Working with excel from Python

A new site for gathering up-to-date information about with Excel files in Python. Working with Excel Files in Python

It has links to tutorials and modules, and even a googlegroups mailing list. Looks useful for anyone who has to work with Excel from Python.

Trippin' thru the Twitterverse with #captaintripps

The first posts from @larry_underwood on April 29 set the stage:

Been having some weird, weird dark-ass dreams lately. Maybe I'll write a song about them. Something about @VegasWalkinDude


Whoa. This thing is serious. RT @healthmap alert phase is 5 per WHO press conference http://bit.ly/ZaRr0 #swineflu #h1n1


And some people are calling #swineflu and #h1n1, #captaintripps. Baby, I'm not digging this at all.


If these names (@larry_underwood, @vegaswalkindude, @motherabigail) bring to mind dreams of cornfields and crows, then you should follow @larry_underwood et al as they tweet their way thru #thestand, as it might play out nowadays with social networking and cellphones.

An impressive performance so far. I'm following over 2 dozen related accounts -- I've set up in a folder in my rss feed. I can't keep up as well on the standard twitterclient - even seesmic. But I'm an oldphart. I expect younger folks will be able to keep up just fine. In any case, if you haven't read Steven King's The Stand, now's the time. And if you have, follow these folks.

M O O N, that spells Twitter. Even Tom knows that.

Dirty Pitchers and Conference Presentations

Due to the nature of the discussions I've seen on this topic, I am disabling comments for this post.

I like dirty pitchers.

I like looking at sexy images of men and of women (I've made no secret that I'm bi). I enjoy watching pr0n movies on occasion, and consider a bit of whips&chains to be added spice. I've posed for some, ahem, risque photos (in my younger, more adventurous days).

Yep - I appreciate pr0n.

What I *don't* appreciate is the use of pr0n, or sexually suggestive (or so-called "glamour") images of scantilly-dressed women, in tech conference presentations.

Now - I've already said I like pr0n. So what's the big deal?

The problem is the effect the use of such images in presentations is likely to have on the (inevitably) few tech women in the audience - women who've already overcome stereotype threat, low self-efficacy, and other barriers to entry to the field and who still may suffer from imposter syndrome (don't know the terms? look 'em up!), who have made the decision to attend in spite of the low numbers of "people like me" (other tech women) - who are likely to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, who may feel, once again, that they don't really belong here (here == 'the tech field').

And no - this isn't about being a "repressed American". I lived in Italia and have seen and enjoyed the myriad sexy images of women (and men) in magazines and billboards there. But be honest with yourself: those images on the magazines and billboards are there *because* they are sexy and because sex sells (blame a million years of hardwiring for that). That's an appropriate context for those images. But what does being sexy have to do with a professional tech conference? What is showing images of "sexy women" saying about the role of women in tech? To far too many women (and men) it says that women belong at conferences as decoration - welcome as boothbabes, tolerated as marketers and maybe recruiters (after all, sex sells) - but not recognized as colleagues, as professional programmers or sysadmins or hardware techs.

The more images like this in conference presentations are viewed as appropriate by presenters or organizers at tech conferences, the less women will feel they "belong" in tech, or at least, at tech conferences. Is that the message you want to send? Is that a consequence you're willing to accept for the sake of a lame joke, or brief moment of tittilation?

VDay

Last April, my friends Harry and Michael invited us to get tickets with them for Cal Performances. One of the performances was for Valentines day - Academy of St Martin in the Field. I bought a pair of tickets, conspiring with them over dinner and a nice hotel - they're far more familiar with Berkeley than I.

So, last night we all four went to the concert. My beloved and I checked in to our lodging, and Michael and Harry picked us up and took us to dinner at a nice Thai place. The concert was great.

We stayed overnight in Berkeley - at the most delightful little B&B. The Rose Garden Inn on Telegraph st in Berkeley. It was kitschy and quaint and lovely - several buildings placed around a central garden full of fountains and gazebos and murals and wrought iron bistro tables. The room was small, with a queen bed (but nicely firm mattress) and had a gas fireplace in the corner, and a little balcony where he could step out to smoke.

I brought along a Cava and we shared a toast with Harry and Michael after the concert. This morning, the skylight awoke us with natural light (my second favorite way to be woken), and my beloved brought me a glass of Cava in bed! After a while, we wandered down to the complimentary breakfast - eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, pastries, etc. And at lunchtime, we checked out and I drove him to his bridge tournament at an SFO hotel. I'll see him late tonight.

All in all, a most pleasant valentines day and night.

Testing new app

MacBreakWeekly recommended Blogo. So I'm trying it out. We'll see how well it works for me. Consider this a test.

Serious levels of geekitudinous love!

Today, My sweetie switched iPhones with me. I had the original iPhone -paid the geektax and everything (the $100 refund from Apple went to an iTunes certificate that I'm still using... ;-) My sweetie had a 3G iPhone. Life was good.

But - he just doesn't use his iPhone the way Ghod (Steve Jobs) intended. I mean, he only used it as a *phone*. Hardly any other apps on it!

I, on the other hand, have been lusting after one of the Clarifi , a lens to slide over the iPhone lens so you can read barcodes!It works with Snappr.

Did I mention that I have *everything* on my phone? I've read several books with Stanza, listen to music with Pandora, do my grocery shopping with iNeedStuff, use both iCal and googleCal on the phone, it's even my alarm clock (because, unlike my regular bedside clock, I can set it to ring at 6:30am MTF and 7:00am W and 8amTh, to fit my son's wacky school schedule), and it's got all my contacts, and it syncs with mobileme so I don't have to worry about losing stuff. And did I mention that mine is an 8gig but his is 16gigs?

So - yeah, we stood in line today at AT&T and after a while, they called us up, swapped out the sim cards, and sent us home. I'm in the middle of re-syncing after restoring the phone. As soon as I restored it, it asked 'restore from backup?' oh yes!

I love my phone. And I also love my sweetie. And he loves me. Obviously.

How dreary to be somebody...

It's odd. I've spent over a decade online, and have been perfectly happy posting rather private information to thousands of strangers.

Yesterday, however, I had a rather... disconcerting experience. Twittering on a #feed to a bunch of fellow flybabies (people who use the techniques for organization, etc, of the site flylady.net) and someone on my Facebook asked me what #flylady was about. It's not that I'm reticent to talk up Flylady, since she and her site have been quite helpful in dealing with my ADD-like executive function problems. But it was an odd feeling to be forcibly reminded that stuff I'm doing here, or on twitter, might show up in Facebook, or Plaxo, or elsewhere, on someone's feed.

What comes to mind is from John M Ford's classic "Final Reflection" in which the saying recurs: "If I had not wanted it heard, I would not have said it." The society is one of constant observation, cameras, bugs, etc, but it applies to the Internet as well - that what I post here, or anywhere on a social network, now, will show up in unexpected places.

Although I *know* this... occasionally, I find it discomforting. Too public. Too many people following what I'm saying - and not just strangers; people I know!

As Emily Dickinson put it:
“How dreary - to be - somebody!
How public - like a frog -
to tell your name - the livelong June -
to an admiring bog!”

Ribbit.