The videos from Europython 2012 are online. You can donload either all videos at once ( 40 Gigabyte via bittorrent) file or watch on youtube
As usual i find the most interesting part of an Europython conference the lightning talks (5 minutes per speaker, lot of speeches):
I heard a terrible sound from my mobile phone last night and initially feared that my mobile phone may be broken. Instead it’s my favorite sound effect now:
The sound of bitcoins arriving in my wallet
Thanks to a most honorable sponsor, i am now proud owner of no longer one single bitcoin, but instead of 5 (five) bitcoins ! I feel encriched.
While it was not the first donation for ThePythonGameBook ( i sometimes get micro-donations via flattr ) it was by far the biggest donation of money and my first bitcoin donation ever.
History: I was owner of some bitocins before but managed to destroy them when a harddisk backup got horrible wrong ( permanently reducing the amount of bitcoins worldwide ). I’m not sure how long the bitcoins will stay on my mobile phone because my mobile phone got stolen once. I learned from those events that i should not hoard my bitcoins.
I feel that bitcoins beat every other service when it comes to money-transferring quality (fast, secure, no fees, open-source). Now i look for ways to spend my bitcoins, Maybe i will use my bitcoins to help projects on kickstarter.
In case you want to send a bitcoin (or fraction of it ) to me, i made an extra large “we accept bitcoins” button on the top-right corner of ThePythonGameBook. I will try to always post a valid bitcoin address in the FAQ of ThePythonGameBook.
Here it is, the final answer why some programming languages become popular:
It’s the beard !
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/beard-gallery/
Note: Guido van Rossum, inventer of python, has of course a beard:
Gudio van Rossum. Source: Wikipdedia (click on image)
Ludum dare game jam is starting this weekend. Check out the keynote (a nice flash video) here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23-keynote/
according to this graph, python is the most liked programming language of hackers:
I found this graph in the python subreddit where it sparked a lot of comments.
Al Sweigart, author of “Invent Your own computer games with Python”, wrote a nice blog entry about the difficulty of teaching programming (to kids):
http://inventwithpython.com/blog/2012/03/03/nobody-wants-to-learn-how-to-program/
Wow, i found out that the famous Khan Academy website has a (hopefully growing) section of python video tutorials:
So far i found no “practice” tests to train python (and earn badges) like in Udacity but i’m very impressed that Khan Academy choose python as an topic to teach.
In case you never heard of Khan Academy, watch this TED Talk Video:
Found a nice website ( http://agedgamer.com ) with a very nice review of a old dos game written in Qbasic:
You can read the original blogpost here:
http://agedgamer.com/2012/01/02/banana-bombs-gorillas-rereview/
The author of the blog posting writes nicely how a (even primitve) computer game can capture the imagination and curiosity of a young boy and how he started modifying the game (the gravity), a first step into learning how to program.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,500 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
Sadly my plans of creating a nice little game during the SuperGameDev Weekend in Vienna’s Metalab were disturbed by too much real life.
I managed however to channel some energy into ThePythonGameBook project, more on that in one of the next blog postings.
On sunday, 11. December 2011 i was in Metalab again to see the final projects. There was good mood everywhere, because Vienna’s Python User group celebrated their second anniversary with a party and a tv team from Vienna’s technical university was also present.
I had the opportunity to play 2 nearly-finished games:
Jumping left/right in front of a Microsoft Kinec controller, you can move a bull left/right who is trampling protesters in a street. Each trampled protester is rewarded (by wall street?) with money. The goal is to make as much money as possible in a given time limit.
At the time of testing, the programming team could not get the kinet system to recognize me, but it worked with some other people.
I found the game very good made, especially the sound effects.
In this game 2 players control little cars by shaking Sony controllers (up/down to move forward, sideways to rotate) and have to drive their cars throug a simple maze while collecting symbols.
The funny thing was that during the game, the players (and the bystanders) were captured from a webcam and the webcam-pictures were played as a “film” after the game.
You can find project links (all on github), winners and more information about the SuperGameDev Weekend directly on the Metalab Wiki page:
https://metalab.at/wiki/Super_Gamedev_Weekend
Click here to see all photos and videos i made: Picasa Webalbum about SuperGameDevWeekend2011
please flattr:
Horst JENS
The Python Game Book Blog 
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