Is being pirated sign of success?

I don't know (and I don't think so) but for sure it's less money in my pocket :)

Anyhow, just the other day I found my book was available for "free download" in a post on a rapidshare forum.

I don't bother too much, it just a strange feeling...

Matplotlib for Python Developers - Images available for download

This is a book on a graphic library, so when they first told me it will be printed in black&white I was quite surprised and puzzled. The editor explained it was to reduce paper copy cost, and that the PDF version will still be in full color, but I would be quite upset if I bought the book and then discover it's black&white without knowing it upfront.

Thus I've asked to at least let the images be downloadable from the book website, so that any reader (either for the paper or electronic copy) can see the pictures as if they're running the programs.

The first request went ignored, but keep pushing got results: now images can be downloaded!! To get them, got the book webpage, then in the "Code Download" section, and request the zip file: in it you'll find either the source code and the images.

The pictures are quite big, because they are the same used for book production (so with specific dimensions and DPI) but you got colors now :)

Matplotlib for Python Developers - PUBLISHED!

Some days are passed, but I'm still pleased to announce that

The first book about Matplotlib has been PUBLISHED!!

It was a really nice experience, it offered me the possibility to work on Matplotlib, do some really interesting stuff, and I'm quite proud of it :)

On the other hand, it was not a "straight" way: the effort I put in this was huge, practically I had to stop all other stuffs and projects I was working on (Debian included) and I was getting more and more tired as time passed. Also, sometimes Packt employees and actions were somehow problematic. but anyhow, the important thing is that THE BOOK IS OUT!!

Now I got also a nice box about the book on the sidebar of this blog!

Enjoy it!!

The beast is quite done

At the end, I made it: the book is in pre-order phase!! yayyy

I'm at the end of reviewing chapters, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel :)

Probably I'll be able to sleep more than 4/5 hrs at night and have additional spare time to work on the projects I've neglected in these months

Update on the Matplotlib book

Some people asked me how's the book writing is going. Ah you're right, it's a loooong time I didn't say anything of the progress, and here it is.

I've just turned the half of the book: about 10 days ago I've sent the 5th chapter (out of 10) and up to now I've covered this (high-level) contents by chapter:

1. installation & setup
   
2. first contact with mpl
3. some more stuff (like graph types)
4. OO style and some advanced things
5. GTK embedding

6th (and current) chapter is about Qt, so even KDE guys will be happy :)

I found several problems when working with GUI design programs: both Glade and Qt Designer made me scream a lot; but probably it's just me that I'm not so used to GUIs :)

Other arguments will be: Wx, web, real use cases.

In particular for the last part (real cases) I'd like to hear some proposals from you. I've already got something in mind, but users opinion will help me direct my work better.

Sorry, I've got to "drop/reduce" the science chapter (it was superseded by the real use-cases one) since I don't think this is the right place for it. Of course, a couple of "science examples" might come into the mentioned chapter, but your proposals have to be at a low-medium level.

What would you like to see in a book about Matplotlib?

I received the interesting proposal to author a book on Matplotlib, the powerful 2D plotting library for Python.

While preparing the arguments list, I'd like to hear even your opinion, because different points-of-view will lead to a better product.

Some basic question I'd like to ask are:

- what are you using matplotlib for?
- what are the things you like the most of matplotlib, that you want to give emphasis to? And why?
- what are the (basic) things that, when you were beginning to use matplotlib, you wanted to see grouped up but couldn't find?
- what would you like to see in a book about matplotlib?
- what are some those advanced feature that made you yell "WOW!!" ?
- what are the things you'd like to explore of matplotlib and never had time to do?

Your suggestions are really appreciated :) And wish me good luck!

Biggest -doc packages

After loosing a lot of time (because I couldn't remember awk syntax correctly), now I know what are the biggest -doc packages in sid:

$ egrep "Package:.*-doc|^Size" /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep -A1 "doc" | grep -v "^--$" | awk '{ if ( $1 ~ "Package:" ) { pkg = $2 } else { print $2" "pkg } }' | sort -n | tail -n 3
77647098 vtk-doc
86947420 libxmpp4r-ruby-doc
107700626 sofa-doc

don't say it's ugly, I know ;)

What's the purpose of this? I wanted to know what medal new version (0.98.5) of python-matplotlib-doc package would win, and that would be silver!!

$ ls -l python-matplotlib-doc_0.98.5-1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 morph morph 91141234 2008-12-16 10:39 python-matplotlib-doc_0.98.5-1_all.deb

I really hope to reduce it before upload it...