Magical math

I was reviewing linear algebra and vector math in general and I do grasp that vectors can easily be used for area or volume, and the comparison to doing it with lines is a somewhat improper comparison. In the case of vectors or matrices there are points that relate to each other in Cartesian space , whereas intersecting lines with known length must also have an angle to put the entire situation in a usable form to compute area or volume. Vectors have more information than lines of known length. It just seemed odd that two different MIT professors thought that vectors were easier than angles and lines, because one has more information than the other and it requires an additional measure to produce a vector coordinate.

The main point of this is to test my mail checker python script and so I had to devise something to complain about that at least had some vague meaning, though that has not stopped me in the past from posting utter gibberish. The core of the mail test is below and I use a dictionary and pickle to save it with the file and its associated size. When mail is received, the indicator is triggered and speaks, and stays on the screen with a specific associated image for each mail received. I just wanted a way to know when important mail arrives when I am studying and also if I am out, then I can see on the screen if something has happened while I was gone.

def checkMailSize(ipath):
 global rebuild
 name=os.listdir(ipath)
 for named in name:
  try:
   if notify[named] != -1:
    newfile=ipath+"/"+named
    if notify[named] == os.path.getsize(newfile):
     pass
    else:
     ping=named+'.png'
     pong='Mail from '+named+' received'
     p=subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/display', ping ])
     p=subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/espeak', '-v', 'en+f3'
,'-p', '65', '-s', '130', '-a', 
'60', '-g', '6', '-k20', pong ])
     print strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S +0000", gmtime())
     time.sleep(3)
     rebuild=1
  except:
   pass