Using Amazon EC2 Linux for Vanilla Minecraft Server

jpindi
Minecraft screen shot

(Hey, I closed comments on my posts, but if you have follow-up questions about this, please contact me directly!) After months of begging, I finally caved in to my seven-year-old’s pleading to install a Minecraft server for her to use with her friends. Not only was I prompted by the challenge, but I also wanted an environment for the kids that I could keep an eye on (plus the endless begging wore me down, obviously). Originally, I was going to build a FreeNAS box and host it there, but a…

Gear box update

jpindi
Gear box workshop

I manage to get some projects done relatively quickly while others tend to be a bit of a slow burn. My printed gear box has definitely been one of the latter. To recap, awhile ago I designed a gear box and engaged 3D Co. to prototype one for me. It works great, and I am a much bigger fan of the “measure thrice, print once” way of doing things, since it is exactly right on the first try. I think that’s part of what’s amazing about 3d printing, is that…

How I Manage oDesk Jobs

jpindi

I’ve been introduced to a world of freelance developers in a whole new way via a website called oDesk. In it, you can either be a freelancer and search out contract jobs which match your skills, or post a job, big or small, for developers and freelancers to bid on. Because it is not tied down to a geographic location, it is a great opportunity to expand your pool of potential candidates (or jobs) worldwide. I’ve been actively using it for a few months and some days at work, it…

3D Printing a Gear Box

jpindi

I don’t think it would come as a surprise to anyone that I have enough of an interest in 3D printing that I had to find some excuse to try it. That excuse finally came when, as part of a larger project, I needed to create a gear box. Besides the obvious (gears, duh) I wanted a pulley system to turn a potentiometer. For fear of jinxing my project I don’t want to get into to much detail, yet. In the meantime, here is the first part of how I…

Time Lapse Test

jpindi

On my bucket list are a few things: take a train across Canada; get a tattoo; scuba Tobermory and a few others (and I’d better start writing these down so maybe I can actually accomplish a few of them). One easier thing on the list is to experiment with lapse videos, preferably up at the cottage. As a proof-of-concept, I put together a short time lapse video. I actually started filming it a day later than I wanted, because the day before there had been a big melt and I…

Mini-economies of Long Branch

jpindi

Long Branch is a neighbourhood located in south Etobicoke, Toronto. The area has been through some challenges, with nearby big box stores on the Queensway wiping out a lot of the smaller shops located on Lakeshore Road. Plus the transition from manufacturing to gentrification has also created a neighbourhood in transition. Business clusters are interconnected businesses which operate in a complimentary fashion to one another. Walking around the neighbourhood, you notice some interesting business clusters which seem to be surviving by working around the typical big-box offering. What follows is…

Toronto Elections data with Neo4j and Python part 3 of 3

jpindi

As the title suggests, this is the home stretch for my 3-part series on Neo4j and Python. This last bit is more Neo4j focussed, with Python doing most of the heavy lifting in the first two posts. Using a 2006 elections contribution dataset, I’ve loaded into Neo4j (2.0 Community Edition) the candidates, contributions, contributor names, postal codes. Additionally, I tried to get the distance between the postal codes for some geocoding. Now to try a few simple queries to test this out. The first one, is to see the top…

Toronto Elections data with Neo4j and Python part 2 of 3

jpindi

In my last post, I took some campaign contribution data and plugged it into Neo4j using a sweet Python plugin called py2neo. Now we’re going to take that same graph and give it some added value, namely flesh out the geospatial aspect of it. Getting back to the example from last time, if you take a nice close look, you’ll see that there are postal codes. What’s missing? ….that’s right: You have all these postal codes, but you can’t really do that much with them because you don’t have any…

Toronto Elections data with Neo4j and Python part 1 of 3

jpindi

As promised I am pushing the envelope on the 2006 Elections contributions datasets. This time I am going to do some analysis using Neo4j, but since the data needs to be loaded using the right syntax, I have a little preparation to do, first. Currently, my data sits in a csv file and looks like the following: 1;Robichon, Georges; ;H3R1R3;H3R;Mont-Royal (Quebec);200.00;CT0001;Cash;CR0001;Individual;LeDrew, Stephen;1.00;Mayor; 2;Rousseau, Remy; ;J4M2B3;J4M;Longueil (Quebec);1000.00;CT0001;Cash;CR0001;Individual;Pitfield, Jane;1.00;Mayor; The first column (in the above it is “1” and “2”) that is a unique ID I created for each donation. It will…

Sankey Diagram using D3.js Part 2 of 2

jpindi

The chart below shows the flows of money to Toronto mayoral candidates in 2006. What follows is a quick explanation and a few observations. Then I follow up with a few short tips on how I got the visualization up and running. 2006 Toronto Election Contributions By Region, Dollar Amounts and Candidate [iframe width=”600″ height=”520″ src=”https://zenbot.ca/elections.html”] Source: City of Toronto Note that I was coding anything ‘Outside Toronto’ to be more specific and got part-way (you can see Kingston and Ottawa as some locations). Basically outside Toronto extends to Mississauga,…