Python is a very-high-level language. That makes it easy to write code quickly, but the program may not be as fast as a program compiled from a lower-level language. For this reason, many scientific programs are written in Fortran or C++. However, it has always been my experience that the majority of time on a […]
Speeding up Python math with Numpy: collision detection example Read More »
In my previous post about cheap LED fixtures, I didn’t mention our Chauvet Q-Wash intelligent moving light LED fixtures. We bought four at a very discounted price to supplement our conventional movers. They weren’t bright enough to stand out in the stage wash, but they made nice little beams in the haze, and they could
The price of cheap Chauvet LED fixtures Read More »
Today I installed numpy on a cluster. Normally, as a Gentoo admin, I just install things with emerge, and all the details are taken care of automagically. However, this cluster runs Red Hat Enterprise, and I don’t have admin privileges, so I had to install numpy in my home directory. I installed 1.0.4, to match
Installing numpy with the Intel Math Kernel Library (mkl) Read More »
The pickle module provided with Python is so useful that I’m surprised I haven’t used it before. Pickle allows you to save an entire data structure (such as an object) to disk as a binary file in a effortless (and fairly efficient) manner. For example, in my latest project I have created a Monte Carlo
Python Pickle: Painless binary storage for Python objects Read More »
http://www.spore.com/flash/dsDemo/sporeds_widget.swf
My first Spore creation Read More »
It’s remarkably easy to spawn a Python thread. However, before doing so, I caution you that a Python thread is not the same thing as an OS thread. Python threads run within the Python interpreter, but the Python interpreter always executes in a single process. The reasons why have already been explained elsewhere, so I
Python threads are easy (with example) Read More »
Two posts ago, I described how I wrote a function in Python that reads in a binary file from Labview. In my last post, I described using wxPython to write a GUI to process the data from those binary files. Naturally, I called the binary-file-reader function from the GUI. The problem is that the file
Redirecting text output from Python functions Read More »
I have finally gotten back to programming in the last couple of days. Our project has finally started to generate a lot of data, so I’ve been refactoring and improving my code that reads data stored in LabView binaries. Today I spent a lot of time creating a GUI for browsing data. Arguably, this wasn’t
Fun with threads in Python and wxPython Read More »
My research group uses Labview 7.1 to write custom data acquisition (DAQ) software. I code everything else in Python, so I need to get data from Labview into Python for processing. Our DAQ program produces Labview binary files, so I had to find a way to read them with Python. Binary files are nice because
Reading Labview binary files with Python Read More »
The site is back online after a server move. Actually I can’t blame the server move for the downtime, because I went out of town and then had a lot of catching up to do, and as a result I didn’t switch the domain to point to the new server. I haven’t been blogging much
Server move completed and general update Read More »