Z Blog

Taking a fun course with Lonely Octopus, I’ve been learning how to use pandas to clean data for analysis, and also how to quickly build a proof of concept/MVP using Streamlit.

Installing Streamlit locally on Windows in Gitbash threw an error:

$ pip install streamlit

WARNING: Failed to write executable - trying to use .deleteme logic
ERROR: Could not install packages due to an OSError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified: 'C:\Python311\Scripts\watn311\Scripts\watchmedo.exe.deleteme'

“Watchmedo”? Sounded like malware. I got scared and shut off my wifi for a sec. Then I calmed down and decided to run it in a venv instead. Created the venv:

$ python -m venv myenv

Then activate it (I’m using Gitbash for my shell):

$ source myenv/Scripts/activate (or source myenv/bin/activate)

Then try again to install Streamlit and check if it installed properly:

$ pip install streamlit

$ streamlit --version
Streamlit, version 1.36.0

Now the moment of truth — run the little app:

$ streamlit run app.py

You can now view your Streamlit app in your browser.

Local URL: http://localhost:8501

It might also require installing OpenAI, so don’t forget to do that, too. BUT…

Running LM Studio is something I’m getting a lot more used to now. I’ve been playing with it and AnythingLLM for local document RAG chats.

So you don’t need to call OpenAI’s API — you can point your app at your local LM Studio server!

You have to grab the example code from inside LM Studio under “chat (python)”:

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:1234/v1", api_key="lm-studio")

Paste that into your Streamlit app.py file, replacing the ‘client’ variable. Make sure the model is loaded up, and that the server is running.

There are tons of settings to consider inside LM Studio. You also need to have enough memory to run the models! LM Studio’s Discord server is a good place to learn more.

I’ve been giving free resume reviews on a couple of Discords for a few months now. Seeing some patterns appear — people are bemoaning the ghosting and the fake job posts, but still using the same approach and blaming their resumes.

So I made a video on the importance of and how to follow up after applying, with a human!

How to contact a company after applying for a job – DMs and emails

This is one thing I wish I would have learned earlier in my own career. We spent so much time “pounding the pavement” years ago, only to be told by some receptionist to “go to the website” in order to apply. We were trained to apply online, apply online, apply online. And just sit back and wait for the response!

In this video I explain how to actually follow up with a company once you’ve applied.

Un-possible?

Looking for a cute set of progress bars for my app, I searched around and found a great blog post with a few examples. Originally I had zero intention of using animated progress bars, but they seemed to fit well enough for my needs and actually added a bit of, dare I say, pizazz, to the page.

So I go to play around with the code… aaand it’s jQuery.

On a positive note, usually I can tell what’s going on in jQuery, as if reading psuedocode. It feels sort of like guessing what a Spanish billboard says as an English speaker (to me, anyway). I suppose the faster way to move forward with my project would have been to just import some jQuery via CDN, but I decided that I wanted to fully understand what was going on, and thus decided to rewrite it in plain JavaScript.

“Mayhaps, in the span since first we met, an AI hath vanquished thee, mighty jQuery,” I said to my screen as I Googled “jQuery to JavaScript converter.”

Surprisingly, there was a tool which actually did something, or enough to get me started. Despite some very strange copy on their page, the WorkVersatile converter did deliver on their promise of only “some errors” after conversion.

The original jQuery:

$(".animated-progress span").each(function () {
$(this).animate(
{
width: $(this).attr("data-progress") + "%",
},
1000
);
$(this).text($(this).attr("data-progress") + "%");
});

… and the invalid JavaScript output:

document.querySelectorAll(".animated-progress span").each(function () {
this.animate(
{
width: this.attr("data-progress") + "%",
},
1000
);
this.innerText = this.attr("data-progress" + "%");
});

My end product; instead of innerText, I used the Django template to fill in the element’s text:

document.querySelectorAll(".animated-progress span").forEach(ele => { 
  
  ele.animate(
  [
    { width: ele.getAttribute("data-progress") + "%", },
  ], 
    {
      duration: 1000,
      fill: "forwards"
    }
  );

});

Pivotal‘s free tier might be just what you need to get started or re-energize your side project.

Combining Pivotal’s project management software with pomofocus.io — those two tabs in my browser have really boosted my output and kept me organized. So far, the free tier of Pivotal Tracker has been enough to get my little project off the ground, so I thought it might be helpful to share.

You create an account and then name your project. Then you can add user stories or features which you eventually plan on adding to your app or site (your product roadmap).

Adding these features is pretty simple, and you can put as much detail as you like.

Working solo, some of the features like “Accept”/”Reject” buttons aren’t really useful (think: pull request meme of awarding oneself a medal). Also, I’m not quite clear on the project velocity calculation, which seems like a powerful feature that I’m not taking full advantage of at the moment (here’s a 2-year-old video explaining the velocity calc feature, or you can actually — shudder — read the docs). Other than that it’s pretty amazing for my needs. And it’s nice to know that I can still have up to 5 users should I need to bring on help.

This sort of freemium app is really enabling a lot of startup and small business innovation, since a lot of side projects don’t generate income at first. I hope to pass it along with a freemium app of my own!

When the phrase, “how long has that been broken?” enters into your vocabulary, it’s probably past time to add tests to your project.

Finally got my tests going with some momentum. I’ve also adjusted the dashboard view a bit over at JobTrek; although I’m lacking time to design a UI, at least it looks a bit better now. (Leave a comment if you think I shouldn’t wait to find another Bootstrap theme.) And dear Lord help me, I’ve bought a domain name and even coughed up the $7 for the Heroku Hobby plan with SSL.

I’d learned some basics in the Kickstart Coding course, but couldn’t get my basic tests to pass. Turns out I’d been adding my tests to the wrong tests.py file, in the wrong app directory. Hopefully this blog post will save some random person out there from making the same mistake!

Another beginner issue for me was testing templates and content for anonymous versus authenticated users — more on that in my next post.

For some good, free content on testing in Django, check out VeryAcademy’s series on YouTube.

Just back from wonderful travel visiting relatives around Jamaica. It was much-needed refreshment, and my first international trip since Sweden, back in the ‘before times’.

It was great to spend a lot of time with family. I specifically went to see my aged grandma, who is in her 90s but is still sharp as a tack and still going up and down staircases — bodes well for the ‘ol genome. When I complained about carrying some extra pounds, she chided me that I could use a few trips up and down some steps as well. The Greatest Generation rolls like that!

My intrepid hubby rented a car and drove around the island. Everyone, including me, was pretty impressed with his skills — next time I will definitely fly into Montego Bay instead of Kingston, and rent a car.

Perhaps Portland, Jamaica’s potholed roads are a good metaphor for a coding career.

(They are making improvements, but in the meantime here is a hilarious commentary on the lack of repair.) Driving those roads certainly make one question one’s life choices. But then there is a smooth stretch of pavement for a while, and all the struggle and perseverance seems worth it.

2024 EDIT: The role I posted about. The company seemed great, the people were amazing, the kudos on my progress were good; even React was not as annoying as I’d remembered. I was lead to believe that my hiring was just one of those weird miscommunications of expectations, which sometimes happens when both sides are well-intentioned and perhaps a bit starry-eyed. Once I was reprimanded for ‘slow progress,’ I started pulling extremely unsustainable hours. It turns out that the company was facing severe financial difficulties after over-hiring — I found out that people were laid off or intentionally pushed out. Now I wish I would have listened to advice not to quit, and rode out the tough schedule. Likely at the cost of some health and home life, sure, but at least I would have been able to collect unemployment and maybe even land another role quickly. /END 2024 EDIT

But discovering that I can do the job, ‘drinking from the firehose’ of web development and seeing leaps of improvement, is very validating.

So I’m again at a small fork in the road — should I forge ahead with another dev role, or should I take what I’ve learned and revisit the customer support/management-y realm. Before the Jamaica trip I was experiencing a lot of angst about it, but I’ve been reminded that a lot of people dream to have such decisions before them! My gut says to apply for both tracks and see what turns up. I think I shall sleep on it.