@douglaswelch Lewisham Chessmen 3D Print - prints can help make history come alive ##history ##3dprinting ##chessmen ##chess ##artifact♬ Medival - StreamVibes

Free Book: Think Python 2e via Green Tea Press Think Python is an introduction to Python programming for beginners. It starts with basic concepts of programming, and is carefully designed to define all terms when they are first used and to develop each new concept in a logical progression. Larger pieces, like recursion and object-oriented programming are divided into a sequence of smaller steps and introduced over the course of several chapters. Download Precompiled copies of the book are available in PDF. The LaTeX source code is available from this GitHub repository. Here is the HTML version. Read Free Book: Think Python 2e via Green Tea Press amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "true"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "thewelchwritecom"; amzn_assoc_search_bar_position = "bottom"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "search"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "More Python Books"; amzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = "Python"; amzn_assoc_default_category = "Books"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "b1eca9d7212722180f3dedb30cbfe849"; amzn_assoc_default_browse_node = "283155";

Download this video Apple is currently giving out freebies to Books users in the US. The next time you launch the app, you'll see a notification inviting you to "explore free books, read-alongs for kids, cozy mysteries, and audiobooks for the whole family." Tapping on the message will lead you to a featured collection where you can select one book or audiobook from a variety of genres. You can also pick a novel from the company's "First in a Series, Free" section. Read Apple is giving free e-books and audiobooks to people in the US via Engadget An interesting link found among my daily reading

In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how I found the travel time data I wanted and how I figured out how JSON data files function and how to pull out just the data I need. Now that I have this data, I needed to learn a bit of Python coding to extract is and use it in calculations and present it to the screen and other in other ways. Learning Python As has been the case throughout my technology work history, I learn on-demand. For me, this means coming up against a problem and then researching how to solve that problem on the Internet, adapting sample code and finally getting it all to work. That was exactly what happened in the project. I was not very familiar with Python, so each time I needed to accomplish a task I would head over to Google Search (which almost always led to me Stack Overflow) to find the answer. Let me walk you through my Python code and explain how it works and a little about how I developed it.Learn more about Python with these books from Amazon.comMore Python Books Python Modules Let’s begin at the top. First, I needed to figure out what Python modules I would need to accomplish all I wanted with the Travel Time program. #!/usr/bin/env python import urllib import simplejson from os import system import os import time The urllib module gave me the tools to access web URLs within the program and request web pages — or in this case — a JSON file served up from the Google Maps API server. simplejson — as you might imagine — provided the code to easily manipulate JSON by converting it into easily accessible arrays of information.  os and  system modules allow me to call on basic operating system utilities like curl and — since I am running on a Mac — say, which speaks the information out loud. The time module provides me the ability to add wait times and get the current data and time. Looking back at the code now, I realize I don’t really use it in this version. I originally had the script set to run every 5 minutes or so, instead of on-demand, so that functionality is not longer needed. Getting the JSON Data Next, it was time to get the actual current JSON data from the Google Maps API. Each time this is called, it returns the current travel time based on distance and also traffic loading. Note: I have removed my own personal API key from the URL. You’ll need to add that in in — along with your start and end coordinates — to make this useful to you. # Google Maps API URL api_url = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=34.178026,-118.4528837&destination=34.057835,-117.8217123&departure_time=now&key= # Get JSON data from Google Maps API response = urllib.urlopen(api_url) data = simplejson.load(response) The api-url variable is simply an easily modifiable placeholder for the url you might use. This is then used to in the call to urllib to pull the actual data from that API url. Note that I have no error checking in whether this actually succeeded or not. This is something you would probably want to add. The data returned by the urllib call is stuffed into a variable called response. This response variable is then used in the call to simplejson which creates an array called data which has all the various key-value pairs sorted out and made easily accessible. My initial version of the program used simple text commands to hack away at the data I needed and was much more difficult and brute force. Once I learned how simplejson worked, though. it open the doors to not only accessing API data for this program, but any API data in JSON format from any API. This was a big step in my learning, for sure. Finding the data I needed in the simplejson array # Get current duration of trip duration = (data['routes'][0]['legs'][0]['duration_in_traffic']['value']) # Get current summary name for trip desc = (data['routes'][0]['summary']) You may remember from Part 1 how I used the JSONViewer to give me a clearer, hierarchical understanding of the returned JSON file. These

Help Create Maker Faire LA 2017!  Please join Hackerspace LA for a meeting for all individuals and organizations interested in forming the leadership team for Maker Faire Los Angeles 2017!  What is Maker Faire? Maker Faire is a gathering of fascinating, curious people who enjoy learning and who love sharing what they can do. It’s a venue for makers to show examples of their work and interact with others about it. Many makers say they have no other place to share what they do. DIY (Do-It-Yourself) is often invisible in our communities, taking place in shops, garages and on kitchen tables. It’s typically out of the spotlight of traditional art or science or craft events. Maker Faire makes visible these projects and ideas that we don’t encounter every day Time/Location Thursday, September 22, 2016 at 7PM  Marvin Braude San Fernando Valley Constituent Service Center 6262 Van Nuys Blvd. Van Nuys, CA 3rd floor conference room RSVP Here We will discuss the Maker Faire Los Angeles Draft Plan and how it might be developed into our final plan. As a guide, we’ll be working from the Maker Faire Playbook. Please review these PDF documents before the meeting. Maker Faire Los Angeles Draft Plan  Maker Faire Play Book Please join with Hackerspace LA in creating this amazing Maker/STEAM/Creativity event right here in our own backyard! Jorge Cornejo, Producer - [email protected] Douglas E. Welch, Co-Producer - [email protected]

While on our recent trip to visit family in Sicily (our 4th trip to this area), we made the time to visit Hackspace Catania, the first makerspace in Italy (if I understood them correctly) which opened 3 years ago in a quiet street in downtown Catania, Sicily. I had found the space during my pre-trip research for interesting places I wanted to see during this visit. With my recent involvement in Hackerspace LA, here in the San Fernando Valley, it made perfect sense to check out as many other makerspaces I could to get some ideas and simply see how other sites were organized. After a couple of emails, we set a time to visit and planned on taking the two older boys in the family along with us. I thought they would find the group very interesting, along with their father and might even provide them a location for classes and events to learn more about technology. Arriving in a relatively quiet street in Catania -- where an old palazzo sits on one corner -- we located the space by its address, but also by the small logo on the door -- an H in a gear -- based on the Open Hardware logo. Yep, this must be the place! We were greeted by several members of Hackspace Catania including  Emilio Messina, Riccardo Puglisi, Massimiliano Marchese and Massimiliano Sapuppo. Here is a picture of our entire group on the Hackspace Catania Facebook Page. Everyone was extremely welcoming -- as is often the case in the makerspace world -- and they eagerly showed off their space and their projects. The space is relatively small, with a main floor and a half-mezzanine above. The main floor holds fold up tables that can be lowered for classes, an amazing DJ-Scratching system designed and built by members, a projector system and the usual eclectic collection of tech and artwork found in most makerspaces.  Main Floor Mezzanine A back workroom included many tools and 2 large homemade CNC machines -- one prototype made of wood and another, in progress, constructed out of aluminum. Upstairs housed a small gaming space with couch, a 3-d printer and an impressive collection of retro computers including a Commodore PET, Commodore 64, Atari 2600 and more. I expressed my dismay -- with a laugh -- that they didn't have an Apple IIe, my first computer. Hackspace Catania performs a lot of outreach around the area, especially with students, and also produces high-end paid classes on topics like Drones, 3-D printing, Arduino and more which help to support the space. After an hour or so, we packed up to head to a family event a little further down the coast, but everyone in my group was very impressed by what they saw and the people they met. The family wasn't really sure exactly what Hackspace Catania was about, but once we started walking around it became very clear and I hope that they will visit and engage with the group whenever they can in the future. Thanks to everyone at Hackspace Catania for making it such a great visit! Keep on making and making the world a better place! The palazzo across the street! Here is a complete slideshow of our day (along with a few other photos) so you can see the entire space I described above. Hackspace Catania Web Site Hackspace Catania Facebook Page Learn more about Makerspaces with these books from Amazon.com More makerspace books on Amazon.com

I’ve often messed about with the visual Scratch programming language and similar apps like Hopscotch (mentioned earlier in TechnologyIQ and Scratch: Multimedia programming kit for kids) and love how it can help introduce anyone, of any age, to the concept of programming. It offer immediate gratification to the user as they can see interactive and animated results of their coding from the very beginning. With an end to spreading the word about Scratch and giving people yet another reason to buy a Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi foundation has released a new ebook, Learn to Code with Scratch. If you are looking to get started coding then a new free e-book which has been released by the Raspberry Pi Foundation as part of their MagPi Essentials selection might be worth more investigation and downloading. The PDF eBook has been created to teach you the basics of learning to code with Scratch the world’s leading visual programming language that is used throughout schools worldwide to teach children the basics of how to think and program almost anything. Scratch is the world-leading visual programming language, created by the boffins at MIT. It’s designed to help kids of all ages learn about computer science within minutes. We think it’s rather cool, and it’s been a core part of Raspberry Pi’s software offering since day one for very obvious reasons. We’ve been working for a while now to dedicate a new Essentials book to it, and we’re ultra-chuffed to let you know that it’s out now! Jump over to the official Raspberry Pi Foundation website to download it and start learning more about Scratch. Get your free PDF copy of Learn to Code with Scratch here Direct Download Link to Learn to Code with Scratch More about Raspberry Pi: Get Raspberry Pi Boards and Components from Amazon Get Raspberry Pi Boards and Components from eBay

I dive into the Arduino world and learn a lot in my first project, a temperature, humidity and light level sensor for my mini-greenhouse that also reports via SSH iOS notifications and Twitter and logs data to local SD Card and a Google Spreadsheet. Download this video podcast    Greenhouse Temperature, Humidity and Light Level Arduino ProjectPowered by USB power bankArduino Yun connected to breadboard for power and sensor dataLocal WiFi connection via Arduino Yun for data reportingRead Temperature and Humidity using blue sensor at topRead current light level using photo-resistor and converting to 100 point scale (0-100, with 0 being total darkness)Date and Time pulled from Linux side of Arduino YunData logged to file on internal SD Card on Arduino (can be accessed remotely via SSH)Data logged remotely to Google Spreadsheet via IFTTTData tweeted out to @douglaswelch via IFTTTData notified on iPhone via IFTTTCurrently polling and reporting every 5 minutesDOWNLOAD CODE for this project