New Job

It's been a while since i last posted about python in science. I apologize to my readers, but it has been a very busy couple of months. As a matter of fact it still is (i am writing this on my cell phone while I comute), but let's get to the point.

The reason for this crazyer than usual months is that I switched jobs. I have been offered a job in a private research company called Intelekto. It is a very interesting company, it's business model is based on selling scientific expertise to companies willing to outsource their research and development needs, to an agile, highly focused company that can deliver solutions in a fraction of the time usually taken by regular companies just to mobilize a research team.

I was hired to manage the reserch team: a small core team of highly trained scientists, ready to crunch through the clients' scientific problems. Whenever the needs of a client falls outside the joint expertise of our core team, we hire other scientists, on a per project basis.

Most of the projects we get, involve the development of software. As a good pythonista, I am starting to build the Python skills of my team and am actively hiring good Python developers. I should say that our company is based in Brazil, but we already have global clients, and are interested in expanding our collaboration network with other global players.

Even though I've been at the head of the research team for less than a month, we are already working with Python tools in a couple of our projetcs: Pyro Robotics, to prototype a robot navigation system, and with NetworkX and Igraph for a graph visualization module.

Well, that pretty much sums up the most recent news. I hope to post about our experiences with Pyro robotics and Igraph soon.

Incredible Video of intracellular molecular dynamics

I just found this incredible video (animation) depicting what goes on continually within our own cells. Reminds me of why I became a biologist.
We should never cease to let ourselves be amazed by the great machine that is the living cell and the organisms they are part of. Enjoy!

Free ZODB!

I am a big fan of ZODB and use it standalone (without Zope) on many projects of mine. One of the things I miss, is a community around it. I don't care much about Zope (though I admire it as a project) and have not being able to find a ZODB focused community. Is there one?

I think ZODB is a great product, the best Object-Oriented database for Python. It's a shame it does not have an active and vocal user community. Maybe ZODB has been eclipsed by Zope for too long. Zope is a cool project, but ZODB could appeal to a much wider audience than just web application developers.

Everytime I start a new application based on ZODB, I think: "what if the ZODB developers stop developing it...", "What if I find I serious bug or limitation in it, and can't motivate (or contact) the developers to fix it...".

I think many people abandon the Idea of using ZODB in their projects, because they can't identify a strong community interested in issues outside serving Zope applications.

Yet, ZODB has been alive for such a long time, feeding on the leftovers from the Zope community...

Isn't it about time ZODB is emancipated into a project standing on its own merits (which are many) and attracting its own community?