Artwinauto

Facebook is a convenient way to connect with your friends and loved ones. Employees like to take a "facebook" break because the news feed from facebook offers some excitement and escape from the boring, monotonous working atmosphere in the office. However overuse of facebook could lead to reduced productivity. Do you have the tendency to browse facebook every hour or so?

[Breaking News: TypingAid 2.15 is released!]

Back to Pycon.

There is a humanitarian effort in Africa called 'One Laptop Per Child'. Two Indians from social service sector created a simple logic game that they think could help the children. It is to be bundled with the laptops. (I mistook their topic as about an AI application, but actually the game is about logical thinking.) A meaningful application with simple GUI programming in Python.

Another valuable talk was given by a veteran. He actually took the time to summarize his 10-year experience with library creation. Creating and maintaining a successful library isn't easy. Success of a library is measured by the number of the users. No user = failure. It is then, the speaker suggests, advisable to start with a use case. Pragmatic, failure is prevented. The programmer extracts the necessary components to form a library and then generalize it to accommodate all other use cases.

Today 10/Jun/2010 is the opening of the 1st Python Conference in Singapore. I didn't attend yesterday's tutorial because I needed the time to prepare my talk. It was 8am when I arrived at SMU's Auditorium. The chairman Dr. Liew gave a welcoming speech. Before the speech, he amazed us with a 3D visual presentation of Pycon, showing the features of each participating Asian pacific countries.

Then, Steve, the chairman of Python Software Foundation gave a speech. It was a pity I didn't see Guido van Rossum, the crowned dictator for life of Python. Steve gave a good talk with a steady and encouraging English which are characteristics of a stalwart. I didn't quite fancy his speech until he told us a story. On one occasion, he asked the creator of Ubuntu Linux what he felt about Python Conference (in US), who replied frankly with you people are good but complacent, meaning self-satisfied. It is always dangerous to be self-satisfied, and the best way to gauge an achievement is not by what has been achieved but by how far we still have to go. The story provoked some thoughts.

Thanks to the feedback and donations, I am able to release a better version. It's much improved and stable and comes close to my original goal (still a distance away). Tutorial can be found here (it should be a good introduction). BlitzType is now able to match what you type to the given words and phrases in a fuzzy manner. I hope it gives you an refreshing alternative to any text autocompletion software in the market.