[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: the iBook's irresistible charms

[Alex Martelli]

On Wednesday 07 January 2004 12:19 am, Konrad Hinsen wrote:
   ...
> > than walking over to my study...!-)  [[now what I _really_ need is a
> > good port of OO.o 1.1, with PyUNO scripting and all... 1.0.3 just
> > doesn't cut it, and I sure ain't gonna splurge on MS Office X...]]
>
> I am waiting for that as well...

There's a 1.1 RC3 -- working on the X side only, but still... -- that I've 
found, downloaded, and am gonna try out as soon as I get some free time --
I'm gonna let you know once I've tried it.


> > until a few days ago my sights for "a future 64-bit-CPU machine" were
> > firmly fixed on AMD-64 boxes, right now a Powermac G5 _is_ starting to
> > look very alluring (even though _its_ price/performance ratio vs cheap
> > AMD-64 boxes isn't really all that good...)!
>
> I still prefer AMD boxes for number crunching, but those noisy beasts
> needn't be on my desktop.

Right, unless you need unbelievably fast bandwidth from the number crunching 
to the video output, I guess; that's when the Powermac G5 quiet operation
would be a real winner, I suspect.  Not really my application area, though; 
the heavy computations are "batch-like", I don't really need truly advanced
interactive / video visualization, I believe.


> There is a nice tool that I found for use with Python on the Mac (to
> get back on topic...), although it isn't really advertised as such. It
> is called VoodooPad (at www.flyingmeat.com). It is best described as a
> Wiki for local use, but it has some nice extras, one of which being the
> possibility to execute a page as a script, also in Python.
>
> This won't replace an IDE (no way to write modules for example), but I
> find it great for throw-away scripts that I do want to keep for
> reference ("What did I do three months ago?"). Keeping the scripts in a
> Wiki-like environment makes it possible to put them together with
> explanations, other scripts, output, graphics, etc., which I find a lot
> more attractive that dozens of files with names such as "run2.py" that
> can easily get lost.

Neat advice, thanks!  And yes, it does sound like a really useful tool.


Alex