Programming – Annabel Treshansky's Blog

Screenshot of a Power App that fetches random jokes from a REST API

Reading Time: 30 minutes

This post describes a Power App that fetches and displays data from a simple REST API using a custom connector created by importing from Postman. The app also uses a Toggle control to create a While loop in Power Apps.

The app itself can be found here: https://apps.powerapps.com/play/f1478489-b888-4e8a-9fe5-8c244e126e70?tenantId=2e9f06b0-1669-4589-8789-10a06934dc61, but is sadly only available to those with a University of Edinburgh login, as this app is a personal educational project and is not for publication or profit.

Why did this happen?

I’ve recently been working on a project to access our Blackboard Learn Virtual Learning Environment more efficiently using REST APIs. It occurred to me that this might be possible using Microsoft Power Apps, which could allow the development of apps more quickly, if we could get the connection itself figured out. The Dad Jokes app was developed as a proof (or otherwise) of the concept.

Mar 10, 2022

Screenshot of an index box with HTML links

Index links and Info Box HTML template code

By Annabel Treshansky

On 2nd December 2020

In HTML, Notes and Templates, WordPress

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Over the summer I helped out with setting up information blogs about Digital Education for the staff and students in GeoSciences.

One pattern that we needed to use several times was an index box linked to headings in sections with ‘back to top’ links, so I created a basic template that can be pasted into WordPress.

Anyone is welcome to adapt and use this: either copy and paste the top section into the Visual editor, or copy and paste the HTML section into the Text editor.

If your theme allows you to use Custom CSS (some but not all of ours do), you can use the id and class names for visually styling the elements.

Note: I have linked to line breaks above the headings rather than the headings themselves due to the variation in how the different themes we were using treat anchor links.

Here is the sample Info Box / Index links structure:

Main picture.
Introduction paragraph text.

Dec 2, 2020

Unix file counting challenge, Part 3: Counting with Shell Scripts

By Annabel Treshansky

On 20th February 2020

In Unix Shell

Reading Time: 7 minutes

This post follows on from Unix file counting challenge, Part 2, which in itself follows on from Part 1. No surprises there.

Post Summary

These are the steps I’ve been taking in developing a short Unix shell script to count a lot of files and directories by type.

Feb 20, 2020

Scarlett O'Hara: "After all, Tomorrow is another day!", Gone With the Wind, via MagicalQuote.com

Unix file counting challenge, Part 2: Tracking down the errors

By Annabel Treshansky

On 17th February 2020

In Unix Shell

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Summary:

I’ve got a project coming up that will involve some major tidying up of a big shared network drive that has been used in different ways by many different people over many years.

One of the first steps is to find out what kind of files are on the network drive, how many of them there are, whether they’re still being used, and where they are stored in the directory structure.

I use a Windows laptop at work, which has a VPN connection to the University’s network and a MacBook at home, which doesn’t (yet). I’ve also been attending a training course in Unix skills, which seem like they could usefully be applied to this problem, and I’ve been really enjoying finding out more about this.

So that’s the combination of things going on.

This post is continued from Part 1, which is:

Can I turn a massive bureaucratic, er, challenge into a fun Unix challenge?

Feb 17, 2020

Can I turn a massive bureaucratic, er, challenge into a fun Unix challenge?

By Annabel Treshansky

On 13th February 2020

In Unix Shell

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Well.

I have been given an enormous number of files of different types, in many jumbled up directories and subdirectories on a network drive, to count. That ought to be a job for the Unix commands and shell scripting I’ve been learning at Software Carpentry over the last couple of weeks, right?

My initial thoughts were that this could be done with either the command line, probably involving ls, sort, regular expressions with uniq and counting options or a shell script looping through a file listing with some combination of those.

Time to fire up Git Bash, my trusty Unix terminal for Windows…

Feb 13, 2020

Geophysics blogging means Equations!

By Annabel Treshansky

On 7th February 2020

In Accessibility, HTML, Useful Tips

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Following on from my previous post, ‘Geophysics blogging means new HTML entities!’, I discovered the maths was getting yet more complicated, with the need to represent equations like this:

Really complicated equation 😬

Ideally, I didn’t want to use images, for accessibility reasons, unless I could provide a meaningful alt tag, which takes me back to the original problem of representing the equation in text, but with less useful characters. Here’s a page with a lot of equations as an example: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/easc080162019-0sv1sem2/2020/02/06/7-2-1-electrical-resistivity/. I’ve made a lot of progress using HTML entities, but they can only get me so far.

Feb 7, 2020

Maxwell's Equations, which show how electricity and magnetism are related, on a T-shirt.

Geophysics blogging means new HTML entities!

By Annabel Treshansky

On 6th February 2020

In HTML, Useful Tips

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’ve been working on moving a couple of Geophysics courses over to WordPress blogs recently, and the latest one includes a lot of mathematical equations.

The previous version of the course was displaying these as images without any titles or alt tags, so I thought I would improve on their accessibility by using HTML entities, several of which were new to me, and it has been an interesting journey!

Feb 6, 2020

A Slightly Unnerving Javascript Video

By Annabel Treshansky

On 4th February 2020

In Javascript

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve enjoyed using FreeCodeCamp’s training resources before, so I was enthusiastic about giving this JavaScript tutorial a go. After about a minute, I was starting to wonder, “Is he really going to stand there talking about JavaScript for 3 hours, standing next to an RV in the snow?” But no, he gets in and leaves the little boy out there…

Learn JavaScript – Full Course for Beginners – freeCodeCamp.org

I’m going to have to watch this later…

Feb 4, 2020