Lo-Fi Python

Messi (Top) Vs. Ronaldo (Bottom) FIFA Player Ratings

These ratings represent the players at their peak of their careers. Messi is a better dribbler, while Ronaldo has more power and strength. Messi has the edge in free kicks, curve in his shot and "longshots" 99 to 98 over Cristiano. They are tied at "finishing", each with 99. Ronaldo has the "Power Free-Kick" trait, whereas Messi has "Chip Shot", "Finesse Shot" and "Playmaker" traits giving him an edge.

EA's ratings suggest that both are prominent goal scorers, with a slight edge to Messi in finesse and shooting from distance. However, there's something to be said for kicking the ball really damn hard. Ronaldo has superior raw shot power and a lethal combo of more powerful jump and stronger headers. All this combined with an "Aerial Threat" specialty enables Ronaldo to vault above and around defenders to smash in golazos off the volley. Ronaldo sizes up to 6' 2" (187 cm) vs. Messi's 5' 7" (170 cm) frame. This Portugese man definitely has an advantage in getting higher in the air. But the Argentinian is quite darty.

Messi has incredible accuracy from distance. He's also a better passer all around and has perfect "vision", great qualities for winning football games. Only in crossing does he have a lower passing rating. Ronaldo is also 10 points better at "penalties" or penalty kicks. The closer he gets to the goal, the more dangerous he is. Messi is more dangerous with the ball while dribbling, passing or shooting except when taking a PK.

Advantages can be gained in many different aspects of soccer. EA has developed a fun dataset to model these all time greats across several football skill dimensions. In 2022's version of the game, Messi is rated a 93, with Cristiano 91. Clearly these two are worthy of top honors. Don't forget Robert Lewandowski, with a 92 rating, who consistently lights up the Champions League and Bundesliga.

jq ftw

I had never used jq before this. Really enjoyed the quick, stylish and practical view of some json. This cool terminal display and syntax highlighting was on my Chromebook shell. It's neat how easily you can pretty print json with jq. I rate it a 99 for json pretty processing and pretty printing on the FIFA scale. Read more in the jq documentation!

Helpful Windows Command Line Documentation

• Windows command line Documentation Syntax
• Command-line reference A-Z
• Command shell overview
• Using command redirection operators
• About Windows Remote Management

A Few General Windows Commands

Use find to look in a text file to count the lines matching a string:

find /C "FAIL" < "Test_Results.txt"
# returns: 0 if no match or # of lines found, e.g. 2,50,100

I wrote a post on findstr, which offers similar functionality.

• clip: pipe commands into the clipboard.
• If: If Statements based on if files exist.
• List ip address-related info:

ipconfig

Check system bit (usually 64-bit or 32-bit):

wmic os getosarchitecture

Automate Windows Scripts with Batch Files

Batch files can be run from command prompt or by double-clicking them. Here's an example of text in a batch file that activates a python virtual environment. Swap in your username and environment if you've created it.

cmd /k "cd C:\Users\your_username\PythonEnv\Scripts & activate & cd .. & dir"

1. Save above as a .bat file.
2. This uses cmd to open a new command prompt in a Windows batch file.
3. cdinto my python virtual env then activate it by running a batch file.
4. Then call dir to print directory contents.

Set a custom system 'last_name' variable to be recalled later.

set /p last_name=Enter a last name:
echo %last_name%
pause

Here we print it out with echo. Then pause.

Line continuation in batch files: Use ^ to continue your batch file scripts on a new line.

System Assessment Tools: powercfg and sfc

Display system stats:

systeminfo

Use powercfg to assess power, sleep and system states

powercfg /SLEEPSTUDY

Use sfc to perform a system file check:

# scan and repair
sfc /SCANNOW
# scan, but do not repair:
sfc /VERIFYONLY

Accessing a Remote Computer From the Command Line

You may want to ping a remote computer to see if it's running. Add your ip address instead of the below 1s and 0s:

ping 01.10.10.01

Log into your Remote Desktop with mstsc:

1. Run Remote Desktop Connection, save an RDP file from Windows Desktop Client.
2. You may need to adjust your credentials on your local machine.
3. Finally, trigger login to an active window from command prompt:

mstsc RDP_File_Name.rdp

WinRM and WinRS can allow terminal access to your Remote Desktop. You may need to set your wifi network to private. To configure winrm:

winrm quickconfig

Log into a remote computer with winrs and run ipconfig:

winrs -r:https://myserver.com -t:600 -u:administrator -p:$%fgh7 ipconfig

Check Out Python's pywin32 Module

This module is extremely useful for scripting out Windows applications. For example, I've made good use of its interfaces to Outlook and Task Scheduler. Install with pip:

python -m pip install pywin32

Here's an example to send an Outlook email:

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import win32com.client

outlook = win32com.client.Dispatch('outlook.application')
mail = outlook.CreateItem(0)
mail.To = '[email protected]'
mail.CC = '[email protected]'
mail.Subject = 'Moneyball Review'
mail.Body = """Moneyball is an inspiring movie, based on real events.
            Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffmann gave great performances.
            The trade deadline scene is delightful. Wow.
            Chris Pratt as Hatteberg too. What a solid film.
            Money isn't everything. Playing ball is.
            """
mail.Attachments.Add('Baseball_Analysis.csv')
mail.Send()

Enter This in Your Terminal

python -m pip install pandas

Pandas is a super useful library for wrangling spreadsheet data, AKA "tabular" data. If successful, you should see activity that looks similar to the below screenshot, where I am installing openpyxl, an additional Python Excel library you'll likely want. You are good to go! This is the part where you get to feel like Neo! See Installing Python Modules in the Python Documentation for more detailed instructions.

To view all your installed libraries, enter:

pip list

Write a "requirements.txt" of installed libraries:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

You can list your outdated packages with the --outdated argument:

pip list --outdated

Use pip's -h help command line argument:

pip -h

View your system and user pip config settings:

pip config debug

Supplementary Resources

• Take a look at this list of 20 modules to get started. Here is another more comprehensive list of libraries you can now install.
• Swing by the pip documentation Quickstartand User Guide to learn some helpful commands.
• PyPI, the Python Package Index is the official Python package repository.
• Why you should use 'python -m pip'
• pip cheat sheet from opensource.com

Congrats on figuring out how to install packages with pip, have fun!

Having issues? Try upgrading your pip version.

python -m pip install --upgrade pip

Try the ensurepip command.

This command will install and upgrade pip to the newest version. New in Python 3.4:

python -m ensurepip --upgrade

"The ensurepip package provides support for bootstrapping the pip installer into an existing Python installation or virtual environment. This bootstrapping approach reflects the fact that pip is an independent project with its own release cycle, and the latest available stable version is bundled with maintenance and feature releases of the CPython reference interpreter."

- ensurepip Python Documentation

You should follow best practice and create a virtual environment before installing libraries. venv or virtualenv. To create with venv:

python3 -m venv add_env_name_here

After your environment is created, activate it with the first command below, then install a library on Ubuntu Linux:

source add_env_path_here/bin activate
python -m pip install pandas

Alternatively, on Windows computers:

cd add_env_path_here\scripts & activate
python -m pip install pandas

Getting the prefix right can be tricky.

In the install command, the prefix is a reference to your Python executable. You may just need to alter your prefix to call it correctly. Here are some to try in place of "python". Observe what happens when you run these command variations. Good luck!

python3 -m pip install pandas
python3.11 -m pip install pandas
py -m pip install pandas
pip3 install pandas

How to Manually Enable the pip Installer

The rest of this post may be useful to you if you are:

1. Working on legacy Python 2 or < 3.3 for which pip is not installed.
2. Seeking to fix a faulty pip install that is not working properly.
3. Curious to know how to manually set up pip.

Assumes Python is already installed. If you're running Windows 10, I found it easy to install Python from the Windows store. Download the get-pip.py file. Go to the link, right click the page and "Save As" a .py file to download. Then place the file where you want to access it. I placed mine in C:Python27Libsite-packages

You could also download the file with curl:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.pyt-pip.py

If you are not sure where your site-packages folder is, type python -m site into command prompt for file path ideas.

Run the get-pip.py file.

Using command prompt's cd command with a Windows "&" operator to run the Python file in a Windows command prompt:

cd c:\Python27\Lib\site-packages & python get-pip.py

Or Linux terminal:

cd /Python27/Lib/site-packages && python get-pip.py

You should see some activity in command prompt that shows installation/updating of "setup" and "wheel". When it finishes, you have installed pip.

Type into command prompt at the same location:

python -m pip install requests

This installs the Requests module into your Python libraries. Requests is an http module which is highly regarded almost universally by the Python community.

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