daily 04/20/2016

• Pocket: Interactive Data Analysis with Python and Excel

  • That’s where xlwings comes into play. At the simplest level, xlwings allows us to glue python and Excel together in two main ways:

     

    • Control Excel from python

     

    • Call custom python code from within Excel

     

    This article will focus on building an Excel worksheet that calls your custom python code.

• Experiments in Linear Regression Land, Part 1 – PowerPivotPro

  • Furthermore, if you believe you have a good linear regression model, you can use it in a predictive capacity – given one variable, you can get a decent guess at an outcome.  In the chart above, for instance, if we had an X value of 6, the linear regression “predicts” that Y would be 20.
  • But all of that lacks Power Pivot’s elegant flexibility – you can’t quickly modify an “old school” Excel analysis like you can in Power Pivot.  Slice it, filter it, sort it, rearrange it, whatever – in Power Pivot, that’s all effortless, whereas in Excel alone, those all require “re-builds” of your original analysis.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/19/2016

• Pocket

  • Tiptoeing around spoilers, Peter Parker, and his alter-ego Spider-Man, come in mid-movie as part of Team Iron Man, in the conflict with Team Captain America.
  • “So you need new people to do that,” added McFeely. “That’s Scott [Lang], who freaks out when he sees Captain America, and most importantly, that’s Peter.”
  • “The most important thing for us is we wanted him to stand apart, as he did in his debut in the early sixties,” Feige said. “He’s a kid who has these abilities, goes out in his spare time, tries to do some good, and he exists in a world where The Avengers can fly overhead occasionally.”
  • : “In the Cinematic Universe, strange aliens flew out of the sky when he was seven years old [in The Avengers]. That has to have an impact on him.

• Why David Fincher Refused To Direct Star Wars Episode 7 – CINEMABLEND

  • “I always thought of Star Wars as the story of two slaves [C-3PO and R2-D2] who go from owner to owner, witnessing their masters’ folly, the ultimate folly of man… I thought it was an interesting idea in the first two, but it’s kind of gone by Return Of The Jedi.”

     What do you guys think? Would you have preferred a Fincher-helmed Star Wars or are you happy with the hiring of JJ Abrams?

• Houston flooding is historic and linked to climate change.

  • Officials in Harris County, where Houston is located, have declared a disaster area and estimate at least 1,000 homes have already been flooded. More than half the watersheds in Harris County are experiencing significant flooding, with at least one cresting above its estimated 500-year flood mark, a new all-time record. Bayous and creeks have overtopped levees in some parts of Houston, and the water continues to rise, with downtown Houston also in the direct path of some of the worst floodwaters.

• How the GOP is losing its grip on working-class Republicans.

  • While their self-interest aligned with Democratic policies designed to help insulate the vulnerable from economic transition, Republicans managed to persuade working-class voters to support the very policies that were doing them harm.
  • While they’ve been encouraged to regard Barack Obama as an extraterrestrial, they’re not demanding the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Though nationalistic, their families are the ones that paid the human cost for the neoconservative fantasy of bringing democracy to Iraq.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/18/2016

• Florida Is Even More Screwed Than We Thought

  • That’s not just building pumps and dredging canals so floodwaters can recede, which is largely what most cities are focusing on now. It means a comprehensive look at how to design for the coming floodwaters that will arrive daily and, in some cases, never recede.

• Heatmap News Shows You What’s Going on Around the World

• Heatmap News Shows You What’s Going on Around the World

• I Have No Idea What This Startup Does and Nobody Will Tell Me

• How to Make the Most of Gmail’s Hidden Labels

• Profiler, Extended Events And Analysis Services

• Texas Longhorns Orange – White Spring Game Review – Barking Carnival

  • The good news was that it only took one look at #61 Mercado to realize that Steve Patterson’s draconian restrictions on walk-on meals have apparently been lifted.
  • with Kirk Johnson set to return in August this backfield is more than capable of carrying the offense if they get reasonable room to roam.
  • Last but not least, true freshman center Zach Shackelford did everything you could reasonably ask of a guy who should be prepping for Prom right now
  • Pray for healthy starters this season, and don’t be surprised if we burn at least one shirt on the incoming OL class.
  • Interesting was the only PG word I used to describe Shane Buechele’s frequent keeps on the Read Option, and I shot straight into Tourette’s territory when Kevin Vaccaro gave him the business two seconds after the whistle.
  • This was supposed to be an exhibition!”*
  • If Tyrone Swoopes is starting games or even getting significant snaps between the 20’s next season, the biggest reason for increased optimism is that he threw a much better percentage of catchable balls downfield than we’ve seen from him to date in a live fire(ish) environmen
  • When you’ve got a playmaker with a height advantage, I’m all for missing short rather than long when the safety isn’t in position to get involved at the catch point. ¬†The downside of that philosophy reared its head when his throw to Johnson got deflecte

  • In other words, you’d rather throw the deep ball like Shane Buechele.

     

  • long-suffering Longhorn faithful into a state of Booamania over his 299-yard, 2TD line in one (admittedly fast-paced) half of football.

  • To put it briefly (ha!), while Swoopes had some nice moments on the deep ball, Buechele was simply outstanding. ¬†And in the short and intermediate game, it wasn’t even close.

     

  • Not every young quarterback has Heard that it’s legal to just dump the ball and fight another day, so it’s good to see the freshman up to speed in that department.

  • With Shane Buechele under center, you’re praying for health but looking at the realistic prospect of starting to test the defense at all three levels and begin the progress towards the kind of all-out attack that Sterlin Gilbert was brought in to deliver.

     

• Refund Status Results

  • Your refund has been reduced to pay a past due IRS tax obligation.

       

    The balance of your refund, $1,764.46, is scheduled to be sent to your bank by April 20, 2016. If your refund is not credited to your account by April 25, 2016, check with your bank to find out if it has been received.
    Please wait until April 25, 2016 before you contact us again as we are unable to take any further action until then

• Syma X5C Quadcopter Review and Giveaway

  • Balancing the throttle so that the X5C hovers at roughly the same height rather than rocketing into the ceiling or plunging into the floor requires a bit of practice.
  • Managing your own reactions and adjusting the controls carefully when the X5C is flying towards you is the second hardest thing to learn.
  • The hardest is that all the controls are relative to the drone. If the drone is facing towards you and you push forward on the control stick, it will fly towards you and not away. I found it best to always keep the X5C orientated so it was facing roughly away from me. This meant the controls behaved naturally.

• Syma x1 Mode 2 selection – RC Groups

  • Low makes it move more slowly for beginners.

• Drone School 2: Know your transmitter

  • Most transmitters, even for small, cheap drones, offer at least two control modes, mode 1 and mode 2. These map the control sticks in different ways – see the diagrams below.

      
  • The vast majority of quadcopter pilots stick with mode 2, which makes the left stick control throttle and yaw, and the right stick control tilt and movement. We’ll assume from this point on that you’re using mode 2.
  • Manual: turns off all stabilization, and does not limit the maximum tilt. This is also known as acro, agility or stunt mode, and allows full inversion. This is the mode you should quietly put your friend’s quadcopter in if you don’t want him to have a quadcopter anymore. Otherwise, steer clear until you’re very confident.

  • Trim controls

         

    Some transmitters give you the ability to trim the inputs from your control sticks. Trimming basically means adding or subtracting a little input from one stick or the other to correct an imbalance.

  • Left stick: X-axis (left and right)

         

    This controls yaw, or which way the front of the drone is pointing, you can think of it like the rudder on an airplane or boat. Moving the stick left rotates the drone anti-clockwise (looking down from on top) and right is clockwise.

    • rotation is yaw
  • How does yaw control work? Multicopters generally use an even number of propellers, half of which spin clockwise and half of which spin counter-clockwise. The yaw control speeds up the props spinning in one direction and slows the others, maintaining altitude and taking advantage of the torque effect to turn the drone left and right.
  • In aeronautical terms, forward/rear tilt is called pitch, and left/right tilt is called roll – but the distinction is a little less important with a multicopter that can move in any direction.
  • The right stick controls the tilt of the drone, and thus the horizontal movement
  • Pushing forward on the right stick adds extra lift at the rear of the drone, tilting it forward and accelerating it forward. This works whichever way you push the stick, including diagonals.
  • Pushing the right stick forward accelerates the drone forward according to which way the drone’s pointing, not which way you’re looking. The orientation of the drone completely changes the effect of that right stick.
  • ut for your first few flights you’re going to want to try to keep yourself facing the same way as the drone so that right stick makes more sense.
  • Most drones have lights that help you with this. On the Syma X5 (above), the orange lights are the forward lights and the green lights are the tail – so if you keep the greens facing toward you, you’re golden!

• Need help getting off the ground with my Syma X5C Quadcopter | DroneFlyers.com Quadcopter Discussion Forums

  • Hmmm…..it certainly should not flip!
     That’s usually an indication of a propeller on wrong…or a complete defect. I had an Syma X11 which did that – it was bad out of the box.
     
     Mode 2 is what you should have in most parts of the world. That’s the setup of the Transmitter – if the left stick is the throttle then you are Mode 2.
     It should have been in Mode 2 by default. If not, here is the diagram on how to make it that way.

• Syma X5C Flight Modes : Quadcopter

  • <form onsubmit=”return post_form(this, ‘editusertext’)” id=”form-t1_cpi9uhn9xr” action=”#” class=”usertext”>

    Elevation = Throttle

      

    “rotation” = yaw

     

     

    </form>

    • permalink
    • save
    • parent
    • give gold
    • pocket

• SYMA X5C-1 (Upgraded Version) RTF 2.4ghz 6-axis RC Quadcopter with 2MP Camera – RC Groups

  • Using The Camera:
     Some people have stated that they thought their craft was defective as their camera wasn’t working correctly but as the instructions stated, the method of taking pictures and video has changed for this upgraded model. Using the LEFT UP-DOWN trim on the included transmitter, still pictures are taken by pushing UP and you should see one red blink on the camera, and video is started by pushing DOWN and ended by pushing DOWN again. Once video is started, the red light will start to blink, when finished, the light will turn back to green and you have successfully saved your file. The original model utilized the buttons on the top of transmitter, not so with the newer model. I cover this and other things in the video review.
  • saw a tip mentioned that was a great idea which simply involved placing a strip of neon colored tape on the front and rear arms to help with orientation.
  • The Nano-Tech 750mah 1S lipo Model NE-BA931 (from Hobbyking) is a perfect fit for this quad
  • The caviet is that the lipo lead will be reversed and you will need to reverse the voltage on the pins but never fear, I covered the process in my video!

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/12/2016

• How it works – DataCamp

  • When you hit the ‘Submit Answer’ button, every line of code is interpreted and executed by R and you get a message whether or not your code was correct. The output of your R code is shown in the console in the lower right corner.
  • You can also execute R commands straight in the console. This is a good way to experiment with R code, as your submission is not checked for correctness.

• Introducing dplyr | RStudio Blog

  • • Your time is important, so Romain Francois has written the key pieces in Rcpp to provide blazing fast performance. Performance will only get better over time, especially once we figure out the best way to make the most of multiple processors.

     

    • Tabular data is tabular data regardless of where it lives, so you should use the same functions to work with it. With dplyr, anything you can do to a local data frame you can also do to a remote database table. PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite and Google bigquery support is built-in; adding a new backend is a matter of implementing a handful of S3 methods.

     

    • The bottleneck in most data analyses is the time it takes for you to figure out what to do with your data, and dplyr makes this easier by having individual functions that correspond to the most common operations (group_by, summarise, mutate, filter, select and arrange). Each function does one only thing, but does it well.
  • dplyr provides another innovation over plyr: the ability to chain operations together from left to right with the %.% operator. This makes dplyr behave a little like a grammar of data manipulation:

• Untitled

  tags: baseball

  • The Glove Hat Drill
  • When you pull your head off the baseball before or at contact you will tend to fly open with the front shoulder.

• Baseball Database Queries with SQL and dplyr | Udemy

  • At a relaxed pace, it should take about three weeks to complete the course. The course is for beginners in SQL, R, and dplyr. You also do not have to understand very much about baseball. We will be using the Lahman Baseball Database, R, dplyr, and Microsoft Access. I will show you how to install everything.

• Modeling | Microsoft Power BI

  • To create a logical connection between different data sources, you create a relationship

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/11/2016

• Generating Fixed-Width Text Files In Excel With Power Query – Chris Webb’s BI Blog

  • The next thing you’ll need to do is to create a custom column that returns a list containing all the values from each of the columns from the current row. The expression to use here is:
  • To do this we’ll need to use a Combiner function – a function that returns a function that, in turn, combines multiple pieces of text together in a specific way.
  • You can’t use Combiner.CombineTextByRanges() to combine text directly,

• The Jungle Book Uses The Best Parts of the Animated Classic To Make Something Brand New

  • “You’re not remaking the real movie,” Favreau explained to io9. “You’re remaking the memory of the movie. Most people have contextualized the movie based on how old they were and what they remember now. And in that regard, it’s very, very difficult to compete with that.”
  • “Exposition works best when the audience is yearning for it,” he said. “When Luke Skywalker busts out the lightsaber and hears about his dad in the Clone Wars, I could have sat through half an hour of that exposition. But if you start a movie with exposition, it sometimes feels like homework you have to sit through. And so I held back on Mowgli’s origin story.”
  • Much of that picking and choosing came about during The Jungle Book’s long, story-focused preproduction process. Unlike most live-action movies, Favreau developed The Jungle Book in the exact same way Pixar and Disney Animation do their films: by hiring a group of people to work on the story, and plotting out the film, in animatics and storyboards, dozens and dozens of times before even touching a camera. This is a process that all but assures your movie works, at least on some level.

• How to run Bash on Windows 10

  • Before we get on to see how to run Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, here’s a little bit on the amazing step by Microsoft to integrate user mode Linux and its tools into Windows OS. Who would have thought one would be running native Bash directly on Windows.
  • with it support for Linux command-line tools which run directly on Windows in an environment that behaves like Linux! Its not any VM but the real Linux on Windows.
  • rom here on , now you can run Bash scripts, Linux command-line tools like sed, awk, grep and you can even try Linux-first tools like Ruby, Git, Python, etc. directly on Windows. One can also access Windows filesystem from within Bash.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/08/2016

• The Alteryx Starter Kit for Microsoft | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

  • A great visualization in Power BI starts with utilizing the right data. Yet, most analysts spend up to 90% of their time getting this data prepared or relying on others to get the data ready. Weeks to months are devoted to preparing a dataset for analysis and visualization. This is not efficient.

• Moleskine’s Smart Writing Set Helps Literary Doodling Step Into the Future – The Atlantic

  • “It’s a masterful bit of excavation of the human psyche,” the design critic Stephen Bayley told The Guardian in 2012 to explain the plain notebooks’ immense popularity. “The stuff you’re writing in it could be the most brainless trivia, but it makes you feel connected to Hemingway … there aren’t many things you can buy for £10 that are the best of their kind. I buy them compulsively. It makes you think you are just about to write, for once, something brilliant.”

• Huawei signs deal with Malta to establish innovation center

  • Huawei will develop safe city solutions with government

• All the Women in the World Are Equally Good and Nothing Else Matters

  • “We have the medicine we need to save lives,” Barbara said with no trace of irony, “yet systems are broken.” This is the first family of the party that is seeking to dismantle Obamacare. As I said, a neat trick.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/07/2016

• Football is better than baseball, and did Johnny Manziel join the Latin Kings? – Barstool Sports

• Inmates in Prisons Across Texas Go on Strike to End Inhumane Living and Working Conditions

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

daily 04/04/2016

• New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat on Donald Trump, Fox News, and the future of the GOP.

  • I don’t think there is any question that Trump has revealed or exposed a deep alienation of a very large—larger even than I expected—swath of Republican-leaning voters from the basic orthodoxies of the party.
  • It’s a center right news network that has good, solid, interesting coverage if you’re watching Chris Wallace or the panel on Special Report or anything like that. Then, it has what Hannity and others like him do, which is just a sort of tribal identity politics for older white people.

• Trump supporters are operating on biological instinct – Quartz

  • One of the strongest instincts is tribalism, says Shenkman, as we instinctively favor those with shared ancestry:
  • Since Donald Trump began his election in June, he’s been activating an ancient instinct in human brains, which is fear of the other. For many people, who lack other knowledge on which they can make their judgments about Mexican immigrants of Muslims coming into the United States, this winds up becoming a powerful trigger for their political beliefs.
  • Since our brain is uncomfortable with dissonance, if we’re told a politician we instinctively like has lied, we’ll come up with excuses to dismiss the idea.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.