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  • raj 6:46 pm on October 14, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , iceland   

    Iceland: Where one in 10 people will publish a book – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24399599

     

  • raj 6:24 pm on September 5, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: dvd,   

    A robot for digitizing DVDs: http://www.britishideas.com/2013/09/03/jack-the-ripper-bot-i-introduction/

     

  • raj 7:51 pm on September 4, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cnc,   

    MatrixShot™ 1.0 First Run

     

  • raj 11:32 pm on August 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    A python interface to archive.org 

    Jake pointed out today that he wrote a cool python wrapper for archive.org that made it easy to upload files. I added downloading support and a few other features:

    #The Internet Archive stores data in "items". You can query the archive using an item identifier:
 
>>> import archive
>>> item = archive.Item('stairs')
>>> print item.metadata
 
#Items contains files, which can be downloaded:
 
>>> f = item.file('glogo.png')
>>> f.download() #writes to disk
>>> f.download('/foo/bar/some_other_name.png')
 
#You can iterate over files:
 
>>> for f in item.files():
...     print f.name, f.sha1
 
#You can use the IA's S3-like interface to upload files to an item.
#You need to supply your IAS3 credentials in environment variables in order to upload.
#You can retrieve S3 keys from https://archive.org/account/s3.php
 
>>> import os;
>>> os.environ['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID']='x'; os.environ['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY']='y'
>>> item.upload('myfile')
True
     

  • raj 6:01 pm on July 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: canon, chdk, magic lantern   

    Magic Lantern is third-party firmware (like CHDK) that works on Canon DSLRs: http://www.magiclantern.fm

     

  • raj 11:44 pm on June 26, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , uploader   

    Plotting uploads/day 

    We are beta testing a HTML5 Uploader, and I wanted to see how much use it was getting. Here is how I plotted the usage. First, install ipython html notebook, then install matplotlib 1.3rc2 to use the xkcd style, then start iPython notebook:

    $ source ~/pyenvs/notebook/bin/activate
$ ipython notebook --profile=nbserver

    Then, in iPython notebook, use the archive.org advanced search engine to see how many uploads per day we were getting:

    import json
import urllib
import datetime as dt
x=[]
y=[]
urlbase = 'http://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?%s'
date = dt.datetime.utcnow()
for i in range(90):
    date -= dt.timedelta(days=1)
    x.append(date)
    params = {'q':'scanner:"Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader" AND publicdate:'+date.strftime('%Y-%m-%d'),
              'fl[]':'identifier',
              'rows':1,
              'output':'json'
             }
    url = urlbase % urllib.urlencode(params)
    f = urllib.urlopen(url)
    o = json.load(f)
    y.append(o['response']['numFound'])

    Now that I have the data, I can plot it, using xkcd-style:

    #Turn on XKCD style
plt.xkcd()
 
plot(x, y)
plt.title("HTML Uploader Items/Day")
plt.xticks(rotation=75)
 
#Save PNG
fig = plt.gcf()
subplots_adjust(bottom=0.3)
plt.savefig('out.png',dpi=100)

    It looks like this:
    out

     

  • raj 10:22 pm on June 24, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: gibson   

    http://loremgibson.com/

     

  • raj 11:04 pm on June 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , xkcd   

    I wanted to update the virtualenv I use… 

    I wanted to update the virtualenv I use for iPython HTML Notebook with the latest matplotlib, which includes XKCD-style plotting. I first set up the virtualenv using these instructions, and then used pip to install the RC2 version of matplotlib using the tarball (since 1.3.0rc2 is not in pypi):

    $ pip install https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/matplotlib/matplotlib/matplotlib-1.3.0rc2/matplotlib-1.3.0rc2.tar.gz
 
#pip installs matplotlib from tarball, but half-uninstalls the dateutil package that we previously installed
$ pip uninstall python-dateutil
$ pip install python-dateutil

    Now, we need to install the Humor Sans font. I downloaded the ttf and put it in ~/.fonts/Humor-Sans.ttf

    After installing the font, we need to make sure the fontList.cache file is rebuilt (Thanks Georg!):

    $ rm ~/.matplotlib/fontList.cache

    We should now be able to produce xkcd-style plots just by running this command in our notebook before plotting:

    matplotlib.pyplot.xkcd()

    However, there are a couple errors with matplotlib 1.3.0rc2:

    • matplotlib.font_manager’s findfont() can’t find Humor-Sans.ttf, which I placed in matplotlib.font_manager.path, so manaully set the fonts for now
    • The XKCD artist style doesn’t work with plot_time() very well, so handle x-axis dates manaully as well

    I downloaded some data from graphite using &rawData=true and pasted that into my ipython notebook. This is sample graph of what it looks like:
    matplotlib xkcd

    Here is the code I used:

    Update: The code below contains workarounds for a font issue that is now fixed (Thanks Georg!). See this post for a better example

    #Use the XKCD style
matplotlib.pyplot.xkcd()
 
#Manually set the font, since I can't seem to get matplotlib to load Humor Sans automatically
ax = pylab.axes()
prop = matplotlib.font_manager.FontProperties(fname=matplotlib.font_manager.path+'/Humor-Sans.ttf', size=16)
 
#Set the Y axis
def fmt_mb(x, pos):
    if x > 14e6:
        return ""
    return '%0.0fMB/min' % (x*1e-6)
yfmt = FuncFormatter(fmt_mb)
matplotlib.pyplot.gca().yaxis.set_major_formatter(yfmt)
 
#Set the X axis
start = 1371584040
end = 1371670440
timestamps = numpy.linspace(start, end, len(x))
dates=[datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts) for ts in timestamps]
matplotlib.pyplot.xticks(rotation=75)
xfmt = DateFormatter('%m-%d %H:%M')
matplotlib.pyplot.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(xfmt)
 
#Set the title, and manually specify font due to matplotlib findfont issue
plt.title("HTML5 Uploader MB/min for the last 24 hours", fontproperties=prop) 
 
#Plot the moving average
values = matplotlib.mlab.movavg(x, 15)
ax.plot(dates[:len(values)], values)
 
#Manually set font for the labels, due to findfont issue
for label in ax.get_xticklabels():
    label.set_fontproperties(prop)
 
for label in ax.get_yticklabels():
    label.set_fontproperties(prop)   
 
#Save PNG
fig = matplotlib.pyplot.gcf()
fig.set_size_inches(10,10)
plt.savefig('out.png',dpi=100)
     

    • Georg Nebehay 1:03 pm on July 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I ran into the same issues with matplotlib not recognising Humor Sans but this thread here http://matplotlib.1069221.n5.nabble.com/getting-matplotlib-to-recognize-a-new-font-td40500.html
      provided me with a solution. After installing a new font it is necessary to regenerate the matplotlib font list cache, which can be done by deleting ~/.matplotlib/fontList.cache on Unix systems. I also had to rename the file Humor_Sans.ttf to Humor Sans.ttf, and now it works like a charm.

      • raj 11:30 pm on July 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks, Georg! Removing ~/.matplotlib/fontList.cache worked for me, without having to rename my font file, which on my system is ~/.fonts/Humor-Sans.ttf

        I’ll update the instructions above.

  • raj 6:40 pm on May 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: documentary   

    Documentary about the Internet Archive 

    By Jonathan Minard, John Behrens, Alexander Porter, and Fearghal O’dea

    Internet Archive from Deepspeed media on Vimeo.

     

  • raj 6:02 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: aaronsw   

    Memorial for Aaron 

    There will be a memorial for Aaron at the Internet Archive on Thrusday, January 24.

    The flag at the Internet Archive is flying at half mast in memory of Aaron:

     

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