My two proposals for presentations got accepted for EuroPython:
-
GIL isn't Evil GIL is the Global Interpreter Lock which forces a Python interpreter to
be able to execute one and only one thread of Python code at a time. Many people think this stops
Python being able to execute Python code in parallel. How wrong those people are. This talk is about
the issues invovled and the various solutions. Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) will
undoubtedly get a mention.
-
SCons the Builder Using dynamic programming languages
is changing the face of build -- which used to be dominated by Make. This talk is about how SCons
harnesses Python to be able to introduce new techniques of build specification. Comparisons
with Gant and
Gradle will no doubt be made.
EuroPython 2009 is being held from 28th June to 4th July 2009 in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
The currently accepted talk abstracts are now up
at http://www.europython.eu/talks/talk_abstracts/
The booking form is
here http://www.europython.eu/registration/
The early bird rate closes on Thursday May 21st.
It has been time for a while now that I got a new laptop or two (I always take two laptops with me when I
go to client sites or conferences, so as to avoid embarassment if one fails to work). Until now I have
always had two Ubuntu laptops. I decided that now was the time to go heterogeneous, so I got a
second-hand white MacBook running Mac OS X Leopard to act as my number 2 machine. I really like MacBook
hardware, it looks beautiful and the keyboards are superb to use. However I still prefer Ubuntu over Mac
OS X.
For my number 1 machine I decided to get a high-performance laptop with a high-resolution screen. Having
looked far and wide, including at Dell who claim to sell high-performance Ubuntu machines in the UK but
actually they don't, and indeed at various US companies claiming to import Ubuntu machines to the UK, I settled
on Linux Emporium as the supplier, and the Lenovo T500 with
Ubuntu 9.04 pre-installed as the machine.
Order placed Tuesday morning, laptop arrived Friday morning, exactly as predicted by the folk at Linux
Emporium. Having spent a day personalizing and integrating it into my set-up, I really like it. Thanks
to John and the others at Linux Emporium for getting exactly the machine I needed to me in the time I
needed it.
On 2009-04-14, I gave a talk to the London Java
Community introducing Groovy. Skills
Matter videod
the event. The LJC page for the
event has various photos and bits of feedback about the session. The session was mostly an
interactive session using code snippets, what few slides there were can be found by
clicking here.
