The most under-rated #geospatial capability is spatial joins, IMHO. It lets you draw correlations from #geodata. During the 2019 assembly elections in India, it allowed me to join voter data (by constituency) with religious population (by district) and show that BJP’s vote share increased with Muslim population, while it reduced the AIMIM-allied JD(S) vote share. That’s just the start. We can explore: Where to open new schools? Where to locate bank branches? Does wealth lead to more or less theft? Does poor health lead to more or less pharmacies? … and hundreds of other random questions. My day job doesn’t let me explore these much. I’d love to work with someone, though. ...

I delivered a talk at PyCon India 2019. My slides are on Github. This is a transcript of that talk. What I’m going to be talking about is how you can get insights by joining two maps but before we go there, just some basic bookkeeping things. In case you’re tweeting, these are the hashtags, you probably want to be using the #PyconIndia, my hashtag my IDs, #SANAND0, you don’t need to worry about the slides, they are online. I’ve already posted on Twitter, the link to the slide deck, the slide deck that you’re using but if you desperately do want to take notes, then one small suggestion. Research has shown that taking notes on pen and paper is much better than taking notes on laptops if you want to remember stuff or on mobile phones. So this was a discovery for me. In fact, it was my discovery of the year and I’m following it diligently. Do give it a shot if you want to take notes. Let’s dive in. ...

I’m really looking forward to this Data Comicgen #event. Get the #data on 5 Aug Analyze it with #googlesheets Use Comicgen for #comics #storytelling Submit on 26 Aug It’s a great opportunity to find fellow data storytellers and comic enthusiasts – to see their work and share yours. And win awards. LinkedIn

Is your code built to last? Mohammed Niyas P shares a developer war story. His shortcut worked. It delivered working code. But 5 years later, when it failed, he didn’t expect he’d still be around to clean it up. https://gramener.com/developerwarstories/this-tech-debt-made-me-humble Found this tale on technical debt interesting? Gramener is #hiring #developers for a technical lead role. See https://gramener.com/job/?id=90520 Nikhil Kabbin – your story’s up next 😉 LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a page that shows the people who most recently followed you. At first, it shows just 20 people. But as you scroll, it keeps fetching the rest. I’d love to get the full list on a spreadsheet. I’m curious about: What kind of people follow me? Which of them has the most followers? Who are my earliest followers? But first, I need to scrape this list. Normally, I’d spend a day writing a program. But I tried a different approach yesterday. ...

The #HarryPotter Screen Time video featured a bar chart race made in PowerPoint. Many of you asked how I made it. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial. https://youtu.be/E1SeoUV8awI (BTW, there are just 9 people on LinkedIn who match “bar chart race” and #powerpoint. This is for you, friends!) Gramener converted this feature into a product, SlideSense.ai. But more on that later 🙂 The original video is at https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6801138072068214784/ LinkedIn

I spent 10 hours this week mining for diamonds. I found just 8! I badly need Fortune III on my pickaxe. But today, my biggest worry is sorted out. Diamond is back in usual quantities in Minecraft 1.17! https://www.windowscentral.com/minecraft-bedrock-edition-1-17-2-hotfix LinkedIn

I had a lovely interaction with Kaushik Das at Star TV. The goosebump moment for me was when he said, “… my boss called me the next day, and said that I’ve been playing with it since you showed it to me. And yeah, this is amazing! Why didn’t we do this before? Thanks, Star TV Network & Gramener teams, for your night-outs, weekends, and relentless energy – and building a TV Rating #analytics platform you can be proud of. ...

I’m running a #webinar for #developers & #designers on Thu 17 Jun. It’s on creating data-driven infographics – without much code. This is based on new open-source #webcomponents Gramener is releasing - which makes it easy to map SVG attributes to data. It’ll be a light, fun workshop where YOU will build something. You can register at https://info.gramener.com/creating-data-driven-infographics-with-web-components Note: Webinar recording it at https://youtu.be/Np50SvvX8UY LinkedIn

Could you spare a minute & share your COVID-19 vaccination cost, please? LinkedIn

This is my first Lightboard video – interacting with a data visualization on-camera. Hans Rosling did something like this with BBC 4. That’s been my inspiration. In this video, I share the screen time of the Harry Potter supporting cast. The bar chart race was created in PowerPoint, and the lightboard effect was created with OBS. (I’ll share a tutorial soon.) What do you think of the video? Any comments? Questions? ...

Comicgen now has a very versatile character – Aavatar. Pick your gender. Hairstyle. Emotion. Attire. Pose. Colors. Create your own character. (It’s open-source.) https://gramener.com/comicgen/v1/ The variations are staggering. It throws up surprising ones too, like crossdressers or bald women in sarees 🙂 What I’m struggling with is: Who needs this? What could they do with it? I’m not sure. If you have ideas or know someone who might, please let me know 🙏 ...

I’ve a theory. PowerPoint can do anything. (Excel too). Shape operations are especially powerful. In this tutorial, I create an address card icon and export it as SVG. I don’t need Sketch / Illustrator for this. They’re great. But no, thanks. I’m pretty good with PowerPoint 😄 Have you seen PowerPoint do anything that made you go “Wow! This is cool!”? Do share. I’d love to hear about it. http://www.s-anand.net/blog/designing-complex-shapes-in-powerpoint/ LinkedIn

We are looking for a Chief Sales Officer. (For Princeton, New Jersey.) Do you ensure clients get value from what you sell? Do you have the energy to go after partners and logos relentlessly? Do you feel the thrill of using data to tell stories? Are you game to take a $10m data company to $50m? We would like to talk to you. Please visit 👇 https://gramener.com/job/?id=90554 LinkedIn

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. ...