A cloud-deployed solution to gather data about music
Infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform) will become the fundamental backbone of a wide range of companies spanning across multiple sectors in the coming years.
The fundamental principle is that running the code deploys cloud infrastructure. This allows entire IT business solutions to be deployed at the click of a button. It also allows anyone to deploy a tool to analyse your favorite songs on Spotify.
If you’re already familiar with Terraform and Python — the final solution can be found here and this is its architecture:
Using statistics, Pandas, BeautifulSoup and AWS to identify value bets
Last year I built a football betting model (algorithm) in Python to help me make data-driven predictions and to identify betting opportunities in t he English Premier League (EPL).
This year I re-built the system from the ground up to find betting opportunities across six different leagues (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A and RFPL).
After completing my last model in late December 2019 I began putting it to the test with £25 of bets every week. Unfortunately, I only managed to fit in eight weeks of betting before COVID-19 cut the EPL short.
The good news is…
Get the edge over your friends in the fantasy premier league
I’ve used all sorts of resources to try and predict the outcomes of football matches using Python.
One of my favourites is Fantasy Football Scout’s lineup predictions. The website is updated in advance of every gameweek with their most up to date predictions and additional team news.
The following tutorial shows you how to build a simple web-scraper in Python to extract these lineups.
1. Scrape ALL the HTML
To scrape the HTML and to prepare it for parsing we’re going to use two popular Python libraries: Requests and Beautiful Soup:
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoupAn ECS Cluster That Scales With Your Needs
This article aims to provide clear examples and instructions on how to develop a dynamic ECS (Elastic Container Service) module with Terraform.
‘Dynamic’ because the Terraform can easily scale up to handle more services and tasks as they are required.
Valuable life lessons from a month of sobriety
Inspiration
I felt inspired to give the sober October challenge a try after my party-loving friend Michael told me that he was going to do the same. The rules are simple: stay sober for an entire month.
I have no idea when I was last sober for an entire month, but it’s definitely long enough for me to not even want to work it out…
Now although Michael only lasted a measly three days. I managed to get through the entire month completely sober and learned a valuable lesson on the way.
I realised that I need to learn how to…
The argument for an internet with borders
The internet inspired us to imagine a world without borders, where data could be shared freely amongst states and everyone was treated equally.
However, the reality of a borderless internet has pushed China, Russia and America into a new cold war. China and Russia have tarnished the definition of ‘internet sovereignty’ with their totalitarian laws and bills, whilst America’s first amendment has had ramifications in every corner of the world.
The global internet is undermining the sovereignty of any country that fails to realise the crux of the problem, a cyberspace without government.
Cyberspace Without Government
The Social Dilemma highlights the unintended consequences
There are only two industries that call their customers users: Illegal drugs and software.
— The Social Dilemma, Netflix 2020
When we think about robots taking our jobs and rising up against us we think of some futuristic dystopian machine like this:
But the reality is that the robots already run the world and it looks like this:
Streaming services have redefined a generation of artists
Our attention spans are getting shorter and the time that we pay attention to trends is decreasing. Should artists play into this meta-trend? Or is there still a place for the double-sided deluxe edition?
Kanye is King (of shorter albums)
I was so excited when Pusha T released his smash album Daytona in May 2018 — not because I’m a huge Pusha T fan (yuggh), but because it marked the start of GOOD Friday. And I’m a massive Kayne West fan.
The ‘GOOD Friday’ marketing strategy (a play on words with the G.O.O.D …
Both have powers that seek absolute control of information
The two ‘great’ walls of China: The Great Wall of China and The Great Firewall of China. Both built with the intention to protect China from invading foreigners, but one with infinitely more power in the digital age.
The East
Over the last twenty years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built a wide range of capabilities that allow them to control and monitor the internet within China. Most of these capabilities have been developed by corporations, corporations that are mandated by the government to police their own platforms.
Some of these capabilities include strict filters on what content reaches…
My Most Valuable Lesson
My first significant failure was absolutely devastating at the time, but it changed my life forever.
Virtual Hero
At sixteen years old I rarely found the motivation to do anything else apart from shoot aliens on my Xbox360.
My mum would always tell me that I played video games too much and that I needed to study more. I’d previously achieved a couple of As and some Bs in my GCSE exams whilst being a full-time hero online, so I definitely thought that I knew better than my own mother.
Since I was an ambitious kid (without the work ethic…
