Preparing for the Insight DE program

Hello there, I’m a fellow

Next week I start the Insight Data Engineering Fellowship Program here in NYC. I’m told there are about 16 fellows in this DE batch. The Data Science program has about 30-35 fellows, we’ll be sharing the office space in Flatiron.

A couple of weeks ago we were emailed a list of materials to read and links to guides to set up an AWS account with Hadoop and Spark. It was relatively easy to follow along, except I had an issue with not enough memory for running Spark on my instance… will have to figure that one out later.

I’ve been thinking for months about project ideas and have some ideas from discussions with friends earlier on in the year. One thing I’m interested in is figuring out a way to map reader opinions for news stories to see geographic spread of sentiment. Another idea is to identify trends in sneakers by doing analytics on resales. Maybe there’s a way to combine both ideas??? Perhaps aggregate opinions of sneakers then plot opinions on a map? See how adoption spreads over time? Only time will tell.

In case you missed, What was the application process like?

The checklist

Before any new project I like to take inventory of resources and make sure everything is ready. Here are the variables I considered. YMMV.

• NYC Specific
  • Sign up for an EasyPay metrocard so that I can pay for monthly unlimited online. Perfect for those I-just-realized-my-card-expired-but-its-raining-cats-and-dogs days.
  • Find out nearest gyms and coffee shops so I can stay fit! I’m a member of NYSC as I got a decent deal signing up earlier for an all access passs in the year but if you want budget-friendly options you can check out Blink Fitness and Planet Fitness for <20/month.
• Food - cuz it needs its own category
  • Food: Make large batches of cookie dough and dumplings, to freeze and have quick foods ready to eat in the middle of the night especially in the days leading up to the deadline(s)!. NYC has 24/7 food options but I’d rather not lose focus from the extra time it takes to decide what/where.
  • Also have a small collection of easy to cook meals on hand for when I’m in the mood for something different.
  • Coffee: Stock up on nespresso pods, sign up for CUPS app
• Sofware configurations - working in the CLI can be more fun than black an white
  • Keep track of settings and plugins in a dotfiles repo
  • Load up ipad with songs and pdfs. Set up dropbox and google drive
  • Create an evernote notebook.
• For posterity
  • Put together this blog, including DNS settings, templates, and themes.
  • Charge camera batteries
  • Portable Charger for smartphone. I got this 3350mAh for 9.99