Python Weekly No 203

Python

Articles, Tutorials and Talks

Switching Eds: Face swapping with Python, dlib, and OpenCV
In this post I'll describe how I wrote a short (200 line) Python script to automatically replace facial features on an image of a face, with the facial features from a second image of a face.

Episode #19: Automate the Boring Stuff with Python
Some of the things we do in life are tedious and boring. It's the kind of thing that machines or robots could do. So let's build those machines! This week we talk Al Sweigart, the author of Automating the Boring Stuff. You'll learn how he hopes to engage and teach Python to a unique and broad segment of the population. We'll discuss why, at first, it might make more sense to keep things simple rather than insisting on the "right" patterns and best practices. 

Learning Seattle's Work Habits from Bicycle Counts (Updated!)
Last year I wrote a post examining trends in Seattle bicycling and how they relate to weather, daylight, day of the week, and other factors. Here I want to revisit the same data from a different perspective: rather than making assumptions in order to build models that might describe the data, I'll instead wipe the slate clean and ask what information we can extract from the data themselves, without reliance on any model assumptions. In other words, where the previous post examined the data using a supervised machine learning approach for data modeling, this post will examine the data using an unsupervised learning approach for data exploration.

Django tutorial
Build a Django application from scratch using Twitter Bootstrap, Bower, Requests and the Github API.

Podcast.__init__ Episode 17 - Glyph on Software Ethics
In this episode we had a nice long conversation with Glyph Lefkowitz of Twisted fame about his views on the need for an established code of ethics in the software industry. Some of the main points that were covered include the need for maintaining a proper scope in the ongoing discussion, the responsibilities of individuals and corporations, and how any such code might compare with those employed by other professions. This is something that every engineer should be thinking about and the material that we cover will give you a good starting point when talking to your compatriots.

K-nearest neighbors in python
In this post, we'll be using the K-nearest neighbors algorithm to predict how many points NBA players scored in the 2013-2014 season. Along the way, we'll learn about euclidean distance and figure out which NBA players are the most similar to Lebron James.

AI Chat Bot in Python with AIML
Artificial intelligence chat bots are easy to write in Python with the AIML package. AIML stands for Artificial Intelligence Markup Language, but it is just simple XML. These code examples will walk you through how to create your own artificial intelligence chat bot using Python.

Intro to ROM/RAM hacking: Building an SMS powered Game Genie with Lua and Python

Augmenting Your Excel Workflow with Python

Teaching recurrent Neural Networks about Monet

PyCon Australia 2015 Videos


Books

Teach Your Kids to Code: A Parent-Friendly Guide to Python Programming
Step-by-step explanations will have kids learning computational thinking right away, while visual and game-oriented examples hold their attention. Friendly introductions to fundamental programming concepts such as variables, loops, and functions will help even the youngest programmers build the skills they need to make their own cool games and applications.


Python Jobs of the Week

Lead Mobile Engineer at Sixcycle
We are a growing team of six looking for a Lead Mobile Engineer who is excited about an entrepreneurial opportunity developing for the intersection of fitness and technology. Working with our Lead Designer and Lead Engineer, the Lead Mobile Engineer will develop our mobile product, help establish our long term technical roadmap, and will have input in critical business decisions as a true partner to the team. 


Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries

Jasper

Jasper is an open source platform for developing always-on, voice-controlled applications.

Pandashells
Bringing the python data stack to the shell prompt. It is an attempt to marry the expressive, concise workflow of the shell pipeline with the statistical and visualization tools of the python data-stack.

Tomorrow
Magic decorator syntax for asynchronous code in Python.

CodeChecker
CodeChecker is a defect database and viewer extension for Clang Static Analyzer.

Flask-Cloudy
A Flask extension to access, upload, download, save and delete files on cloud storage providers such as: AWS S3, Google Storage, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace Cloudfiles, and even Local file system.

macops
Utilities, tools, and scripts for managing and tracking a fleet of Macintoshes in a corporate environment.

Sixpack
Sixpack is a framework to enable A/B testing across multiple programming languages. It does this by exposing a simple API for client libraries. Client libraries can be written in virtually any language.

EcoPy
EcoPy provides tools for ecological data analyses. In general, it focuses on multivariate data analysis, which can be useful in any field, but with particular attention to those methods widely used in ecology.

Saleor
An e-commerce storefront written in Python.

playlist-to-vec
An artist recommendation engine, from feeding Spotify playlists through word2vec.


Upcoming Events and Webinars

San Francisco Python Meetup August 2015 - San Francisco, CA
There will be following talks

• Practical Python 3: fixing things and moving on
• Jython 2.7/3 and Java Integration

Python Presentation Night #31 - Minneapolis, MN
There will be following talks

• Gathering Feedback for Fall Data Science Hackathon Event 
• Twitter Gallery" - Create slideshows from Twitter searches 
• Reading IRS Form 5500 filings for employee benefit plans (with python, of course) 
• Analysis of the baseball data with pandas - Part Two