All posts by Mike

PyDev of the Week: Marc Garcia

PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Marc Garcia (@datapythonista) as our PyDev of the Week! Marc is a core developer of pandas, a Python data analysis library. If you’d like to know more about Marc, you can check out his website which has links to his talks that he has given at PyData in Europe as well as talks at EuroPython.

In fact, here is one of his talks on pandas in case you are interested:

You can also see what projects he is a part of over on Github. Now, let’s take some time to get to know Marc!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

My background is in computer engineering, with a master’s degree in AI. I wrote my first program when I was 9, and not many years later I learned about free software, and I still think it’s one of the most amazing achievements of humanity.

I’ve been working professionally with Python for more than 10 years, and this year I became a Python fellow. I’m a pandas core developer, and been involved in the Python community almost since I started coding in Python.

I started as a regular of the Barcelona Python meetup when we were less than 10 members in the events. I contributed to Django before it reached its 1.0. I was one of the founders of PyData Mallorca. I was a NumFOCUS ambassador. I speak regularly to PyCon and PyData conferences. And I organize the London Python Sprints group, where we mentor people who wants to contribute to open source Python projects. Most people know me for leading the pandas documentation sprint, a worldwide event last March, in which around 500 people worked on improving the pandas documentation. Around 300 pull requests were sent, I still need to review and merge some of them. 🙂

Regarding hobbies, I love hiking, travelling, yoga, playing tennis, dancing forro, playing djembe drums, and watching Bollywood movies. I don’t have time to do all that regularly, but hopefully I will at some point. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Marc Garcia →

How to Export Jupyter Notebooks into Other Formats

Books, Python,

When working with Jupyter Notebook, you will find yourself needing to distribute your Notebook as something other than a Notebook file. The most likely reason is that you want to share the content of your Notebook to non-technical users that don’t want to install Python or the other dependencies necessary to use your Notebook. The most popular solution for exporting your Notebook into other formats is the built-in nbconvert tool. You can use nbconvert to export to the following formats:

  • HTML (–to html)
  • LaTeX (–to latex)
  • PDF (–to pdf)
  • Reveal JS (–to slides)
  • Markdown (md) (–to markdown)
  • ReStructured Text (rst) (–to rst)
  • executable script (–to script)

The nbconvert tool uses Jinja templates to convert your Notebook files (.ipynb) to these other static formats. Jinja is a template engine for Python. The nbconvert tool depends on Pandoc and TeX for some of the conversions that it does. You may need to install these separately on your machine. This is documented on ReadTheDocs. Continue reading How to Export Jupyter Notebooks into Other Formats →

PyDev of the Week: K Lars Lohn

PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome K Lars Lohn (@2braids) as our PyDev of the Week! He has been a part of the Python community for quite a few years. You can learn a bit more about him over on his blog or by checking out his Github account. Let’s spend some time getting to know him a bit more!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

I’m a product of the education system of the State of Montana in the 1980s. I studied Electrical Engineering at Montana State, but switched to Computer Science at the University of Montana. I switched universities to get access to U of M’s VAX-750 running Unix. I graduated with a BS degree in ’83 and then, later, an MS in’ 91.

My hobbies include unusual plants, intricate drawing and baroque music. I have seven greenhouses filled with organic veggies, orchids and carnivorous plants. In the last few years I’ve discovered that I can draw well enough show pieces in art galleries. Finally, while I own an oboe and a family of baroque recorders, I’ve settled on an electronic woodwind instrument, a Yamaha WX-5. Oh yeah, then there are the Harleys: ’08 FX-STB Night Train and a ’15 Fat Boy Low.

I work for the Mozilla Corporation. My first contributions to Mozilla projects began while working at the OSUOSL in ’04. Later as an employee, I was the lead developer in Socorro, the Python based server side of the Firefox crash reporting system. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: K Lars Lohn →

Jupyter Notebook Extension Basics

Python,

There are several methods of extending the functionality of Jupyter Notebooks. Here are four of them:

  • Kernels
  • IPython kernel extensions
  • Notebook extensions
  • Notebook server extensions

For the purposes of this article, I will be focusing on the third item, Notebook Extensions. However, let’s take a moment and talk about the other three so that you are aware of how they can affect your Notebook. Continue reading Jupyter Notebook Extension Basics →

PyDev of the Week: Jacqueline Kazil

PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Jacqueline Kazil (@JackieKazil) as our PyDev of the Week! She is the co-author of Data Wrangling with Python. Jacqueline is the creator of the Mesa package. You can see what other projects she is working on by going to Github. Let’s take a few moments to get to know her better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

With a ten-month-old daughter, a day job, volunteer work, and working on my Ph.D, I have no time these days for dedicated hobbies. Sometimes I pick up the uke and try to play a song for the baby. She is too young to realize how bad I am, but my husband certainly knows. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Jacqueline Kazil →

Creating Presentations with Jupyter Notebook

Python,

Jupyter Notebook can be turned into a slide presentation that is kind of like using Microsoft Powerpoint, except that you can run the slide’s code live! It’s really neat how well it works. The only con in my book is that there isn’t a lot of theming that can be applied to your slides, so they do end up looking a bit plain.

In this article, we will look at two methods of creating a slideshow out of your Jupyter Notebook. The first method is by using Jupyter Notebook’s built-in slideshow capabilities. The second is by using a plug-in called RISE.

Let’s get started!

Note: This article assumes that you already have Jupyter Notebook installed. If you don’t, then you might want to go to their website and learn how to do so. Continue reading Creating Presentations with Jupyter Notebook →