Perseverance, Persistence

26 Oct 2016

Clearly, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post - nearly two full months! I hope I don’t do that very often. Life has been busy lately, as is its habit. Fortunately, for the most part, it’s a fun kind of busy. Still, I should try to push a new blog post up more frequently. At the very least, it’s good practice for my git/markdown skills.

What has been keeping me busy? Well, mostly online classes after I get home from work. Plus, there’s this other big thing going on that is requires the redecoration of a couple rooms in the house… ;)

My online learning has been focused on building a good foundation in Python, as well as learning some of the data science related packages like Numpy and Pandas. One great side-effect in working on that, is that I’ve also gotten a basic handle on using Jupyter notebooks! I’ve also applied my recently gained skills to a project here at work, writing a python script to parse tool list sheets (.txt). The program uses regex to pull out the desired information and compile it into a .csv file for use in Excel (or another spreadsheet program). It was great to use my nascent skills for a practical, “real world” project. I could definitely get used to that. I’m also looking forward to dipping my toes in the water of kaggle soon. I’m starting to feel ready for that. First, I’ll continue with the Data Science Learning Club activities. I can definitely tell that my practice and persistent is paying off, as I’m getting more and more comfortable programming every day. I’m hoping that my next blog post is sooner rather than later!