Rick Martin | Thoughts on technology, writing & collaborating, living & learning on the other side of the world

Using Python to get an author's posts and word count from a Wordpress blog

Submitted by Rick Martin on Fri, 11/16/2012 - 14:33

So occasionally during my regular work over on the [TechInAsia.com][techinasia] blog, some repetitive or monotonous task arises that could be potentially automated somehow. Up until now, my toolbox to take these tasks on has been really limited, but my python skills are beginning to shape up so that I can actually implement some automation to take care of simple tasks.

Here's a simple script that I was working on yesterday, which returns a list of posts for a contributing writer in a given month, along with a word count for each post.

Timeline of Japan's Prime Ministers with Google Docs and Timeline JS

Submitted by Rick Martin on Sun, 09/16/2012 - 00:06

A while ago I tried visualizing all of Japan's many Prime Ministers on a Timeline using data from Wikipedia [^ft] and a Google Docs timeline gadget. It sort of worked, but was buggy... As I look at the page now, it does not work at all.

Adding a Markdown editor to Drupal

Submitted by Rick Martin on Sat, 09/08/2012 - 17:39

editor Here's a post about two very unlikely bed-fellows: Drupal and Markdown.

Drupal is a powerful CMS that I use on this site, even though it is sort of a kill-a-fly-with-a-bazooka solution, and has been a pretty continuous mind-fuck for me since I began flirting with it. From a non-developer point of view, 'flirting with Drupal' might be something akin to flirting with grizzly bear.

3/11 Video Map: Archiving YouTube Clips of the Japan Quake and Tsunami

Submitted by Rick Martin on Sat, 09/10/2011 - 20:22

3/11 Video Map: http://jp.1rick.com Update: It's now at QuakeMap.org

Some of you may recall the Newfoundland Hurricane video map I made back last September. I was a little fed up at the time with what I thought was primarily story-based disaster reporting from local news orgs, when there was an enormous amount of user-generated YouTube clips of the storm that were not being taken advantage of.

Wordpress Blogging with Markdown in TextMate

Submitted by rickmartin on Fri, 06/10/2011 - 01:56

Some of you may have figured out by now that I’m blogging over on Penn-Olson.com, an up-and-coming blog focused on technology in Asia. Think Mashable or Techcrunch but with an Asian focus. It means that I get to cover China again, something I haven’t done much of since moving leaving China for Japan back in 2008. But above all else it means that I get to experiment with new web publishing tools, something I seldom get to do when writing freelance for individual clients.

Contemplating Data Tools After the Quake

Submitted by rickmartin on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 23:34

Like many people in the weeks following the earthquake, I found myself trying to wrap my head around radiation data. I’ve been a big fan of data journalists/geeks for the past couple of years, and many of these people were doing great work after the quake. I tried to point them out on my own website by gathering their “quaketools,” and by writing a short feature in The Japan Times about data visualization.