Language Test

Test 1 – Coming and going

Please select the correct word in each of the gaps in the following paragraph:

Last week I

Test 2 – The past tense

Please select the correct answer to the following question

Question: Why do you think about going to London next summer?

Answer:

Liszt Sonetto played by William Porteous

All that practice is really paying off.

I’m assuming you already have Python installed. I did this on Python 2.5. You may need to make some changes for other version of Python. My starting point was the tutorial on the py2exe website.

Install py2exe and create hello.py:

print "hello world"

Create a script to run hello.py, call it exec_hello.py:

import runpy
import sys
import os
sys.path += [os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0])]
runpy.run_module('hello.py')

Create a setup.py script:

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
setup(console=['exec_hello.py'])

Run this at the command prompt to generate the distribution:

python setup.py py2exe

Copy hello.py into the dist directory.

You should now be able to run dist/exec_hello.exe at the command prompt and it will call hello.py.

I tided things up by getting the setup script to remove unnecessary files and to copy in the hello.py script. It also renames exec_hello.exe to hello.exe:

import os
import shutil
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
setup(console=['exec_hello.py'])
os.remove('dist/bz2.pyd')
os.remove('dist/unicodedata.pyd')
os.remove('dist/w9xpopen.exe')
shutil.rmtree('build')
shutil.copy('hello.py', 'dist')
shutil.move('dist/exec_hello.exe', 'dist/hello.exe')

Last week was the Green Man festival, where the was no green man, but there was a big tree ent who was happy to let us walk under him and write wishes on his legs. Doves were too loud and the singing was out of tune. I reluctantly quit early. The Flaming Lips played mostly new stuff, which was quite psychodelic compared to some of their recent output. The return to their earlier vibe was marked by the inclusion of She Don’t Use Jelly. It was fun and unexpected to see the band turn up in the morning to do their own sound check.

The week before we were up at Edinburgh for this little festival they have each year. Turns out, there was quite a lot on. We caught mostly small theatre shows, like Deborah Pearson’s little piece to a handful of audience in a tiny video shop where she had worked after immigrating from Canada. She had used her camcorder for it’s only outing to film her last days hanging out with her friends before leaving her homeland for good, and repeated verbatim every word that she said in the home movie of the end of her old life.

There was also a bloke walking to space. Well, the same number of steps, anyway. I love Live Art.

My bro came over to visit this weekend. He’s just come back from a gruelling five day residential piano course where he rubbed shoulders and had lessons from some of the best pianists in the world. We celebrated his survival by having an amazing curry in Lasan in Birmingham. Mmmm.

We also went to see The Illusionist, a beautiful hand drawn animation by the director of Bellevue Rendez-vous.

He’s a famous guy, I’m sure both search engines will give me some great results. Let’s take a look at Bing first.

My eye immediately falls to the top link, the news. Is this the best, most accurate, most interesting news about Brad right now? I don’t know, but his Mrs seems to mainly feature in the picture. How about the second line… lots of pictures, some almost pornographic. Not so sure. Then the third link, and we’re into the meat, the raw facts, Wikipedia. The videos are at the bottom of the screen, and there are four of them. I like the way they play little thumbnail videos when you hover over. Very media heavy, and that’s maybe what you want if you’re the kind of person who searches for Brad Pitt.

Score: 4/5

How does Google fare?

Well, first off, I like the side bar on the left; Google haven’t already decided that I’m looking for video or images, I have to specify what I’m looking for.  Interesting that the first news story is from four hours ago, but bing’s is from 11 days ago. Google’s selections are tabloid, but new, compared to the older, and more sober bing articles.  Following the news are the same three links in a different order, then finally the pictures. Was I after pictures? I don’t know, but when I get there, Google’s selection is much better – head shots of Brad looking great. But where are the videos? He’s a film star, but Google has no video links in sight. Strange, given that Microsoft choose four from Google’s YouTube property. Asthetically, I prefer Google’s sparser, less busy presentation; bing is more like a magazine.

Score: 4/5

The Other Way Works

There is a website which I put together for my wife’s theatre company, theotherwayworks.co.uk. One day in Febuary 2007 Google decided that it didn’t like it any more and it vanished without trace from the search. Apparently it doesn’t even help being linked to from two national daily newspapers. I’ve tried in vain to get it re-listed, but I’ve had to give up. Oh well. Still, perhaps I can still find some good links about this theatre company from the competing search engines. What have you got Google?

Well, all of the links are relevant, and hey look there at the sixth link! It comes from the company website. Maybe there is hope after all. That’s the first time I’ve noticed it there for years.

Score: 2/5

And bing?

Well, none of the links are relevant to the company.

Score: 0/5

So Google comes in ahead. They both did well on a popular search and bing failed miserably on a less popular search. I guess it makes sense for the bing engineers to focus on the popular sites, but I won’t be changing my first port of call.

Presumably flipping your screen upside down is not something you want to do often (unless you’re a vampire/bat).

Quite right.
In the end I found exactly what I was looking for in google code.

Rafi ready for a game.

On the edge of the Edinburgh cliff, we went to see the warm-up for Tom’s new show which he’s performing 23 times in the festival. He’s shortened it by a few minutes since I saw it last time, and it’s energy level is threatening to cross the red line. I don’t know how he’s going to manage the full month. I wish his audiences luck and enjoyment as they are trapped in the goldfish bowl of his dream for just over an hour.