May 15, 2012
When requesting and parsing data from a source with unknown properties and random behavior (in other words, scraping), I expect all kinds of bizarrities to occur. Managing exceptions is particularly helpful in such cases.
Here is some ways that an exception might be raised.
[][0] #The list has no zeroth element, so this raises an IndexError {}['foo'] #The dictionary has no foo element, so this raises a KeyErrorCatching the exception is sometimes...
April 20, 2012
The most exciting bit about ScraperWiki is how it forms a link between two very different worlds.On the one hand, we love the public good that...
April 17, 2012
This is a guest post by Martha Rotter, co-founder of Woop.ie and recently launched Irish technology magazine Idea.
Hey remember the Wikipedia blackout? I do, because I was highly amused by the number of students panicking due to papers or homework they seemingly could not complete without this...
April 2, 2012
Lots of people, when they hear about ScraperWiki, ask “is scraping legal? how can you build a business off that?”. Usually to follow up by saying “we do it in our company, but...
March 28, 2012
We’re in Washington DC, the nation’s capital and US HQ! The city is bathed in spring sunlight, the blossoms are out and there’s a bit of a buzz about the town. The ScraperWiki truck is getting ready to park at The Washington...
March 26, 2012
Everybody is talking and trying to do ‘data journalism’ and the first ever International Data Journalism Awards have been established to recognise the huge effort that people are making in this field. It’s a great...
March 22, 2012
It’s difficult to keep up. I’ve just noticed a set of interesting interactive graphs over at the Office of National Statistics (UK).
If the world is about people, then the most fundamental dataset of all must be: Where are the people? And: What stage of life are they living through?
A Population Pyramid is a straightforward way to visualize the data, like...
March 19, 2012
Guest post by Cindy Royal
I’m an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University in San...
March 16, 2012
I installed some new Python libraries and restructured the Python libraries documentation page. Some highlights
- Gensim is “Topic Modelling for Humans”. Read the introduction to the documentation. I’m looking for an excuse to play with it.
- unidecode transliterates Unicode into...
March 13, 2012
Pool temperatures, company registrations, dairy prices …
ScraperWiki is a Silicon Valley style startup, in Liverpool, UK. We’re changing the world of open data, and how data science is done together on the Internet...
