I just released Catfood.Shapefile 2.00, my .NET parser for ESRI Shapefiles.
The big change is that I have migrated to .NET Standard 2.0. This makes it possible to use from .NET Core as well as classic .NET Framework from 4.6.1 up. If you need to use an older version of .NET Framework then you'll want to stick with Catfood.Shapefile 1.60.
Catfood.Shapefile is now also available via NuGet. This is the recommended way to install. The source code is still available on GitHub.
In 2018 I upgraded the related posts functionality on this blog to use word2vec. This was hacked together by averaging the vectors for interesting words in each post together and then looking for the closest vectors. It worked quite well, but the state of the art has moved on just a little bit since then.
OpenAI has an embeddings API and recently released a cheaper model called text-embedding-ada-002. The vectors have 1,536 dimensions, a pretty significant increase from the 300 I was using with word2vec. Creating vectors for all my posts took a few minutes and cost $0.11 which is pretty affordable. As you'd expect those related posts are now significantly more related and useful. Thanks OpenAI!
I shared some code previously for the word2vec hack. This is a lot more straightforward - call the API with the post text and then compare the vectors with cosine distance to find the most related. It works well for search too.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Upgrading from word2vec to OpenAI #code#ml#openai#ithcwy#word2vec Using the Open AI embeddings API to find better related posts for a blog.)
This blog has a couple of Google Analytics integrations - the popular posts list is pulled from GA, and the unnecessarily accurate count of non visitors in the footer. I just migrated from the GA3 API to the GA4 API. The backend for this blog is ASP.NET MVC with .NET 4.8. One day I might catch up with the cool kids and try to get on .NET Core, but not today.
Here's where I stubbed my toe:
I'm following this code sample to make my first GA4 call. After installing the NuGet package I couldn't find BetaAnalyticsDataClient anywhere. It turns out that there is a Google.Apis.AnalyticsData.v1beta package and a Google.Analytics.Data.V1Beta which is only available if you check 'Include prerelease' when searching. You want the second one. I'm not in love with BetaAnalyticsDataClient as a class name, it suggests all sorts of breaking changes are coming. My GA3 integration has ticked over for years with no changes. Maybe GA4 is going to be more like Google Ads and shank you with breaking changes every few months. Moving on...
Wow the error messages are good. Kudos to the API team. I'm so used to cryptic bullshit but this API tells you what you're doing wrong and sends back helpful pointers and even URLs. Every API should be this friendly. I got through the remaining problems fairly quickly because of this.
The code sample passes the property ID as 'property/nnnnnnn' but the API is expecting 'properties/nnnnnnn'.
I'd been using a ServiceAccountCredential created from a .p12 file for GA3. This doesn't seem to be supported for BetaAnalyticsDataClient but I was able to generate a new credential with a .json serialization of the credentials and passing this to BetaAnalyticsDataClient worked fine. I had a permission denied error, this was because I hadn't added the service account email address to the property and doing so got me some data.
The client library is pretty classy (as in too many classes). Creating a filter to exclude internal users involves four nested classes - a FilterExpression that has another FilterExpression for a not condition and then this needs a Filter and the Filter needs a StringFilter. Tedious. And including enums for metrics and dimensions is too much trouble so adding those now requires Metric and Dimension classes but these are just initialized with a string. The list is here.
Lastly when it comes to running the thing the site won't start and says:
"CS0012: The type 'System.Object' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'netstandard, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc7b13ffcd2ddd51'."
Presumably due to some NuGet horror or other. Adding that reference indeed fixes the problem and hopefully doesn't create a new one.
I am now technically if not emotionally prepared for GA3 to be switched off.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Migrating a C# Integration from GA3 to GA4 #code#ga4#ithcwy#c# Some tips on avoiding pitfalls when migrating a C# application from Google Analytics 3 to Google Analytics 4.)
Winter Solstice 2022 (December 21, 2022 at 21:48 UTC) as rendered in Catfood Earth. Winter starts right now in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer if you happen to be south of the Equator.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Winter Solstice 2022 #code#winter#solstice#catfood#earth The exact moment (2022-12-21 21:48 UTC) of Winter Solstice 2022 rendered in Catfood Earth.)
There are some event parameters that are useful to send with every event. Google has a helpful guide here which even covers the case where you have multiple tags (I'm running GA4 and UA during the migration and this isn't unusual). You're supposed to call gtag set before calling config on each tag. This isn't working for me though, I see nothing coming through in the debug view.
Calling set before config works fine for user properties (my journey of discovery yesterday) but unless I was doing something stupid that I haven't seen yet no dice for event parameters. The code above uses the config method of initialization with a shared object to prevent duplicating code. This seems to work fine.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Send event parameters with every event and multiple tags in Google Analytics 4 #code#ga4 How to send common event parameters with every event in Google Analytics 4)
Given that everything in Google Analytics 4 is an event I expected user scoped custom dimensions to be a regular event parameter as well. They're not. And most of the documentation both from Google and others talks about Google Tag Manager which doesn't help if you're just using gtag. It's not that hard to implement, but figuring out all the pieces was way harder than it should be. I hope this helps the next person...
To create a user scoped custom dimension you need a user property. This is different from an event property. In gtag you need to call set on user_properties with an object containing the user properties to set like this:
If you want the user property on the hit sent with page load do this right before the config call when loading your gtag (you can do it as part of the config call if you're just setting up one tag, or as above before the config call which is helpful if using more than one tag). If you don't know the value of the user property at page load time you can also set it and then send an event.
From the client you can inspect the beacon sent to GA4 for an event, for example:
Event parameters get a prefix of ep or epn. In this case I'm using a parameter rc_score set to 0.9 which appears in the beacon as epn.rc_score=0.9. GA auto-detects numeric values and uses epn for these. The user parameter gets a up prefix and in this case is up.user_quality=low. (In this specific case I'm sending a recapture score as both a custom metric and a user scoped dimension so I can segment out high and low quality users, at least from the perspective of recapture).
More visually you can use the debug view in the configure section of GA4 (why there are settings in the reporting interface as well as the settings interface I have no idea). To use this pass { 'debug_mode':true } to your gtag config call. To confirm that you're getting user properties look for an orange icon in the timeline (see screenshot at the top of this post). There is also a helpful user properties active now box at the bottom right of this screen.
Once you have this working you still need to wire it up in GA4. Wait 24 hours... then go to Configure -> Custom definitions. Add a new custom dimension, make sure you pick user scoped and you should then be able to select the user property to use to populate the dimension.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
User scoped custom dimensions in Google Analytics 4 using gtag #code#ga4 Step by step guide for sending user scoped custom dimensions to Google Analytics 4 via gtag.)
I've just released Fortune Cookies for Android 1.30. The last update was in... 2013... it turns out the Android ecosystem has moved on a bit since then and it wasn't even in the Play Store any more as a result. This update has a nice modern theme but is otherwise just an Android version of the classic UNIX fortune command. The database of fortunes is ancient and just running this might get you canceled / fired / etc so use with due caution. If you have this installed it will update as soon as the release is approved.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Fortune Cookies for Android 1.30 #code#fortune#software UNIX style fortune cookies on Android (updated for Android 12))
This update fixes a couple of problems with the screensaver. It now has improved support for multiple monitors (the image will repeat rather than stretch). There was a problem with the screensaver not starting in some cases. This should now be fixed. After upgrading to 4.30 please find and run the 'Catfood Earth Screensaver Settings' shortcut to configure the screensaver.
4.30 also includes version 2022d of the time zone database.
Autumn (or Fall) starts now (23 September 2022, 01:04 UTC) in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring if you happen to be south of the Equator. Rendered in Catfood Earth.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Autumnal Equinox 2022 #code#catfood#earth#equinox#autumnal Render of 23 September 2022, 01:04 UTC, the exact moment of the Autumnal Equinox 2022 in Catfood Earth.)
![[1536]](/image.axd?picture=1536.png)
