October 4th, 2011 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, Data, Ruby
Assuming you regularly work with data found online – and if you don’t, you’re probably here by mistake, so welcome! – then you realize what a pain it can be to grab structured files from some site, save them and import them. I have more methods in more apps than I can count that download [...]
August 10th, 2011 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, Journalism, Work
My first job in Web development was as a member of washingtonpost.com’s “Tools Team.” I was, in title if not in practice, a Tool. Done snickering? Let’s move on. The Tools Team built mostly internal applications and services that helped the Web site run better. I mainly got to work on front-facing projects like the [...]
July 27th, 2011 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, Teaching
There was an interesting discussion on the NICAR-L listserv today about teaching database skills. More specifically, which software to teach and how to teach it. Should you go with SQLite, as I do? What about MS Access (the consensus seemed to lean against)? Is it too much to ask students to install database server software [...]
December 7th, 2010 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, IRE, Journalism
Update: the student price for the conference, $100, does not include IRE membership. That’s $25. Both are bargains. Hey there, journalism student! A bunch of your colleagues are having a get-together in February, and you should come. Actually, you need to be there. I’m talking about Investigative Reporters and Editors’ annual Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference, held [...]
May 11th, 2010 | by Derek Willis | published in Car Tools, XML
It’s true that Excel has been a decreasing part of my toolkit for several years now, and that I never quite had the love for it that I do for various database managers. But I’m guessing that’s the exception, not the rule, in the broader journalism community. So when it came time to propose a [...]