My newest side project: I’m doing it “For Journalism”
The pipeline problem The Mission. Why I wake up every day. To do good work. I live in the intersection of data, journalism, technology and policy. Earlier this week, when deciding what to attack next, project-wise, I was given the following advice. “Pick something innovative, that will challenge your skillset and push this organization forward.” ...
Learning how to…sort a JavaScript/JSON object with Underscore
I received an interesting question from Greg Papuga the other day, on a long ago post for creating a dynamic table off of a Google spreadsheet (wow, that code is messy. eek.) When receiving the spreadsheet data as JSON, Greg wonders if he can sort this incoming JSON by date. That is, dates were entered in ...
Election 2012: What I learned making an auto-updating results map
“I had a dream, in time gone by…” of playing with the “big kids” on Election Night. I thought it’d be fun to pass that time in Washington, DC itself. I thought making an auto-updating results map would be THE thing that proved I was a “real” programmer. When I wrote a post announcing my ...
Making the ONA conference MY ONA conference
Greetings from Chicago, where I’m hanging out for a bit after a whirlwind few days at the Online News Association conference in San Francisco! I had a fantastic time re-connecting with many of my friends and colleagues across the United States and the world. It was great to see so many of you. In a ...
Finding your “intellectual home”
Greetings! This post is coming to you just off of a panel I gave with Dan Victor during the Career Summit portion of the Online News Association’s conference in 2012. I’m writing this beforehand, so not sure what I actually rambled about, but I have notes, and I thought I’d write a short piece on ...
Passing another milestone…
Today is August 22, 2012. On August 22, 2011, I stepped into an AP building as an employee for the first time. This day marks one year with The Associated Press, all the more important because I’ve never stayed at any professional organization a whole year. I’m early enough in my career here that I’m ...
“Is there a Strunk & White for code?”
In my last post, Lisa Williams asks in the comments: “So is there a Strunk and White for code? I’m teaching myself, and I know things like my indentation and the like must be all screwed up, but I haven’t really found any reference that would help me out. Do the conventions vary widely from ...
Learning to love…namespacing (advancing code organization)
Before I can settle down to work, I feel the need to clean my apartment. All the dirty dishes go in the dishdrain. The blanket goes behind the couch. Miscellaneous dust is vacuumed. The physical space represents how cluttered my brain feels, so I like to start with it being organized. What I’m trying to ...
Learning about teaching at Code With Me
“How do I get started doing the kind of work you do? It just seems so…hard.” I hear this comment more than I’d like, and I always find my answers dissatisfactory. “Look things up on the Internet. Find good work, and email the creators.” Or they sound obnoxious as soon as I say them: “Get ...
Learning to love…grep (let the computer search text for you)
I’ve gotten into the habit of posting daily learnings on Twitter, but some things require a more in-depth reminder. I also haven’t done as much paying as forward as I’d like (but I’m having a TON of fun! and dealing with health problems! but mostly fun!) I’d like to try to start posting more helpful ...
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