Python Weekly No 205

Articles, Tutorials and Talks

How I Hacked Amazon's $5 WiFi Button to track Baby Data
A great post that shows you how to hijack and use Amazon's Dash buttons for just about anything you want.

Episode #21: PyPy - The JIT Compiled Python Implementation
Is your Python code running a little slow? Did you know that the PyPy runtime could make it run up to 10x faster? Seriously! Maciej Fijalkowski is here to tell us all about it. This episode is all about the alternative, JIT compiled, garbage collection Python implementation PyPy. 

Creating Powerpoint Presentations with Python

 
Love it or loathe it, PowerPoint is widely used in most business settings. This article will not debate the merits of PowerPoint but will show you how to use python to remove some of the drudgery of PowerPoint by automating the creation of PowerPoint slides using python.

What to expect from the Python Test Podcast (PT001)
A first episode of a new podcast that will be covering various topics related to python testing.

Out-of-Core Dataframes in Python: Dask and OpenStreetMap
This post takes a look at how dask can be useful when looking at a large dataset: the full extracted points of interest from OpenStreetMap. We will use Dask to manipulate and explore the data, and also see the use of matplotlib's Basemap toolkit to visualize the results on a map.

Build a document search engine using Xapian and Pylons
It is now easy to set up a powerful search engine using open source libraries. In this tutorial, we will create a document search engine from scratch using Python bindings to a fast C++ search engine library called Xapian and deploy it using the Pylons web framework on the Python-friendly web hosting provider WebFaction.

A/B Testing with Hierarchical Models in Python
This post discusses a method for A/B testing using Beta-Binomial Hierarchical models to correct for a common pitfall when testing multiple hypotheses. It also compares it to the classical method of using Bernoulli models for p-value, and cover other advantages hierarchical models have over the classical model. 

Creating a Pluto flyby using unaligned New Horizons images

Using SQLite4's LSM Storage Engine as a Stand-alone NoSQL Database with Python

Exploring the Top Incomes Database with Pandas and Matplotlib

The SysAdmin's Guide to Python


Books

Fluent Python

With this hands-on guide, you'll learn how to write effective, idiomatic Python code by leveraging its best--and possibly most neglected--features. Author Luciano Ramalho takes you through Python's core language features and libraries, and shows you how to make your code shorter, faster, and more readable at the same time. Many experienced programmers try to bend Python to fit patterns they learned from other languages, and never discover Python features outside of their experience. With this book, those Python programmers will thoroughly learn how to become proficient in Python 3.


Python Jobs of the Week

Senior Software Engineer (Core) at Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs is looking for a Senior Core Engineer to join the Core Services development team. Experience with distributed systems, Python, Twisted and work experience within a small team is a plus. Day to day responsibilities will include being responsible for designing, building, and scaling the core software that powers Sauce Labs and launches over 10 million VMs a month. You'll be joining a team that is active in open source communities and will have the opportunity to travel to conferences if desired. 

Backend Development Lead at Brandibble
You'll have the opportunity to make the best of your existing experience and implement best practices, learn a lot of new tools and technologies, and directly influence the design and evolution of the Brandibble application as a whole. You'll work very closely with our founder on a daily basis - the two of you will be working side-by-side as he leads frontend development. We're looking for someone who wants to own our backend development effort, have a big impact on how we build things, and have meaningful equity stake in the business. 


Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries

Rb

Rb, the redis blaster, is a library that implements sharding for redis. It implements a custom routing system on top of python redis that allows you to automatically target different servers without having to manually route requests to the individual nodes.

search-script-scrape
101 webscraping and research tasks for the data journalist.

Lobotomy
Lobotomy is an Android security toolkit that will automate different Android assessments and reverse engineering tasks. The goal of the Lobotomy toolkit is to provide a console environment, which would allow a user to load their target Android APK once, then have all the necessary tools without needing to exit that environment.

Lupa
Lua in Python. It integrates the runtimes of Lua or LuaJIT2 into CPython. It is a partial rewrite of LunaticPython in Cython with some additional features such as proper coroutine support.

cache-tier
Imagine you have a set of static files you want to serve to the world. Cache-tier allows you to quickly spin up a Linux web server in a location with cheap, plentiful bandwidth and serve those files to your users.

SubredditSimulator
An automated subreddit with posts created using markov chains.

zget
A simple, Zeroconf-based, peer to peer file transfer utility, for situations where you and your peer are sitting next to each other and want to transfer a file quickly (and can shout the filename across the room).

iTermocil
iTermocil allows you to setup projects in iTerm on OS X and then quickly open them so you have pre-configured sets of windows and panes, which can run pre-defined sets of commands for the given project. It is configured by YAML files and is entirely compatible with the teamocil tool for tmux.

yagmail
yagmail makes sending emails very easy by doing all the magic for you.

Ceryx 
Ceryx is a Dynamic reverse proxy based on NGINX OpenResty with an API.

redis-hashring
redis-hashring is a Python library that implements a consistent hash ring for building distributed applications, which is stored in Redis.

chorogrid
A python script to produce choropleths and colored square- and hex-grid maps.

Plumbum
Ever wished the compactness of shell scripts be put into a real programming language? Say hello to Plumbum Shell Combinators. Plumbum is a small yet feature-rich library for shell script-like programs in Python. The motto of the library is "Never write shell scripts again", and thus it attempts to mimic the shell syntax ("shell combinators") where it makes sense, while keeping it all Pythonic and cross-platform.


New Releases

Django Security releases issued: 1.8.4, 1.7.10, 1.4.22