[omaha] Fwd: ANN: Omaha Python Users Group Meeting Notes, July 12, 2007

[Jeff Hinrichs - DM&T]

A correction, "In the case that a holiday coincides with or is
immediately adjacent
to that day, the meeting will be held 1 week later on the second
Tuesday."  should have read, "In the case that a holiday coincides
with or is immediately adjacent
to that day, the meeting will be held 1 week later on the second
Wednesday."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeff Hinrichs - DM&T <jeffh at dundeemt.com>
Date: Jul 13, 2007 1:18 AM
Subject: ANN: Omaha Python Users Group Meeting Notes, July 12, 2007
To: Omaha Python Users Group <omaha at python.org>,
dundeemt.omahapython at blogger.com
Cc: Marsee Henon <marsee at oreilly.com>


July 12, 2007
The meeting opened up with lots of interesting rumors, speculation and
general kibitzing about Google's plans for the new CB location. Who
knows for sure -- but lots of fun in the mean time.

Jeff gave a presentation on Crunchy ([WWW]
http://crunchy.sourceforge.net/) Talk about a gee whiz app. We poked
at it with sticks and xkill ([WWW]
http://www.xfree86.org/current/xkill.1.html) to figure out how/who had
control of the tkinter/wx/gtk windows.

The graphics capabilities brought out some questions about graphing
packages available to Python. Jeff recalled a recent blog entry by
Fuzzyman a.k.a Michael Foord ([WWW]
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/weblog/) about him looking for a
graphing package to use with IronPython ([WWW]
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/weblog/arch_d7_2007_06_23.shtml#e753).
A bit of googling and gnuplot ([WWW] http://gnuplot.info/) was found.

Next was a question about xml parsers from someone new to Python and
while no one was definitive, we suggested that they look at
elementtree ([WWW]
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-xml.etree.ElementTree.html) and lxml
([WWW] http://codespeak.net/lxml/index.html)

The conversation then drifted towards web development. We had a java
programmer in the group who has been recently been using Django ([WWW]
http://www.djangoproject.com/) and is becoming enamored with Python.
We gabbed about storm ([WWW] https://storm.canonical.com/) and news
about how the TurboGears had started implementing TG2 ([WWW]
http://www.blueskyonmars.com/2007/06/27/turbogears-2-a-reinvention-and-back-to-its-roots/)
as an abstraction on top of Pylons ([WWW] http://pylonshq.com/). There
was also talk of mod_wsgi ([WWW] http://www.modwsgi.org/) and how it
is different than mod_python ([WWW] http://www.modpython.org/). Jeff
shared a little bit about mod_wsgi's embedded and daemon modes he had
picked up from Graham's recent blog entry ([WWW]
http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2007/07/web-hosting-landscape-and-modwsgi.html).

The talk then veered in to lambda ([WWW]
http://docs.python.org/ref/lambdas.html) and the java types whispered
"anonymous" <g> This quickly veered in to discussion on how binding
([WWW] http://docs.python.org/ref/naming.html) operates, which lead to
an impromptu demonstration of passing a function as an argument to a
function and how you assign a function to a dictionary element.

>>> def f(x):
...     return x*x
...
>>> print f(2)
4

>>> def g(fn,x):
...   return apply(fn,[x])
...
>>> g(f,2)
4

>>> d={}
>>> d['foo']=f
>>> print d['foo'](2)
4


As the meeting came to a close, we decided to change the meeting time
from the 2nd Thursday of the month to the 1st Wednesday of the month.
In the case that a holiday coincides with or is immediately adjacent
to that day, the meeting will be held 1 week later on the second
Tuesday. There was also a motion to move the meeting location and two
locations were put up for consideration:

    *

      Scooter's Java Express @ 120th and Blondo
    *

      Student Union @ UNO's campus, 60th and Dodge

We will investigate these two locations and report back to the list
for a vote by early next week.

Brad S. won the Door Prize of "Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition". Tom
never contacted us to pick it up so he lost out from last month. Sorry
Tom.

Thanks and appreciation to Jay and Reboot The User for donating the
meeting space and Dundee Media & Technology, Inc. for the pizza and
pop.


-- 
Jeff Hinrichs