From don at sheu.com Sat May 2 00:06:37 2015 From: don at sheu.com (Don Sheu) Date: Fri, 1 May 2015 15:06:37 -0700 Subject: [Baypiggies] A Call to Support Nepal: Earthquake Emergency Relief Fund Message-ID: Dear Baypiggies, Please read this important request for help and share with your community. This message is from Prerak a friend of mine and a native of Nepal. He?s in Seattle as a masters student in CS, and he is a talented Pythonista and data nerd. Right now his nation needs everybody?s help. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Hi Everyone, My name is Prerak Pradhan and I am an MSIM student at the University of Washignton. I am from Nepal and as you may have heard my country has suffered an unimaginable tragedy. The earthquake left my home town, the capital, Kathmandu, in ruins with about 1000 estimated deaths there and about 4700 dead throughout the country. The neighborhood that I grew up in is now gone and my own house is at the moment unsafe for living. As you can imagine it has been a very difficult time for me. The past few days for me have been nothing short of a very bad nightmare. Being helpless as your loved ones suffer is probably the worst feeling one can have. The Nepalese Student Association at the University of Washington is raising funds to support the relief effort in the remote villages of Gorkha, Nepal (near epicenter of the earthquake). Any financial help that you provide will make an immediate difference to the lives of the survivors. The funds will be disbursed through a local relief agency Bhume JanaKalyan Samaj, a non-profit organization based in Kathmandu and actively working in the highly impacted villages in Gorkha, Nepal. *You can donate by either going to **Nepalese Student Association* * or can go directly to the funding page **here* *.* Your contribution will be used to house Nepalese in tents, provide my people warmth with space blankets, and nourish them with food that will be distributed to the people in the affected areas. A portion of the funds will also go towards rebuilding the region. By donating to either of these funds you will help my nation cope with the aftermath of this disaster. Every dollar counts and no financial support is small. Please feel free to contact me at prerak at uw.edu if you have any queries. Please circulate this information to anybody who you think might offer some help. Thank You, Prerak Pradhan -- Don Sheu ??? (312) 880-9389 *Early-stage Python Startups Apply for Startup Row at www.F6s.com/pyconstartuprowapplication#/apply * *CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE*: *The information contained in this message may be protected trade secrets or protected by applicable intellectual property laws of the United States and International agreements. If you believe that it has been sent to you in error, do not read it. Please immediately reply to the sender that you have received the message in error. Then delete it. Thank you.* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From peggyli.224 at gmail.com Fri May 8 07:50:13 2015 From: peggyli.224 at gmail.com (Peggy Li) Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 22:50:13 -0700 Subject: [Baypiggies] April & May Meetups Anouncements Message-ID: Hello everyone, Here are two updates on our recent and upcoming meetups: (1) The video recording from April's meetup on "Go for Pythonistas" by Francesc Campoy Flores is now available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51PksCJJK8U (2) Our next meetup is on Thursday, May 28 at LinkedIn in Mountain View. Melanie Warrick, deep learning engineer at Skymind.io, will be presenting on neural networks. Please find more information and RSVP at: http://www.meetup.com/BayPIGgies/events/222121298/ Thanks, Peggy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew.francis at mail.mcgill.ca Sun May 10 19:48:01 2015 From: andrew.francis at mail.mcgill.ca (Andrew Francis) Date: Sun, 10 May 2015 17:48:01 +0000 Subject: [Baypiggies] Help for an Upcoming Montreal Python Talk/Application Message-ID: I thought I reach out to a few Python User groups outside the Montreal Area. Why not the Bay Area first (I lived in the Bay in the early 2000s). Intro: During Pycon 2015, I held an Open Space talk called "Adventures in Library Borrowing." I love libraries. Not too keen on the patron experience with the information systems. I was surprised folks showed up: thanks!!! I demoed a simple Google appEngine* prototype that I have been running for well over a year. The application takes an E-mail library loan receipt, parses the entries, places the entries in my calendar*, sends a SMS and tweets (this was to test the framework. Good thing I borrow books mostly from the QA76 and TK5105 sections :-) ). The folks liked the prototype, were supportive, and shared their thoughts about what they would like to see in library applications. A common theme was why no library API for patrons. Side Story: I forgot I had the app running, in part because my University's e-mail loan receipt system was so flaky. However in December 2014, I just purchased a Pebble. When I borrowed a book, it was a bit of surprise and thrill to have the Pebble vibrate (I wasn't used to the watch) and see the loan receipt. I told the clerk not to print the receipt. Research/Challenge: I thought I would revisit the app, spruce it up and put it in Github. An issue is that it is tedious to write a custom parser for each library (of course, this begets the question of having a standardized format for these documents). Could natural language processing, machine learning and heuristics come to the rescue (I have just started playing with NLTK) ? I would like to put material together for a talk I would give at Montreal-Python in Fall 2015. A side issue though is that I really don't have much knowledge about library systems out there.... I have five library memberships, all in the Montreal area. - All have web interfaces. - Four send e-mail reminders.. - To the best of my knowledge, in lieu of paper, two send e-mail loan receipts. - None do SMS. - At least three of the systems use the same OPAC, two send email and one does not. Although library email messages more or less contain similar information, there are variances. Enough to make writing customer parsers a wee tedious. I would like to find out a few things: 1) What are the most common elements in a particular library email? 2) What features does a particular library system support? I would appreciate it if 1) You can tell me about your library. For example, does it issue e-mail loan receipts? Is it straight text? Or text and HTML? 2) If you could send samples of library loan receipts, recalls, reminders and over-due notices, all personal information removed. Here is an example from two of my libraries (McGill Loan receipt) Title: [title] / [author] Location: [call number][location] Barcode: [barcode] Due: [date] Title: [title] / [author] Location: [call number][location] Barcode: [barcode] Due: [date] ----------- (Concordia Loan receipt) TITLE LABEL NO. DUE DATE [TITLE] [SOME NUMBER] [DATE] That said, please feel either post information in your receptive mailing list. Or if polluting a mailing list is a problem, email me at andrew.francis(at)mail.mcgill.ca. Feel free to ask me questions!!!! Again, I would like to see where the road leads me. I'll summarise all my finding in a blog post and/or a talk along with code. Thanks, Andrew * I am serious thinking about dropping appEngine. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mdavis2 at ucsc.edu Mon May 25 18:18:44 2015 From: mdavis2 at ucsc.edu (Marilyn Davis) Date: Mon, 25 May 2015 09:18:44 -0700 Subject: [Baypiggies] Class for Well-Seasoned Programmers June 1-4 Message-ID: Hi Python People, June 1 - 4, there will be a "Python For Programmers" daytime retreat-style class for well-seasoned programmers, at our lab at UCSC-Extension in Santa Clara, right across 101 from the Great America sign: http://course.ucsc-extension.edu/modules/shop/index.html?action=courseSearch The course is low-pressure, but fast-paced, where students learn and practice core concepts and Pythonic thinking. To join this class, you should be well-practiced at programming in some other language. No beginning programmers please, but you can certainly be new to Python. If you are a beginner, or would prefer a weekly class, please consult our catalogue: http://course.ucsc-extension.edu/modules/shop/index.html?action=courseSearch ONLINE CLASS: If you would prefer an online class, you will enjoy: http://course.ucsc-extension.edu/modules/shop/index.html?action=section&OfferingID=1531625&SectionID=5276900 which runs from June 17 - Sept 15. ---- All our Python courses are hands-on with short lectures, and lots of exercises where we study the solutions after some lab time. Questions are always welcome; discussion and pair-programming are encouraged. Please come, and send students! --- And, the first quarter of the professional course is available for $20 at Udemy.Com! I'm so busy that I can't say when the rest of the course will be there, but I'm working on it. https://www.udemy.com/pythonic-python-part-i-the-basics/ I hope you find one of these classes useful to your schedule and your taste. Marilyn Davis, Ph.D. Python Instructor http:www.pythontrainer.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From peggyli.224 at gmail.com Thu May 28 20:42:26 2015 From: peggyli.224 at gmail.com (Peggy Li) Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 11:42:26 -0700 Subject: [Baypiggies] Location Change for Tonight's Meetup Message-ID: Everyone, Our talk tonight with Melanie Warrick will be held in Louboutine in 2061 Stierlin Court, NOT Unite in 2019. Apologies for the slightly short notice on this. Please find more event details at http://meetu.ps/2J4gfN. We do plan to record this talk and it will be available in about one week. Thanks, Peggy -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: