[Chicago] January Meeting Recap.

[Robare, Phil]

Add links to Vpython site and the Pycontest site when you post.

Good writeup.

Phil 

-----Original Message-----
From: chicago-bounces at python.org [mailto:chicago-bounces at python.org] On
Behalf Of Jason R Huggins
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:56 PM
To: David Rock
Cc: chicago at python.org
Subject: [Chicago] January Meeting Recap.

Thanks for hosting the meeting last night, David. Since, Chris McAvoy
wasn't there to do his customary blog post summary of the event, I'll
take a go at it....

My short summary:
* I presented my little 3d machine prototype vis-a-vis the VPython 3d
library. I think the most interesting comment was that my design was
"beautiful lunacy". Everyone agreed I was wise to keep my day job while
I find a market for my little contraption. :-)  I'll now start the
process of blogging about my idea and gathering help from anyone in
web-land who can help me build it. For those not in attendance, my idea
is basically a motorized, programmable version of this: 
http://www.officeplayground.com/pinart.html

* David Rock presented the datetime python module. It raised some
comments about missing convenience functions, whether leap seconds are
supported or not (I think they are, but don't rely on it too heavily
without checking it out further), and the usefulness(uselessness?) of
the tzinfo class.

* Michael Tobis attempted to explain the winning, losing, and cheating
solutions to pycontest.net. Brains were broken in the process. For the
record, #5 (Ian) and #196 (Michael) were in attendance. (There were a
few others who competed, too, but I can't remember the names.)

* One of David's co-workers (name?) at Acxiom posed a Python development
problem he had with asynchronously communicating between several hundred
computers on his LAN. Various suggestions were offered, some of which
may even turn out to be helpful. I wonder if his problem could ever be a
future pycontest challenge? I don't know how one would unit test the
winning entry.

Anyone care to correct my facts before I blog this?

-Jason
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