It was often brought up in conversations with universities and their libraries - having them made things more convenient. The books were selling for a year or so without ISBNs, no problems either way!
436 karma · joined January 26, 2021
The books (e.g.:Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks[1] and Practical Evolutionary Algorithms[2]) are doing well, and whilst I'm likely "leaving money on the table", I'm happy with how it's going.
[1] https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...
[2] https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/practical-evolutionary-a...
Instead of a time-limited trial, we have just one of the plot types (Sankey) freely available indefinitely (https://plotapi.com/page/sankey/).
We tried a time-limited trial, and we just ended up with people re-registering new accounts every 2 weeks.
I was tinkering with Unity at the time, so I thought I’d use it to make future releases on other platforms a little easier.
I’ve tested it on a few iPhones, iPads, and a MacBook Air (running the iPad app). It’s worked nicely on those. I don’t recommend using the AirPod microphone as I noticed some poor recognition on the lower notes!
My motivation came from my younger days where everyone (including myself) had their own little corner of the Internet, made with things like AngelFire and GeoCities. I missed that.
Nowadays, I prefer to make short posts, e.g. [1, 2, 3]. Of course, before I started, I had to write my own static-site generator... It's been years since I've ran my Patreon and I don't post on YouTube like I used to, so there's little to no engagement - which is OK with me.
[1] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/different-adjustments-for...
[2] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/my-pen-plotter-setup/
[3] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/colours-and-patterns-whil...
WebGL pixels works in the same browser, e.g.: https://plotapi.com/docs/visualizations/terminus/#default-vi...
If you want to give Rust a go through Jupyter Notebooks, check out https://datacrayon.com/data-analysis-with-rust-notebooks/set...
I started using KaTeX sometime after 2015 because it promised to be fast (the fastest! [1]). I had to change the representation of a bunch of expressions because KaTeX didn't support some environments, whilst MathJax did. It was a trade-off I was willing to accept at the time.
Many years later, I started writing a personal static-site generator. I wanted comparatively lightweight pages, so rendering server-side was an option. I re-evaluated MathJax vs KaTeX again and this time I leaned towards MathJax, as speed was no longer an issue for me. It looks like KaTeX has broader support now [2].
I'm happy with the way it looks. I'd used KaTeX over MathJax previously because I found it rendered pages faster.
[1] https://shahinrostami.com/articles/my-pen-plotter-setup/
This is interesting! Looking forward to testing the purple theme I use [1]. I wonder if extension developers will need to maintain three sets of instructions now? JupyterLab, Jupyter Notebook >= 7, and Jupyter Notebook < 7
I used to write about evolutionary computation, data science, and other tech bits. I'm on my sabbatical right now and mostly writing pieces with no real common theme. I recently wrote my own static site generator - that held me up a little!
Ultimately, the ecosystem isn't yet as convenient as something like Python. I used to keep an eye on "Are we learning yet?" [3] - although it's been a while now!
[1] https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...
I still check _Are we learning yet_ [3] to see their recommendation on the state of the ML stack (including data processing and structures) in Rust. It still lists "the ecosystem isn't very complete yet.", which is how I felt at the time!
[1] https://github.com/google/evcxr/tree/main/evcxr_jupyter
[2] https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...
I ended up writing a book, "Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks", where I demonstrate using Rust + Jupyter Notebooks for tasks I'd normally use Python for. It's a good experience, although there are some additional limitations when using Rust as a notebook kernel.
[1] https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...
I made it available for free as an endpoint, and then it gained enough popularity to frequently hug my server into submission. After speaking with a few users, it turns out they were happy to pay for it. So I made it a SaaS!
I've enjoyed growing it over time, and seeing how others use it.
Besides that, I've kept things simple and built my own tools around deployment - so making quick changes/fixes are easy for me as a team of one.
I'm refreshing the docs site [2] right now, which I hope will reduce the number of emails I get and make it easier for customers to get the answers they need (even to questions they didn't know they had) themselves.
It was my first time using the Stripe API too, which has the nicest documentation I've ever seen!
I've recently started remaking parts of it in a static site generator I've written focussed on Jupyter notebooks. The first part I've replaced is the Docs (https://PlotAPI.com/docs) - it's a WIP!