2022-02-14 Wordle
Recently the internet based daily word puzzle Wordle (https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/) has become quite a sensation. Ian Stewart has written a python program that can be used to provide assistance in solving the puzzle. He will present the source code of his "wordle_assistant.py" program and demonstrate it in action.
2022-03-14 Combating Spam in Online Forums
Combating spam in online forums is an ever-changing landscape. Can we design a system that can handle anything thrown at it? Ethan McKee-Harris spent nearly 18 months programming a package around this very idea and has a few things he would like to discuss. These range from actually solving the problem at hand, as well as ideas like software design, testing, and optimization.
2022-04-11 Virtual Environments
Peter Reutemann will talk about virtual environments: what they are, why you should use them and, of course, demo various approaches on Linux and Windows.
We still have time if you would like to present/demo a library or project. Just get in contact with the organizer Peter.
2022-05-09 WebSockets Server
There are different ways of adding dynamism to pages coming from your Web server. You may have heard of “AJAX” (“asynchronous JavaScript and XmlHttpRequest”). The next level beyond that is called “WebSockets”, which creates a server connection that allows for an ongoing stream of messages in both directions, to implement a live, continuously-updating Web page. Lawrence will demonstrate how to write a simple WebSockets server in Python, using one of the existing server frameworks that implement ASGI, the Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface.
2022-06-13 Processing and Visualizing Data - Pandas and Jupyter
Python is a great language for processing and visualizing data. Peter Reutemann will demonstrate some basic usage of Pandas and Lawrence D'Oliveiro will show how Jupyter notebooks can be used for that purpose.
2022-07-11 Coqui Text-To-Speech
At previous meetings, older approaches for text-to-speech like espeak and Google's TTS were presented, which are primarily used by vision impaired people. In this meeting, Ian Stewart will demo a new kid on the block, called "Coqui" ( https://coqui.ai/ ). Although Coqui also supports speech-to-text, he will only show the text-to-speech side of things.
Peter R.~
Last night's recording is now available (for approx 1-2 weeks): https://bbb2.nzoss.nz/playback/presentation/2.3/01466e06e953a8c86fd53faadb71ef1ccf9621ba-1657522944067
2022-08-08 Web Scraping and Graphical version of Python help
Peter Reutemann will give a short introduction to web scraping and what libraries you can use. Ian Stewart will demo his graphical version of the built-in Python command "help(...)".
2022-09-12 Language services facilities in the standard Python library
Lawrence D'Oliveiro will give an introduction to some of the language-services facilities in the standard Python library, including abstract syntax trees (AST) and the inspect module.
2022-10-10 PySide6/Qt6 Graphical User Interface
Ian Stewart will demo features of PySide6/Qt6, which allows you to write Python applications with graphical user interfaces that work across all major platforms.
2022-11-14 Number Theory and use of recursion
Mathematics is often seen as a closed book by many people. However, with an easy to read programming language, like Python, it is possible to make mathematical fields such as number theory more approachable and even fun. Computers provide recursion ...with no effort. In some cases a mathematical theory may be explored with a simple Python program that quickly covers all possibilities and their outcomes. A tedious task if it was to be done manually.
Ian Stewart will demo his take on Kaprekar's constant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6174_(number)).
Lawrence D'Oliveiro will show you some fun things with continued fractions, such as approximating Pi.
Peter Reutemann will combine simple formulas with complex numbers to generate some fractals.
Please contact Peter if you'd like to demo/present other interesting or quirky, "mathematically" inspired Python code snippets. Maybe take a look at the "On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences" (http://oeis.org/)?
2022-12-12 Raspberry Pi Pico and MicroPython
The Raspberry Pi Foundation designed and now manufacture the RP2040 microprocessor chip (https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2040/). They deliver this chip on a printed circuit board named "Pico" (https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/).
Ian Stewart will demonstrate a Pico module running MicroPython (https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/micropython.html).