Plutonic Rainbows

While Loops

March 05, 2018

while loops are a good deal more difficult as you have to visualise what is actually happening. One condition will keep running potentially forever until that condition is no longer met. The script below appends numbers to a list and stops doing so when the value is equal to or greater than 6.

i = 0

numbers = []

while i < 7:
    print "The number at the top is now: %d" % i
    numbers.append(i)

    i = i + 1
    print "Numbers are now", numbers
    print "The number at the bottom is now: %d" % i

print "The numbers:"

for num in numbers:
    print num

Easier Loops

March 04, 2018

I have found loops and lists quite difficult to follow so I've broken it down to something more simple; along with comments.

On the weather, most of the snow is melting quickly now as the temperatures move into positive figures.

#build an empty list 

elements = []

#add numbers in the range 1-10 and append them to elements

for n in range(1, 11):
    print "Adding %d to the list." % n
    elements.append(n)

#loop through the list and print the numbers    

for n in elements:
    print "These are the numbers: %d" % n

The Quietus on Leyland Kirby

March 04, 2018

The Quietus on The Caretaker's 'Take care, It's a Desert Out There'

Yet I can't help feeling a sense of quiet optimism in the melded fragments of Kirby's record. Somewhere, a tonality moves to a major key, there is still life somewhere. No matter what the textural aesthetics are telling us, the position it is coming from - the fog of dead voices, the crackle of the analogue era when futures weren't entirely lost - still maintains that something remains.

The melodies of Take Care are questioning in nature, a "What if?" in a haze of almost engulfing hopelessness. But as long as the questioning remains, so does a slight glimmer that the system around us will eventually give way, that it won't stumble on somehow still further than it already has post-2008 and certainly post-2016.

What was once simply withered has now turned rotten. There is moss growing in small patches, on the stones that mark the decaying remnants of what we once were, from the time when we had a future. But all is not yet lost.

Loops and Lists

March 01, 2018

I started looking at loops and lists today - while it's snowing outside. More snow tomorrow apparently. The new addition today is the range() function.

elements = []

for i in range(1, 6):
    print "Adding number %d" % i
    elements.append(i)


for i in elements:
    print "The numbers %d" % i

Limiting File Size to Copy with Python

February 27, 2018

This script uses some of the things that I have learnt so far; open(), read() and len(). I use import argv to pass in the file I wish to use.

The script then makes a decision using if and else as to copying it based on the file size. In this case, 290418 bytes. Once copied, the files are then closed, as this is good practice in Python.

from sys import argv

script, file_from, file_to = argv

file_in = open(file_from)
indata = file_in.read()

print "\nThe file size is %s bytes.\n" % len(indata)

if len(indata) > 290418:
    print "Sorry. The file is too large to copy."

    file_in.close()

else:
    raw_input("\nPress enter to copy file.\n")

    file_out = open(file_to, 'w')
    file_out.write(indata)

    print "All done."

    raw_input("Press enter to close the files.\n")

    file_in.close()
    file_out.close()

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