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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
I gave a presentation at BarCamp Orlando on 5 April 2008. Here is a link to my presentation, Data Analysis with Python.
Presentation at BarCamp Orlando 2008 Read More »
This post is a reminder to myself more than it is intended for anyone else. Well, that’s most of this blog. Gentoo is a great distribution of Linux, but you have to install everything yourself. This is a good thing, because you get a very lean system, but the downside is that you are re-inventing
My current Gentoo Linux setup Read More »
Minutes ago I uploaded a tarball containing my re-release of ODEPACK, a standard numerical tool for the solution of systems of ordinary differential equations. The algorithms and numerical code are identical to the distribution found on Netlib, but everything has been placed into an organized “package” with Makefiles, examples, documentation, etc. The code is set
ODEPACK re-released Read More »
In previous examples, I’ve shown how to pass Python lists into C++ using Boost.python. Because Python lists can contain a mixture of objects of different types, C++ has to use extract<type> to determine what kind of data to get from a list item. This approach works well, but it has its faults. In the C++
Direct access to C++ containers from Python Read More »