Archives of Python

Headroid1 – a face tracking robot head

The video below introduces Headroid1, this face-tracking robot will grow into a larger system that can follow people’s faces, detect emotions and react to engage with the visitor. The above system uses openCV’s face detection (using the Python bindings and facedetect.py) to figure out whether the face is in the centre of the screen, if […]
14 years ago

New book/wiki – a practical artificial intelligence ‘cookbook’

Having almost completed The Screencasting Handbook I’m now thinking about my next project. I’ve been involved in the field of artificial intelligence since my first computer (a Commodore 64 back in the 80s) and I’ve continued to be paid to work in this area since the end of the 90s. Update – as mentioned below […]
14 years ago

Fix for ConceptNet error “Settings cannot be imported, because environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is undefined”

If you’re using ConceptNet and you see: ImportError: Settings cannot be imported, because environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is undefined. then the fix is simple (I’ve been hacking away at an idea whilst at IUI2010 – thanks Rob for the fix). To replicate the error run: from csc.nl import get_nl en_nl = get_nl('en') en_nl.is_stopword('the') The fix is […]
14 years ago

pyCUDA on Windows and Mac for super-fast Python math using CUDA

I’ve just started to play with pyCUDA which lets you run parallel math operations on a CUDA-compliant NVidia graphics card through Python. Update – I’ve written a High Performance Python tutorial (July 2011, 55 pages) which covers pyCUDA and other technologies, you might find it useful. CUDA stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture – it […]
14 years ago

Text to Speech – Festival (cross platform) and MacSpeechX (Python on Mac)

I wanted to play with text to speech, I’ve been looking for a cross-platform open-source solution that sounds reasonable.  I’m really impressed with the festival project, the web demo lets you enter your own text. Update – I’m including this post in my plans for an Artificial Intelligence Handbook. Festival is cross-platform but compiling it […]
14 years ago

New Python tutorials at ShowMeDo using Learning Paths

The latest development at ShowMeDo is a new learning system called Learning Paths.  The Paths are ordered collections of videos and series where individual items are pulled together to make a journey (a ‘learning trajectory’) for the learner to achieve one particular goal. The Path also allow for dependencies so ‘Fully worked Python Projects’ depends […]
15 years ago

Adding PIL (Python Imaging Library) to Mac OS X

I continue my newbie MacBook exploits, currently I’m enjoying the fragmented installation process on a Mac…why is it harder to get stuff installed than on both Ubuntu (lovely apt-get!) and Windows? Installing the Python Imaging Library takes a couple of steps.  There is a 3rd party installer but it assumes you’ve installed their base Python2.5 […]
15 years ago

ShowMeDo server move + Python 3 videos

We’ve spent the last few weeks migrating ShowMeDo to its own server after 3 years operating out of a shared box.  Moving the site was a pain as I’m not a low-level Apache hacker but all in everything seems fine now and we have extra capacity to grow. Kyran has skinned the blog so it […]
15 years ago

Screencast Interviews with Open-Source teachers

Recently I’ve interviewed four experienced open-source screencasters, three from ShowMeDo (all of which are Pythonistas) and Remy, a Brighton local, who teaches jQuery to designers: Horst Jens of ShowMeDo (Linux) Gasto of ShowMeDo (Windows) Lucas Holland of ShowMeDo (Mac) Remy Sharp of jQueryForDesigners (Mac) Each screencaster uses different techniques and platforms and all have learned […]
15 years ago