<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"><channel><title>for your information</title><link>https://alec.fyi/</link><description></description><lastBuildDate>Wed, 12 Oct 2022 17:30:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><item><title>automated proxies with NordVPN Mac</title><link>https://alec.fyi/nord-mac-automation.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: how to use a cheap personal VPN for scraping (&lt;a href="https://github.com/alecbw/NordVPN-Automation-Mac"&gt;code here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0 (+ NordVPN free trial or subscription of your choosing)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 15 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;disclaimer before jumping into this&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This post and my work are not sponsored by Nord. I've found it nice to work with …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 12 Oct 2022 17:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2022-10-12:/nord-mac-automation.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>how-to</category><category>scraping</category><category>python</category><category>internal tools</category></item><item><title>[External] understanding DynamoDB pricing</title><link>https://handbook.vantage.sh/aws/services/dynamodb-pricing/</link><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading. Questions or comments?  👉🏻 &lt;a href="mailto:alec@contextify.io"&gt;alec@contextify.io&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 31 Jul 2021 04:18:31 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:handbook.vantage.sh,2021-07-31:/aws/services/dynamodb-pricing/</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>AWS</category><category>reference</category></item><item><title>build business tools with GPT3</title><link>https://alec.fyi/build-business-tools-with-gpt3.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Use GPT-3 to automate data collection, enrichment, and standardization&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0 to start; up to $400/mo at scale&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;time: 30 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;table of contents:&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#background"&gt;background&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#pricing"&gt;pricing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#auth"&gt;auth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#prompts"&gt;prompts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#classification"&gt;classification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#classification-implementation"&gt;classification implementation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#classification-results"&gt;classification results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#summarization"&gt;summarization&lt;/a&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#summarization-implementation"&gt;summarization implementation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#synthesis"&gt;synthesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#synthesis-implementation"&gt;synthesis implementation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#enrichment-implementation"&gt;enrichment implementation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#biz-implications"&gt;business implications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id="background"&gt;background&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The company OpenAI …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:10:30 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-10-13:/build-business-tools-with-gpt3.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>gpt</category><category>python</category><category>how-to</category><category>internal tools</category><category>auth</category></item><item><title>understanding Google auths</title><link>https://alec.fyi/understanding-google-auths.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: I explain several ways to create and use Google API Console auth&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;read time: 10m (skim), closer to an hour to implement and test&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: free&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="https://console.developers.google.com"&gt;Google API Console&lt;/a&gt; is home to a baffling array of 305 APIs (at time of writing), including Google Docs, Sheets, Drive …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 15 Sep 2020 18:32:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-09-15:/understanding-google-auths.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>auth</category><category>how-to</category><category>software</category><category>python</category></item><item><title>anatomy of a HN hit</title><link>https://alec.fyi/anatomy-of-a-hn-hit.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: screenshots of data from HN traffic&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;read time: 8 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This past Sunday, I posted &lt;a href="https://www.alec.fyi/dorking-how-to-find-anything-on-the-internet.html"&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; to Hacker News&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24101889"&gt;They seemed to like it&lt;/a&gt;. It got 554 points, 194 comments, and stayed on the front page for about a day and a half. It drove 24,000¹ …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:50:30 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-08-12:/anatomy-of-a-hn-hit.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>funnel analytics</category><category>growth hacks</category><category>non-technical</category><category>organic social</category></item><item><title>scraping tweets for fun and profit</title><link>https://alec.fyi/scraping-tweets-for-fun-and-profit.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: find spontaenous interactions by scraping tweets with given keywords&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 5 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Twitter can be a great way to connect with alike minds. But if you're here, you're (probably) not yet a Thought Leader™. Let's walk through a quick way to speed that up …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2020 11:33:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-07-23:/scraping-tweets-for-fun-and-profit.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>non-technical</category><category>python</category><category>growth hacks</category><category>scraping</category><category>dorking</category><category>how-to</category><category>organic social</category></item><item><title>talk the talk (a tech glossary)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/talk-the-talk-a-tech-glossary.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: learn the language of tech niches&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;read time: 10m (skim), closer to an hour top to bottom&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Below is a condensed glossary from my time working in early stage VC, growth, and software engineering.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It is designed to approachable for everyone, especially those without a prior background in …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2020 18:32:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-07-05:/talk-the-talk-a-tech-glossary.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>non-technical</category><category>reference</category></item><item><title>make your own personal CRM (for free in 20 minutes)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/make-your-own-personal-crm-for-free-in-20-minutes.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: don't miss important personal moments with your own personal CRM&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 20 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update August 2020: the trick that enabled easy data import has been disabled. you can still use this build, but it will be more manual to set up&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hey friends,&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;if …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2020 01:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-06-19:/make-your-own-personal-crm-for-free-in-20-minutes.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>non-technical</category><category>google sheets</category><category>how-to</category></item><item><title>how to make Alfred Workflows (&amp; the ones I use)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/how-to-make-alfred-workflows-the-ones-i-use.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: create automations and workflows in Alfred&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0 after one-time $31 cost&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 2 minutes (download existing) / 20-60 minutes (build your own)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;you may remember me raving about Alfred in my &lt;a href="https://www.alec.fyi/my-personal-saas-stack.html"&gt;SaaS stack article&lt;/a&gt;. (If not, it's a cool software that has a bunch of neat features …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2020 01:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-06-11:/how-to-make-alfred-workflows-the-ones-i-use.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>non-technical</category><category>bash</category><category>python</category><category>internal tools</category><category>how-to</category></item><item><title>my personal SaaS stack</title><link>https://alec.fyi/my-personal-saas-stack.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Use free &amp;amp; free-ish software and save lots of time&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: (generally $0; in-line for each item)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;read time: 10 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;All listed softwares have (at minimum) a free trial. All recommendations are products I use and have not been incentivized to promote.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4&gt;productivity&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.alfredapp.com"&gt;Alfred&lt;/a&gt; ($31 onetime) - This is …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2020 01:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-05-18:/my-personal-saas-stack.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>non-technical</category><category>SaaS</category></item><item><title>set up Google Tag Manager (and track anything in Google Analytics)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-google-tag-manager-and-track-anything-in-google-analytics.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Manage your website events and pixels easily in one place&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;time: 15 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Google Tag Manager is the most approachable¹, most scalable², and most commonly used 'event' management system for a budding website/webapp. It is free and can be easily³ shared with non-technical collaborators once …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 05:11:30 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-04-29:/set-up-google-tag-manager-and-track-anything-in-google-analytics.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>non-technical</category><category>how-to</category><category>funnel analytics</category><category>google analytics</category><category>google tag manager</category></item><item><title>dorking (how to find anything on the Internet)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/dorking-how-to-find-anything-on-the-internet.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Use advanced Google Search to find any webpage, emails, info, or secrets&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;time: 2 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Software engineers have long joked about how much of their job is &lt;a href="https://localghost.dev/2019/09/everything-i-googled-in-a-week-as-a-professional-software-engineer/"&gt;simply Googling things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now you can do the same, but for free&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Below, I'll cover &lt;code&gt;dorking&lt;/code&gt;, the use of …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2020 04:10:30 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-04-04:/dorking-how-to-find-anything-on-the-internet.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>dorking</category><category>non-technical</category><category>how-to</category><category>scraping</category><category>growth hacks</category><category>reference</category></item><item><title>mastering Colab</title><link>https://alec.fyi/mastering-colab.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: How to use and productionize Google Colab, a free Jupyter Notebook service&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 15 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/basic_features_overview.ipynb"&gt;Google Colaboratory&lt;/a&gt; (or just &lt;em&gt;Colab)&lt;/em&gt; is a recently popular cloud-ish implementation of &lt;a href="https://jupyter.org/"&gt;Jupyter Notebooks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In addition to Jupyter features you're familiar with - cell based execution, shared state across cells …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:30:48 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-03-22:/mastering-colab.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>how-to</category><category>python</category><category>jupyter</category><category>data science</category><category>ETL</category></item><item><title>set up a microservice in 5 minutes with Serverless</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-a-microservice-in-5-minutes-with-serverless.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: write serverless infrastructure as code&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 5 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;overview&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Serverless, confusingly, means two things.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There's serverless &lt;em&gt;the concept&lt;/em&gt; -  your infra provider dynamically spins up compute at invocation time and (spins it down after). This means no more worrying about managing (or scaling) compute - it's …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2020 01:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-03-13:/set-up-a-microservice-in-5-minutes-with-serverless.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>AWS</category><category>lambda</category><category>how-to</category></item><item><title>mastering Google AppScript</title><link>https://alec.fyi/mastering-google-appscript.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: write Javascript in Google Sheets to build advanced automations&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 10 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;updated: 2021-06-23&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;table of contents:&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#getting-started"&gt;#1 - getting started&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#read-gsheet"&gt;#2 - reading GSheet tabs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#write-gsheet"&gt;#3 - writing GSheet tabs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#api-requests"&gt;#4 - API requests&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#user-ux"&gt;#5 - end user UX&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#gotchas"&gt;#6 - gotchas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#snippets"&gt;#7 - snippets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#sharing-auth"&gt;#8 - auth for sharing AppScript …&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2020 18:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-02-19:/mastering-google-appscript.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>javascript</category><category>how-to</category><category>appscript</category><category>google sheets</category><category>reference</category></item><item><title>set up Google Ads APIs</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-google-ads-apis.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: create all Google Ads auth components so you can automate Google &amp;amp; Youtube Ads&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0 (you don't necessarily need to run any ads, either)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 60 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;before getting into it, one (or two) disclaimer(s):&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are two Google ad-related API suites: the &lt;em&gt;old&lt;/em&gt; Adwords API …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 03 Feb 2020 04:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-02-03:/set-up-google-ads-apis.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>python</category><category>ads</category><category>how-to</category><category>auth</category></item><item><title>set up email sending (anywhere)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-email-sending-anywhere.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: How to set up AWS Simple Email Service, through which you can send emails via many invocation methods&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0 per first 62k emails/mo&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 60 minutes (MVP) + 2 days wait to get out of sandbox&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Every SaaS product at scale leans heavily on email for …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jan 2020 05:54:34 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2020-01-23:/set-up-email-sending-anywhere.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>how-to</category><category>python</category><category>AWS</category><category>SES</category></item><item><title>bash shortcuts</title><link>https://alec.fyi/bash-shortcuts.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: bind common commands to shortcuts. save time. love life.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0 or $29 one time with Alfred Powerpack&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;read time: 15 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Below, I overview the bash snippets I regularly use, and how you can easily invoke them with shortcodes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;table of contents:&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#how-to-implement"&gt;how to implement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#general"&gt;general&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#virtualenv"&gt;virtualenv …&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 13 Dec 2019 01:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-12-13:/bash-shortcuts.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>reference</category><category>bash</category></item><item><title>set up this blog</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-this-blog.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: How to make a static website, built on Pelican, Netlify hosting, Netlify CMS, and Github.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0/mo (&amp;lt;$1/mo w/ domain)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 45 minutes (MVP) / 2.5 hours (with CMS + custom domain name)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;why static (vs dynamic) sites&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With a personal site, less is really more …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2019 17:30:00 -0800</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-11-25:/set-up-this-blog.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>how-to</category><category>bash</category><category>python</category></item><item><title>mastering BeautifulSoup</title><link>https://alec.fyi/mastering-beautifulsoup.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: BeautifulSoup selectors and code snippets&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Once you've become familiar with scraping websites with Python, requests, and BeautifulSoup (if not, &lt;a href="https://www.alec.fyi/how-to-scrape.html"&gt;read this first&lt;/a&gt;), you'll want to start creating reusable components to speed build time and improve data reliability.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Below I've included reference snippets for&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#section-1"&gt;extracting data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#section-2"&gt;cleaning data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#section-3"&gt;picking …&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 31 Oct 2019 06:38:25 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-10-31:/mastering-beautifulsoup.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>python</category><category>scraping</category><category>reference</category></item><item><title>how to scrape</title><link>https://alec.fyi/how-to-scrape.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Using Python requests and BeautifulSoup libraries to scrape data from most data sources&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 30 minutes (MVP) / 120 minutes (cleaner v2)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;BeautifulSoup allows you to navigate through the raw HTML pulled down from a website (in JS, this is called 'Walking the DOM'). Generally, you …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2019 04:10:30 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-10-04:/how-to-scrape.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>python</category><category>how-to</category><category>scraping</category></item><item><title>set up Reddit API</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-reddit-api.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: set up the Reddit API and use it to generate interest data&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;setup time: 5 minutes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Reddit can be a great place to waste an hour or to explore particular new hobbies. It also can be a valuable source of free information on one's customers. In …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 20 Sep 2019 09:34:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-09-20:/set-up-reddit-api.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>how-to</category><category>ads</category><category>auth</category><category>reddit</category><category>python</category><category>growth hacks</category></item><item><title>vocab</title><link>https://alec.fyi/vocab.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: write down words you don't know&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I started a mental exercise some time ago: write down every word I came across and didn't understand (within reason; no &lt;code&gt;floccinaucinihilipilification&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The below list is provided only to keep myself accountable. I'll update this page periodically.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;vocab&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;didactic&lt;/code&gt; - intended to teach …&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 04 Aug 2019 04:11:32 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-08-04:/vocab.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>non-technical</category><category>reference</category></item><item><title>set up Google Sheets APIs (and treat Sheets like a database)</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-google-sheets-apis-and-treat-sheets-like-a-database.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: set up programmatic reads and writes from any Google Sheet you have access to&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 15 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Let's start with a hot take to get the blood boiling.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Google Sheets is (probably) the most important database your company uses.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Every single employee can …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jul 2019 09:30:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-07-18:/set-up-google-sheets-apis-and-treat-sheets-like-a-database.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>python</category><category>how-to</category><category>google sheets</category><category>auth</category><category>ETL</category><category>AWS</category></item><item><title>set up Twilio SMS to Email</title><link>https://alec.fyi/set-up-twilio-sms-to-email.html</link><description>&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: set up a pass-through phone number that forwards to anywhere&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;cost: $0.0075 per inbound SMS&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;build time: 15 minutes (MVP)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;overview&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Think of all the times you've had to submit a phone number to get a promotional code, or an ebook download, or the love of your …&lt;/p&gt;</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alec Barrett-Wilsdon</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2019 08:32:00 +0000</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:alec.fyi,2019-06-25:/set-up-twilio-sms-to-email.html</guid><category>posts</category><category>software</category><category>AWS</category><category>SES</category><category>twilio</category><category>python</category><category>lambda</category><category>how-to</category><category>auth</category></item></channel></rss>