Accidentally in Code

Tag: Twitter

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-14

    • Monday morning inspiration from @zenhabits http://zenhabits.net/2009/12/20-motivation-questions/ #
    • After more great advice from @tgrevatt – scheduling at 80% of capacity – http://bit.ly/4M4d2b #
    • TravelPod is looking for a Javascript programmer: http://bit.ly/62pESf know anyone who'd be good at it? Pass it on! #
    • Coding, but out the window I can see the snow. Suddenly it's really winter! #
    • Getting an NPE from GraphML parser, and I'm not sure why. File is fine, checked it, constructor theoretically takes a file… gah! #
    • Still coding! Little bit of scripting in python and now I'm trying to implement clique finding in Haskell. #
    • I think I was dreaming about Haskell all night. #
    • At least I didn't dream I was a recirsive function though. That was really weird. #
    • Crikey! Disturbing! RT @jpdaigle I once dreamt I was a reference-counting garbage collector. Don't worry, your night of Haskell is nothing. #
    • I totally implemented clique finding in Haskell AND it's super fast. And has an application, one you may find useful… blog post up soon. #
    • Clique finding and Haskell, applications to discovering stuff about your twitter network: http://bit.ly/8n4NgG #
    • OK proving @isfalk wrong on Haskell is enough work for today (hehe) off to #GGD to meet this @krusk I've heard such nice things about! 🙂 #
    • Hmm yoga at 1030? It's about a block away but… Wow that's a lot of snow! #
    • Blogged about last nights #GGD – was awesome meeting everyone! http://bit.ly/4vqgGE #
    • Finally hid Farmville from my Facebook stream. Starting to dislike everyone I know because they all play it. Why why why?!?! #
    • Dear file hosting, why are you breaking my xml? Not cool. #
    • Exception Exception Exception *** !!! *** !!! *** !!! *** #
    • Burn exceptions burn! I'm so defeating you! Pow! I should have my own cartoon where I go around fighting evil using mad debugging skillz, yo #
    • The last bit is pretty hilarious – Google no longer against evil – http://bit.ly/7bk69g /via @adambrunner @GergelyOrosz #
    • This guy is a disgusting misogynist, gets rightly trounced (catholics on women's right to choose) http://bit.ly/7nYbQL #
    • Oops! Didn't credit @dlitz for link in this tweet – sorry! http://twitter.com/kittenthebad/status/6517336021 #
    • Noooo not another NPE, so close to done :'( #
    • NPE totally defeated. Now it's time for bed 🙂 #
    • Just didn't update my privacy on Facebook. Surprised, but read paper that crawled a *lot* of data- many people have open settings to network #
    • Of course when you join a network, Facebook would automatically make everything visible. Got caught by that a couple of times. Wasn't happy. #
    • Gah gah gah incorrect indentation error noooooooooooooo!!!!! Also boyf is insane / ridiculous / very distracting. #
    • Anyone know how to embed an applet into a web page? Including building (has jar and data file dependencies). Thanks! #
    • Abstract for presentation I'm giving tomorrow on cliques+Twitter, everyone welcome (can try and get a more exact time) http://bit.ly/71JN0s #
    • Have you signed the petition for libel reform yet? http://libelreform.org/sign #
    • Earlier I was all, "can't go to the gym code broken" but I went (PT) and on the cross trainer I realized what was wrong. So cool 🙂 #
    • Pet hobo has arrived to investigate this whole applet thing. He ate a whole chicken at 3am apparently, don't think that's normal? #
    • Message from GHCI: "ghc: panic! (the 'impossible' happened)".
      Oops. #
    • Oooh so close… go pet hobo go! #
    • Why are people wishing me a merry xmas? I don't celebrate it. One of them was the passive aggressive nutjob, and no, still don't like her! #
    • Graphing no. of cliques vs following/follower – you might recognize some of my data points! http://bit.ly/4FwrHm #
    • Incidentally, looking for more data points… comes with some cool visualizations… ping me if you're OK with me analyzing you! #
    • Slides up for presentation today at 2:20 – featuring graphs for @jdemond @krusk @snookca – let me know what you think! http://bit.ly/7wJP8H #
    • Have realized don't have requisite connector for presentation. Off to apple store. Eeep! Bit nervous! #
    • OK have the cable. Talks starting. Forgot to have lunch. Breathe! #
    • About to commence marking. 2 assignments and I can't go home until it's done. #
    • 5 assignments down, who knows how many to go. Will to live officially gone. Too cold to go for tea :'( #
    • Strange dream of nemesis killing someone last night. Realized she's "teaching" my friend to ski. Sent him tips-hopefully won't get hurt :-s #
    • Mediocre skiers passing on bad habits=potential disaster. When I was qualifying, used to give free lessons to stop people killing friends. #
    • Done with marking. Commencing re-marking. May get to leave around midnight. Lovely boyf turned up with Dr Pepper and chocolate. I'm lucky! #
    • Flying back to the UK tonight. I've checked in, but haven't started packing. Eeep! #
    • Heading for lunch at Yummy Sushi (Chinatown) with my friends at 12. Come if you're not busy! If you're single female, lots of single boys. #
    • Encountering my first foodie cab driver, he's giving us lots of restaurant recommendations! Japanese villiage sounds pretty good. #
    • Male friend on strip clubs – "it's exploitative of men, it exploits a bug in the male firmware". #
    • Should probably start packing… #
    • Nearly packed and I don't even have to leave for over an hour. What's happened to me? Have lost my hotel-dwelling-hobo skills. #
    • Assuming that mad-panic packing is a skill. This is, of course, debatable. #
    • Packed and ready to go but where's my ride? Worried about taking 2 laptops through security. Byeeeee canadians, back soon! #
    • Made it to airport in time, bag within limit and plane packed but on time. Cate out! #
    • Yay my dad wants to buy me an iPhone and a time capsule. I should come home more often 🙂 #
    • Yes, I'm a little spoiled… #

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  • Slides for Applied Clique Finding: Discovering More about your Twitter Network

    Abstract can be found here.

    As ever, let me know what you think!

    Applied Cliqe Finding: Discovering More about your Twitter Network

    View more presentations from Cate Huston.

  • Chart Showing Number of Cliques / Follower / Following

    You can change around the axis etc however you like. Suggestion:

    Color: unique colors

    Size: Number of Cliques

    Y-axis: Followers

    X-axis: Following

    Now press the “play” button at the bottom left of the chart. You’ll see the bubbles change in size. I know it looks like a year, but it’s not – 1903 means number of cliques of size 3, 1904 is number of cliques of size 4, etc (haven’t figured out how to fix this yet, if anyone knows please let me know in the comments – thanks!)

  • Applied Clique Finding: Discovering More About Your Twitter Network

    Abstract for a talk I’m giving tomorrow some time between 1300h and 1500h at the University of Ottawa. Let me know if you want to attend (slides will be up later).

    Follower / Following networks are essentially meaningless on Twitter due to the prevalence of spam. However by creating the graphs of conversation networks it is possible to create a better picture of more meaningful connections – the other users that interact / are interacted with by a given user. For power users, however, these graphs can be extremely busy, making it difficult to pick out the most important conversations and connections.

    One potential way to summarize the most important connections in a network is to pull out cliques – completely connected sub-graphs. These cliques may represent part of a users core network, or a suggestion of new users to interact with by generating those cliques that a user is connected to. For example, user A might be in a clique with users B, C, D and users B, C, D may be in a clique with a 5th user, E. This suggests that user A might well be interested to interact with user E, as well. This may also help us determine tie strength as well, as a clique is likely an indication of a stronger tie strength than just a singly connected node.

  • List Visualizations

    So these have been on a bit of a back burner lately, with the end of the semester and associated craziness. However I had a suggestion from Treena that’s been sitting in my inbox for a while. She suggested I try @erinblaskie‘s lists, here’s hoping they show more of what I think this visualization will be useful for bringing out (lists that represent actual mini-communities, rather than just grouping people you follow).

    First up: metinreallife. After I graphed this for the first time, I removed an outlier who was following/followed by a ton of people, causing every other point to clump together at the bottom left of the axes. removing it improved things somewhat, as you can see below. It’s noticeable that the more engaged people in the list (in terms of conversations) are not those with the most followers. You can get to the interactive version by clicking on the image (for any of the graphs below).

    4e4b4fc4-e2a8-11de-961a-000255111976 Blog_this_caption

    Next: interesting. There were no conversations in this, though, so I decided not to graph it.

    Third: askerinlive. Again, there were few conversations in this, so I didn’t graph it.

    I’m really looking for lists that represent communities, and perhaps a better way to go about this is to look for lists with more people following them. Erin’s most followed list is one for Ottawa, but that has 500 people in it. Intuitively, I’m looking for lists with a good ratio of people following them to the people in the list.

    Let’s try geekylikeme: Following 155, followers 18. This one is better, but the outliers make it really hard to read. I wonder if it’s better to do it by ratio of followers/following plotted against number of mentions. I’d like to try this on a logarithmic scale, but ManyEyes does not support it. Really, I want more control over the graph which does not appear to be supported.

    90195dd8-e357-11de-8ec3-000255111976 Blog_this_captionThe last list I’m going to try is entrepreneurship, Following 107, followers 14. Again, the points with more influence within the list (more conversation) are clustered in the bottom left corner.

    92316e56-e359-11de-8921-000255111976 Blog_this_caption

    What have I learned from this?

    • Outliers are rarely the most influential in a list. Interaction is probably limited by followers/following – when very popular interaction will be low proportionally out of necessity.
    • I’m not looking for lists of celebrities (or wannabe celebrities), I’m looking for lists that represent communities. Thus the GGDOttawa list is the best I’ve found so far.
    • ManyEyes does not give me all the functionality I want, for example logarithmic scales, and it’s hard to remove outlying data-points (lots of clicks). Going to try Google Widgets next.

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-07

    • After relaxing weekend I'm excited to get on with stuff – is that weird? #
    • Why is everyone playing Scamville and other stupid games and inviting me? Makes me angry and I despise you a little, so's you know. Grr. #
    • Anybody want to go to X'tian indoctrination event and spy on them? Then report them to Int'l Office? Friday 4-6. #
    • Reflecting on lessons in leadership and potential failure: http://bit.ly/7plgb2 #
    • I love love love this blog post about how to hire programmers: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring #
    • Urgh not in the mood to go out tonight, it's cold outside :'( Hopefully it will be a good one! Going to Third Tuesday. #
    • For some reason I decided that PT at 9:30 tomorrow morning was a good idea. Why? And why do we never have any food? #
    • Terrible night's sleep. Gotta go to PT but feel like a small child – I don't want to!! #
    • After all that, PT had cancelled apt yesterday. But she called me, so I didn't know. Should prob start answering phone… #
    • Coding! #
    • Small break to make my 16th loan on @kiva, 2nd one out of repaid funds! V exciting 🙂 #
    • I <3 coding 🙂 javajavajava! #
    • Heading to @thecodefactory for Students and Startups, then onto Pho at Saigon with my friends, if anyone fancies it 🙂 #
    • It's hard to give a 30 second introduction to a room of strangers! http://bit.ly/5x3FbJ – Thanks to @thecodefactory for interesting event. #
    • Yes, I am up and working at 6am. Couldn't sleep – too much to do! Going to need a lot of tea… #
    • After yesterday's coding I have news on The Refactoring and am taking graph requests… http://bit.ly/5O7m0g #
    • Great article on psychology of "what does god think" – is basically "what do I think" – http://bit.ly/5u1rGL #atheist #
    • OK now I could go back to bed for a nap… must keep going! #
    • Office mate and I had a good moan about crazy courses we're taking. Feeling a bit better about things. May nap at desk. #
    • Dear Facebook, there are a lot of people I don't talk to because they're annoying/play Scamville. Please stop encouraging me to "connect". #
    • Why is aircanada.com so broken? And the uOttawa wifi too? Just trying to book a flight! **sobs** #
    • Want to list things that have gone wrong today, but 140 chars is not enough :,( #
    • If anything happens to boyf, it's possibly because he put a picture of Gordon Brown in the living room. It's not for target practise. #
    • Yay! I have tickets! Going to the UK from 12th-22nd December. #
    • Introducing @dlitz to the wombles, he says, "they're like dangerous tellytubbies". He's so wrong. #
    • Just got my first xmas gift. A minion was dispatched to Ottawa with it from NY. Seriously. Awesome. I <3 my friend John! #
    • Good article about Pie Charts & data visualization from Tim Wilson http://bit.ly/6lxZn5 #measure /via @isfalk @immeria #
    • Thanks to darling @dlitz I can code on my new laptop! Finally! Git is going to make things easier 🙂 #
    • When I get back from the uk I'm getting in on this @foursquare malarky. #
    • Crikey!! I'm featured on @BrazenCareerist again! #
    • Today I get to just work on stuff I think is important. Wish that happened more often! #
    • Slides up for "An Introduction to Processing" – let me know if you're interested! http://bit.ly/6PjSei #
    • Interesting perspective – To Hell With Personal Branding http://bit.ly/8lSZwl /via @BrazenCareerist /by @CarlosMic #
    • My friend is over-we're discussing the benefits of his potential marriage to a Swedish girl he's never met, and where it should take place. #
    • 5 Ways Goal Setting Can Go Wrong http://bit.ly/4nxqeE /via @BrazenCareerist /by @CareerSavvy101 #
    • Pet hobo is really distressed by the tv stand in the middle of our apartment. I'm going to allow him to clean things now. #
    • Wow our apartment looks so much bigger now, pet hobo had a point. Next recycling and cleaning the bathroom. Everyone should have a pet hobo! #
    • Thinking Like a Programmer – slideshow of explanation I've given repeatedly this semester! http://bit.ly/8hFfHm #
    • Boyf and pet hobo brought up a random chair from the trash to see what I'd say. Here it is: not impressed, why would you do that? #
    • My friend is presenting at seminar, so I have to go. Wish I could stay in bed though. V sleepy and seminar stupid. Happy Friday everyone! #
    • Duck typing the world (specifically people) – let me know what you think. http://bit.ly/5LgoUB #
    • Urgh sleepy. But which of the zillion things I need to do should I start on? #
    • Frustrated. I want to be better visually than I am. #
    • Just received very bizarre phone call from my friend… we're planning my outfit just in case he decides to get married. #
    • Stunning redesign of former fugly (the british plug) http://bit.ly/1bdNkc /via @zara_p @deworde @MitchBenn #
    • The wonderful @tgrevatt took me to Les Fougeres for brekkie followed by creme brulee. V tasty! Must work out later though! #
    • Out for dinner with friends. A guy called tin tin seems to have a crush on boyf. #
    • Mocking my friend @pinemud who stabbed himself in the hand (hasn't got old yet). In defence, someone points out "i don't think he meant to". #
    • "I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic" – are you kidding me? http://j.mp/gNkH1 #
    • This is super cute – http://twitpic.com/ryxvn – Hundreds Gather to Protest Global Warming /via @dlitz @zchamu #
    • Graphed list from @velevetescape – see it at http://bit.ly/7ytm5N – please suggest if you have any lists that would viz well and pls RT. #
    • Introduced @jpdaigle to dim sum, and he discovered a cockroach. Not good. Poor @pinemud will probably never eat there again. #
    • Feeling sick and sorry for myself. Thinking to give up on Sunday night productivity. #
    • Stunning! Water Drop @ 2000 Frames Bounces – http://su.pr/2mTmxc /via @chris_saunders #
    • Real car does giant loop the loop! Awesome! http://adjix.com/nwye /via @postsecret #

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  • The Refactoring

    A TDD inspired sculpture at RubyConf
    Credit: flickr / alancfrancis

    Lately I’ve been working on something that I’m calling The Refactoring.

    Not that long ago, I wrote about my Twitter Conversation Networks (read the rationale behind them) and I was blown away by the popularity and the amazing feedback that I got. So I tried to incorporate it all in.

    Here’s the thing, though, it was an experiment and frankly kind of a hack. I didn’t have a clear idea of where I’d go with it, I was just playing with things and seeing what would happen. So I rapidly realized that it wouldn’t scale as it was, and I needed to go back to the beginning and start again from scratch, building more complex data structures and making it as modular as possible.

    In tutorials and the lab, I’m often telling students not to get too attached to their code. In fact, when one of them was reluctant to delete a load I told him about this and he looked at me in horror. But it was easy for me to throw it out and start over, because the first thing was just a prototype and after seeing how people used it I have so many more ideas, that will be so much easier when I design it from the ground up with scalability and potential in mind. In fact, I’ve effectively created a Twitter data-mining library that will make it easy to extract information from your network, which is also used to generate the data for my List Visualizations. This will (eventually!) be open-sourced.

    The thing no-one tells you about being a grad student, though, is how little time you get to spend coding. Between TA-ing (especially marking), this course I’m taking with the copious amount of homework, reading papers, and making presentations… I’m not where I want to be. However, I made significant progress on it yesterday and here are some of the things that are going to be possible, as a result of The Refactoring.

    • Weak-tie and strong-tie graphs, so you’ll be able to say I just want to see connections where there are a minimum of two mentions, or three. I’m interested to see how this will change the graph for a user, as we progressively increase the threshold.
    • Your full graph (including weak ties) but only stronger ties for those people you’re connected to – this should help filter out noise as the graphs get very busy. You’ll be able to have an increment, that will increase the threshold as you get further from your central node. This means that it will be possible to go to a greater depth.
    • Related to this, this should make it easy to show connections amongst your first degree nodes, but not connections to people you are not connected to.
    • Reciprocal connection only graphs.

    What else would you like to see about your network?

    I really hope to finish this tomorrow and will need test subjects. You can indicate below if you want to be one, comment including your Twitter handle and what kind of graph you want (i.e. specify tie-strength for central node, tie-strength for first-degree and increment – if any).

    The first five people to comment will definitely get graphs. Thereafter, I’ll do my best but it is the end of the semester so I cannot promise anything on the time frame, sorry.

  • Tweet Cloud

    Tweet Cloud

    Lots of people seemed to be making these the other day, they’re kinda cute.

    Tweet Cloud: Day
    Tweet Cloud: Day
    Tweet Cloud: Month
    Tweet Cloud: Month

    You can get one here if you want: warning it uses OAuth and automatically sends out a Tweet, which I hate. I also heard something about unsolicited DM’s, but if you’re concerned about that all you need to do after you’ve made your cloud is go into your settings page and revoke it’s access.

  • New Lists Visualization!

    I know, it’s been a long time coming. But finally – my new visualization which I’ve created using IBM’s Many Eyes (which is awesome, although very blue).

    Since Twitter released it’s new “Lists” feature, there’s been talk about how Lists are a good way to measure influence – someone who is on more lists is likely to be more influential. Likewise, someone with lots of followers who’s not on any lists (or maybe one called “spammers”) is less influential.

    However, what about measuring influence within lists? For instance, if you’re using lists to collect a group of people, such as the Girl Geek Dinners list, it might be nice to visualize something that indicates how influential people are within that network.

    So, what I’m doing is displaying the scatter-graph of followers vs following, with the size of the bubble being proportional to the number of times the user has been mentioned by another user in the list.

    See the dynamic one for my friends here. Static one below:

    9117565e-d240-11de-be19-000255111976 Blog_this_caption

    Here’s the one for GGDOttawa (dynamic version here):
    B2507ef0-d249-11de-aa1c-000255111976 Blog_this_captionHere’s one for @velevetescape/cool-tweeps – see the dynamic one here. This one is hard to see properly because some trailing values drag the axes out. Eliminating the outliers might really improve it.

    Ae58a324-e278-11de-be05-000255111976 Blog_this_caption

    More coming soon! Taking requests and suggestions!