Mailman 3 April 2016 - python-uk

Help solve a few riddles
by Anand Kumria April 29, 2016

April 29, 2016

Hi, Do you, or someone you know, what to change the world? We are trying to solve a riddle. How do people get cancer? [1] If you have cancer, which medicine will work best for you? Does it exist yet? When you visit your GPs, they can easily and routinely ask for a blood test. We want to make the same capabilities available but for genetic sequencing. [2] We are Genomics England, www.genomicsengland.co.uk, fully owned and funded by the Government and we are seeking a range of permanent Python developers. We need good junior through to exemplary senior developers. >From the outset you will be working we highly talented Bioinformaticians, to help translate their algorithms into Python -- and for the already existing Python make it robust, even easier to test and help us scale so we can (eventually) handle the kinds of query rates the NHS is going to send. The salary on offer ranges from £50k - £90k, depending upon experience; we aren't looking to hire in a hurry. We want to ensure new hires can 'gel' with the team. If you are a recruitment agency, we will consider any CVs sent to us a lovely gift but nothing more. Feel free to reply if you'd like more details and I'll answer as I can. Regards, Anand [1]: Other riddles relate to rare disease and, soon, diabetes [2]: An example of a what that can mean, and a riddle we helped to solve: http://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/first-children-recieve-diagnoses-through-1… -- “Don’t be sad because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” – Dr. Seuss

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Next CamPUG meeting: Tue 3rd May 2016
by Tibs April 28, 2016

April 28, 2016

The next Cambridge Python User Group meeting will be on Tuesday 3rd May at 7pm, at the Raspberry Pi Foundation offices, 30 Station Road, Cambridge. This evening will be lightning / short talks. Please note that we are also now on meetup.com, at http://www.meetup.com/CamPUG/. If possible, please RSVP there for meetings so we have an idea of numbers. As an incentive, there's more detail about each meeting there. Tweeting may occur at https://twitter.com/campython Tibs

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May London Python Code Dojo
by Gautier HAYOUN April 28, 2016

April 28, 2016

Tickets are now available for the next Dojo happening on the 5th of May 2016, 6:30 PM onwards : https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-python-code-dojo-season-7-episode-9-t… This is the same day as the Mayor of London and London Assembly elections so you might want to go vote in the morning if you are a Londoner! All programming abilities welcome, we have diverse attendants ranging from beginners to core Python contributors. This time, we will be hosted by Hired in their office near London Bridge: Hired Metal Box Factory 30 Great Guildford Street London, SE1 0HS See you at the Dojo! Gautier

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PyCon UK 2016
by Peter Inglesby April 27, 2016

April 27, 2016

Hi everyone, I’m delighted to announce the launch of PyCon UK 2016 <http://2016.pyconuk.org/>! The conference will run from 15th-19th September at Cardiff City Hall <http://www.cardiffcityhall.com/>, with a programme of talks, workshops, and other events aimed at the whole Python community. More details are on the conference website <http://2016.pyconuk.org/>, where you can buy a ticket <http://2016.pyconuk.org/tickets/> or submit a proposal <http://2016.pyconuk.org/cfp/> for a talk or a workshop. We have worked hard to ensure the conference is more affordable than recent years. Tickets start at £96 for the weekend, and we are offering financial assistance <http://2016.pyconuk.org/financial-aid/> to help people who would struggle to afford a ticket or other expenses. The website’s code is on GitHub <https://github.com/pyconuk/2016.pyconuk.org>. If you find any problems, please submit an issue or a pull request. If you run a local user group, please share this email with your members. We look forward to seeing you in Cardiff in September! ~ Peter, on behalf of the PyCon UK Committee

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Matplotlib show() doesn't display on OS X
by gvim April 26, 2016

April 26, 2016

I ran this simple script taken from a book: #!/usr/bin/env python3 import matplotlib.pyplot as plt squares = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] plt.plot(squares) plt.show() ... but although the script runs without error it doesn't display anything, doesn't terminate and is unresponsive to either Ctrl+C or Ctrl+D. gvim

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Python data wrangling - my experience of last year's Southampton course
by Michael Grazebrook April 25, 2016

April 25, 2016

Hi Lasy year, Southampton Uni started a new summer school. It's mostly about using Python to explore, process and visualise data. Since the second summer school is now open for registration, it seems like a good time to share my experience of attending it. <http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk/summer-academy/> It's mainly aimed at PhD students of various disciplines. But anyone can attend. I attended the courses on IPython Notebook (Jupyter) and Pandas. There are about 8 courses running in parallel, so hard choices. Some of the courses are taught by authors of the packages. The Pandas course was challenging. In a PhD level class, trying to learn Pandas, numpy, Scipy and Seaborn in 2 days, mastering every detail was beyond me. I couldn't use it without looking stuff up. But I know what it can do and where to start. It was good enough to put the new knowledge to work for my client when I got back to work. With the IPython course, I left feeling competent. The fee is reasonable - less than a training company but without the mollycoddling and a larger class size (30 ish?). Then again, being able to set up a fresh development environment is a useful thing to know. There was plenty of support if one got stuck (Though set-up is best done before the week begins). For me, there was also quite a bit to learn beyond the syllabus. Discovering about what the students were researching was an an added bonus. That works both ways as several people were interested in my experience of the world of work. It introduced me to some tools I hadn't known about before such as slack and etherpad. Add to that the pleasure of revisiting student life and I had an excellent week. Maybe this would interest you too. Michael Grazebrook

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Data Wrangling with Python Course
by Katharine Jarmul April 18, 2016

April 18, 2016

Hi there, My name is Katharine; I live in Berlin, Germany and write Python (/me waves). I'm writing here because I'm promoting a course on learning Python data wrangling / big data in London next month and was hoping for suggestions on places to promote the class. It's a two day introduction to data analysis with Python covering lots of pandas, some hadoop and spark as well as some scaling and automation. Any tips on getting the word out would be wonderful. (eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/data-wrangling-with-python-tickets-245084965… ). Also, if any Python events are happening that week (May 23-29) I'd love to hear about them and meet some London pythonistas. :) Thanks in advance for any / all advice! If you'd rather reach out via twitter I'm @kjam. -katharine

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Python Developer jobs at the Government Digital Service in London
by Alan Wright April 13, 2016

April 13, 2016

Hi We're looking for mid-to-senior Python Developers to work with us at the Government Digital Service, based opposite Holborn Station in London. For more information and to apply, check out our LinkedIn Job Advert <https://www.linkedin.com/comm/jobs2/view/118781272?trk=eml-pillar_view_job&…> Regards Alan Wright Delivery Manager Digital Marketplace Team Government Digital Service

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Build Something, Wed 20th
by SW April 13, 2016

April 13, 2016

For those of you who keep meaning to work on a project and are in/around London next Wednesday (20th), you're welcome to come along to Build Something! http://www.meetup.com/London-Python-Project-Nights/events/226695743/ Thanks, S

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[dw@hmmz.org: Re: Python sandboxing (last week's dojo challenge)]
by David Wilson April 10, 2016

April 10, 2016

On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 06:17:29PM +0100, Jon Ribbens wrote: > Further to the success of dojo participants in breaking out of my > sandbox experiment due to a stupid bug I'd created, I've both > tightened up the sandbox and extended it by adding back in 'with' > and 'import' (of white-listed modules). > > If anyone would like to have another go at breaking out of it, > I'd be interested to hear their results: I guess it goes without saying, but just in case, the core team gave up on any possibility of in-process sandboxing a very long time ago, and all popular implementations are designed with pretty much zero regard for this use case. For an example of a robust sandboxed Python, App Engine disables modules and has a bunch of patches to disable the most obvious seg faults, then applies an OS sandbox on top of that. If you want a real sandbox use an OS supplied facility that's been reviewed to exhaustion like seccomp on Linux, although sadly there are no good wrappers to use Python within seccomp. There is some example code for seccomp here: http://pythonsweetness.tumblr.com/post/65442885019/secure-low-overhead-eval… but really this wants wrapped up in a neat library to be generally useful. Jon are you up for that? :) David

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