How to make a checkerboard in numpy?

I'm using numpy to initialize a pixel array to a gray checkerboard (the classic representation for "no pixels", or transparent). It seems like there ought to be a whizzy way to do it with numpy's amazing array assignment/slicing/dicing operations, but this is the best I've come up with:

w, h = 600, 800sq = 15    # width of each checker-squarepix = numpy.zeros((w, h, 3), dtype=numpy.uint8)# Make a checkerboardrow = [[(0x99,0x99,0x99),(0xAA,0xAA,0xAA)][(i//sq)%2] for i in range(w)]pix[[i for i in range(h) if (i//sq)%2 == 0]] = rowrow = [[(0xAA,0xAA,0xAA),(0x99,0x99,0x99)][(i//sq)%2] for i in range(w)]pix[[i for i in range(h) if (i//sq)%2 == 1]] = row

It works, but I was hoping for something simpler.