Every now and again it is useful to look back at what’s been achieved - ShowMeDo started three years ago and we considered ourselves lucky if 1 Python video was contributed a month.  Now we get several whole series each month!  Often each series is information-laden and created by a competent screencaster.  Viewers learn very quickly and they remember ’seeing it happen’ after they’ve watched the video.

I figured that a look at some of the recent series might be useful.  In total we have over 330 Python screencasts, with 8 series alone for Django.  Over 150 of the screencasts are aimed at Beginner Python coders.

We’ve had several series which cover test-driven development (TDD), unit testing and coverage, as well as discussing the whole development process.  Seeing these hard-core videos teaching ‘a good way of coding’ is really nice, these skills are hard to describe and easy for a beginner to ignore.  Three that spring to mind are:

• Agile Development Tools in Python inc. VirtualEnv, PasteScript
• Agile Python+Pylons inc. TDD, coverage, unit testing
• Developing emol! inc. use-cases and class diagrams in 24 beautiful episodes
  

It is nice to see some web-framework series sprouting up:

• Pylons in action (mentioned above)
• Quick-start guide to TurboGears 2
• Setting Up the Django Dev Environment

In the Club (for paying users) we’ve been busy, currently we’re simultaneously publishing several meaty series.  They’re aimed at beginner/intermediate Python programmers, mixing Python background with useful worked examples:

• Loops and Iteration
• Common Variables and Containers
• What does Python look like?
• Database Programming
• Introducing the Google App Engine

In total we have 11 strong series in the Club which reduce the learning time for a beginner.  We’ve also commissioned some of our open-source authors to join us in the Club, two new series on ‘batteries included’ and ‘C+Python’ are in the works.

We welcome new open-source authors - each author’s contributions are special to us, we don’t stick ads on the pages or require ownership of any rights.  We just do our best to bring an author’s knowledge to a wider audience.

I guess the biggest thing that we’ve achieved is ‘recognition’ - it is nice mailing a project author to discuss a relevant series that we’ve had submitted and to have them say ‘ShowMeDo - yes, I was watching some cool stuff there just the other day…’.

What a fab night!  I counted 46 people which makes this possibly the largest event we’ve thrown - thanks to all for attending.  Sponsored beer, live Qik video, 6 great talks and lively post-event pub conversation - who could ask for a better evening?  Josh made this rather excellent panoramic view of us all:

Each of the 6 talks lasted 15 minutes and covered a wide range of geek and tech-business topics:

• ‘Google Maps + GPS + Python + Series 60 + giant pencil == live biking location demo’, Tristan Roddis (CogApp)
• LiquidFold using Google’s App Engine, Simon Willison & Natalie Downe
• “An airport that you can turn-off” - evolvable flight-paths for crash-resistant landing vectors at a major airport, Matt Sarjent
• ‘Pistach.io: a cracking idea! [blog-based advertising platform, new start-up]’, Aral Balkan and Dave Stone
• AllSizes+ - hacking flickr with GreaseMonkey, Premasagar Rose (of Dharmafly)
• ‘Inuda’s first public app [howsociable.com - brand metrics company side-project]… after two years of ‘Innovating’ alongside client work’, Jon Markwell and Kev The Dev

Ribot both sponsored the event (great beer - thanks!) and made live Qik video streams for the evening.  I believe these segments are correct:

1. Video 1 - quick intro from John and myself
2. Video 2 - Tristan’s Python Series 60 demo starts
3. Video 3 - Tristan concludes, full talk for Simon and Matt (followed by break)
4. Video 4 - Second half - Premasagar, Dave, Jon+Kev

The Ribots also sponsored the beer, they skinned the bottles to show three stages of the design process:

More images can be found tagged in flickr and via the fivepoundapp homepage.  If you’ve a question about the night then come join the FivePoundApp google group.  Finally - thanks to Danny for hosting and to John for yet more great cake.

Possible talks for the next event could include something about ClearLeft’s SilverBack, a Chumby demo and Seb’s postponed Arduino hardware hacking.  I’d love to see some more internal-company demos/start-ups/proto-projects, please ping if you’d be interested in talking.

Addition - great write-up at Ribot HQ, including discussion of how and why they branded their sponsored beer..

John has just published his TurboGears Caching Decorator.  We’ve been using it on ShowMeDo for the last 6 weeks - our cpu usage dropped from 60%+ on our shared box down to <30%.

Currently we cache the main pages for 1 hour, these ought to be extended to ‘forever’ since I have a good cache-expire key for these pages.  If I fixed this then I’d imagine our cpu usage would drop even further.

Getting it installed and running with the ‘cache using files’ version took about an hour.  Developing some custom keys (one for each type of page) took another few hours, we’ve had no bugs and we’re darn impressed.

John developed this decorator for his Chrss and our ShowMeDo - we’re in debt to John for digging us out of our performance woes.  Much obliged!

On the evening of Tuesday July 8th (upcoming) we’re having a Demo Camp in Brighton as the new format for our regular £5 App hack/story evenings.  Everyone is welcome, we normally have 20-40 people, London Python folk are especially welcome.

The current 6 talks (2 for Python - woot!) are:

• ‘Google Maps + GPS + Python + Series 60 + giant pencil == live biking location demo’, Tristan Roddis (CogApp)
• Google App Engine ’stuff’, Simon Willison & Natalie Downe
• Evolvable flight-paths for crash-resistant landing vectors at a major airport, Matt Sarjent
• ‘Pistach.io: a cracking idea!’, Aral Balkan and Dave Stone
• ‘Inuda’s first public app… after two years of ‘Innovating’ alongside client work’, Jon Markwell and Kev The Dev
• ‘Arduino - Beyond Blink’ - Making cool stuff with LEDs, Seb Lee-Delisle

Do you have something to demo?  Get in contact (ian AT ianozsvald.com), maybe we can fit you into this event or maybe the next one.  The next event may well have more of a start-up focus (if you’re running a start-up and you’d like a demo spot please do get in touch!).

The location is a bus-ride along Western Road, it’ll take about 20 minutes from Brighton station (see the upcoming page for maps).  The evening is free, it’ll be bring-your-own-beer (and I’ll aim to bring some spare beer and a hat-for-cash for those who forget).

Ribot was kind enough to video the last event, take a look to get an idea of what to expect (at this event we were trying to figure out the format for 2008’s talks).

I’m now on the look-out for some interesting A.I. or Python related work in the South-East.  An interesting challenge involving Python around Brighton/London could be quite cool.  My skills and experience are listed on my MorConsulting work site.

I have some more time on my hands as I’m winding-back my involvement in ShowMeDo (the video-tutorial site with a Python focus that I co-founded in 2005) as Kyran will shortly be taking the reigns full-time.

I could have two weeks a month to bring to bear on a new problem, preferably something hard that needs some A.I. and thinking.

Does the Python community have a ’skills available’ site for the UK?  I couldn’t see anything so I figured that this public post might be the best way to get the word out.

Yesterday I moved my blog to WebFaction from GoDaddy.  The process was mostly painless, it tooks a few minutes to configure GoDaddy’s DNS system to point at WebFaction and it took over two hours for my domains to work properly at WebFaction (due to global DNS updates), but otherwise was painless.

Currently I’m running this blog from a WebFaction Shared1 account which allows unlimited applications and is very Python friendly (ShowMeDo runs at WebFaction, it is written in Python using TurboGears).

If you need Python[or Ruby]-friendly hosting then do checkout WebFaction, Remi and co are very helpful, problems are sorted within 24 hours (we’ve run ShowMeDo there for a year) and everything ‘just works’.

We’re trying a new format for the next £5 App event, it’ll be an evening Demo Camp (barcamp.org) where 6 people get to demo something cool or start-upy.

We’re looking for an even split between neat-geek and new-startup (preferably bootstrapped or angeled startups, no shiny-suits for sure).

Mark you attendance in Upcoming as usual (and un-attend if you can’t make it to leave space for others). We had 40 people last time, do reserve your seat sooner rather than later.

We have 6 confirmed speakers:

• ‘Google Maps + GPS + Python + Series 60 + giant pencil == live biking location demo’, Tristan Roddis (CogApp)
• Google App Engine ’stuff’, Simon Willison & Natalie Downe
• Evolvable flight-paths for crash-resistant landing vectors at a major airport, Matt Sarjent
• ‘Pistach.io: a cracking idea!’, Aral Balkan and Dave Stone
• ‘Inuda’s first public app… after two years of ‘Innovating’ alongside client work’, Jon Markwell and Kev The Dev
• ‘Arduino - Beyond Blink’ - Making cool stuff with LEDs, Seb Lee-Delisle

If you’d like to present at our next Demo Camp then get in contact with me (ian AT ianozsvald com) or John (demo AT fivepoundapp com).

Mr. Ribot has offered to Qik live-video the event (as he did last time), we’ll have beer and cake as usual and then we’ll be off to the pub.