[Python-cuba] PyDay on PiDay... a true story

[kirby urner]

Let me give some more background:  I'm a huge
fan of the Python decimal type and watched it
mature and get in, boosting Python into the banking
industry big time.  Whatever you think of that
industry's need to control decimal points, having
a language built to suit is a technical challenge
worthy of geekdom. I went to many talks on it.

However I also know through Portland Python
User Group a guy at Mentor Graphics who works
on gmpy2 and such, an extended precision lineage
in its own right, boasting Alex Martelli in the mix.

The idea of showcasing this package, alongside
Decimal, is what brought me to this idea:

A contest on PiDay to generate Pi to 1000 places
using Standard Library or 3rd Party module of your
choice.  Further rule:  use this convergent sum by
Ramanujan << specific sigma notation goes here,
and it's for 1/PI actually so you have to flip it over
at the end >>.

A guy from University of Havana won the contest.
For me, that was like a mini-PyDay on PiDay or
vice versa.

I've posted some links about this on math-teach:

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2246748&tstart=0

That's not my only connection to a Cuba context.

I'm very self-documenting so lots of autobio about
me out there, I won't presume to dictate how to go
about your digging as we all have our favorite ways.[1]

The Pi connection is nice though.

Also PyCuba and PyCUDA come up in searches
and I have done a couple tweets combining them
as a meme.

I know about CUDA from a "truckologist", a 60+
year old Visual FoxPro refugee like me (50+) who
is building more and more Python into his uber-
sophisticated proprietary stack which to this day
routes trucks all over North America (and who
knows where else by now), a one man show.
I'd nominate him for some kind of award but not
sure which one yet.  Trucks still have a bright future,
even with global climate change and all, or so
Jim would aver.

Kirby

[1]

Blog post that mentions Cuba,
"""
I was most fortunate to reconnect with Glenn Baker, high school chum in the
Philippines.  He'd been in Vienna, Virginia before Manila, in India, Turkey
and Pakistan before that, another expat brat, like me.  His dad was USIS
when I knew them, mine USAID, former UN, a free lancer.  My dad'd also
worked for the Libyans, the Egyptians and the Swiss.  Glenn stayed with our
family that time we were living in DC and I was rather newly into the Bucky
stuff.  Glenn got a job with CDI
<http://web.archive.org/web/19990208003721/http://cdi.org/>, and formed
better relations with Cuba.  I went on in software, developing applications
in a proprietary Microsoft language (acquired, formerly *FoxPro 2*, another
in the *xBase* genre), then migrated to Python, which is what brought me
here, courtesy of *The Open Bastion* and my day job.
"""

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2012/09/djangocon-2012.html
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