Hello! Welcome to the first of a series of (hopefully) regular round-ups and highlights from what’s happening in the Software Underground. We’ll cover announcements and cool events, plus anything we think is relevant, popular, or just cool.
The heart of the Software Underground is the Slack workspace. It’s so busy these days that it’s hard to catch everything, so we hope this round-up helps. True to the nature of geoscience, our selection criteria will be a mix of quantitative and qualitative. And as scientists, we’ll allow ourselves the freedom to improve our methods over time. Disagree with something? Tell us about it.
We’ve put links here that will take you directly to the messages in Slack. Just keep in mind that you’ll have to be logged into your account for those to work. If you’re not a member yet, sign up here — it’s free.
SPE Data Analytics wireline log contest – An announcement was made about this new competition. The entrance fee, though small, was an initial surprise to some, but apparently the revenue will go toward SPE student scholarships. Another conversation surfaced on how tricky it is to evaluate the submissions in relatively niche contests such as these. The contest launches today, 15 January.
Jupyter Notebooks in Excel – Apparently there are two types of people in the subsurface world: those who use Excel, and those who are in Software Underground. LOL. Seriously though, a link about embedding Jupyter notebooks in Excel brought a mixture shock and horror.
Anaconda Navigator != conda – Confused about what Anaconda Navigator brings to the table? So are others in the community! Many of us prefer the command-line conda tool, but that comes with its own challenges, as discussed in this thread on teaching about environments. Do you use Navigator? Do you like it? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Connecting the dots – Creating linestrings from collection X and Y coordinates is straightforward if you know the sequence in which the dots are connected. If the points aren’t ordered, then the problem is more difficult. Some good discussions were bolstered by Leo Uieda’s gentle nudge, “We’d love to have this sort of thing in Verde if you’re keen on contributing.”
Wherefore art thou open data? – The need for open data came out of a member testing a seismic well-tie algorithm. Several folks pointed him toward a number of open data sets. A number of the usual suspects that come up again and again are: SEG wiki, F3, UK Oil and Gas Authority, and the Data Underground. The Data Underground is a Swung project, so you should definitely poke around and let us know what else might live there. Open Data. Yes please. Let’s have some more of that.
The quality and speed of the knowledge sharing in the Software Underground is truly remarkable. Whether you’re asking questions, responding to others, or just sharing something that’s cool, we are all bettered by it. See you in Slack!