Category Archives: Interesting

Now here’s a thing…

Tk Windows in Python

24 Monday Nov 2025

Posted by in Fun, Interesting, Python

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Python has included the Tk interface module (tkinter) since versions 2.7 and 3.1. The module is a binding to version 8.5 of the Tk GUI suite for making windowing applications. My first installed version of Python was 2.7, so I’ve been aware of the module for over ten years but never explored it.

At the beginning of this month, I decided to dive in. It led to an intense two-week bout of 12+ hour days, but I emerged with working apps (and my sanity). This post and ones to come document and share what I’ve learned.

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Dual Numbers in Python

17 Monday Nov 2025

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The last two weeks I’ve been on a serious coding binge teaching myself Python’s Tk module. Once I wrap things up, I plan to publish a series of tutorial posts.

In the meantime, here’s a trick I learned recently that allows one to start with a series of data point and use those to (quickly!) generate a set of corresponding data points that are the derivative of the function implied in the first set. The trick uses something called the dual numbers.

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Byte Multiplication Trick

29 Monday Sep 2025

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I’ve been working on an arbitrary-precision numeric class (in Python) that stores numbers in what amounts to base-256 — that is to say, in machine-native binary. It differs from the variable-length integers in Python by supporting fractions (and from Python’s Decimal number type by being binary).

It occurred to me I could implement multiplication with a lookup table rather than actually doing the math (at the CPU level, that may be what in fact is going on). So, I thought I’d compare the two implementations.

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Parsing Multipart Form Data

15 Monday Sep 2025

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I have a suite of simple CGI webapps that run on my localhost Apache webserver. Long ago they were Perl scripts. These days they are Python scripts. However, in some areas, Python can be a moving target. Case in point, the cgi module and the FieldStorage dictionary object.

The module was deprecated since Python 3.11 and removed in Python 3.13. Which I just installed on my new laptop. Which broke all my webapps. Which forced me to update them. Which went fine except for one app using multipart form data. This post documents the changes and some new code I wrote.

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