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341 posts latest post 2026-05-11
Publishing rhythm
Feb 2026 | 6 posts

Pytest capsys

Testing print/log statements in pytest can be a bit tricky, capsys makes it super easy, but I often struggle to find it. capsys # [1] capsys is a builtin pytest fixture that can be passed into any test to capture stdin/stdout. For a more comprehensive description check out the docs on capsys [2] using capsys # [3] Simply create a test function that accepts capsys as an argument and pytest will give you a capsys opject. def test_print(capsys): print('hello') captured = capsys.readouterr() assert 'hello' in captured.out print('world') captured = capsys.readouterr() assert 'world' in captured.out References: [1]: #capsys [2]: https://docs.pytest.org/en/stable/capture.html#accessing-captured-output-from-a-test-function [3]: #using-capsys
1 min read

Building Rich a Dev Server

Draft Post I’ve really been digging @willmcgugan’s [1] rich [2] library for creating TUI like interfaces in python. I’ve only recently started to take full advantage of it. Dev Server # [3] I am working on a project in which I want to have a dev server running continuously in the background. I really like dev servers theat automatically chooose an unused port and list out the running pid so that I can kill it if I need to. - automatic port number - auto-restart - display ( port, pid, uptime ) finding the port # [4] I am very novice at best when it comes to sockets, the following function came from searching StackOverflow for how to tell if a port is in use. I recursively check if a port is being used, if it is I increment by one until I find an unused port to return. def find_port(port=8000): """Find a port not in ues starting at given port""" import socket with socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) as s: if s.connect_ex(("localhost", port)) == 0: return f...

Site Down During Build

Recently I noticed a new netlify site of mine was down while I was checking to see if new content was live. Later found out this was consistent after each and every push the site would go gown as soon as I hit push, and would not come back until the build finished. Is this normal? # [1] Do other Netlify sites go down during build??? Short Answer NO. All of my google fu lead me to believe I was alone and none of my other sites do this. Digging into my build # [2] My deploy script ends with the following. After resetting keys and watching it build half a dozen times I determined that everything was working as normal here. - name: Deploy to Netlify uses: nwtgck/[email protected] with: publish-dir: "./markout" production-branch: markout production-deploy: true deploy-message: "Deploy markout from GitHub Actions" env: NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN }} NETLIFY_SITE_ID: ${{ secrets.NETLIFY_SITE_ID }} Opening the Nelify Console # [3] After poking at t...

Kedro pipeline_registry.py

With the realease of kedro==0.17.2 came a new module in the project template pipeline_registry.py. Here are some notes that I learned while playing with this new module. migrating to pipeline_registry.py # [1] - create a src/<package-name>/pipeline_registry.py file create a - register_pipelines function in pipeline_registry.py that mirrors the - register_pipelines method from your hooks.py module do not bring the - hook_impl decorator remove register_pipelines method on your ProjectHooks - class You should now have something that looks like this in your src/<package-name>/pipeline_registry.py. """Project pipelines.""" from typing import Dict from kedro.pipeline import Pipeline def register_pipelines() -> Dict[str, Pipeline]: """Register the project's pipelines. Returns: A mapping from a pipeline name to a ``Pipeline`` object. """ return {"__default__": Pipeline([])} pipeline_registry only works in kedro>=0.17.2 Conflict Resolution # [2] What happens If I register p...

Stand With Your Team

People who are quick to toss team members under a bus are not well trusted or highly thought of and it will lead to some toxic team dynamics. Building Steam # [1] While collaborating on any project there are going to be decisions made that aren’t necessarily your favorite, during a summer internship my mentor made some decisions that I was not on board with, but I accepted his wisdom and moved forward with little push back. Full Spead Ahead # [2] During a review, leadership showed interest in the option that I wanted to go towards. I was quick to jump up and say I told you so right then and there and pitch reasons why my idea was so much better. The Aftermath # [3] I walked out so proud that leadership recognized my idea, but I will never forget the look on my teammate’s face and what he told me after the meeting. “Wow quick to throw me under the bus in front of everyone 😢”. I ~ my teammate Realizing what Happened # [4] It was at this moment that I threw my mentor, a good ...

Blogging For Me

I create this blog with one person in mind, me. There are others like me # [1] This is not completely selfish, as there are likely many others out there that think similarly to me. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and varying levels of experience. In no way do you need to be an expert to create content others will benefit from. Accurate # [2] I am as accurate as possible. I don’t know everything, and If I waited for that to happen I would never post, or write at such a high level no one else (including me) would ever want to read. Generally I know that I am directionally accurate for most of the article. In fact there is often a part of the article that I don’t feel the best about. It may have been some code that could have been better. I try to point these things out. Often when I am and point out where I know there is improvement to be had I get the most welcoming comments, “that was just fine how you did that”, or “I tried that myself and saw a better abstraction. ...
3 min read

Minimal Kedro Pipeline

How small can a minimum kedro pipeline ready to package be? I made one within 4 files that you can pip install. It’s only a total of 35 lines of python, 8 in setup.py and 27 in mini_kedro_pipeline.py. 📝 Note this is only a composable pipeline, not a full project, it does not contain a catalog or runner. Minimal Kedro Pipeline # [1] I have everything for this post hosted in this gihub repo [2], you can fork it, clone it, or just follow along. Installation # [3] pip install git+https://github.com/WaylonWalker/mini-kedro-pipeline Caveats # [4] This repo represents the minimal amount of structure to build a kedro pipeline that can be shared across projects. Its installable, and drops right into your hooks.py or run.py modules. It is not a runnable pipeline. At this point I think the config loader requires to have a logging config file. This is a sharable pipeline that can be used across many different projects. Usage # [5] # hooks.py import mini_kedro_project as mkp class Pro...

Markdown Cli

This is a post that may be a work in progress for awhile, Its a collections of thoughts on managing my blog, but could be translated into anythiung that is just a collection of markdown. Listing things # [1] - posts - tags - draft posts data # [2] - frontmatter - filepath - content - template - html [3] render content # [4] - Markdown.Markdown - support extentsions frontmatter cleaning. # [5] - provide ways to hook in or clean up the frontmatter Markata.Markata methods # [6] - load - render - save Markata.Post methods # [7] - load - render - save Markata plugins # [8] - before_load - before_post_load - after_load - after_post_load - before_save - before_post_save - after_save - after_post_save Markata plugins # [9] - cleanse_frontmatter - html_feed - json_feed - rss_feed - save_posts CLI # [10] $ markata list tags python data $ markata [ { "title": "post title", "description": "this is a post", "filepath": "path_to.md", "content": "the ...

My Content Strategy For 2021

I am making another push in 2021 to get my content out in the world and meeting users where they are. See how I plan to execute. Platforms # [1] - waylonwalker.com - Twitter - DEV - hashnode - Medium - LinkedIn - Anchor Markdown # [2] My content is written in markdown, all markdown. I find that markdown does a really great job at getting out of the way and letting ideas flow onto the page. I am never fussing with fonts and formatting while physically writing posts. Not that I don’t spend way more time than I need to tweak these things on my own personal site where everything gets posted. Articles # [3] Much of what I create is inside of short articles that get posted to my personal site waylonwalker.com [4]. These will get cross-posted to DEV [5], hashnode [6], Medium [7]. I have made cross-posting a bit easier for myself by posting the markdown for each article next to the post on my personal site. Add .md to any post and there is the source. Should I be giving my art...
3 min read 💬 1

Quickly Edit Posts

Recently I automated starting new posts with a python script. Today I want to work on the next part that is editing those posts quickly. Automating my Post Starter [1] Check out this post about setting up my posts with python 🐍 Enter Bash # [2] For the process of editing a post I just need to open the file in vim quickly. I dont need much in the way of parsing and setting up the frontmatter. I think this is a simple job for a bash script and fzf. - change to the root of my blog - fuzzy find the post - open it with vim - change back to the directory I was in bash function # [3] For this I am going to go with a bash function. This is partly due to being able to track where I was and get back. Also the line with nvim will run fzf everytime you source your ~/.alias file which is not what we want. Lets setup the boilerplate. Its going to create a function called ep "edit post", track our current directory, create a sub function _ep. Then call that function and cd back to where...

Gitui is a blazing fast terminal git interface

Gitui is a terminal-based git [1] user interface (TUI) that will change the way that you work with git. I have been a long-time user of the git cli, and it’s been hard to beat, mostly because there is nothing that keeps my fingers on the keyboard quite like it, except gitui which comes with some great ways to very quickly walk through a git project. installation # [2] Go to their [releases]https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui/releases) page, download the latest build, and pop it on your PATH. I have the following stuffed away in some install scripts to get the latest version. install latest release GITUI_VERSION=$(curl --silent https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui/releases/latest | tr -d '"' | sed 's/^.*tag\///g' | sed 's/>.*$//g' | sed 's/^v//') wget https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui/releases/download/v${GITUI_VERSION}/gitui-linux-musl.tar.gz -O- -q | sudo tar -zxf - -C /usr/bin/ run gitui # [3] It opens blazing fast. gitui Quick Commits # [4] Sometimes I edit a number of fi...
2 min read

Kedro - My Data Is Not A Table

In python data science/engineering most of our data is in the form of some sort of table, typically a DataFrame from a library like pandas, spark, or dask. DataFrames are the heart of most pipelines # [1] These containers for data contain many convenient methods to manipulate table like data structures. Sometimes we leverage other data types, namely vanilla types like lists and dicts, or even numpy data types. What is Kedro [2] unfamiliar with kedro, check out this post Sometimes datasets are not tables # [3] There are times when our data doesn’t fit nicely into a DataFrame. Lucky for us Kedro has pickle support out of the box. Pickle is a way to store any python object to disk. Beware that pickle files coming from an unknown source can run malicous code and are considered unsafe. For the most part though when you read and write your own pickle files they are a good tool to consider. See more about pickle [4] from python.org. Cataloging Pickle # [5] I may have a dictionary ...

Quickly Change Conda Env With Fzf

Changing conda environments is a bit verbose, I use a function with fzf that both lists environments and selects the one I want in one go. Conda # [1] I have used conda as a virtual environment [2] tool for years now. I started using conda for its simplicity to install packages on windows, but now that has gotten so much better and it’s been years since I have run a conda install command. I’m sure that I could use a different environment manager, but it works for me and makes sense. What environment manager do you use for python? Conda environments are stored in a central location such as ~/miniconda3/envs/ and not with the project. They contain both the python interpreter and packages for that env. Conda create # [3] Conda environments are created with the conda create command. At this point, you will need to name your env and select the python version. conda create -n my_env python=3.8 After running this command you will have a directory ~/miniconda3/envs/my_env with a base...
3 min read

Vim Replace Visual Star

Replacing text based on whats in the current search register is a quite handy tool that I use often. I believe I picked this tip up from Nick Janetakis, check out his YouTube channel for some amazing vim tips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP_ckZ30gbs If there is one thing that I Like most about vim it’s the ability to hack on it and make it work well for you. Replacing text in vim # [1] Vim can often be a bit verbose, but that’s ok because we can hack on it, and make our own shortcuts and keybindings. For instance, finding and replacing text requires using a command at the vim command-line :. Replacing foo with bar looks like this :%s/foo/bar/g, the final g means all of the foos, not just the first one on the line. making it better # [2] I have a keybinding in my init.vim that will allow me to search for a pattern with the usual / character, page through them as normal with n and N, but when I press <C-R> it will populate the replace command for me so that all I need to do ...
2 min read 💬 3

Minimal Python Package

What does it take to create an installable python package that can be hosted on pypi? What is the minimal python package # [1] - setup.py - my_module.py This post is somewhat inspired by the bottle framework, which is famously created as a single python module. Yes, a whole web framework is written in one file. Directory structure # [2] . ├── setup.py └── my_pipeline.py setup.py # [3] from setuptools import setup setup( name="", version="0.1.0", py_modules=["my_pipeline", ], install_requires=["kedro"], ) name # [4] The name of the package can contain any letters, numbers, “_”, or “-”. Even if it’s for internal/personal consumption only I usually check for discrepancy with pypi so that you don’t run into conflicts. Note that pypi treats “-” and “_” as the same thing, beware of name clashes version # [5] This is the version number of your package. Most packages follow semver [6]. At a high level its three numbers separated by a . that follow the format major.minor.patc...
2 min read

If Tmux

I do much of my work from tmux, I love it so much that I want to setup some functionality that puts me in tmux even if I didn’t ask for it. Bash Function # [1] Bash function to check if the shell is in a tmux session. in_tmux () { if [ -n "$TMUX" ]; then return 0 else return 1 fi } Using the bash function # [2] I often open up vim to do some quite edits, but before I know it I have several splits open and I need access to another shell utility, but I forgot to start in tmux. This function makes sure tht I start in tmux everytime. Using if_tmux to ensure vim is opened in tmux. vim () { in_tmux \ && nvim \ || bash -c "\ tmux new-session -d;\ tmux send-keys nvim Space +GFiles C-m;\ tmux -2 attach-session -d; " } I am not quite sure if this is proper use of the && and ||, let me know if you have a better way to do one thing if in_tmux returns true and another if it returns faslse. References: [1]: #bash-function [2]: #using-the-bash-function

Save Vim Macro

If you are like me, you have created a macro or two that is pure glory, and you forget how you made it after a day or so, or you immediately want to store it away as a custom keybinding. As with most things with vim, it’s easy to do once you understand it. Creating a Macro # [1] One of the earliest things we all learn to do in vim is to create macros, custom sets of functionality stored in a register that can be replayed later. To create a macro, get into normal mode, then type q followed by a letter that you want to store the macro under. qq Note: a common throw-away macro register is q because it’s easy to hit qq from normal mode to start recording. Replaying a Macro # [2] Macros can be replayed using @ followed by the letter that you stored the macro under. @q Registers # [3] Registers are nothing more than a single character key mapping to a value of some text. As you yank, delete, or create macros in vim, it automatically stores text into these registers. When you hit...
3 min read 💬 3
Live Substitution In Neovim

Live Substitution In Neovim

Replacing text in vim can be quite frustrating especially since it doesn’t have live feedback to what is changing. Today I was watching Josh Branchaud’s Vim-Unalphabet series on Youtuve and realized that his vim was doing this and I had to have it. https://twitter.com/_WaylonWalker/status/1346081617199198210 How to do it # [1] I had to do a bit of searching and found a great post from vimcasts [2] that shows exactly how to get the live search and replace highlighting using inccomand :h inccommand # [3] 'inccommand' 'icm' string (default "") global "nosplit": Shows the effects of a command incrementally, as you type. "split" : Also shows partial off-screen results in a preview window. Works for |:substitute|, |:smagic|, |:snomagic|. |hl-Substitute| If the preview is too slow (exceeds 'redrawtime') then 'inccommand' is automatically disabled until |Command-line-mode| is done. Add this to your config # [4] I believe that this is a neovim only feature, add it into your ~...

Newsboat

Web browsers are a black hole of productivity. I try to use them as little as possible when it is time to focus. I try to use help, ?, or ?? with ipython, or –help at the command line as much as possible. What about that time I am trying to see what my online friends are posting on their sites? I used to used google reader quite heavily before that was taken down. Newsboat # [1] I am going to give a terminal rss reader a try for a bit and see how that goes for me. I have really struggled to get into an rss reader since google reader died. installation # [2] I installed with the reccomended snap for Ubuntu. sudo snap install newsboat Adding feeds # [3] super simple Running help for newsboat directed me towards their config files at the bottom. ❯ newsboat --help newsboat r2.22 usage: /snap/newsboat/3849/usr/local/bin/newsboat [-i <file>|-e] [-u <urlfile>] [-c <cachefile>] [-x <command> ...] [-h] -e, --export-to-opml export OPML feed to stdout -r, --refresh-on-start refresh f...