currently has the keyboard up for sale, but you need to act fast as there is only a day or so left)

0 - http://hairysun.com/blog/2013/04/02/oh-ergonomic-keyboard/

mharrison··on Python Indie Bundle - Honoring Bitcoin Black Friday
Actually, Vol two contains the decorator book (and the functional/compreshion book and the iteration book) :)
mharrison··on The Workman Keyboard Layout
Interesting. I have a split ergodox and switch to a laptop keyboard a bit. My fingers don't seem to mind the angle too much. Though it is crazy how keyboard layout has been status quo for nearly 100 years.
mharrison··on The Workman Keyboard Layout
I had a programming layer on my ergodox, but due to some bugs in the firmware haven't bothered with it...

Ideally (when I get time to fix it), I'll have a thumb key to hold down and get any programming symbol (optimized to Python for me) on or nearby the home row.

mharrison··on The Workman Keyboard Layout
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the norman layout here. I consider it to be an improvement over colmak and workman. Using it on my ergodox (and I know another relatively prominent geek doing the same), and really enjoying it.

https://normanlayout.info/

mharrison··on IKEA or Death-Metal
I went straight ikea and got the same score (sample size=1)
Page 1 of 2Next →