2023

Once in a while we stumble into something interesting while we are not looking for it. This is a post on how I came across a chart while going through an online course, the experience in replicating the chart, the lessons I learnt.

The instructor of the course - Course: Data Visualization Fundamentals and Best Practices by ObservableHQ. While going through his website I found this interesting chart - Blog Calendar.

The discovery

Displaying his blog posts over the years in a chart was something I’m seeing for the first time. Since then even during his class I was seeing it how it was built and imagining how it would look for my blog. During the time provide for the final assignment, I doubled down and spent time on exploring tools to recreate the chart.

The 30s are tricky period. Till 20s you can survive with a student or young earner tag. In the late 20s, you experience what the freedom is. And, when you start feeling you can do whatever you can and reach wherever you want to in life. Now you’re in your 30s and most likely you got punched at your face.

Right now the project focuses on creating dashboard for Mutual funds, and gradually adding other investement vehicles viz stocks, PPF, and EPF.

Fetching NAVs

To track the mutual funds, we come across an API by Yuvaraj Loganathan - MFAPI. Thank you, Yuvaraj. The API gets updated on daily basis and free to access (as in free beer). For our project, which is not intended for any financial gain, this api is the right fit.

Osmosis

Osmosis is term all of us come across during our schooling days.

In biology, osmosis is the movement of water molecules from a solution with a high concentration of water molecules to a solution with a lower concentration of water molecules, through a cell’s partially permeable membrane.

Water purification through reverse osmosis is one of the popular application in our day to day life.

Do we see anything similar to Osmosis in real life?

This is continuation in the series about our side project. This post is a follow up to the pervious post on various tools used to build the process of building the application

The Environment

Core language used in our project is Python. Python is used to fetch details from API calls, cleaning the API return value, and also writing it into DB. Even though the language is very popular and user ranges from amateurs to big corporations, it undergoes development. Implying the new versions are created and released often. And so, setting up the environment is necessary.

This is a continuation to previous post on our new side project. Instead of building a spaghetti code that just works, we are approaching the entire process through the industry practise.

For example, the working components are modularised for easier maintenance. These individual modules are built on TDD approach, testing with every step of our development. The test results are passed through coverage to understand how much code is covered under our testing process. And, based on this coverage status the code is committed into Git repo. This regulates clean and working code.

One of the major difference between developed and developing nation is the way we treat the labours. Usually when a nation grows it concentrates on creating wealth. The wealth, once gets generated it tends to flock together and the rich gets super rich at the cost of vulnerable populous. Once this gap gets too large, the society becomes unstable.

Scene 1: During school days

Teacher : Why didn’t you finish your homework?

Student : We experienced powercut all through the evening. And so, the home

T : Don’t say unnecessary reason in your age we were reading under the street lamp.

Scene 2: During college days

College student : I need a bike to commute to college.

Parent : In your age we were walking n Kilometers to catch the government bus to college, your generation needs private vehicles at this young age?!

Everyone of us think(or worry) about future, especially in 30s. Likewise, I worry about financial stability of my future. The retirement comes top of the list among the various worries. And so, I started investement. The investment includes various vahicles - Mutual fund, stocks and fixed components. Investing is a beast; tracking the investment is like taming the beast. For tracking the progress there are (literally) endless apps coming into to market. You must either trade in your data or pay for some freemium features.