Archive | Hack RSS feed for this section

17 February 2012 2 Comments

Some Metallica Setlist Analysis using Tableau Public Visualization Software and some Python Hacking

I’ve been messing around with Tableau Public for a few nights, and I must say that it is damned impressive, and I’ve used a LOT of Reporting / Analysis / Business Intelligence tools in my day.

I needed to do a proper test / POC; the question was – what kind of data do I use to give it a proper test drive?

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge Metallica fan, hell for as long as I can remember, that’s just been “one of my things” (as many current, ex-girlfriends, and ex-wives can attest to)…

2 June 2011 1 Comment

Cross Post: SQL Server, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, & Major League Baseball (I)

Just a recent article I wrote for the C&C Computer Solutions site / blog. Great stuff. Here’s a bit of the intro, but for the MEAT of it, you’ll have to go to the C&C site and read it yourself…

8 September 2010 8 Comments

Cut-N-Paste Corner: PHP function – Dynamically Round up to nearest 10, 100, 1000 or whatever (Graphing Axis Sex Toy)

One from the “Random-Shit-Pulled-Out-of-the-Junk-Drawer” Department… as I sit here and watch my beloved Red Sox cement their way OUT of playoffs… {sigh} Here’s a little function I use when building sexy little graphs in my PHP Reporting / Web Interfaces. Its good to calculate a MAX value for the graph axis. Since we never know […]

18 August 2010 7 Comments

Mortgage Software Hack: Importing Contacts automatically into Encompass WITHOUT the SDK (just with SQL)

Anyone who has ever dealt with the mortgage software package “Encompass” from Ellie Mae – from any kind of support / IT standpoint knows the pain. It just… well, doesn’t behave as you would assume. Seemingly simple things (from an integration / workflow standpoint) just don’t play nice, help in the web forums is laughable, […]

17 August 2010 25 Comments

Running Python script(s) as a Windows Service – Keep your Python Mojo Engines Running while you Sleep!

Now any Python duct-taper integrate-anything junkie like me has a need to schedule their things (in production) every once in awhile. Usually this is not a problem – Unix / Linux cron jobs handle this nicely – but for a client or job that runs on a Windows server – the built-in “Scheduled Tasks” just […]