S Anand

I use PowerPoint instead of Adobe Illustrator or Sketch. I’m familiar with it, and it does everything I need. One of the features I’m really excited by in PowerPoint is the ability to manipulate shapes. Let’s say you have a rectangle and a circle. You can select both of these shapes and in the Shape Format > Merge Shapes dropdown, you can: merge them with a union combine them (like an XOR operation in Boolean algebra) fragment them, which breaks them up into pieces intersect them subtract them This is so powerful that you can create any kind of shape. Let’s take an icon from Font Awesome at random – say an address card – and create it. ...

For 10 years, I’ve enjoyed building data visualizations by writing code. Today, we launched the Gramex IDE at https://gramex.gramener.com – and it aims to make me redundant. Everyone can do the same, but without code. I’ll miss the good old days, but looking forward to a brave new world of low code. LinkedIn

When we started Comicgen – a JavaScript library to generate comics - https://gramener.com/comicgen/ – I didn’t expect it to become the #1 page on the Gramener website. Today, we had another unexpected surprise. The Comicgen Power BI plugin is a Power BI Editor’s Pick: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-march-2021-feature-summary/ It’s open-source: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-US/product/power-bi-visuals/wa200001420. Try it out. #datacomics #comics #dataanalysis LinkedIn

Daksh India is an NGO that works with legal & political data – such as every single legal case in India. They’re looking for a senior #datascientist who can explore such data and publish visual insights. What I like about such roles is that it allows you to publish your work and build your portfolio. You could apply at https://dakshindia.org/work-with-us/ (via Surya Prakash B S) LinkedIn

Unofficial Guide to Programming Minecraft with Websockets. My daughter got me hooked on Minecraft. (If you see me staring intently at you during a Zoom call, I’m probably fighting a mob.) As it turns out, Minecraft is pretty programmable. You can send it messages using websockets that can place blocks, create mobs, get information, and more. None of this is officially documented, though. So I spent a few weeks reverse-engineering this and put together a guide to programming Minecraft. ...

Jolie No. 1 There are more Bollywood actors in Hollywood. Some are even turning down Hollywood roles. So we wondered: How easily can a Bollywood actor connect to a Hollywood actor? As part of the Oct 2019 Gramener data story hackathon, Anand, Kishore, and Niyas created a Jolie No 1 — a data video where Govinda announces (in our imagination) that he will act with Angelina Jolie in Jolie No 1, but declines to comment on who introduced them. ...

Here are some famous funny dialogues by Tamil comedian Vadivelu. Can you guess which movie they’re from? Don’t worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green.

At PyCon Indonesia, I spoke about a project we worked on with the World Mosquito Program. The World Mosquito Program (WMP) modifies mosquitoes with a bacteria – Wolbachia. This reduces their ability to carry deadly viruses. (It makes me perversely happy that we’re infecting mosquitoes now 😉.) Modifying mosquitoes is an expensive process. With a limited set of “good mosquitoes”, it is critical to find the best release points that will help them replicate rapidly. ...

There are more Bollywood actors in Hollywood. Some are even turning down Hollywood roles. So we wondered: How easily can a Bollywood actor connect to a Hollywood actor? As part of the Oct 2019 Gramener data story hackathon, Anand, Kishore, and Niyas created a Jolie No 1 — a data video where [Govinda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govinda_(actor) announces (in our imagination) that he will act with Angelina Jolie in Jolie No 1, but declines to comment on who introduced them. We picked a theme first The hackathon theme was “movies”. We explored 5 themes: ...

Here are beautiful first interludes from Harris Jayaraj's Tamil film songs. Can you guess which movie they’re from? Don’t worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green.

Ganes and I created a data movie on speed-cubing records as part of a Gramener hackathon. Here’s a video of us talking about how we created it. Anand: We picked the Rubik’s cube story for this hackathon. Tell me more about how this excited you. Ganes: Since my son started solving the Rubik’s cube a few months back, I’ve been fascinated with these competitions. I still don’t know how to solve it, but I like watching it. ...

Contronyms are words that have two meanings that are the opposite of each other. Sanction, for example, may mean restricting something (e.g. sanction against imports) or approving something (e.g. sanctioning imports). Scan may mean to look at cursorily (e.g. scan a document) or look at in detail (e.g. scan an X-Ray) Fine may mean excellent (e.g. fine wine) or average (e.g. the wine’s fine). I enjoyed this list of 75 contronyms.

Minecraft lets you connect to a websocket server when you’re in a game. The server can receive and send any commands. This lets you build a bot that you can … (well, I don’t know what it can do, let’s explore.) Minecraft has commands you can type on a chat window. For example, type / to start a command and type setblock ~1 ~0 ~0 grass changes the block 1 north of you into grass. (~ means relative to you. Coordinates are specified as X, Y and Z.) ...

Always a pleasure when our work lands on Andy Kirk’s list 😊 – thanks for being a great motivator, Andy! LinkedIn

One problem I’ve had in Markdown is rendering a content in columns. On Bootstrap, the markup would look like this: <div class="row"> <div class="col">...</div> <div class="col">...</div> </div> How do we get that into Markdown without writing HTML? On Python, the attribute lists extension lets you add a class. For example: This is some content {: .row} … renders <p class="row">This is some content</p>. But I can’t do that to multiple paragraphs. Nor can I next content, i.e. add a .col inside the .row. ...

Here are dialogues from Nagesh's films. Can you guess which movie they're from? Don’t worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments Hema Subramanian 2 Jan 2021 9:37 pm: Didn’t get 5 6 and 7

I walked ~11 million steps in the last 3 years, at ~10K steps daily. Since 1 Jan 2018, I've steadily increased my walking average until Aug 2018. Then my legs started aching. So I cut it down until Jan 2019. In Feb, I resumed and was fairly steady until May 2020. To complement workouts like this, products that are aimed for men over 50 can be used. In May, my wife refused to let me walk for more than an hour a day. It took me a few months to convince her and level up. I ended 2020 averaging a little over 10K steps for the year. ...

In 2020 I made 3 resolutions. Read 50 books. I almost made it. Here are my reviews. Walk 10,000 steps daily. I managed it, like the last two years. Lose 2 kgs. I failed – and instead, put on 6 kgs. On self-improvement, I completed a Landmark course and an Art of Living course. Both had a huge productivity impact. (Mail me for details.) On software, I starting playing Minecraft and moved from Gmail to Windows 10 Mail. More on this. ...

My most-used apps in 2020 were: Everything. Locates files. Like Finder. Fast and brilliant. Chrome. But Edge is pretty good, and I’m using it for secondary accounts. Visual Studio Code. It’s my note-taker, TODO list, outliner, and IDE. Minecraft. I’m addicted. PowerPoint. I use it to make & edit videos, not just slides. Zoom. Thanks to the lockdown. Breakout rooms are great. Mail. It uses under 50MB. Gmail takes 250MB. VLC. It still plays all formats, but I’m looking for a replacement. Seafile. Our private Dropbox. AutoHotKey. The best macro tool, but hard to use. The new utilities I started using recently are: ...

This month, I sold half my Indian equity mutual funds and was researching funds to invest in. I was looking for something safe & long term. As I was exploring 10-year Gilt Funds (mutual funds that invest in the Indian Government’s 10-year bond), I noticed that they had a pretty high yield – mostly over 10%. I took a closer look at ICICI Prudential’s Constant Maturity Gilt Fund. (They had the lowest expense ratio.) The annualized returns over the last 5 years were 10.77%, and it’s never fallen below 10% in the last 5 years. ...