[Edu-sig] more news 'n views

Kirby Urner kurner at oreillyschool.com
Thu Nov 15 18:42:28 CET 2012


In related news (noting RurPL is continuing its advance)...

the Visual Python group (VPython.org) have been tackling in earnest
the challenge of seamlessly integrating their 3D mini-API to an OpenGL
experience within wxPython, the Python adapter for the wx GUI toolkit.

I simply subscribe to that list, I'm not in a dev role on that so
won't have answers to nitty gritty questions.  I'm not up to date on
wxPython either.

https://github.com/BruceSherwood/vpython-wx  (here's the source code)

Congratulations to Python for having so many signature educational products.

I do not count Blender, which although "educational" is more
professional and hard to master without skills unrelated to writing
code (more like an ESRI product in that regard, also using Python).

Other news:

Our user group meeting was packed as usual.

The woman who spoke after me had been teaching herself the whole LAMP
stack from quasi-zero, with Python her P language.

She was living in China when she started, coming from the USA (hazy on
the details) and so was already in a mode to want to learn new
language / customs / culture.

She had come a long way in a relatively short time.  She bravely spoke
of setbacks and disappointments as well as victories.   The audience
was empathetic.

Here's a link to an editable copy of her talk (shared by Portia):

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IgeLis250VcbF-zdwmBlrHOqodB3PNoXU_m1piCZuCM/edit#slide=id.p

That talk followed nicely after mine (the first talk) about 'Pythonic
Andragogy'.

http://4dsolutions.net/presentations/pycon2013.pdf  (my slides)

I have this slide near the beginning listing various meanings /
connotations of Adult, gets wheels turning, and then the next slide is
titled 'Trendy / Spoofy' and I call out to the audience for a similar
word I'm looking for.

"Like 'Breaking Bad' I said, alluding to a popular TV show".
"Popular" one guy called out.  "Edgy" I said.  "For Adults" (as in
'Python for Adults') can be "edgy".

Then Portia's talk had some URLs with off color words in them.  Some
of the best teaching sites use profanity, even right in the URLs.

She underlined the word "edgy" as well, alluding to what we had just
heard in my talk.

Portia has that DIY love-to-make-things-that-work attitude that's so
celebrated around O'Reilly (my talk was somewhat a company talk i.e.
an ad for OST).

We enjoyed the new venue, Idealist, a company on the top floor of what
used to be a police headquarters for Portland but the police have long
since moved.

Urban Airship continues to be our regular host I'm pretty sure.

Although I'm listed as an organizer and helped start the meetup
presence (on meetup.com), PSF member Michelle Rowley is the chief
organizer who makes it all happen in this chapter.

Pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirbyurner/8187740417/in/photostream
(police station, see adjacent slides for more meetup)

Portland is looking forward to the return of Holden Web (Steve Holden)
this Friday from ApacheCon / Europe.

He's producing ApacheCon / USA (also an international event) -- in
Portland this year (Hilton -- also a former Djangocon venue, great
reviews)).

(Steve Holden is the author of the Python courses I teach)

Kirby


More information about the Edu-sig mailing list