michael-mccracken.net (science)

Links for January 3rd through January 5th

Michael McCracken — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:14:00 GMT

My shared links for January 3rd through January 5th:

2011 Annual Question | Edge : "what scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit" - As usual more thought provoking essays than will fit in my head, but seriously, what is "A Proxemic of Urban Sexuality" getting at?
Simplified Unity Lens Development with Singlet | Michael Hall's Blog -
llvm-py - Python bindings for LLVM - Google Project Hosting -
The Mython Programming Language - "Mython is an extensible variant of the Python programming language. Mython makes Python extensible by adding two things: parametric quotation statement, and compile-time metaprogramming. The parametric quote statement is simply syntactic sugar for saying "run some function on this embedded string". Compile-time metaprogramming allows you to evaluate that function on the embedded string at compile time. This gives you added choice, both in terms of what your code looks like, and when you want to evaluate that code."
Solaris Internals and Performance FAQ - Siwiki - Main Page for Solaris Internals Wiki. Tons of info about Solaris' er, Internals.

Links for December 28th - 29th (Including PyCon2012 Talks of Interest)

Michael McCracken — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:21:00 GMT

My shared links for December 28th through December 29th:

The Email-SIG Archives - Archives of group working on email package in python
Link Grammar - grammar parsing package homepage as part of abiword
Overview -- NetworkX 1.6 documentation -
dmalcolm - Automatically detecting reference-count bugs in Python extension modules -
PyCon US 2012: Parsing Horrible Things - If you've ever wanted to get started with parsers, here's your chance for a ground-floor introduction. A harebrained spare-time project gives birth to a whirlwind journey from basic algorithms to Python libraries and, at last, to a parser for one of the craziest syntaxes out there: the MediaWiki grammar that drives Wikipedia.
PyCon US 2012: Python for data lovers - Exploring and analyzing data can be daunting and time-consuming, even for data lovers. Python can make the process fun and exciting. We will present techniques of data analysis, along with python tools that help you explore and map data. Our talk includes examples that show how python libraries such as csvkit, matplotlib, scipy, networkx and pysal can help you dig into and make sense of your data.
PyCon US 2012: Time series analysis in python - Analyzing, storing and visualizing time-series efficiently are recurring though difficult tasks in various aspects of scientific data analysis such as meteorological forecasting, financial modeling, ... In this talk we will explore the current Python ecosystem for doing this effectively, comparing options, using only open source packages that are mature yet still under active development.
PyCon US 2012: Email package - The email package in the Python Standard library has had a somewhat rocky transition into the Python3 era, and still doesn't handle non-ASCII easily. That is about to change. This talk will compare how things worked in Python2 (the past), how things work now (in Python3.2), and how things will work much better in the future (hopefully Python3.3).
PyCon US 2012: Advanced SQLAlchemy - How do you take the big step from casual SQLAlchemy user, who treats your database as a mysterious object store, to advanced power user, who optimizes critical queries, plans indexing and migrations, and generates efficient reports? This talk will teach you how databases think; why humanity invented the Relational Algebra; and how SQLAlchemy grants you access to relational power.
PyCon US 2012 : Python FUSE - Contrary to classical kernel residing file-systems in *NIX, FUSE is an API to develop file systems in user space. This talk details internals of FUSE, developing your own file-system with Python-FUSE, followed by creative application of Python-FUSE based file system.
PyCon US 2012: What's new in the PyStdLib - Lots of Interesting stuff has gone into Python Standard library in 2.7, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 release. Some interesting features that went in really make programmers life easy and it can bring in a 'wow' factor to their code. Additionally, it can also help the external library developers to relook at the their libraries to use new facilities available from standard library modules.

This talk distills stuff from What's new document from 2.7, 3.2 and 3.3 and presents some of the choicest new features from Python standard library. Since a lots has gone in since 2.7, focus would be given to those which have had good discussion in tracker or in python-dev and would in general was a most sought out one.

PyCon US 2012: Code Generation in Python: Dismantling Jinja - For many DSLs such as templating languages it's important to use code generation to achieve acceptable performance in Python. The current version of Jinja went through many different iterations to end up where it is currently. This talk walks through the design of Jinja2's compiler infrastructure and why it works the way it works and how one can use newer Python features for better results.
Mailman 3 -- PyCon US 2012 - Mailman 3 has been in development for several years. This is an evolution of the ever popular mailing list management system that runs thousands of mailing lists around the world. This talk describes how the code has been modernized and how the architectural deficiencies of Mailman 2 have been addressed using REST and other technologies. This is a spinoff from the AOSA chapter on Mailman 3.
RelEx Dependency Relationship Extractor - OpenCog - RelEx, a narrow-AI component of OpenCog, is an English-language semantic dependency relationship extractor, built on the Carnegie-Mellon Link Grammar parser. It uses a series of graph rewriting rules to identify subject, object, indirect object and many other syntactic dependency relationships between words in a sentence. That is, it generates the dependency trees of a dependency grammar. Its set of dependency relations it employs resemble those of Dekang Lin's MiniPar and the Stanford parser (and it has an explicit compatibility mode). It is inspired in part by the ideas of Hudson's Word Grammar.
Could you start a blog on this thing? -
Chinese high end CPUs are now in the game - details: Part 2, Alpha by VR-Zone.com - Chinese supercomputer uses Alpha architecture. Article has some interesting details and some cringeworthy breathless praise for the lamented Alpha chips…

Links for July 12th through July 15th

Michael McCracken — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:23:00 GMT

My shared links for July 12th through July 15th:

Understanding Hardware Acceleration on Mobile Browsers | Blog | Sencha - Understanding Hardware Acceleration on Mobile Browsers | Blog | Sencha
Scientists Turn to the Web to Raise Research Funds - NYTimes.com - Crowdfunding science. It can't replace existing sources, but it's a great idea for some projects.
The rise and fall of the independent software developer - Seeing a lot of this lately - big enough to be a target but small enough to be unable to fight.
Presentation Boot Camp (aka Tufte in Twenty Minutes) - A condensed 3-page summary of main ideas in tufte's books. Includes the idea of a handout - something I've used in the past and would like to use again.
Rapid DHCP: Or, how do Macs get on the network so fast? : Caffeinated Bitstream - Very interesting comparison. I'm also curious what windows does here - it seems like windows xp laptops often take a long time to join a network, too.
Why I will never pursue cheating again - A Computer Scientist in a Business School - Reading those automated cheating reports must be depressing. I wonder if it'd help for the system to just send the report back to the student every time?

Links for July 6th

Michael McCracken — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:28:00 GMT

My shared links for July 6th:

Computational science: ...Error : Nature News - "…why scientific programming does not compute."

I too have worked with large codebases from non-programmers. It can be difficult to tell a brilliant physicist that programming well is hard. After QED, nothing seems hard.

Attachments.me - A nice interface to searching your email, with a focus on attachments. But they're not a hosting provider , so it is not immediately clear what's stopping your email provider (say gmail) from adding this and wiping out the business?
waffle -> Perturbingly - Jesper reading the tea leaves on Growl dropping features to get into the mac app store.