Besides, why travel 30min to see and help a friend when we can both travel half a continent in a few weeks and not talk to each other there!

So here is a public apology of sorts to Ned. I hope we can connect at PyCon and have a chance to chat for more than 5min.

With luck the video of the presentation will be put up on ustream soon like the James Tauber Pinax one was (James is 15min away from me, same story).

There is a lot going on, so consider this a quick overview of things to come (maybe).

Executive overview: Potter good, Silverlight/CLR amazing, PyCon-Tech kicking, Storm brewing, and send more Pocky.

I did finally get a chance to read the last book of Harry Potter. I broke down on vacation and went to the Book Exchange, a great used book shop. I spent about an hour visiting and rediscovering some old friends, and left with one new one. (Translation: I perused books I love, buying the first two John Saul books I ever read, and picked up HP7.) The only negative of the entire book was the epilogue. It was either too short, or too long. I would have either liked to know a bit more, or done without it. There, how is that for no spoilers? Oh, and I am ranked #37 on potterpredictions! (which is now accepting comments) Given some of the predictions people added, I suspect some gaming of the system (i.e. some people read the images posted online the week before the books release).

Just before going on vacation, there was the July Cambridge Python Meetup, on Silverlight by Chris Bowen. This was a fantastic presentation, with live running demonstrations, including a python interpreter running in firefox, with the same objects being accessed in python, javascript, and VB! I know, I know, VB… But just think about it. It’s 100% in the browser, and the same object is accessible in all virtual machines at the same time (because it is really a common VM under it all). No, it’s not slow. Say what you want about Microsoft, but you cannot say they do not do innovative and revolutionary work. Well you can say that, and people do; they are just wrong. I will do an extensive writeup on this topic later, including the (extremely poor) audio of the talk and information on the linux port later. I should also note that Chris did a fantastic job and weathered some rather pointed questions quite well.

It’s PyCon-Tech Time!!!!! I would like to give a special thank you to Noah Kantrowitz for hosting the new PyCon-Tech Trac site. This means we now have a proper bug tracking system, and a roadmap! So come to the online meeting, give feedback, and join the fun. There is a ton of work to be done. We need people to take screen shots of the system running for documentation. We need code documentation. We also need some good examples of talk proposals (most likely taken from previous years). We will also be adding some cool new features to the system. things like change history, atompub feeds, comments in the schedule, social network integration, and will be fully functional even if you have no javascript. Oh, and if you think the web site is ugly, clustered, confusing, and think you can do better? Great! Let’s talk! Thought I was going to say ‘do it’? No, I don’t expect some mythical web guru to come in and replace the entire web design and whip a site out of their proxy. It’s all about a team effort.

Tonight was the August Cambridge Python Meetup on Storm by Chris Armstrong. Storm is an ORM for a new machine management system called Landscape. I have spent some time looking over Storm and reversed my initial reaction to it. I really like the multiple database support, and the advanced caching (more like instance management) is fantastic. It is very verbose, but very slim (huh?). Many of the issues I have with the Django ORM are solved by Storm. Unfortunately all the things I love about the Django ORM are missing. It is just a very different take on DB-Object mapping than other systems, and yet looks very very similar to all the others. The python classes are not special. There are no meta classes, nothing to inherit from, no ‘magic’. Well there is SOME magic, but it is relatively thin. All in all a very contradictory system I will have a much larger post going into details on this soon. I have the presentation, and will post the audio. I was able to get my hands on a wireless mic, mixer, noise filter, amp, and digital recorder. That means the audio, for once, does not suck.

Immortal words of Gabe, ‘…tell them to bring more Pocky‘.

There were two guest speakers:

1: George Lambert, Goldenware Technology
2: Mike Pittaro, SnapLogic open source data integration Project implemented in 100% Python

I decided to try something new and record the event on my little sensa mp3 player. The audio is bad at best, but it is mostly audible. We were in Somerville so at some points an airplane goes overhead. If these prove useful to people I will bring better recording equipment next time. My A/V production equipment is tied up on another project so all I did was split the audio into multiple tracks and do a lame re-encode. I tried to keep the files to under 25Meg while splitting based on topics. Unfortunately meetup.com has a 10Meg per file limit and a 100Meg per group max, so that was out of the question. The first file is under 8Meg, so please check that out first and only if you can withstand the audio quality, check out the others. I and my bandwidth will appreciate it.

NOTE: The audio is extremely soft at points and at the beginning, so you will need to crank the volume up.

• Introductions and Django.June recap (mp3, ogg)
• Mass TLC recap, and an extensive discussion on GPLv3, Licensing, Patents, and Python (mp3, ogg)
• Lightning rounds with George Lambert and Mike Pittaro. (mp3, ogg)
• Open Discussion (mp3, ogg)

The software George Lambert mentions which is used to view changes in the GPLv3 draft is Plone! Though there is talk of converting the FSF web site over to a Django based one. I sent an e-mail to the lists giving better information on OLPC for those interested as well. Noah Kantrowitz responded offering to help anyone in the group get started with development.

1. 15 new Yew shrubs planted in the back yard (NEE!)
2. All the beds cut, weeded, trimmed, pruned, and a huge new bed one roughed out
3. First half of the border stones are in, awaiting four yards of mulch
4. New feature productized in the engine after four years of research and development
5. Re-re-re-re-re-re-re-learned how complex SWIG typemaps can get
6. Learned how roundup differs from trac, and how it does not (conference paper submission and review, NICE!)
7. Created a detailed list of new features and code snippits to incorporate into the PyCon-Tech code base (dynamic schema creation rocks!)
8. Was present at two very successful python meetups (can’t really take credit for their success, but I actually made it to them on time!)
9. Wrapping my brain around multi-threading (ipython + Stackless + scipy + matplotlib = my new shell; too bad matplotlib is not thread safe on win32)
10. Got the LightScribe CD art done for a set of Sugar Live CD’s I am planning on burning

I have 6 other blog posts started (most very short). All last week I was sleep deprived. This weekend improved things, mainly because my body shut down. I promised myself I would not write e-mails or these posts late at night or when I was over tired, as I tend to ramble and go off on tangents. oops….

Boston/Cambridge Python Meetup – Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 7:00 PM

Boston Plone Meetup – Thursday, May 24, 2007, 7:00 PM

UPDATE: New Location for the Plone Meetup
Nature Conservancy
11 Ave. de Lafayette
Boston, MA 02111
(617) 542-1908

Peter Marquez has lined up a great speaker for the Cambridge meetup Wednesday! George Lambert of Goldenware Travel will be talking about his companies switch to python and what impacts (good and bad) this decision has had. This is not our normal day, week, or location for a meetup, but was chosen for availability of people and the guest speaker. One of the topics at the meetup will be when and where to hold future meetings, and to schedule future speakers as well as informal sessions. We will also be saying farewell to a Chris Curvey who worked hard for years managing the Boston Python Interest Group.

The Cambridge Python May Meetup

When:

Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 7:00 PM

Where:

Brickbottom Building
1 Fitchburg St, Somerville MA Suite 151 Building B
Somerville , MA 02143
617 620 3071

• Info/Map
• This venue has been marked “private” by the Organizer.

Description:

Why did you choose Python?Developers and their companies are using Python to do all kinds of tasks. From utilities to ERP systems. Why are they choosing Python over Java, C++ and other proven enterprise 3 and 4gls?At this meeting we’ll all get a chance to meet each other, learn why we’ve made this choice and what we’ve learned in the process.To kick off the meeting, I have asked George Lambert of Goldenware Travel to explain why his company has switched to Python and the benefits and challenges they are seeing.The meeting will be held at my office in Somerville. We currently have 7 RSVP’s and 10 “Maybe’s”. Of course that may change with the date change.

Then there is the Plone meetup the very next evening! This will be a great chance to meet the people behind the Boston Plone events coming up and get an overview. Lots to discuss, and lots to learn!

The Boston Plone May Meetup

When:

Thursday, May 24, 2007, 7:00 PM

Where: (UPDATED May 21st 10pm EST)

Nature Conservancy
11 Ave. de Lafayette
Boston , MA 02111
(617) 542-1908

• Info/Map
• This venue has been marked “private” by the Organizer.

Description:

The first ever Plone sprint in Boston is going to be happening July 18-23, 2007 at the Christian Science Center (where we hold the monthly Boston Plone meetups). At the meeting on thursday, we will discuss the sprint topics and plan the logistics to make sure it’s a smooth experience for everyone who participates. Bring your ideas and enthusiasm! If there’s time, we will also get a sneak peek at Plone 3.0 which was just released as beta 3 a few days ago.Read more about the upcoming sprint on the Plone4Artists / Multimedia Sprint in Boston page.We will also discuss the Zope 3 Training for Plone Developers that will be happening in the two days prior to the sprint.If your interested in knowing what what’s the latest and greatest in the Plone world, this meetup is for you.For more information, see http://www.bostonplon…

Directions: The entrance is in the center of the long building next to the reflecting pool. Tell the security guard you are here for the Plone Users Group meeting. Call me on my cell if you have trouble. If coming by T, closest stop is green line Symphony T stop. Hynes Convention Center is also very close, as is Mass Ave (Orange line). Parking at the Christian Science Center underground parking garage available, but will cost $5. Please let the parking attendant know that you are here for the Plone Meetup hosted by Danny Robert.

Please note that while the official location of the church is 1 Norway Street, the meetup location is in the Christian Science Church Park and is closer to Huntington Ave. See this Google map for clarification.

This evening was the second informal meet up of the year, held at Trident Booksellers on Newbury Street. In total there were five of us, which is about average for informal sessions rescheduled with one day notice (oops). This allowed for some intense discussion with a fair amount of depth, on a wide range of topics. I originally planned a seed discussion on a number of open source projects which are in need of more volunteer (and paid) support. We were so busy talking about education, engineering, Python 3000, and the differences between object and functional programming that we never really got to any projects besides OLPC; which is good as I left the materials on the printer at work. I love informal gatherings like this because it allows for some amazing free association and everyone comes away learning something. Hearing how others are using python and other technologies to solve real world problems or just for fun; it never gets old. Here are the highlights (as much as I can remember………)

I wish I had the foresight to get peoples names written down, but that did not happen. Fahri Basegmez is starting a new company around a wxPython application. The concept to be able to model physical objects in 2D, animate them, and have them interact using a complex physics engine. The catch? It’s targeted for high school students and has a clean GUI+Python Editor. The current plan is to have a demonstration of the application for the June 14th Boston-Pig formal meeting at the Nature Conservatory. I am being light on details on purpose as I do not know how much the author wants to disclose at this date. More detail will be given when we get closer to the June meeting.

There was a lengthy discussion about ‘Software Engineering’ and the issues on whether any software can be held to the same engineering principles of quality, verification and standardization of classical Engineering disciplines. I personally like to think of myself as an ‘Engineer’, but I know I am not. My undergrad with in Electrical Engineering, but I am not certified, and have been principally a programmer since age 11 (I have the uncashed $6.20 royalty check to prove it). I think the end consensus can be summed up as: Certain aspects of software design and algorithms can be held to the rigors of an engineering discipline, but on a whole software is closer to literature than engineering.

The benefits of FORTRAN for fast mathematical processing and how to access those entrypoints from python ctypes was discussed in some detail. Other languages including lisp, PLG, PLA, CPM, hascal, smalltalk, C#, VB, Mono, and assembly were discussed, dissected, and all around ripped upon and praised in equal amounts. At some point we got to talking about IronPython. At PyCon Fuzzyman gave a demo of using the gui builder in DevStudio with IronPython instead of VB. There was also a demo of something similar for wxPython, but overall it was weak by comparison. No one knew of anything better which was not tied to the Windows operating system.

One question came up on trying to validate if a piece of python code is malicious or not. This included all the standard issues with restricted python. Some of the standard tools were mentioned as well as Tim Peters opinions on the matter. A fair amount of time was spent contrasting a pier review community based system for validating code, verses an automated one, or some sort of hybrid.

Chuck Spitz has a new web service he would like people to look at and give feedback on. It is a consumer based car review site, zDecisions, based on the django framework. Go check it out, fill out the survey, and send him an e-mail with feedback on the site.

There were a number of web sites and projects mentioned which people were interested in or were proposed as solutions to peoples problems. Here are the ones I can remember:

• One Laptop Per Child
  • Main Page
  • Wiki
  • RedHat magazine articles (Sugar Intro, Sugar Apps)
• Python IDE’s
  • Komodo Edit (I have a thing for dragons)
  • Wing IDE
  • SPE
  • Python in Eclipse
• Django Snippits
• Firefox Extensions
  • Firebug
  • WeDeveloper

In the end it was almost three hours of interesting discussions on not just python, but programming, engineering, and education; just to pick three topics. The next Boston-Pig meeting will once again be an informal meeting at the Trident Booksellers, Thursday May 10th, 7pm-9pm (or later).