DEV Community: Emily Cain

maintaining your mental health after a layoff

Emily Cain — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 18:22:52 +0000

If you’re reading this, you may have lost your job recently or know someone who has. That’s a stressful situation that can challenge the mental health of anyone, regardless of whether you’ve struggled with it in the past. Here are some tips for taking care of yourself in the wake of a layoff; it doesn’t erase the pain of losing your job suddenly or the stress of trying to find a new one, but it’s a good starting point to help you stay well enough for whatever you need to do next.

Note: I am not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. Please talk to a doctor or therapist if you feel you need help or advice specific to your situation.

Ok, here are my tips:

Keep routine and structure. Try to wake up at the same time (doesn’t have to be the same time you did while working but it should be the same every day) and have breakfast and get dressed just like you were going to a job. Consider going for a walk every morning.
In all the below items, focus on concrete goals you can control (I will apply to x jobs per week, spend y minutes cleaning a day, put my phone away by 9pm) rather than outcomes you can’t (I will get a job by x date, I will have a clean house, I will always fall asleep by 11pm).
Keep work/life boundaries with job searching. There is a diminishing return on investment in terms of time spent and it definitely is less than 40 hours a week. If you have a work desk or area you would sit in to work from home, use that for job searching; try not to do things like scroll LinkedIn on your phone outside that area. Don’t job search evenings and weekends (or declare some other time off-limits if your schedule makes that easier).
Take care of your health generally. Maintain good sleep hygiene (tips below). Try to exercise at least a little every day—consistency > intensity, and if you can, find something you enjoy and/or with other people. Now may be a good time to schedule doctor/dentist/etc appointments you’ve been putting off if you still have insurance.
Reach out to people. Make plans to see friends. Call people you haven’t talked to in a while and catch up. Volunteer. If you have a hobby or community group or faith community you used to attend regularly, start again. http://Meetup.com is good for finding free or cheap events in your area.
If you have a past history of needing a particular type of support—like you used to see a therapist or you have gone through substance abuse recovery—now is a good time to set up an appointment with your old therapist, call your sponsor/attend a meeting, etc.
Please try not to let all this be another thing to worry about. If you fall short one day, try to forgive yourself and think “I’ll do better tomorrow,” not “I’m failing at all this mental health stuff.” This is all very hard and anything you do to care for yourself in this time is better than nothing.

Sleep hygiene tips https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep-hygiene#bed-and-sleep

I may update this later with some more detailed resources. Feel free to share what has worked for you in the comments!

How to change bash versions on Mac with Homebrew

Emily Cain — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 00:18:24 +0000

MacOS comes with bash 3 as the default shell program; Apple doesn't want to upgrade to the later versions for intellectual property reasons. This means that some features of later versions of bash, like associative arrays, are not available with the default shell. You can always install later versions yourself, however.

Setting up my Mac to run a different version of bash in the terminal was surprisingly hard for me to figure out how to do; it's a pretty straightforward process but I didn't see any one resource describing the entire thing from start to finish, so I'm doing it here.

This is based on my own experience installing bash 5.0.16, using Homebrew 2.2.7, on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6. If this doesn't work for you, let me know in the comments (including the versions of bash, Homebrew, and MacOS), and what if anything did end up working. I'd love to make it applicable to more people.

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes some basic familiarity using the terminal on Mac.

You should have the Homebrew package manager installed -- see this article for instructions.

There's some basic editing with vim -- this article contains everything you need here, but it's basically just knowing i for "insert" and esc+ :wq + return to save changes.

Check your current version

Verify that you have the old version installed currently:

$  echo $BASH_VERSION
3.2.57(1)-release

Install the latest bash version using Homebrew

Use $ brew install bash to install the latest version (or specify a version). Take note of where in the filesystem the cask is located, you'll see a message like this:

==> Pouring bash-5.0.16.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/bash/5.0.16: 150 files, 9.4MB

Take a look at that folder:

$ ls /usr/local/Cellar/bash/5.0.16
AUTHORS         NEWS            changelog
CHANGES         NOTES           include
COPYING         README          lib
INSTALL_RECEIPT.json    bin         share
$ ls /usr/local/Cellar/bash/5.0.16/bin
bash    bashbug

The full path to the shell we want is (in this case) /usr/local/Cellar/bash/5.0.16/bin/bash. Make a note of it for the next step.

Set the default shell

There are two steps to changing this. First, find the "shells" file and edit it:

$ atom /etc/shells  # or whatever your preferred text editor is

Add the full path (in this case /usr/local/Cellar/bash/5.0.16/bin/bash) to the end of the list of shells, then save and quit. This will tell your computer that it is safe to use that shell (it's a safety measure to prevent people from accidentally setting random programs as their default shell and breaking everything).

Back in your command line, use the "change shell" command:

$ chsh
Changing shell for <user>.
Password for <user>:

Enter your password. You'll then get file like this in Vim:

# Changing user information for <user>.
# Use "passwd" to change the password.
##
# Open Directory: /Local/Default
##
Shell: /bin/bash
Full Name: 
Office Location:
Office Phone:
Home Phone:
~
~

Change the entry after "shell" to the new shell path, then save and exit.

Check installation

You may need to open a new terminal window or tab for this to work.

$ echo $BASH_VERSION
5.0.16(1)-release

🥳 Yay! 🥳 You can now use new features from bash 4 and 5. And you can always put the default shell back using chsh if you want.

Bitwise Operations on your Fingers 🙌👩🏻‍💻

Emily Cain — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 02:06:15 +0000

I first came across bitwise operations as part of an Advent of Code challenge in 2017. I was thoroughly confused. "How can you do AND on two numbers? That doesn't make sense!" I dutifully used the AND operator in whatever language I was using for the challenge (probably Go) and just accepted not knowing what it meant.

My next encounter was in a workplace discussion group where we learned about using AND operators to filter packets, using tcpdump. I asked enough questions to actually understand what was going on with these bitwise operations, and I want to share one of the methods I came up with in this article. It involves counting on your fingers in binary and then using your hands to perform bitwise arithmetic -- no computer needed. I don't know if anyone else has done it quite like this, but I find it helpful.

Background

Any computer system you use represents information as a series of 0s and 1s, using base 2 or binary to represent numbers. Bitwise operators perform a Boolean operation on each bit to reach the final result.

For example, let's say we want to find 6 AND 3.

0110 (6) 
0011 (3)
----
0010 (2)

Breaking this down:

In the 2^0 (1's) place, the first value is 0 (false) and the second value is 1 (true). false AND true = false.

In the 2^1 (2's) place, the first value is 1 (true) and the second value is 1 (true). true AND true = true.

In the 2^2 (4's) place, the first value is 1 (true) and the second value is 0 (false). true AND false = false.

In the 2^3 (8's) place, the first value is 0 (false) and the second value is 0 (false). false AND false = false.

To summarize: for each place or column, do the Boolean logic operation on the input values in that column to get the output for that column.

You use the same process for doing other bitwise operations.

OR (true if either value is true):

0110 (6) 
0011 (3) 
----
0111 (7)

XOR (true if the two values are different):

0110 (6) 
0011 (3) 
----
0101 (5)

NOT is a unary operator, which is to say it takes only one input, and it reverses the value of each column (or bit).

0101 (5) 
----
1010 (10)

You can play with bitwise arithmetic using this calculator.

Finger Method

We'll start by learning to finger-count in binary.

Some finger counting systems start with the thumb, but I am going to use the index finger for 1 because then each hand represents a nibble, or half-byte, which can be represented by a single hexadecimal digit. (It also means I can use my thumb to hold down any unused fingers.) The middle finger is 2, the ring finger is 4, and the pinky is 8.

1, or 0001:

2, or 0010:

3, or 0011, or 2^1 + 2^0:

7, or 0111, or 2^2 + 2^1 + 2^0:

12, or 1100, or 2^3 + 2^2, or C in hexadecimal:

15, or 1111, or 2^3 + 2^2 + 2^1 + 2^0, or F in hexadecimal:

AND

For the AND operation, use your left hand to make the first number and your right hand to make the second number. For each hand, the index finger should always represent 1, the pinky 8.

Here's 6 on the left hand and 3 on the right.

Now take the two hands and place them together, palms touching, fingers tented.

The fingers that are touching at the top represent the answer (2).

Some more examples:

12 AND 7 = 4

10 AND 5 = 0

OR

Let's use the same inputs with the OR operator.

Here's 6 on the left hand and 3 on the right.

Now take the two hands and place them together, palms touching, fingers tented.

The places with at least 1 finger up represent the answer (7).

Some more examples:

12 OR 7 = 15

10 OR 5 = 15

8 OR 1 = 9

XOR

Here's 6 on the left hand and 3 on the right.

Now take the two hands and place them together, palms touching, fingers tented.

The places that have exactly one finger up represent the answer (5).

Some more examples:

12 XOR 7 = 11

10 XOR 5 = 15

NOT

Take all the fingers that are up and put them down; put all the fingers that are down and put them up.

NOT 5 = 10

Conclusion

Now you know how to do the bitwise operators on your fingers! Hopefully this helps you understand these operations in a more intuitive way.

How to Set up a Twitter Bot with Python and Heroku

Emily Cain — Sun, 24 Jun 2018 01:46:30 +0000

I just set up a Twitter bot to generate pharmaceutical ads and tweet them out a few times a day. (Source code here). I ended up piecing together concepts from a couple different tutorials in order to do this, and no single tutorial laid out the whole process, so I'm writing it up here.

The steps can be summarized as:

write a function to generate text strings for your bot to tweet
create a Twitter account, and set up an application under it
- set up a phone number with Google Voice
- assign your account that phone number, allowing you to create applications
write a script that connects to your Twitter application, and sends it an API call to tweet the output of your function from step 1
set up a Heroku app that runs the function from step 3 as a worker
set up a basic server in your Heroku app so that Heroku won't freak out and throw an error
set environment variables in Heroku for your Twitter app's credentials.

Steps 4 through 6 could also be used to set up any Python script to run on Heroku.

I'm using some Google features to generate a unique email and phone number for the Twitter account, but you can handle creating those with whatever service you like.

This article assumes some basic background knowledge on the following concepts: Python, REST APIs, Git, environment variables.

Because it uses Heroku, the app will have to be saved in a Git repository.

Also, I used a virtual environment and saved the requirements in a file by running

$ pip freeze > requirements.txt

This becomes relevant when you set up Heroku, which uses requirements.txt to install the Python packages you need.

1. Generate strings

I'd made this functionality a while back. For the pharma bot, I use Markov chains to generate drug names, and then insert them in a randomly generated template, to get advertisements like this:

Worried you might have twitchy ossicle? Sudate® can help!

Are you plagued by restless elbow? Ask your doctor about Estron® today!

You don't have to deal with pompous spleen alone. Ask your doctor about Ryzema Prenztriumetine® today!

The function that creates these is called get_ad.

In your own code, replace get_ad with a function that generates whatever kind of text you like.

2. Create a Twitter app

You'll probably want to give the bot its own account rather than Tweeting from an existing account, so set one up.

The Twitter account will need a unique email. If you want to use an email address that already has its own Twitter account, you can take advantage of Gmail's functionality to sign up with an "alternate" email that goes to the same inbox.

You will also need to set a phone number in your app; again, you can use Google to create an alternate contact that goes to an existing number, this time using Google Voice.
Next, go to your Twitter Apps dashboard and create a new app (while logged in as the bot's account).

For the app's website, I put the GitHub URL where the repo for this project lives.

Once you create the app, make sure that it allows read and write access.

3. Connect to the Twitter App and send tweets

I used this article, How To Write a Twitter Bot with Python and tweepy, as a rough guide for this part. Check it out for a guide on setting up your Twitter app and connecting to it via API. Note that you will need to add an "access key" to your Twitter application.

They have their bot reading lines from a text file; instead, I had mine call get_ad. The script that does this is called bot.py. Here's the part that generates and sends the Tweet:

from generate_advertisement import get_ad

INTERVAL = 60 * 60 * 6  # tweet every 6 hours
# INTERVAL = 15  # every 15 seconds, for testing

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_KEY, ACCESS_SECRET)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

while True:
    print("about to get ad...")
    ad = get_ad()
    api.update_status(ad)
    time.sleep(INTERVAL)

I then ran bot.py in my local terminal.

Success!

It was able to send tweets just fine, but I don't want to leave my laptop on and my terminal open forever, so I needed to get it running on its own server somewhere. My next task was to put the bot on Heroku.

IMPORTANT: DON'T COMMIT YOUR SECRET KEYS

Connecting to Twitter via the API (including via a wrapper library like tweepy) requires you to use keys that identify your app and authenticate you as a user. Make sure you don't commit these keys in a Git repository--that's like publishing your password. Even if you later remove the keys from your code, they'll be in your commit history.

Initially, I stored the keys in a file called credentials.py, which I added to my .gitignore. It looked like this:

CONSUMER_KEY = 'consumer key'
CONSUMER_SECRET = 'consumer secret'
ACCESS_KEY = 'access key'
ACCESS_SECRET = 'access secret'

I then imported the keys into bot.py. This didn't end up working out once I put the app on Heroku, but it was fine for testing it on my local machine.

4. Set up Heroku

Sign up for a Heroku account if you don't already have one. Heroku allows you to push and deploy code with Git, and you can create up to 5 apps for free.

Once you have the Heroku command line interface installed, initialize your repository with Heroku. It's ok if you let it generate a random URL for your app, since nobody will be looking at it directly.

$ heroku create

This will set up a Heroku app and also give your Git repository a remote called heroku. The code on that remote's master branch will be run by Heroku.

You'll need to set up a Procfile to tell Heroku what to do once it gets your code. Put this in your Procfile:

worker: python bot.py

This means Heroku will do the equivalent of when you ran python bot.py on your local terminal.

Then commit your code and push it to Heroku.

To deploy from your local master branch:

$ git push heroku master

To deploy from a different branch:

$ git push heroku my_branch_name:master

Then you can log into your Heroku dashboard and check its activity and logs to see what happens.

5. Basic Web Server

Turns out Heroku doesn't like to just run scripts with workers, because it expects to see a web server.

You can fix this by creating a simple web server. I used this StackOverflow answer as a guide.

Code (server.py):

from os import environ
from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
app.run(environ.get('PORT'))

Then, in your Procfile, just say: web: python server.py.

I tried this (and committed and pushed to Heroku again). I then saw the following error:

Error R10 (Boot timeout) -> Web process failed to bind to $PORT within 60 seconds of launch python flask

I fixed this by setting the host when I ran the app:

app.run(host= '0.0.0.0', port=environ.get('PORT'))

6. Set environment variables

Remember how I said not to commit your Twitter credentials to your Git repository? This becomes an issue when you deploy to Heroku, because it uses your Git repo to deploy, and so importing constants from an ignored file won't work.

You can set environment variables in your Heroku dashboard, then use os.environ to get them in Python. Add this to bot.py before making the API call:

from os import environ
CONSUMER_KEY = environ['CONSUMER_KEY']
CONSUMER_SECRET = environ['CONSUMER_SECRET']
ACCESS_KEY = environ['ACCESS_KEY']
ACCESS_SECRET = environ['ACCESS_SECRET']

Then your app will be able to connect to the Twitter API without ever committing your secrets.

What's Next?

Now you know how to create a Twitter bot and run it on Heroku!

You can adapt this project to tweet out anything you like. This article explains how to use Python to generate text with Markov chains. You can create a text file with each line containing a sentence you want to tweet using the method outlined in How To Write a Twitter Bot with Python and tweepy. You can tweet lines from public domain works at Project Gutenberg. Or do anything you want!

note: an earlier version of this article was published at emcain.github.io.