From the vision to the task: an introduction to goal-setting

Defining goals is one of the first and most crucial steps to take when managing a team, project, or even an organization. With so many related keywords—e.g., vision, mission, goals, objectives, SMART, Objective and Key Results (OKRs), and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)—used in different areas of an organization, understanding and navigating through them feel daunting. In this article, we present each concept by using theory in a simple and organized fashion.

2022-09-20

Riding the wave: Predicting the use of the bike-sharing system in Barcelona before and during COVID-19

We present our study, where we analyzed how a comprehensive set of factors influenced the use of Bicing before and after the COVID-19 lockdown in Barcelona, identified the relevant factors that help predict Bicing usage, and unpacked how the relevance of these factors changed as the global pandemic unfolded.

2022-05-03

The global interorganizational network before and during a global pandemic

A study published in Social Networks where we explored the structural characteristics of the global interorganizational network before and during COVID-19 using GDELT.

2022-02-28

Global Interorganizational Network Dataset from GDELT

We present the dataset on our research that explores the structural characteristics of the global interorganizational network, comprising multinationals, intergovernmental organizations, and international non-governmental organizations. We extracted the data from GDELT, which compiles media-reported events worldwide.

2022-01-02

Optimize Pandas & Dask for big datasets: the example

In this post I explain how to optimize Pandas to process huge amounts of data. I explain the three optimizations that allowed me to analyze more than 100 million rows and 59 columns with a regular computer: 1. looping correctly by using Pandas’ builtins, NumPy, and SIMD vectorization; 2. tweaking dtypes; and 3. parallelizing using all CPU cores and unlocking bigger-than-RAM datasets with Dask.

2021-07-18

Execute anything when booting using systemd

A concise explanation about executing a script at boot by using systemd and a regular user account, instead of root.

2020-07-12

Big Sheets – Domain Driven Design with a hexagonal architecture

Big Sheets is my attempt to a software using concepts of clean architecture, hexagonal architecture, Domain Driven Design (DDD), and a bit of event-driven programming; by following the amazing book Architecture Patterns with Python.

This post introduces the architecture of the software, so you can take a peek at the code after, and comments a few challenges and learnings from the experience. If you are a practitioner, Big Sheets can serve you as an elaborated example.

2020-06-13

The retry-requests package

Networks, and servers are unreliable: they can fail, saturate… our requests should handle these scenarios. I created a small package in python — retry-requests —to do it for us easily.

2019-12-28

Distribute your apps with apt

Debian’s app distribution (apt) is a simple, native, and friction-less tool to manage apps and their dependencies. Just with the combo apt update && apt upgrade you ensure that systems are up-to-date, including your software and its dependencies —and it works with Ubuntu and friends. In this tutorial we learn how to package apps, generating

2019-07-30

Debug segmentation faults in Apache from mod_wsgi

In this guide we show how to get information from apache segmentation faults that come from python’s mod_wsgi.

2019-06-25

Create a sphinx extension to customize your docs

With Sphinx is easy to generate documentation of your python project, as long as you don’t require some custom code. This is a tutorial of how to create a quick & dirty Sphinx extension to personalize the docs of your project.

2019-06-16

DAGs with materialized paths using postgres ltree

Building Acyclic Directed Graphs (DAGs) using materialized paths with Postgre’s ltree.

2018-08-27

pip, python packages and venv

Python package and virtual environment management can be a bit tricky. This post has some best and bad practices from a personal point of view.

2018-08-13

Router as a WiFi extender & switch

Do you know you can use your old and abandoned router as a switch and a WiFi extender? If you plug an ethernet cable to the router it will broadcast that connection through WiFi and the other remaining ethernet ports. So you can, for example, take the router to another room with poor WiFi signal

2018-01-30

Code in PyCharm in your PC and execute in a linux virtualbox

I need to develop a software that only executes in Linux and I program in Mac. Moreover, I want to execute it in isolation as the software can potentially destroy the OS and I will run it with root.  Let’s configure what we need to develop in our beloved machine A and run/debug in our

2018-01-25

Useful SSH and SCP commands and config

SSH and SCP are really powerful commands. In this entry I quickly explain them and show some cool usage cases and configurations.

2018-01-16

Create a custom live Debian 9 and 10 the pro way

In the following tutorial we create a custom Debian 9 and 10 live installation image by using debian-live. Our live image carries some private software that we want to execute every time someone boots the live cd. The resulting live-cd boots with an USB stick, a CD, and the network by PXE.

2017-12-26