Exploring Ideas: A Blog on Technology, Startups, Food, and More
Welcome to my blog where I share thoughts and insights on technology, startups, and life in Atlanta. Browse through the articles below or explore by topic.
HashingEncoder: Tackling Extreme Cardinality with the Hashing Trick
April 15, 2025
In our journey through categorical encoding techniques, we’ve explored OneHotEncoder, OrdinalEncoder, and BinaryEncoder. Today, we’ll tackle an approach designed for extreme cardinality: the HashingEncoder from category_encoders. When you’re dealing with millions of unique categories or streaming data where new categories appear constantly, traditional encoding methods break down. That’s where the...
The Secret to Change Management: Transform While You Perform
April 14, 2025
The most difficult challenge for leaders implementing organizational change isn’t designing the transformation; it’s maintaining operational effectiveness throughout the process. Military organizations have mastered this critical balance, providing valuable lessons for civilian leaders facing similar challenges. The Dual Imperative: Transform While You Perform Military units undergo continuous tra...
BinaryEncoder: The Space-Efficient Alternative to One-Hot Encoding
April 13, 2025
In our previous posts, we explored OneHotEncoder and OrdinalEncoder, two fundamental approaches to handling categorical data. Today, we’ll dive into a clever (or hacky) middle ground: the BinaryEncoder from category_encoders. Binary encoding attempts to offer a compromise between the dimensionality explosion of one-hot encoding and the potentially problematic ordinality of ordinal encoding. It was...
Elevating Celery: A Velvety Celery Soup Recipe
April 12, 2025
Celery is often relegated to a supporting role in cooking: the background component in soups and stocks or a vehicle for dips. This soup turns that dynamic on its head, showcasing celery as the primary flavor in a velvety, satisfying dish that might just change how you think about this underappreciated vegetable. The Recipe What makes this soup special isn’t some complex technique or rare ingredie...
TRL vs Other Maturity Models: A Comparative Analysis
April 11, 2025
“So which framework should we use?” a colleague might ask when confronted with the many options for assessing technology maturity. If you’ve ever tried to navigate frameworks like TRLs, CMM, MVP, and Lean Startup, the abundance of acronyms and methodologies can be overwhelming. Let’s explore these four common approaches to determine when each might be most valuable. Four Approaches to Technology M...
OrdinalEncoder: When Order Matters in Categorical Data
April 10, 2025
In our previous post, we explored one-hot encoding, which creates binary columns for each category. But what if your categorical variable has a natural order, or you need a more compact representation? That’s where ordinal encoding comes in. Today, we’ll dive into the OrdinalEncoder from the category_encoders library - a simple yet powerful tool for handling categorical data. The Concept: Mapping ...
Measuring Success: EOS Metrics for Technology Organizations
April 9, 2025
This is Part 5 of our Building with EOS series. Check out Part 1 for the fundamentals of EOS, Part 2 for core components, Part 3 for tech implementation, and Part 4 for enhancing product development. “What gets measured gets managed,” they say. But in tech companies, figuring out exactly what to measure can feel like trying to count clouds. Should you track lines of code? User satisfaction? System...
Makefiles: The Unsung Hero of Python Development
April 8, 2025
I’ve been building Python libraries for years, and there’s one tool that consistently makes my life easier: the humble Makefile. Yes, that decades-old build automation tool from the C world. It might seem old school, but it’s become an essential part of my Python development workflow, and today I want to show you why. What’s a Makefile Anyway? If you’re coming from a pure Python background, you mi...
Atlanta Creek Restoration: Reviving Waterways for Wildlife & Community
April 7, 2025
As a cyclist who has traversed Atlanta’s urban landscape for years, I’ve had a front-row seat to the remarkable transformation of our city’s creeks. Pedaling along the evolving trails that trace Peachtree Creek, Nancy Creek, Tanyard Creek, and Proctor Creek has given me a unique perspective on these waterways. What once felt like forgotten backwaters, concrete channels I’d grudgingly ride past to ...
Modern Python Package Publishing: PyGeoHash's New CI/CD Pipeline
April 6, 2025
Gone are the days of manually building wheels and uploading them to PyPI - we now have a fully automated pipeline using GitHub Actions and PyPI’s Trusted Publisher system. Let me walk you through how we set this up, because it’s pretty cool. The Old Way vs The New Way Back in the day (like, last month), releasing PyGeoHash went something like this: Build the source distribution locally Build wheel...
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