Python
Mukti 11.2 at NIT Durgapur
We reached Durgapur around 3:30AM on Friday, woke up by 6AM due to the really cold temperature. The inauguration event started few hours late and after that Mether started doing his RPM workshop.
UPDATE: flickr set can be found here.
Report from PyCon India 2010
So I am back from PyCon India 2010. I missed last year, so was waiting for this year’s event. Met many faces after very long time and to be in a place with so many other python lovers is always a nice experience. The total attendance was around 700 but the venue was too big for that number , so except the lunch time, corridors had lesser number of people discussing. The selection of the talks were also matching the environment as they came from different directions. We saw talks with hardware accessibility to web development to GUI application toolkits, network programming, scientific computing, terminal based works etc.
GNUnify2010 and my python workshop
GNUnify2010 was the first for me. Started a bit early to the venue, Rahul was along with me. His talk was in top of schedule. I slowly moved to the lab where my python workshop was scheduled.
The main target of the workshop was to show/teach the basics of the python programming language. I hear mostly students asking “How to start working on a project?” but as the learning curve is not so easy in most of the things, they run away. The only students we have from India who are contributing to any FOSS projects are the people who came in their own interest. I found programming with python can be an easy entry point for the general students and they can become better programmer in life. This is the main reason behind my python workshops in different places.
No need to buy books, great online community, projects working on different dimensions, all of these can generate interest in the students.
Coming back to my workshop, I generally try to follow my own book (which I have to update). Slowly going through simple examples and showing that it is not difficult. I ask the students to solve the lab works they do in any programming lab in python. This will help them to understand the basics of the language. The workshop lab was supposed to have 30 students, but many more came so I had to ask them to seat in groups in the computers (most of them was running Fedora ). The basic feedback I got, states that it was easy, but how the students are going to use this, I have no clue. Btw, most of the students in my workshop were from Pune University Maths department, I told them to attend Ramki’s workshop in the second half as his workshop was about explaining how to solve mathematical problems.
At the end of the workshop I showed few applications written in python and talked about job opportunity in market. 2 students contacted me after the event.
Full set of the event photos can be found here.
Coming month, I will be in Durgapur, doing another python workshop , I will also conduct a Django workshop.
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sparcy — command line utility for Spac Systems Limited GPS loggers
Few days back I bought a new GPS data logger from Sparc Systems Limited , GDL 3204. It comes with a nice 3 page manual. The last page explains the data format of the logs.
The device works in a very nice and easy way, it is having 32 channels.
We already had a nice python script to parse the log and create gpx files. But for me , every time “cat”ing the device and then convert the log is a difficult task.
Sparcy , which can get the data from the device and convert them into gpxfor you. If you already have the raw data, you can convert them to gpx too. People from #osm helped me a lot to understand how latitude and longitude calculations are done.
RPMs are available here.
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Dependency chart for kde-settings
Download from here.
Warning 18MB , may crash your browser and system, download and view with a desktop image viewer.
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Boog, the desktop bugzilla client for Fedora
Few nights back I was looking for way to explain my dad how to file a bug and this starts from there. Me and mether had the initial discussion in the middle of night about the basic design and workflow.
From the project page “Boog is a desktop and command line bugzilla client that aims to provide a very easy and simple interface for end users to file bug reports. We aim to built some intelligence into the client. We will collect the Fedora version and component version information, hardware details, log output, SELinux status and other details depending on the component the user chooses to file a bug report against.”
To get automated information , I wrote some code based on this wiki page.If your package requires any other information which can be collected automatically please drop a mail to me.
I started writing a console based client for the same. For now we thought that user will know against which package he wants to file the bug.
The first screen
In the next screen, user needs to put the username and password or it will pick them up from a config file.
Next is the package name
Then a single line summary
Next it will open up your favorite editor based on $EDITOR environment variable or it will fallback to vi.
Finally it will show the report to the user , user may want to submit that to go back or cancel the whole operation.
While submitting the bug it will automatically upload the files to be attached.
After submitting the report the user will get an URL of the bug just filed.
You can see the process in this screencast.
We need help on the mockup of the Gtk based GUI. Please contact me or mether in case you want.
Any new ideas or suggestions are welcome :)
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