Setting up Python notebooks locally for Machine Learning
While there are many options for hosting python notebooks
for free remotely, but I prefer to do things locally. If you wish to do
the same then please read on. Note that I did home some problems
installing skikit-image
on a new Apple with M1 silicon, but after
upgrading the latest version of the operating system and doing and
updating my homebrew
setup everything works. Note that these
instructions are for using pip
. If you are using an alternative
package manager such as Anaconda
then you are on your own. I know
nothing about setting up Python on a windows machine.
Setting up the Virtual Environment
First it is better set up a virtual environment (see Creating and Using Virtual Environments in Python . In a suitable place on your machine do:
python3 -m venv env
source ./env/bin/activate
Note that you might be prompted to upgrade pip
. If you are, then
follow the instructions. You are only upgrading the version in your
local virtual environment.
Installing the relevant packages
When you prompt changes to (env)
you are inside your virtual
environment. You can now use pip
to install packages. For reasons
that I’m not going to explain your life is made a little easier if you
install wheel
pip install wheel
You can now install various useful packages for machine learning
pip install numpy scipy matplotlib scikit-learn pandas scikit-image
treelib nltk
This might take a while. The package jupyter
drives the
notebooks, so install that
pip install jupyter
Emacs key bindings
I have been using the editor
Emacs for over 30 years. The
key binding are hardwired into my brain. If you are like me then
installing the jupyter-emacskeys
package will make your life a
little less frustrating.
pip install jupyter-emacskeys
Launching notebooks
You talk to Python notebooks using the web browser when you are running them locally you start your own little server
jupyter notebook
If you have thing configured then a web browser might open up. If not then look at the output on the terminal and you will see something like:
[I 09:47:31.185 NotebookApp] Use Control-C to stop this server and shut down all kernels (twice to skip confirmation).
[C 09:47:31.216 NotebookApp]
To access the notebook, open this file in a browser:
file:///Users/justin/Library/Jupyter/runtime/nbserver-49899-open.html
Or copy and paste one of these URLs:
http://localhost:8888/?token=83e4ad6deece18a89f8c244f28bb3268d115a4a047764f36
or http://127.0.0.1:8888/?token=83e4ad6deece18a89f8c244f28bb3268d115a4a047764f36
So in this case you can point your browser at
http://127.0.0.1:8888/?token=83e4ad6deece18a89f8c244f28bb3268d115a4a047764f36
and you are ready to go.