15/11/2021
mORE pYTHON
Progress! New project up on GitHub, a web-scraper for images which can be used for example as a way to find the most popular album covers of all time. Data gathering algorithms drive the future of software optimization and behavior analysis.
Download the images using a certain size, in this case 1600x1600 which would be the most common album art size - unless there is a thumbnail image version for a certain software that would be even larger in terms of search results. The way to google image-search using a particular image resolution is to add imagesize:WIDTHxHEIGHT to your search. This helps with eliminating practically all non-album-cover images from my results.
nOT NECESSARilY the most accurate result with 10 images, but with hundreds of images you’ll already start to get the bigger picture...
getting the hang of Image scraping (and web scraping in general) is handy for future projects since training an A.I. program means feeding it data, lots of data. The capability of consolidating the required data will save a lot of time when building very specific A.I. systems.
Note: THe legality of web-scraping is an ever-developing subject but to quote the article below from Towards Data science: “Make sure that you are not breaking any laws, terms of services, or otherwise have a negative impact on your target.“
I’d like to add that scraping tens of images with your Python-project is likely just fine, whereas gathering thousands of files might get your IP banned.
Image Scraper GitHub-link: https://github.com/Hugelius/ImageScraper/
Reference: https://towardsdatascience.com/image-scraping-with-python-a96feda8af2d
31/10/2021
Python progress
I've been self-learning Python during my free time and this blog is my way of documenting what I've learned, what kind of problems I've encountered and how I can use programming as a tool in Graphic Design.
This blog is mainly for tracking my progress, but i appreciate any form of feedback. feel free to have a look around and if you spot any errors or have any questions, email me at hi@hugoheino.com and we’ll talk! I’m also curious if you are learning Python yourself; Did you run into any big obstacles, and how did you solve them?
My GITHUB: https://github.com/Hugelius
The reason I chose Python is because I wanted to start a new language right from the basics. I did not have any previous experience with a general purpose language since my previous programming experience was all HTML and CSS with a bit of Swift back when I had an iPhone. Python seemed like a great way to start, since the syntax is relatively easy to read and the language itself is growing year-by-year, just check it out on Google Trends and you’ll see what I mean.
Just like in design, there are thousands of sites and petabytes of video material for references, tutorials and general principles. So far I’ve taken a few courses, watched a ton of more in-depth explanations of different issues and how to solve them, and I’ve set myself a comprehensive roadmap for the future. It is super important to put everything in use after binge-watching a tutorial series, so I’ll be creating my own applications and diving a bit deeper to learn by actually getting my hands dirty, so to speak.
During my first two weeks of my Python-studies I decided to create a cheat sheet with most of the beginner syntax and things I was having trouble remembering. Check it out below:
Python cheat sheet, 31/10/2021, please email me at hi@hugoheino.com if you find any errors :)
The first application that I’ve created is a simple Windows Notepad clone with a dark theme and a few functions, such as open/save and word/character counters. The GUI and dark theme are created with PySimpleGUI, which is a package that makes simple interface creation relatively easy with a row-based approach. Just to give you an idea, most of the GUI is actually created by just using four rows of actual code. Most of the work is in figuring out the technical stuff, such as the open/save-functions.
GITHUB LINK TO THE NOTEPAD CLONE: https://github.com/Hugelius/Nightpad
I will be posting more of my projects here and on GitHub. I am also set on documenting my progress here at least until i consider my self proficient in Python.