Archives of Life

ShowMeDo server move + Python 3 videos

We’ve spent the last few weeks migrating ShowMeDo to its own server after 3 years operating out of a shared box.  Moving the site was a pain as I’m not a low-level Apache hacker but all in everything seems fine now and we have extra capacity to grow. Kyran has skinned the blog so it […]
16 years ago

PayPal refunds between Pounds (GBP) and Dollars (USD)

I’ve just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to refund a USD deposit payment to one of my PayPal accounts back to the originator.  When receiving the money I’d converted the payment to GBP and so that PayPal account only had a single (GBP) currency. When trying to refund the chap’s USD payment […]
16 years ago

Making Local Freelancers More Visible

Here’s a problem I’ve been pondering for the last few months, maybe you can say if my idea has legs… This year I’ll be expanding my ProCasts at a rate of knots.  I intend to partner with a set of great freelancers (particularly animators and 2D designers) – but how do I find them? The […]
16 years ago

Marble-mouse sticking, finger slips [solved]

For the last few weeks my lovely Logitech Marble Mouse has been sticking – my finger would slip whenever I pulled it towards me (‘down’) whilst up, left and right were just fine.  I had a memory that when I first bought the mouse in August everything was much smoother… A quick Google revealed nought […]
16 years ago

Upgrading Ubuntu Hardy to Ibex

I’ve just upgraded from 8.04 LTS to 8.10.  Inevitably there were some hiccups – no sound, difficulties with the nVidia drivers. The initial upgrade was flawless, it took under 30 minutes to prepare itself, download the new packages, install everything and reboot. I have an NVidia 8500GT which requires the non-free driver for decent video […]
16 years ago

ProCasts Interview, New Testimonial

Jolt Magazine were kind enough to interview me about how ProCasts makes professional screencasts, the resulting article has just been published as Screencasting: An Expert Reveals the Dark Art. “While researching one of these articles I did an interview with professional screencaster, Ian Ozsvald. It was so good that I just couldn’t bring myself to […]
16 years ago

PyCon UK 2008 Write-up

We’re heading towards the end of the afternoon from a great weekend’s worth of PyCon, Right now Ted Leung is giving the key-note on Dynamic Languages.  JavaScript’s acceptance and speed improvements is being high-lighted, Ted seems to have some worries about JavaScript’s continual growth. Yesterday we had Mark Shuttleworth‘s key-note on how he wanted to […]
16 years ago

CamTasia tip – increasing the call-out length

I’ve just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out an odd behaviour in CamTasia v5.1.0.  The documentation (great video demo) explains that a call-out can be added, and then by dragging the call-out we can change the length for its display. Only…it seemed that you couldn’t drag the length.  You can easily drag its position, […]
16 years ago

Learning Python via ShowMeDo

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 […]
16 years ago

Experimenting with eLance

I’ve posted a job into eLance for the first time – I figure it is time to experiment with remote web design and CSS implementation.  Now this might seem odd given that I live in web-designer-rich Brighton… I’m a believer in building on-line marketplaces where we can remotely trade our skills rather than only doing […]
16 years ago