wcedmisten's recent activity

  1. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    wcedmisten
    Link
    After about a year of web scraping and data cleaning, I finally created 510k.fyk. The website enhances the FDA's public medical device database by providing predicate device information for 510k...

    After about a year of web scraping and data cleaning, I finally created 510k.fyk. The website enhances the FDA's public medical device database by providing predicate device information for 510k devices.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Adding keyboard shortcuts to a 24 year old government website with userscripts in ~comp

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    Looks like grammarly didn't catch that one, whoops. Should be fixed now, thanks for the tip!

    we the URL for the string

    Looks like grammarly didn't catch that one, whoops. Should be fixed now, thanks for the tip!

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Adding keyboard shortcuts to a 24 year old government website with userscripts in ~comp

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    Yeah, I actually managed to automate a lot more than this with some web scraping and OCR, but the manual data cleaning was needed for the last ~20% that couldn't be automated. Since there's a lot...

    Yeah, I actually managed to automate a lot more than this with some web scraping and OCR, but the manual data cleaning was needed for the last ~20% that couldn't be automated. Since there's a lot of trial and error going from device name -> the actual ID, it doesn't lend itself very well to further automation unfortunately.

    I even tried using an LLM to parse the device name from the PDF, but didn't get great results and I didn't really trust it vs. just doing it myself.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Adding keyboard shortcuts to a 24 year old government website with userscripts in ~comp

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    Glad you enjoyed it! I highly recommend trying it out. For me, the number of lines of code written was quite small compared to the time saved

    Glad you enjoyed it! I highly recommend trying it out. For me, the number of lines of code written was quite small compared to the time saved

    6 votes

  6. Comment on Could you, please, write down a monthly grocery list (and instructions if needed) to buy in a supermarket without carrying any plastic back home? Please, state your region/country/city. in ~enviro

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    Canned goods usually have a plastic lining to prevent the food from reacting directly with the metal can.

    Canned goods usually have a plastic lining to prevent the food from reacting directly with the metal can.

    9 votes

  7. Comment on What are your favourite transport maps? in ~transport

    wcedmisten
    Link
    Slightly off topic from your question, but I'm a big fan of isochrone maps, and I've been obsessed with using them in my open source projects. These maps show the geographic area that can be...

    Slightly off topic from your question, but I'm a big fan of isochrone maps, and I've been obsessed with using them in my open source projects. These maps show the geographic area that can be traveled to within certain time intervals. With modern open source tools, creating these maps is pretty easy.

    What's really cool is that they're actually a pretty old concept. Here one of my favorites, a 1910 map of travel times in Melbourne, Australia by train.

    And here's a demo site where you can make your own.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on Let's add (and rearrange?) some groups + a few notes about other short-term plans in ~tildes.official

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    IMO part of the fun was exploring a new subject through a compelling visualization. My favorite was a recurring project analyzing "the weirdest shaped baseball field in each state". Even though I...

    IMO part of the fun was exploring a new subject through a compelling visualization. My favorite was a recurring project analyzing "the weirdest shaped baseball field in each state". Even though I have no interest in baseball, seeing the data visualization was great.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Let's add (and rearrange?) some groups + a few notes about other short-term plans in ~tildes.official

    wcedmisten
    Link
    I think a data visualization group would be pretty cool. Thinking about /r/dataisbeautiful. I really enjoyed making OC for that subreddit, but I don't really see a group that similar content would...

    I think a data visualization group would be pretty cool. Thinking about /r/dataisbeautiful. I really enjoyed making OC for that subreddit, but I don't really see a group that similar content would fall under.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Sony’s confidential PlayStation secrets just spilled because of a Sharpie in ~games

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    Trying to redact digitally can have its own issues if you don't know what you're doing. I think there have been cases of just highlighting the text black rather than actually removing it, so it...

    Trying to redact digitally can have its own issues if you don't know what you're doing. I think there have been cases of just highlighting the text black rather than actually removing it, so it can still be copied out of the document.

    7 votes

  11. Comment on Dealing with databases, inserts, updates, etc. in Python in ~comp

    wcedmisten
    Link Parent
    Personally I wouldn't consider using ORM a best practice. It's an abstraction layer that many devs choose to avoid (myself included). I would say it's more about how much control your want over...

    Personally I wouldn't consider using ORM a best practice. It's an abstraction layer that many devs choose to avoid (myself included). I would say it's more about how much control your want over your DB queries.

    As for security, most sql libraries warn you to use prepared statements or similar to prevent SQL injection. As long as you're following those guidelines and not inserting user input directly into your queries you should be fine.

    3 votes