What I'm up to this week (March 26, 2017)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/3628067413

I've made some pretty good Fortran progress this week, enough that I should have a review of the next third of the book later this week. I also made good on my thought from last week and did write a response in (mostly) defense of Matlab. I also bought two books on Python, one on general intermediate to advanced Python and the other on NumPy. Both are perhaps pushing my my familiarity with Python but that's sort of the point. And yes, as the photo suggests, I should probably stop buy books while I have a queue. If only they weren't so full of delicious, delicious knowledge...

In summary, my priorities for the week:

1. Continue focusing on the Fortran book to knock it out. Of course, finishing this book will probably lead to me to buy another I have my eye on. I think I have a problem.
2. I did get one of the gerrymandering projects downloaded and running, although I have yet to figure out how to have it run through the actual optimization process. I may have to contact the original author if it becomes too frustrating to try and figure out; the GitHub documentation is less than helpful when it comes to generating results. Document your code everybody.
3. After all this, I'll put some time into finishing reading/reviewing Probably approximately correct, and will probably spend some time looking up some SQL tools for a project I'm starting with a friend. I've already started skimming through the NumPy book, so that may move up the chain faster than some of this other stuff. We shall see.  

In the future I may need to do a post about Fortran. Now that I've spend some time learning it, I've also gained a greater appreciation for its niche in the world and why it's still relevant. I'm looking forward to using it as a real skill if I can manage it. 

I'm also looking into some interesting software a former coworker directed me towards. I don't want to talk about it too much before I know more about it, but depending on how things go it could have some exciting possibilities. You'll, of course, hear about it first here if anything comes of it.