Robin's Blog

Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category

A Python sqlite3 context manager gotcha

I’ve neglected this blog for a while – partly due to the chaos of 2020 (which is not great), and partly due to being busy with work (which is good!). Anyway, I’m starting to pick it up again, and I thought I’d start with something that caught me out the other day. So, let’s start […]

Automatically downloading nursery photos from ParentZone using Selenium

My son goes to a nursery part-time, and the nursery uses a system called ParentZone from Connect Childcare to send information between us (his parents) and nursery. Primarily, this is used to send us updates on the boring details of the day (what he’s had to eat, nappy changes and so on), and to send […]

Easily specifying colours from the default colour cycle in matplotlib

Another quick matplotlib tip today: specifically, how easily specify colours from the standard matplotlib colour cycle. A while back, when matplotlib overhauled their themes and colour schemes, they changed the default cycle of colours used for lines in matplotlib. Previously the first line was pure blue (color='b' in matplotlib syntax), then red, then green etc. […]

Markdown in WordPress – and writing blog posts is fun again

As you may have noticed, I hadn’t blogged here for quite a while, but have recently started blogging regularly again. This is mostly due to sorting out various WordPress issues I was having, and installing some new plugins to make writing blog posts fun again. Ever since I installed the WordPress update that added the […]

Five new-ish Python things – Part 1

I keep gathering links of interesting Python things I’ve seen around the internet: new packages, good tutorials, and so on – and so I thought I’d start a series where I share them every so often. Not all of these are new new – some have been around for a while but are new to […]

Automatically generating a legend for a choropleth layer in Leaflet

Some work I’ve been doing recently has involved putting together a webmap using the Leaflet library. I’ve been very impressed with how Leaflet works, and the range of plugins available for it. leaflet-choropleth is an extension for Leaflet that allows easy generation of choropleth maps in Leaflet. The docs for this module are pretty good, […]