Travel dates back to antiquity where wealthy Greeks and Romans would travel for leisure to their summer homes and villas in cities such as Pompeii and Baiae.^[7] While early travel tended to be slower, more dangerous, and more dominated by trade and migration, cultural and technological advances over many years have tended to mean that travel has become easier and more accessible.^[8] Mankind has come a long way in transportation since Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world from Spain in 1492, an expedition which took over 10 weeks to arrive at the final destination; to the 21st century where aircraft allow travel from Spain to the United States overnight.

Travel in the Middle Ages offered hardships and challenges, however, it was important to the economy and to society. The wholesale sector depended (for example) on merchants dealing with/through caravans or sea-voyagers, end-user retailing often demanded the services of many itinerant peddlers wandering from village to hamlet, gyrovagues (Wandering Monks) and wandering friars brought theology and pastoral support to neglected areas, travelling minstrels practiced the never-ending tour, and armies ranged far and wide in various crusades and in sundry other wars.^[7] Pilgrimages were common in both the European and Islamic world and involved streams of travellers both locally (Canterbury Tales-style) and internationally.^[9]

In the late 16th century it became fashionable for young European aristocrats and wealthy upper class men to travel to significant European cities as part of their education in the arts and literature. This was known as the Grand Tour, it included cities such as London, Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome. However, The French revolution brought with it the end of the Grand Tour.^[7]

Travel by water often provided more comfort and speed than land-travel, at least until the advent of a network of railways in the 19th century. Travel for the purpose of tourism is reported to have started around this time when people began to travel for fun as travel was no longer a hard and challenging task. This was capitalised on by people like Thomas Cook selling tourism packages where trains and hotels were booked together.^[10] Airships and airplanes took over much of the role of long-distance surface travel in the 20th century, notably after the second World War where there was a surplus of both aircraft and pilots.^[7]

Safety

Authorities emphasize the importance of taking precautions to ensure travel safety.^[12] When traveling abroad, the odds favor a safe and incident-free trip, however, travelers can be subject to difficulties, crime and violence.^[13] Some safety considerations include being aware of one’s surroundings,^[12] avoiding being the target of a crime,^[12] leaving copies of one’s passport and itinerary information with trusted people,^[12] obtaining medical insurance valid in the country being visited^[12] and registering with one’s national embassy when arriving in a foreign country.^[12] Many countries do not recognize drivers’ licenses from other countries; however most countries accept international driving permits.^[14] Automobile insurance policies issued in one’s own country are often invalid in foreign countries, and it is often a requirement to obtain temporary auto insurance valid in the country being visited.^[14] It is also advisable to become oriented with the driving-rules and -regulations of destination countries.^[14] Wearing a seat belt is highly advisable for safety reasons; many countries have penalties for violating seatbelt laws.^[14]

There are three main statistics which may be used to compare the safety of various forms of travel (based on a DETR survey in October 2000):^[15]

Eons

Hope you liked all the places.

Thank you.

Creating a website

15 Essential Python Tips And Tricks For Programmers

Tips#1. In-Place Swapping Of Two Numbers.

Python provides an intuitive way to do assignments and swapping in one line. Please refer to the below example.

x, y = 10, 20
print(x, y)
 
x, y = y, x
print(x, y)
 
#1 (10, 20)
#2 (20, 10)

The assignment on the right seeds a new tuple. While the left one instantly unpacks that (unreferenced) tuple to the names <a> and <b>.

Once the assignment is through, the new tuple gets unreferenced and flagged for garbage collection. The swapping of variables also occurs at eventually.

TOC

Tips#2. Chaining Of Comparison Operators.

Aggregation of comparison operators is another trick that can come handy at times.

n = 10
result = 1 < n < 20
print(result)

# True

result = 1 > n <= 9
print(result)

# False

TOC

Tips#3. Use Of Ternary Operator For Conditional Assignment.

Ternary operators are a shortcut for an if-else statement and also known as conditional operators.

[on_true] if [expression] else [on_false]

Here are a few examples which you can use to make your code compact and concise.

The below statement is doing the same what it is meant to i.e. “assign 10 to x if y is 9, otherwise assign 20 to x“. We can though extend the chaining of operators if required.

x = 10 if (y == 9) else 20

Likewise, we can do the same for class objects.

x = (classA if y == 1 else classB)(param1, param2)

In the above example, classA and classB are two classes and one of the class constructors would get called.

Below is one more example with a no. of conditions joining to evaluate the smallest number.

def small(a, b, c):
	return a if a <= b and a <= c else (b if b <= a and b <= c else c)
	
print(small(1, 0, 1))
print(small(1, 2, 2))
print(small(2, 2, 3))
print(small(5, 4, 3))

#Output
#0 #1 #2 #3

We can even use a ternary operator with the list comprehension.

[m**2 if m > 10 else m**4 for m in range(50)]

#=> [0, 1, 16, 81, 256, 625, 1296, 2401, 4096, 6561, 10000, 121, 144, 169, 196, 225, 256, 289, 324, 361, 400, 441, 484, 529, 576, 625, 676, 729, 784, 841, 900, 961, 1024, 1089, 1156, 1225, 1296, 1369, 1444, 1521, 1600, 1681, 1764, 1849, 1936, 2025, 2116, 2209, 2304, 2401]

TOC

Tips#4. Work With Multi-Line Strings.

The basic approach is to use backslashes which derive itself from C language.

multiStr = "select * from multi_row \
where row_id < 5"
print(multiStr)

# select * from multi_row where row_id < 5

One more trick is to use the triple-quotes.

multiStr = """select * from multi_row 
where row_id < 5"""
print(multiStr)

#select * from multi_row 
#where row_id < 5

The common issue with the above methods is the lack of proper indentation. If we try to indent, it’ll insert whitespaces in the string.

So the final solution is to split the string into multi lines and enclose the entire string in parenthesis.

multiStr= ("select * from multi_row "
"where row_id < 5 "
"order by age") 
print(multiStr)

#select * from multi_row where row_id < 5 order by age

TOC

Tips#5. Storing Elements Of A List Into New Variables.

We can use a list to initialize a no. of variables. While unpacking the list, the count of variables shouldn’t exceed the no. of elements in the list.

testList = [1,2,3]
x, y, z = testList

print(x, y, z)

#-> 1 2 3

TOC

Tips#6. Print The File Path Of Imported Modules.

If you want to know the absolute location of modules imported in your code, then use the below trick.

import threading 
import socket

print(threading)
print(socket)

#1- <module 'threading' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py'>
#2- <module 'socket' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/socket.py'>

TOC

Tips#7. Use The Interactive “_” Operator.

It’s a useful feature which not many of us know.

In the Python console, whenever we test an expression or call a function, the result dispatches to a temporary name, _ (an underscore).

>>> 2 + 1
3
>>> _
3
>>> print _
3

The “_” references to the output of the last executed expression.

TOC

Tips#8. Dictionary/Set Comprehensions.

Like we use list comprehensions, we can also use dictionary/set comprehensions. They are simple to use and just as effective. Here is an example.

testDict = {i: i * i for i in xrange(10)} 
testSet = {i * 2 for i in xrange(10)}

print(testSet)
print(testDict)

#set([0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18])
#{0: 0, 1: 1, 2: 4, 3: 9, 4: 16, 5: 25, 6: 36, 7: 49, 8: 64, 9: 81}

Note- There is only a difference of <:> in the two statements. Also, to run the above code in Python3, replace <xrange> with <range>.

TOC

Tips#9. Debugging Scripts.

We can set breakpoints in our Python script with the help of the <pdb> module. Please follow the below example.

import pdb
pdb.set_trace()

We can specify <pdb.set_trace()> anywhere in the script and set a breakpoint there. It’s extremely convenient.

TOC

Tips#10. Setup File Sharing.

Python allows running an HTTP server which you can use to share files from the server root directory. Below are the commands to start the server.

# Python 2

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

# Python 3

python3 -m http.server

Above commands would start a server on the default port i.e. 8000. You can also use a custom port by passing it as the last argument to the above commands.

TOC

Tips#11. Inspect An Object In Python.

We can inspect objects in Python by calling the dir() method. Here is a simple example.

test = [1, 3, 5, 7]
print( dir(test) )

['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__delslice__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']

TOC

Tips#12. Simplify If Statement.

To verify multiple values, we can do in the following manner.

if m in [1,3,5,7]:

instead of:

if m==1 or m==3 or m==5 or m==7:

Alternatively, we can use ‘{1,3,5,7}’ instead of ‘[1,3,5,7]’ for ‘in’ operator because ‘set’ can access each element by O(1).

TOC

Tips#13. Detect Python Version At Runtime.

Sometimes we may not want to execute our program if the Python engine currently running is less than the supported version. To achieve this, you can use the below coding snippet. It also prints the currently used Python version in a readable format.

import sys

#Detect the Python version currently in use.
if not hasattr(sys, "hexversion") or sys.hexversion != 50660080:
    print("Sorry, you aren't running on Python 3.5\n")
    print("Please upgrade to 3.5.\n")
    sys.exit(1)
    
#Print Python version in a readable format.
print("Current Python version: ", sys.version)

Alternatively, you can usesys.version_info >= (3, 5) to replacesys.hexversion!= 50660080 in the above code. It was a suggestion from one of the informed reader.

Output when running on Python 2.7.

Python 2.7.10 (default, Jul 14 2015, 19:46:27)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
   
Sorry, you aren't running on Python 3.5

Please upgrade to 3.5.

Output when running on Python 3.5.

Python 3.5.1 (default, Dec 2015, 13:05:11)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
   
Current Python version:  3.5.2 (default, Aug 22 2016, 21:11:05) 
[GCC 5.3.0]

TOC

Tips#14. Combining Multiple Strings.

If you want to concatenate all the tokens available in a list, then see the below example.

>>> test = ['I', 'Like', 'Python', 'automation']

Now, let’s create a single string from the elements in the list given above.

>>> print ''.join(test)

TOC

Tips#15. Four Ways To Reverse String/List.

# Reverse The List Itself.

testList = [1, 3, 5]
testList.reverse()
print(testList)

#-> [5, 3, 1]

# Reverse While Iterating In A Loop.

for element in reversed([1,3,5]): print(element)

#1-> 5
#2-> 3
#3-> 1

# Reverse A String In Line.

"Test Python"[::-1]

This gives the output as ”nohtyP tseT”

# Reverse A List Using Slicing.

[1, 3, 5][::-1]

The above command will give the output as [5, 3, 1].

TOC

Hope you liked it.

If you want to learn how to code, taking your first steps into this huge universe might seem like a daunting, if not intimidating task. Here’s the big secret: There are plenty of free (and inexpensive) resources you can use to give yourself all the help you need, teach yourself new techniques, and make this learning process fun and exciting—as exciting as coding can get, at least.

Whether you’re an adult looking to transition into the tech industry, a student looking to learn the latest language, or a hobbyist who just wants to understand how software and services work, all you need is a computer and internet access to start your programming journey. But before you take a flying leap into The Matrix, here are our best tips and resources to set you off on the right foot.

Ask yourself: Why do you want to learn how to code?

Take a few minutes (or a day) to think about the reasons—the real reasons—why you want to learn a programming language. Be honest with yourself. Are you trying to learn the barest minimum to score a promotion? Are you looking to make a big career change? Do you want to create the next greatest app? Thrill your roommates by programming your various smart devices to do something awesome?

Your answer can help determine which programming language(s) you should master, as well as what sort of commitment (in time and money) your goal may require. For example, if your dream is to create the next great operating system or a killer alternative to PhotoShop , you would benefit from a formal computer science education that teaches you C++, as well as more complex topics like data structure, algorithms and memory allocation.

On the other hand, if you’re a mid-career professional looking to transition into a tech career, a short-term coding bootcamp might make more sense than going into debt for a second degree. If all you want to do is build websites or push your Raspberry Pi to its limits, a combination of interactive tutorials and free online courses might be enough to get you going.

Choose the right programming language

Once you figure out why you want to code, you can more easily pinpoint which programming language you should tackle. While there is no single “best” programming language to learn, some languages are more user-friendly than others. HTML and CSS are considered the easiest entry points into the coding world, but they are only really useful for developing basic websites.

For more interactive websites involving payment systems or databases, you’ll need to know Javascript, PHP, SQL, and Python to make all the components sing. Mobile app makers use Swift or C to make iOS apps, and Java or Kotlin for Android apps. Video game developers will turn to Unity, or even C#, to bring their game ideas to life.

Still can’t decide on your starter programming language? Most professionals recommend learning Python, C#, or JavaScript, as they offer the widest utility and career flexibility. To help you make up your mind, check out this great infographic that compares a few popular programming languages.

Get a book

The best way to learn to code may involve you getting up-close-and-personal with some dead trees—a real book that you can follow along from beginning to end. In a perfect world, this will give you a more comprehensive introduction to coding than jumping around from topic to topic on a website

You can probably find an e-book for any language or framework you’re trying to learn on GitHub, but many web developers swear by Jon Duckett’s colorful series on everything from front- to back-end web development.

As a self-taught programmer, you might also benefit from books that offer broader advice on the profession. You’ll improve your thinking and habits, traits you can apply to any language you decide to learn. Steve McConnell’s 900-page Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (2nd Edition) is considered the definitive guide for best practices, with data-backed advice on everything from project design to debugging code.

A corollary to that behemoth is Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by “Uncle Bob” Robert Martin. Martin believes code should be efficiently written for easy testing and scalability, making this a must-read for many modern dev teams.

Since programming is really about problem solving, you’ll appreciate the thought process and “back of the envelope” solutions that Jon Bentley shares in Programming Pearls (2nd Edition). Every chapter ends with a number challenges that are often used in technical job interviews, so make this book part of your job prep.

Check out some interactive tutorials or coding games

Let’s face it: reading lines of code on a screen or in a book can look like gibberish. When you see an example in action, that abstract concept suddenly makes perfect sense. That’s the beauty of interactive coding tutorials you can find around the web.

For example, FreeCodeCamp not only breaks down coding concepts into small chunks within your web browser, it also pairs each concept with a relevant exercise that you have to solve before moving onto the next topic. This way, you can’t just skip ahead to the fun stuff; the site really forces you to debug your code as you learn.

Thank you

HOPE YOU liked IT.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said that certain SAS solid state drives would fail once they hit their 32,768th hour of operation—that’s 3 years, 270 days, and 8 hours—unless their firmware is upgraded to version HPD8.

The company says a manufacturer notified it of a firmware defect in certain solid state drives used in server and storage products on November 15.

While those who backed up their data on different drives will be able to recover it, anything on the affected HPE SSDs will be gone forever. “After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered,” the company ominously warned.

HPE never said why the drives fail at exactly 32,768 hours, but PCMag speculates that it’s related to an integer overflow bug, as the number 32,768 is the maximum negative integer a 16-bit computer can process, and 32,767 is the maximum positive integer.

Some of the SSD models already received a patch on November 22, while a patch for a second set of drives will arrive on the week starting December 9.

Links to the firmware download and instructions on how to apply the update are available from HPE’s advisory. There’s also a link to determine an SSD’s total power-on hours.

“By disregarding this notification and not performing the recommended resolution, the customer accepts the risk of incurring future related errors,” wrote HPE.

What just happened? Tesla’s Cybertruck unveiling wasn’t without its faults, but it did manage to garner a lot of interest from early adopters, over 200,000 of whom placed pre-orders for the electric pickup over the weekend.

It’s fairly easy to imagine the hype when Elon Musk gets onstage with an electric pickup nearly as divisive as the man himself. Although Tesla’s stock price dipped by 6 percent after the Cybertruck’s recent unveiling, pre-orders continued to pile up over the weekend and reached an impressive 200,000 as of Sunday night.

The pickup is still a few years away, but the company’s marketing and the lower price of admission have resulted in a healthy number of prospective buyers. Keeping them as such would be a challenge for Tesla, as the company’s track record of actually delivering its cars on schedule has run into various issues in the past, leading many to cancel their reservations last year after running out of patience for the Model 3 to make it to their driveways.

Nevertheless, the pickup truck remains a favorite class of vehicle among US buyers, most of whom are likely behind these pre-order figures. It also helps that the $100 refundable fee needed to reserve the Cybertruck is Tesla’s lowest price yet, as compared to the $1,000 deposit required for the Model 3 and the $2,500 fee for the Model Y SUV.

Reaching such a high number of pre-orders for the Cybertruck was made possible “with no advertising & no paid endorsement” boasted Musk on Twitter, but then that duty was taken over by the internet itself, which unleashed a sea of Cybertruck memes over the weekend and made sure the electric pickup remained a hot topic of most discussions, online and offline.

Highlighting the Cybertruck’s utility and speed, Musk compared it to America’s current favorite pickup and one of the world’s best sports cars, calling it a “better truck than an F-150 [and] faster than a Porsche 911.” For what it’s worth, he also shared a brief clip of the Ford pickup being pulled uphill by the supposedly more powerful and heavier Cybertruck.

Although Tesla’s latest product might not be to everyone’s taste, the company can certainly do with the $20 million or so which it has generated through the Cybertruck’s pre-orders in such a short period. The company has only managed to record five profitable quarters to date, including its latest Q3’19, and the Cybertruck could potentially provide a much needed, if temporary, financial relief.

Also, unlike the Model 3 that was touted as the cheapest Tesla but launched with its most expensive trim, the Cybertruck will be made the other way round. Its cheaper single and dual-motor versions will be produced initially in the latter part of 2021, followed by the flagship tri-motor spec that’s expected to arrive no sooner than late 2022.

HOPE YOU ALL LIKED IT.