I built a simple Streamlit web app for a DIY electrolyte mix recipe. Embracing the "vibe coding" lifestyle, I decided to let a Claude agent do most of the work for me. Here's how it went. (Spoiler: pretty good but far from perfect)
Now that we've identified some common problems, let's make the first steps toward solving them. First we'll focus on small, simple changes that will have an immediate impact.
An overview of the Circulate app and common problems with its search functionality. Not talking solutions yet, just seeing what types of problems exist. Plus, some constraints and limitations of a volunteer project with a shoestring budget.
My previous job gave me a free Kroger Boost membership. Now that membership is expiring. Is it worth renewing for $59?
Another year, another request for fantasy football rule changes. This time some people want to use a new scoring system for kickers. Let's (over)analyze how it would impact scoring.
Streamlit is hosting a hackathon to show off their new connections functionality. I built a simple app implementing semantic search to explore public datasets in the city of Chicago's Socrata open data platform.
Traffic deaths in the US are increasing, and big SUVs and trucks seem to be taking over the roads everywhere. Are those things related? I analyzed publicly available traffic crash data and found that yes, bigger cars are statistically more likely to injure or kill pedestrians.
I use Strava to track my runs, and sometimes I'm annoyed with how noisy the GPS tracks are. I recently learned about Kalman filtering, a methodology for smoothing noisy data. Let's see if it can solve my Strava problem. Plus, a small Flask app that integrates with the Strava API.
Some of my fantasy football league members want to make changes to defense scoring settings. I'm not sure it's a good idea, or if it even matters at all. Let's find out! Featuring a Streamlit web app and the (ugly) Yahoo Fantasy Sports API.
A basic tutorial for managing Python environments using conda (for those who don't like pyenv, or when pyenv isn't sufficient).
A basic tutorial for managing Python environments using my preferred tool, pyenv.
I recently replaced my old laptop. Despite looking forward to the release of the new MacBook Pro for years, I opted for the MacBook Air instead. Why? It offers good performance and much better value. Most people (but not everyone) should probably make the same choice.
I wanted to try out the popular FastAPI framework. As a learning exercise, I reproduced a simple Flask tutorial using FastAPI.
Elo is a rating system for two-player games, such as chess. I developed a Python implementation of a generalized Elo system that works for multiplayer games. Then I built a web app to track the Elo ratings of my friend group's poker games. At the risk of personal embarrassment, I'm publishing the results.
Exploring how rank aggregation methods can be applied to fantasy football. Sometimes the consensus is more accurate than the predictions from any individual expert.
I analyzed the comments from episodes of the popular YouTube series "Hot Ones" and found some differences between episodes with male and female guests.