TIL Better to use partition rather than split when you want to convert a ‘string’ to a ‘dict’ based on the first occurence of a specific delimiter (as in .split(..., 1)). Note that unlike split, the delimiter is kept and you probably don’t want to keep it. #python

  Peter Erskine, Palle Danielsson & John Taylor, As It Was.

Mathematical Recreations and Essays, by W. W. Rouse Ball. (Note that the PDF is nicely hyper-linked!)

Another common trick is to throw twenty cards on to a table in ten couples, and ask someone to select one couple. The cards are then taken up, and dealt out in a certain manner into four rows each containing five cards. If the rows which contain the given cards are indicated, the cards selected are known at once.

The value of owning more books than you can read. I have thousands of books in my home, many of which are more than 20 years old. From time to time it seems to me that’s all I have left. I’ve read them all except the last ones I bought. However, I can understand what it’s like to contemplate all that we still have to learn.

TIL. There’s a nice option when you edit Python code under Emacs which consists in sorting automagically all import statement. In most cases, it works great, however there are some edge cases. E.g., it is common in Flask applications to have import defined after initializing the app itself, because of cicular imports. Hopefully, it is possible to override the default settings and to add a local directory variable, as recommended on Spacemacs website (SPC f v d). #emacs

  Tindersticks, Tindersticks.

Sadly, there’s not such a steady flow on Pragmatic Emacs. #emacs

  Robyn, Indestructible.

Lovely work by @aschinchon! There’s more to see on his blog, e.g. Mandalaxies.

I wish I had read this nice post on Travis-CI, by Julia Silge, before I struggle myself with Travis and R. Unrelated but also interesting post: Tensorflow, Jane Austen, and Text Generation. #rstats

Understanding how text generation works with deep learning and TensorFlow has been very helpful for me as I wrap my brain around these techniques more broadly. And that’s good, because exactly how practical of a skill is this, right?! I mean, who needs to generate new text from an existing corpus in their day job?