Setting up PiCloud
PiCloud is another cloud computing provider, which is actually using the EC2 Amazon infrastructure. However, they do offer environments with preinstalled Python software, including NumPy. These environments are just EC2 instances that we can ssh into. In this recipe, we will be using the Python 2.7—Ubuntu Natty 11.04 environment. For the installed packages in this environment, see http://www.picloud.com/docs/base_environment/2/installed/ . PiCloud follows the freemium model, meaning that you can start out for free and pay later on if you require more resources.
How to do it...
After the mandatory sign up, log in to PiCloud.
Create an environment.
We start out without any environments. In order to create an environment, first click on the Environments tab. Next, click on the "create a new environment button. Select the Python 2.7 base environment. Currently, you can choose between a Python 2.7 and 2.6 environments, both on Ubuntu.
Creating an environment takes a few minutes...