Last week a time-saving Python program I had been running successfully for several months in the Google Colab Jupyter notebook environment suddenly failed with a curious error.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75464271/attributeerror-str-object-has-no-attribute-execute-on-connection

The cause – an upgrade to a package (SQLAlchemy) that a library I was using (pandasql) depended upon had broken the library.

This was rather concerning since I had written a huge volume of code using the library and refactoring the code to do things a different way would have been a not insignificant undertaking.

Happily there are a couple of fixes. One is proposed in the link above which is to downgrade the package the broken library depends on before installing the library:

!pip install --upgrade 'sqlalchemy<2.0'
!pip install -U pandasql

This is not entirely satisfactory since one can imagine a time when that downgraded version is no longer supported.

Ideally a fix would be released to pandasql itself but despite its popularity and widespread use it seems no changes have been made to it for several years so what are the chances of that happening..

https://github.com/yhat/pandasql/issues/102

Alternatively, we can use a forked ‘fixed’ distribution of pandasql that someone has kindly created:

https://pypi.org/project/pansql

and simply install that fixed distribution (instead of pandasql) and then import the modules needed from it:

#!pip install -U pandasql
!pip install -U pansql
#from pandasql import sqldf
from pansql import sqldf

There may be debate about whether to use SQL and pandasql against dataframes, when other mechanisms to query their data are available:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bigdata/comments/oklwgk/pandasql_the_best_way_to_run_sql_queries_in_python/

Regardless of such stylistic, philosophical and aesthetic considerations, SQL remains one of the most established and popular languages for querying tabular data and rewriting existing code to use alternative methods, like the pandas query function can be time-consuming and will certainly require retesting.

https://towardsdatascience.com/10-examples-that-will-make-you-use-pandas-query-function-more-often-a8fb3e9361cb

I’ve experienced these unexpected failures of previously working code on occasion before e.g. where a package was completely removed from the base Colab distribution.

https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/issues/3347

Happily the community developed a fix in that instance too.

So, running Python programs on Google Colab’s ever changing foundation remains a rather nerve wracking experience with unexpected work being required from time to time when things suddenly break and you need to research, implement and test fixes. If you know a better approach to managing the relentless and inevitable changes to Colab please leave a comment!

Inflammation increases with weight gain, which leads to insulin resistance and leptin resistance. So, if you’re looking to lose weight, reducing inflammation is key. You can do this by avoiding processed foods and added sugars, eating more anti-inflammatory foods, getting enough sleep and decreasing stress levels. Reducing the amount of inflammation in your body will also lower your risk for diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

There is more to long term health and weight maintenance success than calories in and calories out. Check out these conversations by 2 London hospital doctors.

https://www.medtronic.com/covidien/en-gb/clinical-solutions/bariatric-solutions/obesity-the-big-truth.html

For laypersons check out this article by a dietician.

https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2058068/inflammation-might-be-the-reason-youre-not-losing-weight-here-are-5-things-you-can-do-about-it/

In a nutshell these resources help us understand the need to put good foods in (leafy greens, broccoli/cauliflower, nuts, fatty fish) as much as avoid bad foods.

I wonder whether we may ‘self-medicate’ and become fat exactly in order to reduce our metabolism, feel tired and hence reduce troublesome thoughts.

It’s not easy. Good luck! All the best for now.

This Nature article illustrates the distortion to our perception of the world introduced by the map most of us are familiar with.

The world map we know makes objects closer to the poles appear larger so Greenland looks the same size as Africa which is 14x bigger.

The 6 largest countries by size are Russia, Canada, China, the US, Brazil and Australia.

Both these maps put the UK at the centre of the world for historical reasons. The links below provide further perspectives and details.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

https://www.worldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/

With the flow, right of middle. A memorable acronym to remember where to position yourself on the river Thames.

Which TV will have the best picture quality in 2023? There is a lot of talk about the headline flagship sets from the consumer electronics arms of the OLED panel manufacturers, LG and Samsung, with Sony’s A95K QD-OLED successor yet to be announced, but the truth of the matter may just have been staring us in the face all along.

Let’s summarise what some of the biggest TV YouTubers and Audio-visual websites have to say before reaching a conclusion.

• Samsung S90C / S95C has potential for greater colour brightness and luminance if pushed
• LG G3 META Micro Lens Array improves brightness but not necessarily colour brightness because of the white subpixel however he found colours to be brighter perceptually
• Panasonic MZ2000 processing and picture quality made it one of the best at CES 2023

• MLA just focuses existing light better rather than increases light energy so doesn’t increase burn in risk
• MLA peaks at 2100 nits so a ‘150% increase’ (2.5x original or 1.5x original?)
• QD-OLED2 colour brightness is measurably purer since no white subpixel but perceptually MLA may appear little different

• LG Brightness Booster Max light control architecture (MLA) and light boosting algorithms increase brightness by up to 70% but just on 55, 65, 77 inch models (not 83)

• Samsung puts Micro LED top of its range with, OLED bottom and Neo QLED in the middle.
• S90/95C in 55, 65, 77 inch sizes

• MLA is brighter across all window sizes from 1% to full screen white giving more depth and punch and brighter colours
• Panasonic MZ2000 1500 nits (cd/m2) peak light output on a 10% window
• Graph shows 50% brightness boost over previous year’s LZ2000 at 10% window size but reducing to just 20% brightness boost at 100% window size.
• Though brighter MZ2000 clears image retention quicker than LZ2000
• Some scenes look identical in brightness on old LZ2000 and new MZ2000
• With ambient light blacks look less black and more pink on the new MZ2000

• MLA design uses 27 billion lenses to redirect out of the screen light previously reflected inwards
• Brightness is 50% greater than last year’s model
• MLA increases colour volume
• “True to the film maker’s vision” slogan – even though film makers take into account typical end user equipment

• 30% brighter over 2022 QD-OLED due to higher intensity light and less internal absorption
• Blacks will be truer than the greys of QD-OLED v1 due to optimisation of the top layers of the panel

• LG MLA and Samsung QD-OLED2 are the main technologies impacting top end picture quality for 2023.
• TCL Micro LED promises the best picture quality but is 5 years plus away
• Panasonic MZ2000 with MLA is vote for best of show with a visible difference against last year’s model
• Wireless HDMI is on the LG Signature OLED M model

• G3 Micro Lens Array (MLA) will achieve the best full screen brightness
• S95C QD-OLED has a brighter blue OLED material and a new anti reflective layer will reflect less light and so achieve truer blacks in a brighter room than its predecessor (OLED v1 also used by Sony A95K)
• LG G2 issues were full screen brightness, uniformity (magenta tint) and colour accuracy
• Samsung S95B issues were lifted blacks under ambient light, low bit rate content processing and bent panels
• The competition will be about high APL brightness and lower luminance colour accuracy

• Marketing materials don’t specify the brightness window sizes
• Panel may be capable of 2000 nits but the implementation in the models may be less
• Forbes states QD-OLED v2 is 1500 nits at 10% and a 30% improvement over the previous year.
• QD-OLED issues remain: colour fringing with coloured lines in bright scenes and near black smearing.
• LG G3 1500 nits on 10% window and 2000 on 3%
• Both Sony A95K (QD OLED with heat sync) and Samsung S95B (without heat sync) holds sustained brightness better though does not get so bright as LG G2.
• Panel consistency and lack of pink tinting are the main advantages of QD-OLED over OLED.

• Samsung updates in 2022, presumably to keep the panel safe, meant the S95B no longer offered its original brightness by the end of the year
• QD-OLED2 is trying to be brighter than MLA (2100 v 2000 nits)
• LG Evo G2 panel had a pink tint uniformity issue and Samsung QD-OLED S95B panel had a software update trust issue

• At CES 2023 the Samsung booth demonstrated QD-OLED v2 as being perceptibly brighter with even more saturated colours than 2022 QD-OLED.

RTINGS.com provides measurements for several popular TVs and top of the line LEDs measure and are perceived as much brighter and more impressive with bright full screen scenes than top of the line OLED TVs, whether WRGB OLED or QD-OLED.

For 10% peak and 100% sustained brightness respectively, RTINGS.com gives

• OLEDs: LG G2 (evo) 450, 190; Sony A95K (QD-OLED) 410, 148; LG G1 (2021) 406, 161
• Mini LEDs: Samsung QN95B 1,934, 569; Sony X95K 1223, 633;
• Full Array Local Dimming: Sony X95H (2020) 1085, 625

So to summarise, the latest 2023 OLEDs are 30% to 50% brighter than last year for sub 10% white windows but for full screen white are perhaps just 20% brighter so for viewing in a daytime room or bright high APL scenes with, for example, sunshine, snow or sports both of the new OLED technologies, QD-OLED v2 and MLA (META), remain much less impactful than LED designs.

Micro LED achieves the holy grail of professional reference mastering monitor black and bright performance like the 31 inch Sony BVM-HX310 but is too expensive a technology for mass market consumer sets for now and several years to come, with lower energy consumption being one of the technical challenges needing to be overcome.

Each bin defines the absolute maximum number the bin can contain. A bin of 10 will contain numbers up to 10 so 9 and 10 but not 10.1. In other words, the bin contents are less than or equal to (<=) the current bin and greater than (>) the previous bin.

In short a bin contains numbers up to and including the bin’s number but not a fraction over the bin’s number as shown in the examples above.

People usually give their age as rounded down and age limits operate in that way too so a 17.9 year old can’t vote in the UK. If we want to find the number of people aged say 15-18 we need to use the Excel ROUNDDOWN function to make sure someone who is 18.3 or 18.9 appears in a 15-18 bin defined as 18. The previous bin in this example would have to be 14 to capture 14 year olds but not 15 year olds.

If you don’t have the funds or inclination to pay for Vizio or Lucidchart here are a few tools for easily creating a variety of common diagrams, from flow charts to entity relationship (data structure), dependency, UML and presentation graphics. Some don’t require any drawing or layout skills whatsoever and allow you to produce clear professional looking diagrams quickly just by typing concise human readable text – no manual and time-consuming drawing, positioning, resizing, formatting and alignment of objects and connectors!

Org Chart

https://slidesgo.com/slidesgo-school/google-slides-tutorials/how-to-create-an-organizational-chart-in-google-slides

https://whimsical.com/organizational-chart-BLVgnvNgT2jxnxui5Xz2Ng

Flow chart

https://slidesgo.com/slidesgo-school/google-slides-tutorials/how-to-create-flowcharts-in-google-slides

https://whimsical.com/swimlane-diagram-NPTsYh6pkkgQ83NbcytwXy

See also Activity diagram for the equivalent in the internationally agreed UML notation.

Activity, Class, Gantt, Mindmap & more

https://www.planttext.com/

Archimate Diagram

Archimate is an internationally agreed standard, in the style of UML, that lets one describe pictorially all elements of Enterprise Architecture from motivation like drivers, goals and outcomes to business processes, data, applications, technology, strategy, capabilities, courses of action (like projects and programmes) and deliverables.

https://plantuml.com/archimate-diagram

All Plantuml diagrams can be constructed, shared and saved via

http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml

and

https://www.planttext.com

however since the URLs are so long (the URL encodes the script that describes the diagram) a URL shortener can be employed for easier sharing and embedding.

https://tinyurl.com/5d258ucc

Tip: change the real URL you land on using the shortened link above from the format

https://www.planttext.com/api/plantuml/png/{long string}

to this format

https://www.planttext.com?text={long string}

to be able to edit the diagram!

Here is the new URL of the revised diagram, in the SVG format this time, which can be scaled without loss of resolution:

https://tinyurl.com/yck3j9ay

Note: if you change the diagram the URL of your edited diagram will also change, which means that you will need to change the diagram URL embedded in any documents that refer to it if you want them to reflect your edits. Of course, if you simply download and include the generated png file in your document you need to change the document whenever you revise the diagram too. The upside is that anyone can revise the diagram in future without having to recreate it from scratch and without needing any software – just internet access. One isn’t even dependent on a particular website since the ‘long string’ from http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/uml will also work at https://www.planttext.com and one can even install one’s own diagram server:

https://plantuml.com/faq-install

Class and many other UML diagrams

https://plantuml.com/class-diagram

Also allows one to quickly write:  Sequence diagram  Usecase diagram  Class diagram  Object diagram  Activity diagram (here is the legacy syntax)  Component diagram  Deployment diagram  State diagram  Timing diagram 

ER Diagram

https://graphviz.org/Gallery/undirected/ER.html

https://tinyurl.com/ww27kydz (planttext.com – revise as needed and then embed in your document using the URL you are directed to when clicking SVG)

https://tinyurl.com/dne33z9f (plantuml.com)

Dependency Diagram

These can be very powerful by providing insight into the chain of dependencies and relationships within a system. Graphviz allows diagrams in the simple ‘dot’ graph description language to be constructed, shared and saved via e.g.

https://dreampuf.github.io/GraphvizOnline

http://magjac.com/graphviz-visual-editor/

App Wireframe

https://whimsical.com/web-app-wireframe-MQJZk63o4PSpJES2zPTXLx

Slide Presentation Graphics

https://slidesgo.com/

Icons

https://www.flaticon.com/

Other tools

https://app.diagrams.net/ (formerly draw.io, fiddly on a phone)

https://docs.google.com/drawings (needs sign up, cumbersome on a phone)

http://dia-installer.de/ (needs installation on a desktop OS so unusable on a phone)

https://www.lucidchart.com (needs sign up, app installation on phone and free version limits documents and objects per document)

Hope this helps – feel free to share your favourite diagramming tools and resources in a comment!

At least 157 MPs have publicly declared their support for the Prime Minister including those listed in the tweet below.

The latest figure can be seen here: https://twitter.com/johnestevens

🔵 Boris Johnson needs the backing of 180 Tory MPs to remain as party leader

— John Stevens (@johnestevens) June 6, 2022

The list above may not include some of the latest declarations of support – you can search Twitter for “support prime minister” e.g.

A leadership election would take months, and I believe it is right that the Prime Minister focuses on dealing with the issues that matter to our constituents. He has my full support in doing so.

— Heather Wheeler MP (@HeatherWheeler) June 6, 2022

If you have a more up-to-date figure feel free to tweet a reply here.

So looks like 49+ Tory MPs are publicly backing the Prime Minister Boris Johnson#HowManyMPsSupportBoris#voteofconfidence#voteofnoconfidence#VoteOfNoConfidenceResult#VoteOfConfidenceResult

— GI Chow (@GIChowDotcom) June 6, 2022

If you want to show your appreciation for someone’s message or photo in a WhatsApp group chat but don’t want to bother everyone in the group with a notification of your reaction there is now a way by simply long tapping the thing you want to react to and selecting your emoji reaction.

This was a feature request raised over 6 years ago but better late than never I guess!

https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-WhatsApp-let-you-like-someones-message