Every time I teach a class on parallel computing with Python using the multiprocessing module, I wonder if multiprocessing is really mature enough that I should recommend using it. I end up deciding for it, mostly because of the lack of better alternatives. But I am not happy at all with some features of multiprocessing, which are particularly nasty for non-experts in Python. That category typically includes everyone in my classes.

A while ago I described why migrated my agendas from iCal to orgmode. To sum it up, my main motivation was to gain more freedom in managing my information: where iCal imposes a rigid format for events and insists on storing them in its own database, inaccessible to other programs, orgmode lets me mix agenda information with whatever else I like in plain text files. Today's story is a similar one, but without the happy end.

Another EuroSciPy conference is over, and like last year it was very interesting. Here is my personal list of highlights and comments. The two keynote talks were particularly inspiring. On Saturday, Marian Petre reported on her studies of how people in general and scientists in particular develop software.

The last two days I participated in the "Executable Papers workshop" at this year's ICCS conference. It was not just another workshop among the many ICCS workshops. The participants had all submitted a proposal to the "Executable Paper Grand Challenge" run by Elsevier, one of the biggest scientific publishers. On the first day, the nine finalists presented their work, and on the second day, the remaining accepted proposals were presented.

I have been using mobile (pocket size) computers for about 15 years, starting with the Palm Pilot. Currently I use an Android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S). While mobile devices are mostly used for consulting rather than for entering information, text entry has always been a hot topic of debate. Apple's Newton Messagepad, probably the first mobile computing device in the modern sense, pursued the ambitious goal of handwriting recognition.

I have been using Macintosh computers since 2003, and overall I have been happy with the personal information management (PIM) tools provided by Apple: AddressBook, Mail, Safari (for bookmark management). The one tool I have never liked is iCal. Its user interface is fine for consulting my agenda, but entering information is too complicated and the todo-list management is particularly clumsy.

I have received a number of questions and remarks about my keynote talk at EuroSciPy 2010, ranging from questions about technical details to an inquiry about the release date of Python 4.0! Rather than writing lengthy replies to everyone, I try to address all these issues here.

This weekend I attended the EuroSciPy 2010 conference in Paris, dedicated to scientific applications of the programming language Python. This was the third EuroSciPy conference, but the US-based SciPy conference has been a regular event for many years already, and recently SciPy India joined the crowd. It looks like Python is becoming ever more popular in scientific computing. Next year, EuroSciPy will take place in Paris again.

The question if living beings, in particular those of our own species, possess "free will", and how it works if it exists, has recently become fashionable again. The new idea that brought the topic back into discussion was that our sense of free will might just be an illusion.

A few months ago I decided to take a closer look at Eclipse, since several people I know seemed to be quite fond of it. I had tried it earlier on my old iBook G4, but quickly abandoned it because it was much too slow. But my new MacBook Pro should be able to handle it. Last week I finally decided to retire my Eclipse installation.

Programmers, scientific and otherwise, spend a lot of time discussing which programming languages, libraries, and development tools to use. In such discussions, the notion of a programming paradigm is rarely mentioned, and yet it is a very fundamental one. It becomes particularly important for parallel and concurrent programming, where the most popular languages and libraries do not necessarily provide the best programming paradigm.