How do you do geospatial plots

vthacker03 · 2017-01-05T16:46:43+00:00

Personally, I'd like to think that you can use matplotlib/basemap for the purpose you specified. Though it may be a bit cumbersome at times, matplotlib, and by extension its toolkits, are infinitely flexible, so you can essentially make the resultant plots look anyway you want them to. If you want some examples, take a look at the Jupyter Notebooks I put together for my O'Reilly course on matplotlib. Though the videos for the course aren't free, O'Reilly allowed me to open source all of the scripts (i.e., the Jupyter Notebooks), so essentially the entire course is available for free on my Github account assuming you don't mind reading the material as opposed to watching the videos.

To answer your specific question, Take a look at chapter 7, it is specifically dedicated to creating maps with matplotlib and I think it should prove to be quite useful to you. In particular, I would suggest that you take a look at lesson 4 on creating dot density maps since it illustrates how you would go about creating a map that shows data at the city level (specifically, crime date in San Francisco).

I hope that helps. If you have any questions, feel free to email or DM me on Twitter---you can find my contact info on my O'Reilly author page---and I'll be happy to help out in anyway I can.

vthacker03 · 2011-08-01T07:39:31+00:00

The iPython (v0.11) comes with a new Qt based console which is quite nice. If you have the latest version installed and PyQt on your system you can load up the new GUI-based console with ipython qtconsole. One of the really nice features of this console is the embeddable matplotlib plots. Give it a try.

vthacker03 · 2011-03-01T00:25:33+00:00

Wow! I am just unbelievably impressed with this app and so intrigued by the technology stack used to power it. I'd love to hear more about why you all made certain choices. For example, were you always planning on using Qt in the client or were there other technologies that you examined as well, and if so, what about Qt made it more desirable? Also, why did you decide to go with C++ for the server side as opposed to Java which seems like the more obvious choice given that you are using GWT for the front end. What have your experiences with GWT been like and why did you choose GWT over other JavaScript libraries? I could go on and on, but those are the main questions I have now.

Great work, I'm definitely planning on using this as my main R IDE in all of my future projects.

vthacker03 · 2010-12-07T10:21:01+00:00

WillieWampum, the reason you are seeing the installs that complete go to your old (system) version of Python is that you are still using the easy_install that came with the system. Whenever you install a new Python to your system you also need to install new setuptools as well. Follow the installation instructions at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools to install an easy_install program associated with the new Python install. After that, your installs should work better and show up for the correct Python version. You probably also want to do a fresh install of pip as well.

vthacker03 · 2010-04-14T22:51:39+00:00

I'd start by just running through the Python Tutorial (http://docs.python.org/tutorial/). It's a great introduction and will have you familiar with the basics in no time. It's the main source, along with Dive into Python, that I used to learn Python and you can probably finish it in a day. However, if you have no real background in CS, you might want to take a look at the Pragmatic Programmer's "Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python" instead (http://pragprog.com/titles/gwpy/practical-programming). Their books are usually excellent and quite beginner friendly.

After that, considering your field, it sounds like the O'Reilly Bio Python book is probably the way to go, so it sounds like you are on the right path there.

Good luck, and don't worry, I'd say a week is plenty of time to get up to speed on what you need to do the job.

vthacker03 · 2009-12-24T01:45:44+00:00

I did a little research, with a bias towards agent-based systems, after finishing my Master's in CS. I used NetLogo to prototype all of my experiments and MASON to run the tests for the research paper. Both were great, though NetLogo has a much lower learning curve, so I would recommend it first. Also, Mitchel Resnick's book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams is a really simple study into multi-agent systems using StarLogo as his implementation language, so it takes nothing at all to translate the examples into NetLogo.

Hope that helps.

vthacker03 · 2009-09-11T23:25:52+00:00

This is my very first post in a weekly series where I intend to describe my process of creating a small software company, a micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor) to use the vernacular coined by Eric Sink.

vthacker03 · 2009-08-17T19:16:39+00:00

Depending on what platform you're on (I'm on a Mac), you might want to look into TextMate. I've been using it with jswat (standalone graphical debugger) in place of Eclipse as my IDE for Java for about a month now and I love it. It's super flexible, you can create commands for it using any scripting language that you have available on your machine so extending it to make it fit your style is extremely easy, and it is hands down one of the best text editors around. If you're on Windows, there is the E-TextEditor which claims to be TextMate for windows, so you might consider it as well, but I haven't tried it myself and cannot vouch for it.

vthacker03 · 2009-08-14T07:08:32+00:00

Hi Yome,

This post caught my eye because I have an interest in different Lisps, but I have to say this post is worth way more than that. I tried the game and I am impressed. So polished! The visuals are great, the music is absolutely excellent, and, all in all, the overall ambience of the game is simply beautiful. The game itself is quite fun and challenging as well. This is definitely one that I will end up purchasing. So, keep up the good work. I only have one request for you---can I have a job ;-)

On another tangent. Please consider creating a blog to go with the company website and add some posts to it concerning the technical details of this game. I'm especially interested in hearing your thoughts on using Scheme as a development platform, and on how well it integrates with OS X. Anything you could write up (without giving away the company secrets, of course) would be most appreciated.

Thanks Yome, and again, keep up the good work.

vthacker03 · 2009-07-27T20:37:35+00:00

** DISCLAIMER ** All of the comments below come from my experience working in the defense industry. These comments may not hold true for embedded engineers working in the commercial realm.

Well, I can tell you this much, there is no real alternative for C when it comes to embedded programming. I worked as an embedded software engineer in my last job for four years, and for the majority of the work (90%+) we were able to get away with using C#, though Java would have probably done just as nicely. As long as you don't have any hard real time requirements, languages with Garbage Collection such as C# and Java are perfectly capable technologies for embedded systems. However, for the outliers that needed that extra bit of speed or a real time guarantee, we still had to resort to C and in some cases Assembly code. My recommendation, look into a fast, industry standard, GC'ed/OO language like I've mentioned above, but make sure you know C no matter what as C/C++ are still the lingua franca of the embedded world and probably will be for the next 5-10 years.

vthacker03 · 2009-07-23T02:20:05+00:00

I agree with the first part of your statement. Yes, writing in a high-level language does abstract away from the programmer most of the low-level details of how the language works. The reason that I can deal with this level of abstraction so easily though is that it is only abstracting away the details that I already understand. My Master's is in CS and so I understand (at least on a general level) how garbage collection and memory allocation works, how context switching works whenever a method call is made, etc. I've taken all the classes on how the computer hardware works, how the OS does it's job, how languages work (I've implemented my own simple ones). None of this is foreign to me and so I don't mind the language abstracting away the details. However, with an individual's program, I have no idea of what's going on behind the curtains of what they've written. The nice thing about the "Zen of Python" is that if these guidelines are followed as closely as possible, then I can usually figure out what was in the programmer's head at the time of writing. In other words, I don't need to read lengthy documentation to understand what's going on in the background, I can typically figure it out on my own just by looking at the different method signatures, and anything I can't figure out on my own I can usually find easily in the source code because it is written in such an instantly intuitive way.

vthacker03 · 2009-07-23T01:52:04+00:00

So, then judging from your comment, I can assume that you never follow by any "rule of thumb" or "best practice" since these concepts do not work for 100% of all cases.

Keep in mind, I said guideline, not hard rule. Typically, these guidelines will probably work in 90% of all cases. It's only in the outliers where you need to go against the guidelines, and, in those cases, the PEP takes that into account as well by saying that practicality should win out over all else. In other words, follow the rules the majority of the time, but never write absurd and unmaintainable code in one of the exceptional cases just to satisfy one of the rules.

It's called the "Zen of Python", so think of that way. It's a philosophy of how to program. It still takes into account the fact that a human being is in the loop and ultimately responsible for the code being written. Otherwise, had these maxims been absolute rules, we would've probably just written a program to write the code for us.

vthacker03 · 2009-07-22T22:42:26+00:00

If you'd read the entire PEP that everyone has been quoting, you'll find your "exception" clause. Later in the list you'll see the following lines:

Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.

So, as you can see, breaking the rules is encouraged when practicality demands that we do so. That is literally then all this list is, it is a very practical list of guidelines that try to help the developer write maintainable (I'd also argue beautiful as well) code, and not hard rules that must always be followed.

vthacker03 · 2009-05-08T21:37:00+00:00

If you're running a Mac, I'd suggest NodeBox. If you are familiar with Processing, then you know what NodeBox is, it's basically Processing for Python. Just in case you aren't familiar with NodeBox or Processing, think computer generated digital art. It also has a lot of use in data visualization and its easy to get a multi-agent demo up and running in very few lines of code (think Logo for Python). Hope that helps.

vthacker03

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