Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 23
July 13, 2019
G1 Climax Airtable, refined
Tags: wrestling, airtable
I’ve refined a few of my G1 airtable data. When I made it, I didn’t actually have any real data (since it was before the event began), but now that 3 events have happened, I’ve been able to tweak some things for better viewing.
So, first off, I’m still learning Airtable. Like any software, you need a meaty project in order to figure out exactly what it can and can’t do. The G1 has been awesome for figuring out what Airtable is good for. My workflow has been pretty much like this
Import data
Try to make sense of it
Try to make cool views using the data and some math.
So, the first view that’s of use is the ranking.
It looks like a spreadsheet, but the points aren’t just typed in. The numbers are updated after I type in the winner of the match in this other view. For instance, “Match 1” has both performers, but “Match 1 Winner” only has the winner (obvs). Once that’s selected, the the number in the “win” column ticks up one. The “points” column is a formula: “wins” *2 + “ties” (ties are 1 point). When a match is a tie, I’ll have to manually add in that point. I also might figure out a way to have that happen automatically once a tie actually happens.
I’ve also made a view for recommended matches. This is done manually after each show so I can remember what I thought was actually good.
July 7, 2019
G1 Climax 29 Rankings
Over the weekend, I created an Airtable for keeping track of the G1 Climax 29 tournament. It was a fun challenge to create. Here’s the first useful view: a ranking of how each performer is doing. This will update after every event until the finals in mid-August.
And here’s the second useful view, showing the results from each night. This will also update after each show.
July 2, 2019
Cura, July 3, 2019
Note: The playlist embedded above will always be the most recent playlist and might not match the list below.
Cura is my Spotify mixtape. You can listen to it and subscribe here. I keep it as one playlist so it’s easy to subscribe to. I update it fairly frequently, but I also keep an archive playlist so you don’t have to miss a thing.
I hope you like it. I made it for you.
Here’s the track listing for this week:
放課後ディストラクション By Etsuko Yakushimaru
ワンルームシュガーライフ By Nanawoakari
Match 3 By Shonen Knife
Yume De Mata Aetaranaa By Yunomi, nicamoq
恋愛サーキュレーション By 〈物語〉シリーズ
Flash By Perfume
Kawaki wo Ameku (From “Domestic na Kanojo”) By Akano
CANDY GIRL By FEMM
恋の星占い、海をさして By KOTONOHOUSE, Yunomi, くいしんぼあかちゃん, Azuki
Galactic Mermaid (From “Carole & Tuesday”) By Akano, Cristian
Gifs from Onedrive test
This is mostly just an experiment to see if GIFs work (and will continue to work) when using the Onedrive image embed feature.
Here’s a GIF.
July 1, 2019
More Things, July 2, 2019
It wouldn’t be a personal blog without a link list of stuff I liked around the web.
This one’s a little longer because I changed the way I save things to Pocket. I’ve been tinkering with Airtable, IFTTT and Pocket, and the results have led me to start enjoying the web a lot more. The side effect was that my script for More Things was saving everything I put into Pocket, so this entry took a long time to cull. I’m changing my Pocket script for next time to just save the faves, so future More Things entries will look a little different. Enjoy!
Is It Better to Use an App, or Do It the Old-Fashioned Way?
How Do Nonalcoholic Bars Actually Work?
For Men Who Hate Talking On The Phone, Games Keep Friendships Alive
Bill Murray Explains Why He Created a Secret 1-800 Number to Be Reached About Roles
What if All I Want is A Mediocre Life?
I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer
The Millennial Sex Recession Is Bullsh*t
Topher Grace should only play villains
Why wear a watch when I have the time on my phone?
Benefits of a daily diary and topic journals
A Norwegian City Wants to Abolish Time
Why Do I Love Soccer Players So Much?
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
Can You Really Be Yourself at Work?
Neon Genesis Evangelion is the perfect story for this moment in history
How the Lonely Island Mastered the Fine Art of Being Dumb on Purpose
Simplicity or style: what makes a sentence a masterpiece?
A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop
Why Converse Is Still The Ultimate Summer Shoe
The Essence of Apple’s Decision
Life Got You Down? Load Up The Sims 4 And Open A Semen Café
One Trick To Getting Better At Mario Kart: Relax
What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times
June 26, 2019
Mario games
I’m having fun making a database of video games. It’s helping me learn how Airtable works, and I think it’ll be a helpful app to know for years. As an aside, if there were a Letterboxd for games (or TV shows), I’d have never thought to make this list.
Something really great about Airtable is that you can choose to share only certain parts of your database. Here, I’ve got a list of all the Mario games I’ve played (it’s…most of them). I’ve sorted it by rating, so the ones I loved the most are on top.
I don’t often think of Mario games as my favorite series, but not very many go by that I don’t love.
June 22, 2019
Currently Playing on Airtable
I used to love widgets. Even though I’m not on a Mac, I’m sad that their widget screen is going away in the fall. I don’t use many of them on Windows, because the “live tile” idea obviated it well enough. I love widges on the iPhone.
I’m learning how to use Airtable. I’ve got two projects going there: a personal video game database, and a website database. I’ll be updating the linkblog section of “about” with a view from the website database pretty soon, but I wanted to show off the video game one first. Here’s a view of the video games I’m currently playing, with a completion percentage and a personal rating.
I’m not sure where this’ll go on the website but I want it to live somewhere up in the headers. Maybe just in “About”?
June 19, 2019
Every day I open things and move a bunch of stuff to the evening.
Every day I open things and move a bunch of stuff to the evening. It would be great if you could set a task for either “today” or “tonight” but sometimes I think it’s a feature. They want you to look at your list and think about it. Some days, I appreciate it.
June 16, 2019
Your Daily Drive and Spotify podcasts
I’m a Spotify user, but only for music. I never listen to podcasts inside it. It’s an inferior experience to even basic podcast players. There’s no way to auto-download podcasts. This was table stakes in 2005 when podcasts became a thing. You’d download them to iTunes and sync them to your iPod, and the file would not only live offline but would stay offline until the episode finished. Then it would go away.
This week, Spotify added a new feature called Your Daily Drive. It’s neat! It’s a 90ish minute playlist of stuff it thinks you love because of its totally decent algorithm, separated by a handful of news podcasts. It’s meant to imitate and thus completely destroy the last feature left of FM radio: interruptions from music you’ve heard too much to inform you what the president tweeted. There’s even a “download” toggle so you don’t have to use data in your car, and this playlist will presumably update its songs list regularly.
There’s just one problem: the podcasts in the playlist don’t download. Select them to download individually. As you can see in this screenshot, there’s multiple download toggles for this playlist.
Spotify has a huge advantage over any other music player with their podcast integrations. I’m sure lots of people listen to them in Spotify and don’t realize the experience is subpar. But this is subpar.
June 13, 2019
Cura, June 14, 2019
Note: The playlist embedded above will always be the most recent playlist and might not match the list below.
Cura is my Spotify mixtape. You can listen to it and subscribe here. I keep it as one playlist so it’s easy to subscribe to. I update it fairly frequently, but I also keep an archive playlist so you don’t have to miss a thing.
I hope you like it. I made it for you.
Here’s the track listing for this week:
Saturdays (feat. HAIM) By Twin Shadow, HAIM
Love Yourself By Sufjan Stevens
