Hi,
Apologies on missing a couple of these. The holidays and AMS really kept me
busy.
On to your summary of what's been going on in the world of Python at
Unidata:
---2017 AMS Annual Meeting---
The 2017 AMS annual meeting was a great success. Ryan May presented the
core science keynote at the Python Symposium to a packed house. The
recording and slides are available here:
https://ams.confex.com/ams/97Annual/webprogram/Paper314111.html
There was also a lot of useful feedback at Alex Haberlie's poster on
gridding in MetPy and Ryan May's poster about the road to MetPy 1.0:
https://ams.confex.com/ams/97Annual/webprogram/Paper304950.html
https://ams.confex.com/ams/97Annual/webprogram/Paper314057.html
Julien Chastang also presented on Unidata's Online Python Training:
https://ams.confex.com/ams/97Annual/webprogram/Paper315368.html
https://unidata.github.io/online-python-training
More Unidata AMS 2017 highlights here:
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/entry/ams-2017-
conference-highlights-from
Hope to see you in 2018 in Austin!
---New Unidata Python Staff---
The end of January brought a new staff member to Unidata's Python team:
John Leeman. John comes to us via Penn State (geophysics), and you can
learn more here:
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/entry/unidata-
program-center-welcomes-john
John has already been working hard on helping MetPy move ahead--welcome
aboard, John!
---Regional Workshops---
We will be in Millersville, PA (at Millersville University) on April 6-8
holding a regional workshop focused on Python, including MetPy, Siphon and
using AWIPS with Python. If you can get yourself to Millersville, you're
welcome to attend! For more information see:
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/entry/2017-
millersville-regional-workshop
Seats are limited!
We're talking to other host institutions about additional Python workshops,
and we'll be working to improve the Python workshop materials. Stay tuned!
https://unidata.github.io/unidata-python-workshop
--MetPy--
In the interim, MetPy had 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 bug-fix releases. The biggest
changes were fixing some oddities in the Skew-T plotting. More information
is available here:
https://github.com/Unidata/MetPy/releases
We're also working hard on the next release, likely 0.5, planned for the
end of March. Mostly bug-fixes, but also a few additional calculations,
including (hopefully) CAPE/CIN. The focus is on items supporting the
regional workshops. You always can see our thinking and planning here:
https://github.com/Unidata/MetPy/milestones
as well as by installing ZenHub (https://www.zenhub.com/) and looking here:
https://github.com/Unidata/MetPy/milestones#boards
We're a community project, and as such we welcome input on those plans.
I'd also like to highlight that since the beginning of November 2016 (our
last update), a lot of you have reported issues and we've merged Pull
Requests from Kevin Goebbert (upper air fixes), Aaron Hill (meteogram
example), Shawn Murdzek (hodograph fix), and Will Holmgren (documentation
fix). Thanks for the help!
---Matplotlib 2.0---
This isn't Unidata-specific, but I wanted to call attention to the fact
that Matplotlib finally had its official 2.0 release. If you weren't
already aware, Matplotlib 2.0 is a large release changing the default
style--no code breakage, but your plots will look different (and hopefully
better by default). For a summary of those changes, see:
http://matplotlib.org/users/dflt_style_changes.html
As always, we welcome your questions and feedback. We especially love the
pull requests, but I cannot emphasize enough how important your feedback is
in shaping our plans.
Until next time,
Ryan
--
Ryan May, Ph.D.
Software Engineer
UCAR/Unidata
Boulder, CO
