Montreal Python

Montréal-Python 9 is this Wednesday at room PK-5115 of UQAM at 6 PM.

We have a lot of very interesting flash presentations scheduled for
the event:

• Simon Law: Cygwinreg and ctypes — Using the Windows registry from Cygwin
• Mathieu Chartier: ConFoo.ca — One of the largest Web development conference in North-America
• Sébastien Pierre: Sink — A tool to compare and keep directories in sync
• Erik Wright: Django Lean — A tool for lean development and A/B testing
• Alexandre Vassalotti: Memory profiling for Python programs
• Hugo Boyer: PyCUDA — High performance computation using graphic cards

Main Presentation will be Andrew Francis on Stackless Python and there
will be a keg of homebrew.

See you there!

update:the event was moved from the 23rd to the 30th.

Montréal-Python 9 will take place at UQAM, on Wednesday 2009-09-30 in
room PK-5115 of the President-Kenedy building.
The PK building is located at 201 Président-Kenedy, the street that is also called Ontario on the east side of St-Laurent. The PK building has a direct entrance to the Place-des-Arts metro station.

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentation

Our main presenter will be Andrew Francis and he is going to walk us
through his Survey of Stackless Python:

Over the years, Stackless Python has acquired a mystical reputation,
mostly based around its micro-thread implement and its use in a really
big MOORPG. Otherwise, relatively little is known about Stackless
Python. I would like to change this…

In this talk, I will discuss what is Stackless Python and its
relationship to Python. I will give an overview of key Stackless
Python concepts. Special attention will be devoted to network
programming. I will finish the talk with a mention of my own Stackless
work and Stackless Python’s future. Throughout the talk, I will
suggest that Stackless Python true strength is not the performance of
its concurrency model but rather its simplicity that gives insights as
to what a Pythonic concurrency model would look like.

Living in Montreal, Andrew Francis has an academic background in the
humanities, computer science, and management. Professionally, Andrew
has worked at companies such as BNR, Omnimark, and Adobe Systems in
California. Ever since 2005, Andrew has been playing with Stackless
Python, as a part of his work with WS-BPEL, and he has never looked
back! At Pycon 2008, Andrew gave the talk “Adventures in Stackless
Python/Twisted Integration.”

We still have a lot of open slots for flash presentations so don’t
hesitate to propose a talk. Also, our speaker pool is running low so
please get in touch with us if you have an idea for a main
presentation.

Here is a follow-up on Montréal Python 8. By popular demand, we will try and do our best to post the slides and example files online after the event.

Flash presenters at MP8 were:

• Jennifer Bell: visiblegovernment.ca and fixmystreet.ca — Google Maps API and Geodjango (slides, code)
• Sébastien Pierre: Pamela — rediscovering the pleasure of hand-written HTML (slides)
• Francis Pieraut: follow-up on Digipy, the real time character recognition system presented at Montreal Python 6 (slides)
• Yannick Gingras: the Setuptools entry-points plugins system (examples)

Our main presenter was Alexandre Vassalotti on developing extension modules for CPython (slides, examples).

As we mentioned at MP8, Montreal Python is teaming up with PHP Québec for the PHP BBQ, which unfortunately we did not have time to rename to something more language agnostic. The BBQ will take place at Parc du Mont-Royal on 2009-08-08 at 13h. There will be a home brewed beer contest between the PHP and the Python master brewers. I will proudly represent the Montréal Python team with a keg of Pythoune Brune, a fruity Belgian dark ale. Please confirm your presence by calling 514-581-8497 to make sure that there is enough food. Admission is only $5.

Montréal-Python will take a break for the rest of the summer. We’ll be back on track in mid-September for MP9 with Andrew Francis who is going to do a presentation on Stackless Python. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we have the final date and location.

As usual, we are still looking for presenter for both flash and main presentations! Do not hesitate to contact us if you have an idea for a presentation.

Montréal Python would like to thank our sponsors who made MP8 possible:

• gold: Département d’Informatique de l’UQAM
• silver: Pivotal Payments and Savoir-faire Linux
• bronze: O’Reilly and AESS

Thanks again to the presenters and to the attendees. See you at the BBQ.

– Yannick Gingras

Greetings Pythonistas of Montréal, we have the pleasure to announce that Montréal Python 8 will take place at UQAM on Wednesday 2009-07-08. The event will be in room SH-2420 of the Sherbrooke building, located at 200 Sherbrooke west

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentation

Our main presenter will be Alexandre Vassalotti on developing extension modules for CPython

Python makes an excellent glue language to connect software components. The CPython interpreter can easily be extended to provide new ways to manipulate and combine your programs and libraries.

The core of the talk will be on how to develop extension modules for CPython using its C API. The presentation will also give insights how to write Python code which makes efficient use of the CPython interpreter.

Please note that the audience will be expected to have a basic understanding of the C language. However, people who do not know C will probably still enjoy the commentaries about the design of the CPython interpreter and the overview of the alternative techniques available for extending it.

Alexandre Vassalotti is a contributing Python core developer and a computer science student at McGill University. He was a successful participant of Google Summer of Code 2007, for which he worked on the different aspects of Python 3.0.

We still have a few open slots for flash presentations so don’t hesitate to propose a talk. Also, our speaker pool is running low so please get in touch with us if you have an idea for a main presentation.

– Yannick Gingras

This is a reminder that Montreal Python 7 will be on Wednesday 2009-05-27 at La Banque, 175 Roy E. Based on your feedback, we’ll start earlier and we’ll have a tighter schedule.

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentation

Our flash preseters will be:

• Jean Schurger: Intro to Google AppEngine
• Sébastien Pierre: Railways — Un toolkit web léger et déclaratif
• Alexis Laferrière: PyCaptain — Writing a game with PyGame
• David Goodger: Building PyCon
• Marc-Antoine Desroches: Unique — A Copy-paste detector

Our main presenter will be Olivier Bélanger on “Ounk, un environnement de scripting musical”.

La création du logiciel Ounk a été motivée par le besoin d’un environnement de programmation musicale offrant une excellente qualité sonore accompagnée d’un langage de haut niveau, simple et efficace. L’environnement doit permettre à l’utilisateur d’arriver rapidement au résultat sonore souhaité. Le langage Csound comme moteur audio fut choisi pour plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, Csound est un langage mature ayant une communauté de programmeurs très active. En plus d’offrir une très large librairie d’opérateurs, la précision de l’interpolation produit un rendu sonore d’excellente qualité. Csound permet aussi de calculer les échantillons en temps réel ou en temps différé, en créant un fichier son sur le disque dur, ce qui permet de construire des structures sonores dont la complexité n’est pas limitée à la puissance du processeur.

Par contre, la syntaxe du logiciel Csound est un peu désuète et rébarbative. Ounk nécessitait une syntaxe moderne, claire et efficace pour l’écriture des scripts. Le choix du langage de programmation Python s’est imposé principalement pour la simplicité de sa syntaxe, sa librairie de fonctions riche et variée, le fait qu’il est multi-plateforme et les facilités d’interfaçage qu’il fournit. Python est un excellent langage pour construire des algorithmes puissants et versatiles.

Le tandem Python et Csound combine la puissance du langage de programmation Python à la qualité du moteur audio Csound pour offrir un environnement de programmation musicale agréable à utiliser, que ce soit pour la construction d’interfaces graphiques, l’exploration des techniques de traitement sonore, le multitâche ou la communication avec d’autres logiciels.

Lors de cette présentation, seront détaillés, et mis en exemple, les différents procédés mis en place dans l’environnement Ounk pour faciliter la création de scripts musicaux.

Olivier Bélanger a terminé en février 2009 un doctorat en composition électroacoustique à l’université de Montréal sous la direction de Jean Piché et Caroline Traube. Ses travaux ont porté sur la création d’un modèle de synthèse de la voix chantée et sur le contrôle algorithmique des instruments de synthèse. Depuis 2003 il est chargé de cours pour le secteur électroacoustique de la faculté de musique de l’université de Montréal où il donne les cours de programmation musicale. Ses recherches s’orientent vers le développement de logiciels de programmation et de traitement du son.

– Yannick Gingras

We are pleased to announce that Montreal Python 7 will be on Wednesday 2009-05-27 at La Banque, 175 Roy E. Based on your feedback, we’ll start earlier and we’ll have a tighter schedule.

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentation

Our main presenter Olivier Bélanger on “Ounk, un environnement de scripting musical”.

La création du logiciel Ounk a été motivée par le besoin d’un environnement de programmation musicale offrant une excellente qualité sonore accompagnée d’un langage de haut niveau, simple et efficace. L’environnement doit permettre à l’utilisateur d’arriver rapidement au résultat sonore souhaité. Le langage Csound comme moteur audio fut choisi pour plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, Csound est un langage mature ayant une communauté de programmeurs très active. En plus d’offrir une très large librairie d’opérateurs, la précision de l’interpolation produit un rendu sonore d’excellente qualité. Csound permet aussi de calculer les échantillons en temps réel ou en temps différé, en créant un fichier son sur le disque dur, ce qui permet de construire des structures sonores dont la complexité n’est pas limitée à la puissance du processeur.

Par contre, la syntaxe du logiciel Csound est un peu désuète et rébarbative. Ounk nécessitait une syntaxe moderne, claire et efficace pour l’écriture des scripts. Le choix du langage de programmation Python s’est imposé principalement pour la simplicité de sa syntaxe, sa librairie de fonctions riche et variée, le fait qu’il est multi-plateforme et les facilités d’interfaçage qu’il fournit. Python est un excellent langage pour construire des algorithmes puissants et versatiles.

Le tandem Python et Csound combine la puissance du langage de programmation Python à la qualité du moteur audio Csound pour offrir un environnement de programmation musicale agréable à utiliser, que ce soit pour la construction d’interfaces graphiques, l’exploration des techniques de traitement sonore, le multitâche ou la communication avec d’autres logiciels.

Lors de cette présentation, seront détaillés, et mis en exemple, les différents procédés mis en place dans l’environnement Ounk pour faciliter la création de scripts musicaux.

Olivier Bélanger a terminé en février 2009 un doctorat en composition électroacoustique à l’université de Montréal sous la direction de Jean Piché et Caroline Traube. Ses travaux ont porté sur la création d’un modèle de synthèse de la voix chantée et sur le contrôle algorithmique des instruments de synthèse. Depuis 2003 il est chargé de cours pour le secteur électroacoustique de la faculté de musique de l’université de Montréal où il donne les cours de programmation musicale. Ses recherches s’orientent vers le développement de logiciels de programmation et de traitement du son.

We still have a few open slots for flash presentations so don’t hesitate to send us your presentation ideas.

– Yannick Gingras

As you hopefully know by now, Montreal Python 6 is this Tuesday at la Banque. Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h45: Announcements and flash presentations
• 19h15: Break
• 19h45: Main presentation: Francis Piéraut on Machine Learning empowered by Python

Flash presenters will be:

• Nathanaël Lécaudé: PyMT: module for developing multi-touch enabled applications
• Stéphane Jolicoeur How Python is used at the National Film Board of Canada
• Alexandre Bourget SFL Vault: a secure distributed crediential storage system
• Herald Gjura The challenge of managing a horde of Pythonistas
• François Pinard Tweeting with Python
• Olivier Bélanger Ounk: a Python audio scripting environment for Csound; pitch for Montréal Python 7

In case you missed the original announcement, here is the abstract for the main presentation:

Machine Learning is a subfield of AI that considers learning patterns from existing data. Related applications are increasing in many fields where adaptive systems are needed, like fraud detection, face recognition, recommendation systems, disambiguation systems, insurance risk estimation, web traffic filtering, voice recognition, and many others.

The first part of this presentation will cover the basics of machine learning; in the second part, we will dive into a real example and see the complete process of using machine learning to create a real-time digit recognition system using Mlboost, a python library. The practical approach should allow the audience to assimilate the most important concepts of machine learning and the critical need for data preprocessing.

After a Software Engineer degree, Francis Piéraut made a research master in Machine Learning at LISA. During his research work, he developed flayers, a powerful C++ neural network library. During the beginning of his career, his spend several years in Montreal startups companies applying Machine Learning and statistical AI related solutions. In 2005, he released the first version of MLboost, a python library that allows him to speedup his Machine Learning projects by simplifying data preprocessing, features selection and data visualization.

See you there.

–Yannick Gingras

Alexadre Vassalotti just published a write-up of the presentation that he gave at Montreal Python 5. Hopefully that will help the ones who were not fast enough at note taking and the ones who didn’t have the joy of attending.

– Yannick Gingras

Pictures of Montreal Python 5 are now showing up on Flickr. Thanks to Simon Law, our master portraitist.

We are pleased to announce that Montreal Python 6 will be on 2009-04-14 at La Banque.

Our main presenter will be Francis Piéraut on Machine Learning empowered by Python:

Machine Learning is a subfield of AI that considers learning patterns from existing data. Related applications are increasing in many fields where adaptive systems are needed, like fraud detection, face recognition, recommendation systems, disambiguation systems, insurance risk estimation, web traffic filtering, voice recognition, and many others.

The first part of this presentation will cover the basics of machine learning; in the second part, we will dive into a real example and see the complete process of using machine learning to create a real-time digit recognition system using Mlboost, a python library. The practical approach should allow the audience to assimilate the most important concepts of machine learning and the critical need for data preprocessing.

After a Software Engineer degree, Francis Piéraut made a research master in Machine Learning at LISA. During his research work, he developed flayers, a powerful C++ neural network library. During the beginning of his career, his spend several years in Montreal startups companies applying Machine Learning and statistical AI related solutions. In 2005, he released the first version of MLboost, a python library that allows him to speedup his Machine Learning projects by simplifying data preprocessing, features selection and data visualization.

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h45: Announcements and flash presentations
• 19h15: Break
• 19h45: Main presentation

We are still looking for flash presenters so contact us if you have an idea for a flash presentation.