sandbubble - a python sandbox for untrusted code
A single-file, virtualenv-first python sandbox for running your own LLM and agent generated code
John Stowers
Recent content on John Stowers
Latest posts
Loopbio, Another Couple of Years
Loopbio in 2020 and 2021: remote use of Loopy, the locust virtual reality system, the science it was used for, and what we added to the products.
FreemooVR and LocustVR
A friendly fork of FreemoVR, and the first VR system for freely walking locusts
Three More Years at Loopbio
Loopbio from 2017 to 2019: the Motif and Loopy products, and the science they were used for.
FreemoVR - Virtual Reality for Freely Moving Animals
A virtual reality system for freely moving flies, fish and mice
Year One at Loopbio
Loopbio’s first year: camera-synchronisation hardware, frames and lighting rigs, and the first scientists using the tools.
Another Change
Co-founding Loopbio, and the observation that led me there.
Installing OpenCV 3 on Ubuntu 12.04
Compiling OpenCV 3.0 on Ubuntu 12.04
On Abstractions, Simplicity, and Positioning
The most important design principle is minimising the cost of the inevitable failure of your abstraction - and how Python, OpenCV, Arduino, GNOME Shell and ROS each position themselves around it.
Operating a Many-camera Real-time Tracking System
Patterns for managing a real-time multi-camera tracking setup
FlyMAD - The Fly Mind Altering Device
Simplified ROS Distribution
Distributing Pure Python ROS Applications
Simplified ROS Distribution
Lightweight Development Prefixes
lightweight development prefixes on Linux
GNOME Tweak Tool 3.10 Improvements
ROS + Gtk
Python Print / String Format Reference
Bash Cheat Sheet
Python Bindings to the Pointcloud Library
python-pcl
ROS and Gtk for Laboratory Control
ROS + Gtk
I'm at GUADEC
An organised person would have blogged about going to GUADEC before the event started. I am not that person. I am there now. Come see me if you want to talk about / hack on GNOME tweak tool Scientific computing with PyGObject (improving interaction with numpy, etc) Windows builds of PyGObject + GTK3 Real time charting ( https://github.com/nzjrs/uber-graph )
A Change
2011 has been an interesting year. Between the stupid earthquakes and the pressure of finishing my PhD, I have been silent because I have had nothing interesting to talk about (cf. twitter…). But there is a light at the end, I’m on track to complete my thesis, ‘Biologically Inspired Visual Control of Flying Robots’, in December/January. I’m excited to say that I have…
Make Quick Reference
This page contains a minimal GNU Make reference, adapted for my use from The official quick reference Automatic Variables: Here is a summary of the automatic variables. See Automatic Variables , for full information. $@ The file name of the target. $% The target member name, when the target is an archive member. $< The name of the first prerequisite. $? The names of all the prerequisites that are…
Interfacing Python + C + OpenCV via ctypes
I was recently asked to help a colleague access his image processing C-library from python; quite a common task. As those of you who are familiar with Python might realise, there are a whole bag of ways that this can be accomplished; SWIG Cython ctypes PybindGen In this case the colleague only needed to access a single function from the library returning image data, and then hand this result onto…
End of an Era: PyGTK
I just released PyGTK 2.24, which will almost certainly be the last major PyGTK release. The future of Python on the GNOME platform is PyGObject + GObject Introspection . From my experience over the last few months porting a number of my projects, the future is bright. In a cruel twist of irony, the state of PyGTK on Windows and Mac has never been better. The credit for the windows work (and some…
PyGTK All-in-one Installer for Windows
The PyGTK team is pleased to announce the return of the highly popular all-in-one installer for Windows. The PyGTK All-in-one installer provides an alternative installation method for PyGTK users on Windows. It bundles PyGTK, PyGObject, PyCairo, PyGtkSourceView2, PyGooCanvas, PyRsvg, the gtk+-bundle and Glade in one handy installer. Currently 32 bit Python 2.6 and 2.7 versions are supported on…
GTK+ Viewer for Microsoft Kinect
I’m hacking on the new Kinect at the moment and the OpenGL viewer didn’t work for me so I threw together this terrible quality gtk+ one. I’ll clean up the code and try to get this into OpenKinect ASAP.
Map Updates
I recently made a number of improvements to osm-gps-map , the easy to use mapping widget. The motivation for these came at the request of the foxtrotGPS developers (foxtrotGPS is a community developed fork of TangoGPS). These changes enhanced the API for adding images and tracks to the map, and in addition allowed me to clean up the basic API making it easier to use for the common case. But, there…