gdb has fantastic support for debugging Python/C extensions. It understands how to print the contents of PyObject * variables using their Python-side representation, and can even print Python tracebacks.

These features are described elsewhere. I suggest visiting that link to see why this is so cool. This blog posting is …

I recently got a Mac Mini so I can start working on Macintosh-specific issues with matplotlib. Thanks again to Hans Petter Langtangen, the Director of the Center for Biomedical Computing at Simula for his gracious donation that supported the purchase.

One of the things I'd like to use this machine …

Jake Vanderplass has a very thought-provoking essay about the future of visualization in Python. It's an exciting time for visualization in Python with so many new options exploding onto the scene, and Jake has provided a nice summary. However, I don't think it presents a very current view of matplotlib …