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Mexican bean shakshuka
The first time I ever tried a shakshuka I cooked it from this recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt. It quickly became my favourite breakfast.
[... 448 words]Weeknotes: California Protected Areas in Datasette
This week I built a geospatial search engine for protected areas in California, shipped datasette-graphql 1.0 and started working towards the next milestone for Datasette Cloud.
[... 1,099 words]Weeknotes: Rocky Beaches, Datasette 0.48, a commit history of my database
This week I helped Natalie launch Rocky Beaches, shipped Datasette 0.48 and several releases of datasette-graphql, upgraded the CSRF protection for datasette-upload-csvs and figured out how to get a commit log of changes to my blog by backing up its database to a GitHub repository.
Weeknotes: Installing Datasette with Homebrew, more GraphQL, WAL in SQLite
This week I’ve been working on making Datasette easier to install, plus wide-ranging improvements to the Datasette GraphQL plugin.
[... 1,009 words]GraphQL in Datasette with the new datasette-graphql plugin
This week I’ve mostly been building datasette-graphql, a plugin that adds GraphQL query support to Datasette.
[... 1,249 words]Fun with binary data and SQLite
This week I’ve been mainly experimenting with binary data storage in SQLite. sqlite-utils can now insert data from binary files, and datasette-media can serve content over HTTP that originated as binary BLOBs in a database file.
[... 957 words]Weeknotes: datasette-copyable, datasette-insert-api
Two new Datasette plugins this week: datasette-copyable, helping users copy-and-paste data from Datasette into other places, and datasette-insert-api, providing a JSON API for inserting and updating data and creating tables.
[... 953 words]Weeknotes: datasette-auth-passwords, a Datasette logo and a whole lot more
All sorts of project updates this week.
[... 913 words]Building a self-updating profile README for GitHub
GitHub quietly released a new feature at some point in the past few days: profile READMEs. Create a repository with the same name as your GitHub account (in my case that’s github.com/simonw/simonw), add a README.md to it and GitHub will render the contents at the top of your personal profile page—for me that’s github.com/simonw
Weeknotes: SBA Covid-19 PPP loans, Datasette talks, Datasette plugin upgrades
This week I’ve mainly been exploring Small Business Administration Covid-19 loans data, pitching some talks and upgrading some plugins for compatibility with Datasette 0.44+.
[... 524 words]Datasette 0.45: The annotated release notes
Datasette 0.45, out today, features magic parameters for canned queries, a log out feature, improved plugin documentation and four new plugin hooks.
[... 863 words]Weeknotes: cookiecutter templates, better plugin documentation, sqlite-generate
I spent this week spreading myself between a bunch of smaller projects, and finally getting familiar with cookiecutter. I wrote about my datasette-plugin cookiecutter template earlier in the week; here’s what else I’ve been working on.
[... 703 words]A cookiecutter template for writing Datasette plugins
Datasette’s plugin system is one of the most interesting parts of the entire project. As I explained to Matt Asay in this interview, the great thing about plugins is that Datasette can gain new functionality overnight without me even having to review a pull request. I just need to get more people to write them!
[... 914 words]Weeknotes: Datasette alphas for testing new plugin hooks
A relatively quiet week this week, compared to last week’s massive push to ship Datasette 0.44 with authentication, permissions and writable canned queries. I can now ship alpha releases, such as today’s Datasette 0.45a1, which means I can preview new plugin features before they are completely ready and stable.
[... 728 words]How much can you learn from just two columns?
Derek Willis shared an intriguing dataset this morning: a table showing every Twitter account followed by an official GOP congressional Twitter account.
[... 951 words]Datasette 0.44: The annotated release notes
I just released Datasette 0.44 to PyPI. With 128 commits since 0.43 this is the biggest release in a long time—and likely the last major release of new features before Datasette 1.0.
[... 1,648 words]Weeknotes, I guess
What a week. Hard to work up the enthusiasm to write about what I’ve been working on.
[... 314 words]Weeknotes: Datasette 0.43
My main achievement this week was shipping Datasette 0.43, with a collection of smaller improvements and one big one: a redesign of the register_output_renderer plugin hook.
Using SQL to find my best photo of a pelican according to Apple Photos
According to the Apple Photos internal SQLite database, this is the most aesthetically pleasing photograph I have ever taken of a pelican:
[... 1,937 words]Weeknotes: Working on my screenplay
I’m taking an Introduction to Screenwriting course with Adam Tobin at Stanford, and my partial screenplay is due this week. I’m pulling together some scenes that tell the story of the Russian 1917 February Revolution and the fall of the Tsar through the lens of the craftsmen working on the Tsar’s last Fabergé egg. So I’ve not been spending much time on anything else.
[... 226 words]Weeknotes: Datasette 0.41, photos breakthroughs
Shorter weeknotes this week, because my main project for the week warrants a detailed write-up on its own (coming soon... update 21st May here it is).
[... 867 words]Weeknotes: Archiving coronavirus.data.gov.uk, custom pages and directory configuration in Datasette, photos-to-sqlite
I mainly made progress on three projects this week: Datasette, photos-to-sqlite and a cleaner way of archiving data to a git repository.
[... 1,132 words]Weeknotes: Datasette 0.40, various projects, Dogsheep photos
A new release of Datasette, two new projects and progress towards a Dogsheep photos solution.
[... 826 words]Using a self-rewriting README powered by GitHub Actions to track TILs
I’ve started tracking TILs—Today I Learneds—inspired by this five-year-and-counting collection by Josh Branchaud on GitHub (found via Hacker News). I’m keeping mine in GitHub too, and using GitHub Actions to automatically generate an index page README in the repository and a SQLite-backed search engine.
[... 1,100 words]Weeknotes: Hacking on 23 different projects
I wrote a lot of code this week: 184 commits over 23 repositories! I’ve also started falling for Zeit Now v2, having found workarounds for some of my biggest problems with it.
[... 901 words]Goodbye Zeit Now v1, hello datasette-publish-now—and talking to myself in GitHub issues
This week I’ve been mostly dealing with the finally announced shutdown of Zeit Now v1. And having long-winded conversations with myself in GitHub issues.
[... 2,050 words]Weeknotes: Covid-19, First Python Notebook, more Dogsheep, Tailscale
My covid-19.datasettes.com project publishes information on COVID-19 cases around the world. The project started out using data from Johns Hopkins CSSE, but last week the New York Times started publishing high quality USA county- and state-level daily numbers to their own repository. Here’s the change that added the NY Times data.
[... 993 words]Weeknotes: Datasette 0.39 and many other projects
This week’s theme: Well, I’m not going anywhere. So a ton of progress to report on various projects.
[... 806 words]Weeknotes: this week was absurd
As of this morning, San Francisco is in a legally mandated shelter-in-place. I can hardly remember what life was like seven days ago. It’s been a very long, very crazy week. This was not a great week for getting stuff done.
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