Alright, so yesterday I finally got around to messing with Linn Grant, been meaning to for ages. Heard a bunch about it, seemed cool, figured I’d give it a shot.
First thing I did was download the stuff. Found it pretty quick on the usual sites. Unzipped it, you know, the standard drill. The install instructions were kinda vague, tbh. Just said “put it somewhere and run the thing.” Okay, then. Made a new folder in my ‘tools’ directory, chucked all the files in there.
Then I tried running the main executable. Nothing. Just a quick flash on the screen, then nada. Figured it probably needed some dependencies or something. Started googling around, found a forum post that mentioned needing some specific version of Python. Ugh, Python. I already have like three versions installed.
After much trial and error (and a lot of cursing), I figured out which Python version it wanted. Installed the right packages with pip, finally got the thing to launch. The UI is… well, let’s just say it’s not winning any design awards. Super basic, but functional, I guess.
Spent the next couple of hours just poking around, trying to figure out what all the buttons did. The documentation was pretty sparse, so it was mostly just guesswork. Managed to get it to load some data, ran a few basic analyses. The results seemed reasonable, but honestly, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing yet.
Learned a few things along the way:
- It’s picky about Python versions. Seriously picky.
- The UI is not intuitive. Prepare to spend some time experimenting.
- The error messages are cryptic. Good luck debugging anything.
Overall, my first impressions are mixed. It seems powerful, but definitely not user-friendly. Gonna keep playing around with it, see if I can get the hang of it. Maybe I’ll write another post later with some more detailed instructions, if I ever actually figure out how to use the thing properly.
Right now, I’m mostly just feeling frustrated and slightly confused. But hey, that’s half the fun, right?
Next up, I’m gonna try feeding it some real-world data and see what happens. Wish me luck!
