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DataCrayonon Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

My book "Data is Beautiful" [1] is a practical book where each section takes you through creating a data visualisation in Python

[1] https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-is-beautiful/

DataCrayonon Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

Data is Beautiful, where each short section is on building a different visualisation with Python https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-is-beautiful/ (my book)

DataCrayonon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

Thank you! I'm glad they've inspired some interest :)

DataCrayonon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

Thank you - missed that!

DataCrayonon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

My books on https://datacrayon.com/shop/ fit that description.

Although they’re no where near breaking even if I account for even 20% of my time, I’ll continue to work on them because I want to see them finished.

I’ve priced them as “early access books” where the price grows as the content does as a way to gain some kind of interest and support the work!

DataCrayonon Show HN: Thumbnail.ai – Just paste a blog post link and get a thumbnail

I generate screenshots/thumbnails in two sizes during the build process of https://datacrayon.com/. They're used for twitter cards and to make the homepage a little more interesting!

DataCrayonon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

Don't know whether to laugh or cry! At least I can say we're talking two venti coffees from Starbucks...

DataCrayonon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

I early-released access to an API for generating interactive chord diagrams. Can be used via Python package, Rust crate, or HTTP API.

https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/chord-pro/

It's been/being used by people from many different sectors which is great to see. It's making enough to pay for 2 coffees a month, or at least to cover the server it's hosted on. If I didn't enjoy working on it, I'd factor in my time!

It started as a quick way to generate a d3-chord diagram and has slowly grown since then.

DataCrayonon Show HN: DevBooks – Help Developers find indy books

Very cool - thank you for adding them!

DataCrayonon Show HN: DevBooks – Help Developers find indy books

It's a great idea. I've submitted two of my books:

- Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks (https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...)

- Practical Evolutionary Algorithms (https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/practical-evolutionary-a...)

I hope they fit in!

DataCrayonon JupyterLab 3.0

Great news! I'd only just updated the Purple Please theme[1] for Jupyter Lab 2.0, will have to look at doing the same for Jupyter Lab 3.0. It looks like they've made some improvements to extension development too which is good to see.

[1] https://datacrayon.com/posts/tools/jupyter/theme-purple-plea...

DataCrayonon Sega Dreamcast: Windows CE

Sega Dreamcast had terrible marketing, at least in the UK...

Here's one of the big ads I often saw on TV... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT1Tbc_PD2k what is a Dreamcast?

Another UK ad... they had the word "Dreamcast" on the Arsenal top... https://nirvanacph.com/welcome/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/dr... what is a Dreamcast?

DataCrayonon Sega Dreamcast: Windows CE

ChuChu Rocket was not a flash game!

DataCrayonon Sega Dreamcast: Windows CE

Seeing the Sega Dreamcast for the first time gave a true feeling of the "next-gen".

I bought my Hong Kong launch console with Pen Pen TriIcelon, Virtua Fighter 3tb, and a Godzilla VMS... great times. I remember the Windows CE logo printed on the console, but besides that, it didn't mean much as an end-user.

Here's the intro animation remade with D3.js! https://datacrayon.com/posts/visualisation/visualisation-wit...

DataCrayonon Microsoft says it found malicious software in its systems

I must be experiencing a real case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. I hadn't noticed this attitude towards Rust until yesterday, and now I've seen it multiple times since then.

DataCrayonon Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

Very nice! Almost all of the traffic to https://datacrayon.com comes from HN/Reddit... I remember things being different in the GeoCities/Angelfire days. I wonder if sites like this would change that

DataCrayonon NASA wants to retrieve and study the 96 bags of poop we left on the moon

A fun yet educational song for the kids this Christmas!

DataCrayonon Creative Code-Generated Art

If anyone is interested in code-generated art with D3.js, it's something I'm working towards with this book https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/visualisation-with-d3/... less focussed on data visualisation, moreso on using shapes

If anything, it can be fun https://twitter.com/ShahinRostami/status/1306683819655868416

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

Hi! I don't recommend using Rust to learn data science. Unless you're an exceptional Rust programmer, you may end up spending most of your time negotiating with Rust instead of putting data science concepts to practice.

The difficulty of the language aside, the ecosystem isn't ready yet... I've been keeping an eye on https://www.arewelearningyet.com/, I hope it's still up-to-date. For this reason, I would recommend Python for data science/ML.

I try to cover both Rust and data science in my book (https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...), but it can be tricky!

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

I hadn't considered this to be an issue - this is new to me. I would use "package" for Python as I do "crate" for Rust. It is just the terminology used on the website https://crates.io/. For me, it also indicates that it's available through the repository.

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

Hi - this contribution is a Rust crate. I've done the same for Python. In this case, I think distinguishing the post with the language makes sense!

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

I also want you to make this...

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

To make things even more confusing... https://imgur.com/a/vdzoKgF

Images illustrating (guitar) chord diagrams, and featured link describing (radial network) chord diagrams!

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

Thank you for highlighting that - I've created an issue (https://github.com/shahinrostami/chord_rs/issues/3) and will check it out when I can!

DataCrayonon Show HN: I made a crate for creating interactive chord diagrams in Rust

Hi - I'll see if I can get it to disappear on background click (will check Bootstrap docs now).

In the meantime clicking the [x] or pressing [esc] will make it go away and not return!

edit: Done! I moved the popup further down the page too. Thank you for the feedback.

DataCrayonon Getting our first thousand users in one day

Perhaps it was a slow day if 100 points isn't considered that many - I think the high traffic was from being on the front page!

I wish I could quantify the traffic, but it really did wipe out the server, preventing everyone (including myself) from accessing it! I couldn't even remote in to shutdown/reboot.

The last number I had was just as things were grinding to a halt. It was just over 350 "realtime" users according to google analytics!

DataCrayonon Getting our first thousand users in one day

We almost had a similar experience with our front-page HN post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25314170

Except we were not prepared for the traffic, and it took the site down for over 24 hours! Lesson learned...

DataCrayonon Show HN: I Wrote a Book on Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks

I'm glad you're interested! It links through to 2 videos for setting up the environment if you need it too.

Sorry about the newsletter - I did not expect anything near this kind of traffic, and it's hit everything :)

I've made a temporary 15% discount coupon "hnhug10" for anyone who wants/needs one!

In the meantime I need to start thinking about more resilient hosting...

DataCrayonon Show HN: I Wrote a Book on Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks

I will have to invest in better hosting!

edit: looks like nothing I do will bring the WordPress instance back to life :) in the meantime: https://datacrayon.com/posts/programming/rust-notebooks/pref...