Categories
Training & Community

New Stars Of Data 6 Preparations: August

In this post, I talk about my August preparations for the upcoming New Stars Of Data 6 event in October 2023.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Last month, I shared the news that I’m speaking at the next New Stars Of Data event in October:

2023 08 11 NewStarsOfDataSchedule

I explained how I prepared my submission and outlined what I’d been up to in July. Now it’s time for an August update!

Presentation Slides

In this section, I examine how the presentation is going and what I’ve spent my time on. Broadly, this breaks down into finishing the opening slides and preparing the Data Wrangler demo.

Opening Slides

This was probably the most important August job for the New Stars Of Data preparations. Before I could properly start work on the rest of the presentation, I needed to have the opening in a state where I could practise it. Additionally, Olivier was expecting a demo of it at the end of the month!

The opening slides do a couple of jobs for me:

  • Letting viewers know they’re in the right place.
  • Setting my agenda.
  • Introducing the Sale Sizzlers and the associated data.
  • Introducing myself!

They also outline the insights I’m going to create, which meant I could start work on…

Demo Storyboarding

A big part of the session will be the VS Code Data Wrangler demo. I want to present the extension in the best possible light and make the session worth everyone’s time, so the more polished the demo the better!

I spent some time on GitHub and YouTube researching Data Wrangler’s capabilities. Microsoft Product Manager Eren Orbey talks about Data Wrangler in several YouTube videos, including this Guy In A Cube video that was published right in the middle of August!

Armed with these insights, I considered the wrangler operations that made the most sense with the Sale Sizzler data. I now have a sequence of operations that add value to the data and showcase Data Wrangler well.

What remains now is practice. Lots of practice!

Technology Testing

In this section, I examine the technology I’ll be using to deliver the presentation.

Current Tech

My current laptop is from 2016. Performance-wise, it’s been upgraded with more RAM and an SSD and runs like a dream. However, the webcam and microphone are firmly rooted in the pre-COVID times when such devices weren’t as big a deal as they are now.

Upon testing, the microphone seems to be fine. The webcam? Not so much.

Teams HPTrueVision
Laptop: HP Truevision

Okay, so decent visual quality isn’t a condition of the New Stars Of Data slot. And I could even turn the camera off if necessary. But I’ve been considering a new webcam for a while now anyway, and this seemed like an ideal time to take a look at the webcam market.

I also found that my practising sessions felt better on my work laptop, which has a better webcam. Not having to deal with a potato camera that makes it look like I’m on the surface of the sun is a big confidence boost.

New Camera

Firstly, I browsed the website of UK retailer Currys. Currys has a good webcam buyers guide, and their online store has extensive filters to drill down into brands, costs and features. After some time on the Currys, TomsGuide and Wired sites, I shortlisted these cameras:

Armed with this list, I turned to YouTube for some hands-on reviews. Several creators have made videos that try out and compare these cameras, and the footage was very helpful when making a decision.

Of particular use was this BadIntent video:

And this Andyhhhdx video:

I ultimately chose the Logitech StreamCam because it’s a newer model than the C922, and the visual quality looks better than the Kiyo. Finally, I shopped around for the best price, arriving at a very appealing offer on Amazon:

2023 08 29 LogitechStreamCam

Initial results from the StreamCam are encouraging!

Test LogiDefault
Logitech SteamCam: Default

Logitech also offers free software to support their cameras. The Logitech Capture app features camera customization settings and an OBS-like video editing and streaming environment. I’m going to spend some time with it in September to find the optimum setup.

New Lighting

I also wanted to upgrade the room lighting. This was less of a task, as I bought some Calex smart bulbs earlier in the year and had one spare! After ten minutes up a ladder, the existing energy-saving bulb was swapped out for a smart one. The Calex app lets me control the brightness and colour of the bulb, and I can save the optimal settings. Sorted!

Bulbs500

I was also fortunate to randomly find some end-of-season vlogging kits for sale! Of particular interest were the clip-on ring light, the tripod and the mountable LED lamp:

PXL 20230907 160448909500

Best part of all – £24 of kit for a tenner!

PXL 20230907 160402099500

Not bad for a beginner setup!

Mentor Check-In

I concluded August with a progress report and session demo to Olivier. It went mostly well, and Olivier had suggestions for my problem areas and optimisation tips for other slides. He also noticed the camera improvement, which is good to know!

I feel like I’m about where I expected to be, but there’s still plenty of work to do. My September jobs are:

  • Consider Olivier’s August feedback and update slides accordingly.
  • Finalise the Data Wrangler slides and practise the demo.
  • Create files to use in case of emergency or technical difficulties.
  • Optimise my streaming environment.

Summary

In this post, I talked about my August preparations for the upcoming New Stars Of Data 6 event in October 2023. Not long to go now!

If this post has been useful, please feel free to follow me on the following platforms for future updates:

Thanks for reading ~~^~~

Categories
Training & Community

New Stars Of Data 6 Preparations: July

In this post, I talk about my July preparations for the upcoming New Stars Of Data 6 event in October 2023. Yes – it’s now the middle of August. I’ve been very busy!

Table of Contents

Introduction

I’m speaking at the next New Stars Of Data event in October! I have a Sessionize profile now and everything!

2023 08 11 NewStarsOfDataSchedule

Back in December, I said that I wanted to try improving my presentation skills in 2023. I found out about New Stars Of Data when they advertised their May 2023 event, and when they opened the NSOD6 Call For Speakers I decided the time was right to have a go myself!

But wait. What’s New Stars Of Data?

Nom Sharks On What?

New Stars Of Data is an event focused on the tuition and promotion of new speakers in the Microsoft space. It is run by Ben Weissman and William Durkin, and is supported by a team of experienced speakers. There have been five events at the time of writing, with the sixth scheduled for October 27 2023.

NSOD open their Call For Speakers roughly every six months and announce it on their Twitter feed. There are four criteria that all applicants must meet:

  1. You have never spoken at a large, public event before (User Groups/Meetups do not rule you out!).
  2. Your presentation is on a topic in the Microsoft Data Platform world.
  3. Your presentation is in English.
  4. Your presentation will fill the allotted time (60 minutes).

Successful applicants have an experienced speaker assigned to them as a mentor. The mentor supports the newcomer through the process, coaching them in all aspects of creating and delivering their session.

Not sure if this is the case for every event, but I also received a cool New Stars Of Data t-shirt for taking part!

Creating My Session

In this section, I cover how I came up with my session’s topic and how I wrote my abstract.

Choosing The Topic

Once I decided to submit a session, I needed to decide what it would be about! While I specialise in AWS (amazonwebshark being a bit of a giveaway) I use many Microsoft products in a typical working week. Two of these are Power BI and Visual Studio Code. By chance, I was starting a new post when the Call For Speakers was announced. This post was about a recent VS Code extension called Data Wrangler.

Data Wrangler is a no-code data preparation and cleaning tool. It uses Python and the Pandas and Regex libraries to provide on-demand data operations, and uses Excel and Power Query technology to enable data profiling, data quality checks and the visualisation of data distributions.

Changes are presented in real-time, with a Git-like interface showing the original and updated data. This lends itself very well to demos! Data Wrangler also offers several export methods for the transformed data, one of which is CSV. This is perfect for Power BI visuals! The session was taking shape!

Finally, I needed a data source. This decision was easy, as I’ve already been using the race results from the 2023 Sale Sizzlers events for another project. The Sale Sizzlers are a series of four 5k running events that place over the Summer, the results of which are freely available as CSVs on the Nifty platform.

Having chosen a topic for the session, I needed to write an abstract for it. So what’s that?

Writing The Abstract

A session abstract is a brief summary of a session or talk. It typically provides an overview of the session topic, the services used and the key takeaways for attendees.

When writing mine, I took advice from a Brent Ozar post and a Johan Ludvig Brattås video. The result was an abstract that was technically accurate but felt a bit flat. So I turned to the tool du jour ChatGPT.

I supplied my abstract and asked ChatGPT for improvements. The results were…mixed, ranging from cliché city to word salad. Some highlights:

  • “…effortlessly assimilating the race results…”
  • “Reveling in the effortless efficiency…”
  • “…fervent sports aficionados…”
  • “Seize this opportunity to join forces in this compelling expedition of knowledge!”

None of which I could say with a straight face, so I turned those down.

I did like some of ChatGPT’s suggestions though. Ultimately, an abstract is as much an advert for a session as it is a description of one, so there needs to be some marketing and persuasiveness in there somewhere.

My finished abstract is on Sessionize and is included below:

In this session, I explore the capabilities of the Visual Studio Code Data Wrangler extension and Microsoft Power BI using real results from the Sale Sizzler 5k race series. I’ll uncover valuable insights through engaging visualisations and user-friendly and low-code data transformations.

This session will cover the following key steps:

– Getting started by setting up a Visual Studio Code environment and seamlessly importing the race results.

– Discovering the convenience of the Visual Studio Code Data Wrangler extension for effortlessly transforming and cleaning the race results

– Taking a closer look at the Python code generated by Data Wrangler to understand what’s happening behind the scenes.

– Loading the transformed race results into Power BI to generate informative visualisations and analyse trends.

Join me if you’re a data professional, a budding analyst or a sports enthusiast!

So ChatGPT wasn’t marking its own homework, I asked Google Bard what it thought of this abstract. It responded:

I think your abstract is very well-written and informative. It clearly states the topic of your session, the speaker’s qualifications, and the key takeaways for attendees.

Well, it made the robots happy. It also pleased Ben and William, as they accepted my session!

So who’s mentoring me?

My Mentor

My mentor is Olivier Van Steenlandt. Upon discovering this, I thought his name looked familiar. It turned out he’d written an Azure DevOps Pipelines post I’d seen the week prior! Small world!

Fotoshoot D1 33 681x1024 1

Olivier is a BI professional specialising in Microsoft. He has substantial experience with SQL Server, Power BI and Azure, and is currently a BI Team Lead.

Since his first session at Datagrillen 2022, Olivier has presented at several events internationally and is currently delivering a session about migrating from SSRS to Power BI Paginated Reports. I enjoy our conversations and he’s given me lots to think about!

Progress Update

In this section, I cover the specifics of my July preparations for my New Stars Of Data session.

I had my first meeting with Olivier in mid-July and got my first jobs! Jobs like “Start getting familiar with Zoomit” and “Please close some of your fifty million Chrome tabs”. I also agreed to start working on the start and end of the session and to decide on its general flow.

To begin, I consulted the New Stars Of Data Speaker Improvement Library and watched Steve Jones‘s “Creating a Slide Deck from an Idea” video. I then reached out to Steve, who happily supplied his example deck for me to review. Thanks for all your help Steve!

Next, I watched Rob Sewell‘s “How do you do that? Remote Presentations.” video. While I expected a video like Steve’s, Rob focused more on his equipment. I hadn’t even thought about this! In August I plan to test my laptop’s microphone and webcam to see what the output is like.

In my August meeting with Olivier, I demoed my starting and summary slides and showed my new-found Zoomit skills. I committed to some extra tasks besides equipment testing:

  • Finalise the start and end of the session.
  • Decide on and start producing the main section and demos.
  • Practise the session opening with a view to presenting it to Olivier in September.

Practising will work well with the equipment testing, as I’m going to have lots of disposable footage over the next few weeks…

Summary

In this post, I talked about my July preparations for the upcoming New Stars Of Data 6 event in October 2023. I’ll be posting further updates in the run-up to October, so watch this space!

If this post has been useful, please feel free to follow me on the following platforms for future updates:

Thanks for reading ~~^~~

Categories
Me

Emotive Amiga Code

In this post, I respond to July 2023’s T-SQL Tuesday #164 Invitation and talk about emotive code on the Amiga.

tsql tuesday

Table of Contents

Introduction

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday comes from Erik Darling. To paraphrase his invitation:

Think back to the last time you saw code that made you feel a thing. Hopefully a positive thing. Think along the lines of: surprise, awe, inspiration, excitement. Or maybe it was just code that sort of sunk its teeth into you and made you want to learn a whole lot more.

Now, while Erik’s invitation mentions the last time, I want to talk about the first time. This is an ideal opportunity to expand on something I wrote on my About page about AMOS tutorials. But before I start explaining why I consider some mid-nineties Amiga code to be emotive, I should explain a few things.

Key Topics

This section introduces some of the key topics I talk about in this post.

Amiga

The Amiga home computer was first released by Commodore in 1985, and was one of the first computers with custom graphics and sound hardware.

Amiga500 system
An Amiga 500

The Amiga was designed to compete with the Apple Macintosh and the IBM PC. It had a custom chipset and a multitasking operating system. These made the Amiga appeal to a wide range of audiences including:

The Amiga also had expansion capabilities, with various third-party add-ons available like the Video Toaster production tool. This allowed the Amiga to be used for visual effects in TV shows like Babylon 5 and SeaQuest DSV, and films like Apollo 13 and Titanic.

The Amiga Wikipedia page has information on history, chipsets, trivia and more.

Amiga Format

Amiga Format was a monthly UK computer magazine published from 1989 to 2000.

logo amiga format

Broadly, there were three types of Amiga magazines:

  • Game-focused magazines like Amiga Power (Yayyy – Ed).
  • Serious magazines like Amiga Shopper.
  • Magazines with some of both, like Amiga Format.

Amiga Format was about 50% games to 50% serious. This expanded to their coverdisks, with a fairly even split of utilities and game demos across each month’s disks.

My first Amiga Format was issue 30, purchased alongside the family Amiga 500+ Cartoon Classics bundle:

AmigaFormat iss30

And I still have them both! Young me chucked the magazine around a fair bit, so years later I bought a copy from eBay in better condition. I’ll get some photos on Instagram when I get a chance.

The Amiga Format Wikipedia page has some additional information including some regular features.

AMOS

AMOS (or to give its full name AMOS BASIC) is an Amiga dialect of the BASIC game programming language.

AMOSBox

First published in 1990 by Europress Software, AMOS was well received and sold over 40,000 copies worldwide.

Interaction comes via the AMOS Editor: a text editor with the AMOS language built into it. This allows users to type, edit, save and run AMOS programs from within the editor, without the need for a separate runtime tool or compiler.

amos

The AMOS Wikipedia page goes into more technical detail, and this PowerPrograms page has a user’s AMOS perspective.

In addition, AMOS Professional has a GitHub repo, and I would be remiss if I didn’t include Dan Wood’s excellent AMOS retrospective video:

From AMOS To YAML

In this section, I talk about the Amiga code that ended up being so emotive and indirectly set my future career in motion.

Scene Setting

It’s Christmas 1992, and I’m a young shark pup still in single digits. I hit the newsagent’s magazine shelves with pocket money in hand and buy that month’s Amiga Format:

AmigaFormat iss42

Yes – it does say January 1993 on the cover. Before writing this post I never had a good explanation for this, so I reached out to the Amiga Addict Discord for some clarity.

It turns out that, during this period, Amiga Format produced issues every four weeks instead of monthly. Former Amiga Format editor Marcus Dyson speaks about this at around 38:30 in Maximum Power Up podcast episode 139.

But anyway.

Throughout 1992, Amiga Format’s coverdisks featured a series of fully-functional software packages known as The Amiga Format Collection. This collection included:

  • Fractal landscape generator Vista (AF33)
  • HAM paint and animation package Spectracolor Jr (AF35)
  • Machine code assembler Devpac 2 (AF39)

Adorning Amiga Format 42’s cover was AMOS:

af42 1993 01 d1

I’d read about AMOS before. Amiga Format issue 35 had a demo of Easy AMOS, and even the games-centric Amiga Power mentioned AMOS in its Public Domain section. And now, suddenly every Amiga Format buyer had an unrestricted copy of it.

Amiga Format partnered this with a Learning AMOS magazine section. Basic principles, syntax and screenshots were introduced across nine pages, with the tenth page having a tutorial for a scrolling text demo. This was to be the first part of a monthly Mastering AMOS series.

What A Pong

Now, young me didn’t pay much attention to this part of issue 42. It was Christmas after all, and I had demos of Lemmings 2, Fire & Ice and Bill’s Tomato Game to keep me busy!

Enter Amiga Format issue 43. This month’s AMOS tutorial was Solo Pong – a simple version of Pong with the player controlling both bats. This was deliberate – the focus here was on learning AMOS as opposed to learning coding.

Young me was intrigued! The scrolling demo didn’t really appeal, but this was a game! The complete script was only half a page long, and the tutorial explained each line. So I gave it a shot, and within an afternoon I had my very own Pong clone!

2023 07 07 solopong

The code itself made no sense to me – I was copying words from a magazine onto a screen and hoping for the best. But I found the process itself captivating. The idea that all the software I’d run on my Amiga was made by words on a screen – and words that I could type myself at that – was a revelation!

On an unrelated note, Amiga Format 43 included the last of the Amiga Format Collection series – the database package Prodata. So not only did issue 43 introduce me to coding – it also foreshadowed my eventual tech career!

Mastering AMOS Legacy

Amiga Format continued the Mastering AMOS series until issue 51. They went on to include AMOS Professional with issue 67, and ran an Ultimate AMOS tutorial series from issue 68 to issue 73.

Damien Junior didn’t do much more with the Mastering AMOS series after Amiga Format 43. I vaguely remember having a go at the Amiga Format 44 tutorial, which added some bells and whistles to the existing Pong code. But after that, it started going over my head and I lost interest. Although to be fair, I was a child!

The coding curiosity remained. As the 1990s went by I found myself trying out Amiga Format’s DevPac 2 and Blitz Basic tutorials, and by the end of the 1990s I was learning Excel formulae and VBScript at school. During the 2000s I started using HTML, CSS and PHP, and began using T-SQL, Powershell and DAX at work in the 2010s.

Which brings me to the present day, where I find myself learning Python and experimenting with reStructuredText (for Read The Docs) and YAML (for CloudFormation). And I thought, after thirty years, why not revisit the Amiga Format tutorial and see how I feel about AMOS now?

Thirty Years Later

Like many self-respecting Amiga fans I have WinUAE installed on my laptop, and an ADF of the AMOS coverdisk isn’t hard to find. So I fired everything up! And, after thirty minutes of typing, squinting and error troubleshooting, witness the result of my mighty endeavour – SHARK PONG:

2023 07 07 sharkpong

I clearly wasn’t squinting hard enough though. In this script, AMOS uses the ball’s X coordinate to determine if a player has lost. Where the tutorial’s LOSE conditions are:

If X>=320 Then LOSE : Goto RESTART
If X<=-20 Then LOSE : Goto RESTART

I missed the minus in the second IF statement and wrote:

If X<=20 Then LOSE : Goto RESTART

Thus creating a version of Shark Pong that Left Paddle can never win, as the losing X coordinate is in front of the paddle:

SharkPongFail

But then again, it wouldn’t be an early 90s tutorial follow-along without an unintended and slightly hilarious bug, right? And the command to stop running the code? Control-C. That broke my brain briefly.

But yeah. Revisiting the same code that captivated me 30 years ago was a blast! The original tutorial code is in my GitHub for those curious to see it, both as an unformatted text file and in glorious BlitzBasic!

Further Reading

Summary

In this post, I responded to July 2023’s T-SQL Tuesday #164 Invitation and talked about emotive code on the Amiga.

I had a lot of fun writing this! A phrase like ’emotive Amiga code’ might not sound fascinating on paper, but it was interesting to revisit that tutorial after so long. I even finally answered a question that’s lingered in my head for a few decades.

Thanks to Erik for this month’s topic! My previous T-SQL Tuesday posts are here. If this post has been useful, please feel free to follow me on the following platforms for future updates:

Thanks for reading ~~^~~