Python Liberation Front

The Last Syllable

When quakes shall root out foundings to the core,
When bold Abora shakes with cholic roar,
Then let the one in Abyssinia weep
That man so rashly lays him down to sleep.

How small a loss it were to lose a race
Of mighty mind and self assur'ed face,
Who write their songs with fingers in the sand
And like Sir Spens, go walking on the strand.

But what a pity should we lose our hope,
As we quest through end times filled with sorrow.

Before the solemn eyes of ag'ed Pope
Man holds the last spectacular at bay,
No more we weep; the moon is full again
Today; Eternity is then tomorrow.

Web Scraping is Fun, but it does tend to break...also, a little Python script...

Well, it's sad I guess. I really liked my little program that scraped the web to answer user questions. I used search engines to go out and rank the relative popularity of various alternative answers to the user's questions. It worked flawlessly. But then changes in the search engine output pages messed things up. So, after revising it several times to make it work again, only to have it break again eventually, I have now given up.

I was forewarned that web scraping scripts tend to break because any little change in the format or organization of the pages you are scraping can break your algorithm. But I had to find out the hard way ;-)))

Still, it was fun. But for now, I have removed the options of my my little askMerlin program that used web scraping, leaving behind a simple but fun decision analysis type program. The new, cleaned up program can be downloaded at askMerlin500.py . It is a command line program that should work on any Python equipped system. Don't expect too much but I am fond of it nonetheless. I do think it would a be a nice script for relative newbies to Python to play around with, since it is easy to think of ways to add additional functionality in very simple ways.

I am still working on making a Java .jar file version of askMerlin using jythonc. Then, this program can be run an any JVM equipped system. Also, I am working on making a Java applet version using Jython, so that it can be run live from my website.

And, I have ideas to add other nice options to the program. It's really just a start.

But of course work and business travel chew up so much time (sigh), but stay tuned, real soon now...;-)))

Python is the best and most popular general purpose scripting language

Python is the best and most popular general purpose scripting language. That is, Python is the best and most popular general purpose, dynamic, interpreted language. Sure, there are other scripting languages that are more popular for specific application domains, and there are big company backed systems languages that are far more popular; but in its niche, Python is tops.

Being open source, and not backed by big companies' marketing dollars, Python is not even in the same league as Java, and the .NET languages C# and VB.Net. Those corporate backed entities have incredibly powerful tools, IDE's and marketing dollars behind them.

And, among scripting languages PHP is tops for server side web scripting, Perl is number one for text parsing and CGI, Ruby is perhaps most popular with object oriented purists who don't mind the Perl-like syntax, and Javascript is most popular for client side web scripting, given its nearly universal support by web browsers. But for general purpose scripting, Python is clearly number one and gaining in strength.

That positions Python as the universal scripting language. Not only does the Python virtual machine run on almost every platform, but Jython is available for the JVM and IronPython is in the works for .Net and Mono.

Let's face it, we could sit around and bemoan the fact that the big commercial "systems" languages have such incredible tool support and marketing muscle, such as the .Net juggernaut and the IBM, SUN, BEA and other IDE's for Java.

But, better to take heart that for the pure writing of code, Python has the opportunity to become the universal solvent. It just may be that, twenty years from now, Python code will run everywhere, and will be the scripting language of choice on all the big company IDE's as well.

There may by then be a lot of application areas where subject specialists create their own database front end's and customize real applications, by using big company tools that require no code to be written at all. But, computers will always need actual code, and Python can be the lingua franca.

And on top of all that, while .NET, Eclipse, JBuilder etc. may outclass any one Python tool, we do have a plethora of good choices for almost any job requirement, including good access to about every important GUI toolkit imaginable, and we even have easy point and click GUI builders like PythonCard and the on-coming industrial strength Boa Constructor.

So, Python is well on its way to world domination, just not in the same manner as Java or C#. Python is more like an underground movement that sneaks in around the edges and winds up playing a most significant role for the long run.

Long live Python, the universal solvent!

Before the Flood...and After the Apocalypse

Before the Flood...
and
After the Apocalypse...

A Postmodern Tale...

Looking out on the flatland all around, I see that the apocalypse has already happened, even though we still await the flood of events to come.

We don’t need to wait for the tribulation, for all around us we are living in the wasteland of our own times, a time shorn of dignity and bereft of soul.

No one has time at all; we rush madly onward each and every moment, clutching at goals and grasping at nettles; we must win! We must succeed. We need money, love, esteem, fun, safety, security, excitement and the future supply of money to ensure all of these things. We don’t have time; we don’t have meaning; and most of all, we don’t have eternity, since our flat world will disappear at our death, which is all too soon; we don’t have time.

No need to wait for disaster, annihilation, end times woes; we are already living in the post-apocalyptic world, and have been for some time now.

But our post apocalyptic world doesn’t have endearing characters like mad Max; deep meanings like Christian Revelations; high tech features like 2001, A Space Odyssey. We are in a post apocalyptic Hell that won’t go away and we don’t even realize it!

This world around us is the aftermath, the Desolation of Abomination; a world in which we have life but no love; health but no soul; money but no satisfaction.

So bring on the future! By God, we are ready! What else can you show me, what else have you got? We’ve been bloody since long before the flood, and we are tired of modern day Noah's singing post-modern blues which we can’t understand without a computer program!

We are out of control, and the time is late. But let us face the future with positive minds, expectant outlooks, and most of all, a sense of destiny.

By the Waters of Babylon...

I remembered, and I wept.

Full Moon rising tonight, I feel like a werewolf, lost in space...

Please! STOP! Listen, hear me out! I’ll be brief and to the point.
I remember Bob Dylan when he was young, singing beneath the starlight. I remember the Beatles, when they were young, I even remember the Rolling Stones. I remember when we all listened to the same songs, watched the same TV shows, dreamed the same dreams.

I remember running through the grass and trees on a summer night, laughing, playing, cousins all around. I remember green apples, I remember Grandma’s warnings, late night stories, crickets croaking. I remember picnic summers, softball outings, Friday night drive-ins.

I remember Willie Mays, center field grace, mothers’ faces, school kids knowing; the future was all before us. Men on the moon, the 60’s swoon.

I recall being alive, so much to strive for.

I remember Abraham Lincoln. Honor, honesty, destiny. Hard work, loyalty, failure, success, blood, guts, civil war. I remember his dilemma, his courage, but mostly I remember his long, lanky humor on backwoods lawyer trips, old Abe could make a day go by, and never miss a lick. He was ugly and homely and humble, and I miss old Abe.

For God’s sake, where did it all go, where did we go wrong? I’m going crazy here in the dark moonlight, screaming my brains out beneath the stars of fate. What in the hell is going on around here, anyway? When did we let the financial planners take over America, the stock selling shills on TV bombard our brains? When did money become the only savior, greed the only rule?

When did we decide to hate each other? Competition, hell, we got killing, you kill me or I’ll kill you, it’s not the law of the jungle, it’s worse than that, we got high tech tigers that kill for fun, or fear, or lust.

Where did our present generation of politician's come from? Where are we going?

Are we going to just rot away as if nothing matters?

I want to build something; something that lasts, something we all build, and grow , and sweat, and paint, and mend, and care for, and make, and stake our blood in the soil of America for future generations.

We got people dying all over the world, we got people hopeless, poor, powerless, children lost and hungry. Poisoned air and water, ruined lives.

Excuse me, but we got souls exploding in thin air; blood is flowing, and nobody gives a damn.

I want Abe Lincoln back. I want our future back. If we don’t have any money left after the crash, at least give us a future, a mission, a care, a matter , a soul to live for and die for. Give us back our heart and our country and our values and our spirit.

I remember how it was, the taste of life on our tongues. I want it back.

How does it feel, America, how does it feel?

I’m falling down into a long well, the deeper I go, the more I lose orientation. After awhile, I look up, and I can no longer tell if I’m falling or rising up a long dark shaft.

Pulling me down is a reality that I know I can’t avoid or fight: Gravity always wins. Pushing me up is the realization that I must awake from this dream sometime.

All around me, or deep inside me, I hear a voice and see a light. But the light is not just from within my brain; its not just shone from up above by someone else; it’s not just the sun breaking through the walls of the shaft, which now seem not so thick nor opaque.

Rather, the voice is within my mind, but you hear it too. It’s part of our culture, but it’s busy being born. The voice wails as the light of day melds the whole experience into one New Day.

How to interpret this? If we keep falling the way we are, with lots happening, but with no meaning, the center won’t hold, our society will explode and regress to anarchic chaos. If we try to rise to the heights of the spiritual meaning we intuit and hope for, but lose our grounding in the solid ground of real science, then we will awake into a robotic, zombie-like state unworthy of human existence.

We must break through the artificial barriers which our minds have erected around us for protection; but, using our minds as tools, we must meld the solid ground of science with the meaning we construct with our own minds, as guided by the light of day.

Going beyond our nostalgic dream of a blissful Planet of the Apes, where all meaning is pre-made for us; we must enter into the evolutionary process of the future, joining our voices in harmony with the Voice we heard in the dark shaft, and , using our minds as a mirror, reflecting the Light we see from another world into the full reality of science.

This is an Omen of Millennium.