Montreal Python

We are pleased to announce that Montreal Python 7 will be on Wednesday 2009-05-27 at La Banque, 175 Roy E. Based on your feedback, we’ll start earlier and we’ll have a tighter schedule.

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentation

Our main presenter Olivier Bélanger on “Ounk, un environnement de scripting musical”.

La création du logiciel Ounk a été motivée par le besoin d’un environnement de programmation musicale offrant une excellente qualité sonore accompagnée d’un langage de haut niveau, simple et efficace. L’environnement doit permettre à l’utilisateur d’arriver rapidement au résultat sonore souhaité. Le langage Csound comme moteur audio fut choisi pour plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, Csound est un langage mature ayant une communauté de programmeurs très active. En plus d’offrir une très large librairie d’opérateurs, la précision de l’interpolation produit un rendu sonore d’excellente qualité. Csound permet aussi de calculer les échantillons en temps réel ou en temps différé, en créant un fichier son sur le disque dur, ce qui permet de construire des structures sonores dont la complexité n’est pas limitée à la puissance du processeur.

Par contre, la syntaxe du logiciel Csound est un peu désuète et rébarbative. Ounk nécessitait une syntaxe moderne, claire et efficace pour l’écriture des scripts. Le choix du langage de programmation Python s’est imposé principalement pour la simplicité de sa syntaxe, sa librairie de fonctions riche et variée, le fait qu’il est multi-plateforme et les facilités d’interfaçage qu’il fournit. Python est un excellent langage pour construire des algorithmes puissants et versatiles.

Le tandem Python et Csound combine la puissance du langage de programmation Python à la qualité du moteur audio Csound pour offrir un environnement de programmation musicale agréable à utiliser, que ce soit pour la construction d’interfaces graphiques, l’exploration des techniques de traitement sonore, le multitâche ou la communication avec d’autres logiciels.

Lors de cette présentation, seront détaillés, et mis en exemple, les différents procédés mis en place dans l’environnement Ounk pour faciliter la création de scripts musicaux.

Olivier Bélanger a terminé en février 2009 un doctorat en composition électroacoustique à l’université de Montréal sous la direction de Jean Piché et Caroline Traube. Ses travaux ont porté sur la création d’un modèle de synthèse de la voix chantée et sur le contrôle algorithmique des instruments de synthèse. Depuis 2003 il est chargé de cours pour le secteur électroacoustique de la faculté de musique de l’université de Montréal où il donne les cours de programmation musicale. Ses recherches s’orientent vers le développement de logiciels de programmation et de traitement du son.

We still have a few open slots for flash presentations so don’t hesitate to send us your presentation ideas.

– Yannick Gingras

We are pleased to announce that Montreal Python 6 will be on 2009-04-14 at La Banque.

Our main presenter will be Francis Piéraut on Machine Learning empowered by Python:

Machine Learning is a subfield of AI that considers learning patterns from existing data. Related applications are increasing in many fields where adaptive systems are needed, like fraud detection, face recognition, recommendation systems, disambiguation systems, insurance risk estimation, web traffic filtering, voice recognition, and many others.

The first part of this presentation will cover the basics of machine learning; in the second part, we will dive into a real example and see the complete process of using machine learning to create a real-time digit recognition system using Mlboost, a python library. The practical approach should allow the audience to assimilate the most important concepts of machine learning and the critical need for data preprocessing.

After a Software Engineer degree, Francis Piéraut made a research master in Machine Learning at LISA. During his research work, he developed flayers, a powerful C++ neural network library. During the beginning of his career, his spend several years in Montreal startups companies applying Machine Learning and statistical AI related solutions. In 2005, he released the first version of MLboost, a python library that allows him to speedup his Machine Learning projects by simplifying data preprocessing, features selection and data visualization.

Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h45: Announcements and flash presentations
• 19h15: Break
• 19h45: Main presentation

We are still looking for flash presenters so contact us if you have an idea for a flash presentation.

Marc-Antoine Desroches will be giving a presentation on VLAM Compyle, a just-in-time compiler for Python at the Montreal Scheme/Lisp User Group meeting next Thursday (2009-03-12) . Marc-Antoine was one of our flash presenters at Montreal Python 5. The MSLUG meeting is at 7pm in Room 3195, André-Aisenstadt Building, Université de Montréal, 2920 chemin
de la Tour.

– Yannick Gingras

Greetings Pythonistas of Montreal,
as you hopefully know by now, Montreal Python 5 is this Thursday at la Banque. Here is our schedule for the evening:

• 18h00: Opening
• 18h45: Announcements and flash presentations
• 19h15: Break
• 19h45: Main presentation: Alexandre Vassalotti on Porting your
  Code to Python 3

Flash presenters will be:

• Marc-Antoine Desroches:
  VLAM Compyle, a just-in-time compiler for Python; pitch for an upcoming talk at the Montreal Scheme/Lisp User Group meetings.
  
  
• Francis Piéraut:
  Machine Learning enpowered by Python; pitch for Montreal Python 6.
  
  
• Hugo Boyer:
  FAB online: a web interface for the machinist; follow up on his presentation at Montreal Python 4.
  
  
• Philippe Chretien:
  Python and Bluetooth.
  
  
• Tristan Matthews:
  Video4linux, osc, and chuck.
  
  

update: we also had a last minute presenter:

• Joseph Turian:
  Machine Learning using Theano, An optimizing compiler in Python
  
  

– Yannick Gingras

We have the pleasure to announce that Montreal Python 5 will be on
2009-02-26 at La Banque.

The main presentation will be Alexandre Vassalotti on Porting your
Code to Python 3:

Python 3, also colloquially known as Python 3000, is now out for
general use. Unfortunately, its usage is limited since only a few
libraries are currently compatible with Python 3. In this
presentation, you will learn a straightforward process for migrating
Python code and the common difficulties related to the
transition. In addition, an overview of the new features brought by
Python 3 will be described with practical examples. Finally,
upcoming changes and features in Python 2.7 and 3.1 will be
presented.

Alexandre Vassalotti is a contributing Python core developer and a
computer science student at McGill University. He was a successful
participant of Google Summer of Code 2007, for which he worked on
the different aspects of Python 3.0.

The main presentation should be from 45 to 60 minutes. Before the main
presentation, there will be a few flash (5 mins) presentation. We
still have open spots for the flash presentation so don’t hesitate to
send us your idea for a flash presentation.

La Banque is located at 175 Roy. See you there.

– Yannick Gingras

We are back, with a new location and a cool presentation in store for you. Thursday September 25th @ 18h30 at http://labanque.ca/ - 175 Roy Map.  Our presentation will be from Hugo. Here is the intro.

Python for the machinist

In this presentation, I will show you how I use Python to create physical objects, circuits and machine elements. This presentation will walk you through simple python programs that generate instructions for CNC (Computer Numerical Control) equipment, and  include a live demo where a ‘useful’ object will be created  on a personal milling machine. There should be ample time left for an interesting technical discussion to follow.

We will have refreshments available (beer, soda) as well as some food.

Also, there will be time for lightning talks, announcements before the presentation. The registration is back on the wiki…  http://www.barcampmontreal.org/wiki/MontrealPython4

MontrealPython4 – we will not be meeting this Thursday which was the tentative date for our next meetup. We’re working on the next event and it’ll be late in August / beginning of September.

The next meetup is likely to be fun : new location, more people, python code that leads to objects. We just need more time to organize it properly.

                  — Arach

MontrealPython3 was a lot of fun. Martin Blais gave us 2 very interesting presentations. In case you missed it or want to follow up, you can find snakefood, beancount and more at http://furius.ca/home/software.html.

Thanks again to StandoutJobs for lending us their space and Akoha for the refreshments.

MontrealPython4 will be July 31st. We’ll have more details in the weeks to come.

 –Arach

MontrealPython3 will be held June 26 2008 @ 6:30PM. We’ll be meeting at Standout Jobs : 3981 boul. St. Laurent, Suite 615, Montreal. Going forward, we will do one presentation per meetup. This will be more convenient for lots of people, who have to leave before the end and feel bad about it…

Our presenter will be Martin Blais, who will give one of his proposed presentations (Snakefood / Beancount).

Read the rest of this entry »

I really like the use of the mailing list as a way to pitch presentation ideas, it’s efficient and open. The downside is that a mailing list is not great for individual feedback because nobody wants to disturb more than 30 people with their preference. So here is a little experiment to help us organize in a more simple and open way: a polling widget.

For more information on the presentations listed below, look here for Hugo Boyer’s and here for Martin Blais’ presentation ideas .

There are other people who have suggested presentation topics they would like to present, I invite them (you) to write to the list, it’s the way to get a talk on MontrealPython. If you’re not on the mailing list, please join http://groups.google.com/group/montrealpython

MontrealPython3 date coming soon …

Opinion Polls & Market Research

– Arach