Front Range Pythoneers Meeting: Wed, Dec 20, in Boulder, Colorado

2006-12-19 Thread frpythoneers
Important Change: we will be meeting at bivio Software instead of
Jill's to better accommodate this month's demos.

== Meeting: December 20, 2006 ==

 * Time: 6-8 PM

 * Location: bivio Software, Inc., 28th and Iris. Above Hair Elite in
Suite S.

 * BoulderSprint. Eric Dobbs proposed we adopt Jython, and this looks
like we have enough momentum to actually get some useful work done in
our upcoming sprints.

 * Tom Churchill and Vinny will demo Churchill Navigation's
earth-rendering engine (which looks like Google Earth, only apparently
even better and faster ;) ). Vinny (their main Python guy) will explain
how they built the glue logic (and why they decided against SWIG) and
perhaps some of the implications of using Python as a scripting
language in a real-time (60 fps) environment, and the techniques they
employed to keep the graphics pipeline from stalling when making an
expensive call into their engine from Python.

 * Brian Granger from Tech-X will help us think more deeply about
concurrent Python programming, especially as seen in a new version of
IPython.

We will have food & drink available. Did I mention the free beer? Hope
to see you there.

For more information: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

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Support the Python Software Foundation:
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Front Range Pythoneers Meeting: Wed, Jan 17, in Boulder, Colorado

2007-01-14 Thread frpythoneers
== Meeting: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 ==

 * Time: 6-8 PM

 * Location: Churchill Navigation, in their spiffy new office at 100
Arapahoe Ave, Suite 10, all the way at the end, in Boulder, Colorado.
There is abundant parking.

 * Tom Churchill and Vinny Fiano will demo Churchill Navigation's
earth-rendering engine (which looks like Google Earth, only apparently
even better and faster ;) ). Vinny (their main Python guy) will explain
how they built the glue logic (and why they decided against SWIG) and
perhaps some of the implications of using Python as a scripting
language in a real-time (60 fps) environment, and the techniques we
employed to keep the graphics pipeline from stalling when making an
expensive call into their engine from Python.

 * Brian Granger from Tech-X will help us think more deeply about
concurrent Python programming, especially as seen in a new version of
IPython.

 * BoulderSprint. We had a great sprint on Jython, focusing on design.
Momentum is really building, Jython might actually get the love that
Charles Oliver Nutter of JRuby proposed. More interestingly, there's a
chance for people in the dynamic language community to work together on
JVM implementations. We will talk about the next sprint to be held on
Saturday, February 3.

We will have food & drink available. Hope to see you there!

For more information: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list

Support the Python Software Foundation:
http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html


Front Range Pythoneers Monthly Meeting: Wed, Feb 21, in Boulder, Colorado

2007-02-16 Thread frpythoneers
== Meeting: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 ==

 * Time: 6-8 PM

 * Location: bivio Software, Inc., 28th and Iris. Above Hair Elite in
Suite S. There is abundant parking.

We have a line up of PyCon talks. Our presenters will have a chance to
practice on you, while giving you a sneak peek of what will happen in
Dallas next weekend:

 * Fernando Perez will present his joint talk with Brian Granger,
"IPython: Getting the most out of working interactively in Python":
IPython (if you do not know it yet) is an enhanced interactive shell
for Python. It provides a large number of features not found in the
default shell that make interactive work in Python more seamless and
convenient.

 * Jim Baker will present "Iterators in Action": Using iterators well
can make your code lean and your programming fun. We will distill
current best practice by investigating some (mostly) useful examples
of iterators in action. Expect to see a focus on itertools and recipes
from the cookbook.

Other items to talk about:

 * BoulderSprint. We had a great JythonSprint, focusing on getting
IPython to work on it. Next sprint will be in April, also on IPython.
Wait a second, what's up with IPython?

 * Google Summer of Code. One of our missions is to mentor Pythoneers.
Does it make sense to add a local component to GSoC 2007?

We will have food & drink available as usual. Hope to see you there!

More info: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

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http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list

Support the Python Software Foundation:
http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html


Front Range Pythoneers Monthly Meeting: Wed, Mar 21, in Boulder, Colorad

2007-03-17 Thread frpythoneers
== Meeting: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 ==

 * Time: 6-8 PM

 * Location: bivio Software, Inc., 28th and Iris, Boulder, CO. Above
Hair Elite in  Suite S. There is abundant parking.

This Wednesday (March 21) we have a great lineup of PyCon 2007 talks
from local presenters:

 * Matt Boersma will present "Write Less Code with XRC for wxPython":
an easier way to do GUI layout using wxWidget's XML-based resource
system.

 * Sean Reifschneider will present "Python and vim: Two great tastes
that go great together". The vim editor includes extensive abilities
for customization and scripting. In addition to its own simple macro
language, vim also supports calling Python code. This Python code has
access back into vim for manipulating the edit buffer as well as
running normal vim commands. Examples demonstrated in this talk will
include automatically detecting indentation style (tabs/N spaces),
automatic update of DNS "serial" numbers when editing DNS zone files,
mail alias tab-expansion, and a time tracking application using a
"domain specific vim" as the user interface.

Other items to talk about:

 * BoulderSprint. The next sprint will be April 28 on the IPython1
Beta. This would be an excellent opportunity to learn about
decorators, Twisted, and other advanced Python concepts while helping
getting this amazing shell to beta status.

 * Google Summer of Code. The Python Software Foundation's application
to join GSoC was just approved. It's not too late to be a mentor. But
the student application deadline is March 24!

We will have food & drink available as usual. Hope to see you there!

More info: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

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Support the Python Software Foundation:
http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html


ANN: Front Range Pythoneers Meeting, Wed, May 16, 6-8 PM, in Boulder, Colorado - Weather Research with Python

2007-05-11 Thread frpythoneers
== Meeting: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 ==

 * Time: 6-8 PM

 * Location: bivio Software, Inc., 28th and Iris, Boulder, CO. Above
   Hair Elite in Suite S. There is abundant parking.

This coming Wednesday, May 16, we have two researchers from the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder presenting
how they use Python as part of their weather research:

 * Joe VanAndel will present "Linux and Python at 20,000 Meters Above
   the Sea", a NCAR/CNES dropsonde project that investigated the
   hurricane formation zone off the west coast of Africa. After
   introducing the driftsonde project, he will discuss how Linux was
   used in the on-board gondola computer and explain how using the
   Python programming language facilitated reprogramming the gondola
   in the middle of a flight.

 * Mary Haley will present "Python Frameworks for Geoscience
   Visualization and Analysis". PyNGL and PyNIO are Python interfaces
   to a widely popular software package called the NCAR Command
   Language (NCL) for the access, analysis, and high-quality
   quantitative visualization of geoscientific data. Mary will briefly
   discuss NCL's history, and then segue into why Python was chosen
   for developing the next generation framework tools for file
   input/output, analysis and visualization. She will show an
   animation from a new high resolution Community Climate System Model
   (CCSM) run computed on a T341 grid (1024 points in longitude by 512
   points in latitude) that was created using NCAR's new Python
   interfaces to NCL and other post production utilities.


Some upcoming events you might be interested in:

 * Front Range Code Camp. Saturday, May 19. This would be an good
   setting to have a Python code jam.

 * Pythoneers Meeting, June 18. Steve Bethard from CU will present on
   Python and Natural Language Processing.

 * SciPy 2007 Conference, Aug 16-17. Held on the CalTech campus in
   Pasadena, CA, Aug 16-17. The deadline for abstracts is June 29.

We will have food & drink available as usual.  This includes our usual
free beer!

Hope to see you there Wednesday!
More details: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

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http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list

Support the Python Software Foundation:
http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html


ANN: Front Range Pythoneers Meeting, Wed, June 20, 6-8 PM, in Boulder, Colorado - NLP with Python

2007-06-14 Thread frpythoneers
== Meeting: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 ==

 * Time: 6-8 PM

 * Location: bivio Software, Inc., 28th and Iris, Boulder, CO. Above
Hair Elite in Suite S. There is abundant parking.

This coming Wednesday:

 *  Steve Bethard will present on Python and Natural Language
Processing: the computational semantics group at the University of
Colorado at Boulder is interested in improving machine understanding
of text by moving past the basic word-level approaches used by most
commercial applications these days. Whether they're teaching computers
how to tell a person from an organization, how to decide what order a
set of events occurred in, or how to convert a document into a complex
semantic graph, Python plays a key role in the process. Steve will be
discussing a number of the uses they've found for Python, including
the handling of complex data formats, modularizing their natural
language processing components, and the different types of feature
extraction they perform when building machine learning models.

 * Lightning talks for SciPy 2007. Are you working on a project
combining scientific computing and Python? Feel free to try out an
idea for a talk at SciPy on on our group with a 5-10 min informal
presentation! The SciPy conference is Aug 16-17 at CalTech, and the
deadline for abstracts is June 29.

We will have free food & drink as usual.  We're meeting from 6-8 PM at
bivio Software, which is at 28th and Iris in Boulder, above Hair Elite
in Suite S.

For our next meeting (July 18), we will be having presentations
showcasing web frameworks for Python. And we are planning to have a
sprint or jam on Saturday, August 4 around web frameworks. More
details to come.

Hope to see you there Wednesday!
More details: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list

Support the Python Software Foundation:
http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html