Community Data Science Workshops (Spring 2014)/April 5th Linux project dependencies

In this section, we'll download everything we need for tomorrow's projects.

Install ColorWall dependencies
If you are running Ubuntu or Debian, at a Terminal prompt run:

sudo apt-get install python-tk

You will be prompted for your administrative password.

This will install the  package, which is used by the ColorWall project.

Download the ColorWall project
You'll be writing graphical effects for ColorWall. Download the ColorWall code and example effects so you're ready to start working with them tomorrow:


 * 1) Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory:
 * 2) * http://web.mit.edu/jesstess/www/BostonPythonWorkshop8/ColorWall.tar.gz
 * 3) Find ColorWall.tar.gz on your Desktop and double-click on it. A window will pop up with some options about how to "extract" the file. Leave the defaults where they are and click the "extract" button. That will create a folder on the Desktop called ColorWall containing several files.

Test the ColorWall code
Start a command prompt and navigate to the Desktop/ColorWall directory where the ColorWall code lives. For example, if the ColorWall project is at ,

cd /home/jesstess/Desktop/ColorWall

will change you into that directory, and

ls

will show you the source code files in that directory. One of the files is "run.py", which has a ".py" extension indicating that it is a Python script. Type:

python run.py

at the command prompt to execute the run.py Python script. You should see a window pop up and start cycling through colorful effects. If you don't, let a staff member know.

Now type:

python run.py -a -s

at the command prompt to execute the run.py Python script so that it runs only the advanced effects. You should see a window pop up and start cycling through different colorful effects. If you don't, let a staff member know.

You can also run both sets of effects by typing:

python run.py -a

Success!
You've completed setup for the ColorWall project.

Download the Wordplay project
We've written some skeleton code for the Wordplay project already. Download this code so you're ready to start working with it tomorrow:


 * 1) Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory:
 * 2) * http://web.mit.edu/jesstess/www/BostonPythonWorkshop8/Wordplay.tar.gz
 * 3) Find Wordplay.tar.gz on your Desktop and double-click on it to "extract" it. That will create a folder called Wordplay containing several files.

Test the Wordplay code
Start a command prompt and navigate to the Desktop/Wordplay directory where the Wordplay code lives. For example, if the Wordplay project is at ,

cd /home/jesstess/Desktop/Wordplay

will change you into that directory, and

ls

will show you the source code files in that directory. One of the files is "words1.py", which has a ".py" extension indicating that it is a Python script. Type:

python words1.py

at the command prompt to execute the words1.py Python script. You should see a column of English words printed to the screen. If you don't, let a staff member know.

Success!
You've completed setup for the Wordplay project.

State Capitals
We'll look at an example Python script that quizzes you on state capitals during the lecture on Saturday.


 * 1) Right click the following file, click "Save Target as..." or "Save link as...", and save it to your Desktop directory:
 * 2) * http://web.mit.edu/jesstess/www/BostonPythonWorkshop8/state_capitals.py

Success!
You are done downloading the Saturday projects.