Richard Jones' Log

Wed, 28 Apr 2010

PyCon Australia CFP: One Day Left!

The Call For Proposals for PyCon Australia 2010 finishes tomorrow!

Presentation subjects may range from reports on open source, academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. As long as a presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the program.

We're especially interested in short presentations that will teach conference-goers something new and useful. Can you show attendees how to use a module? Explore a Python language feature? Package an application?

Submit your proposal here: http://pycon-au.org/cfp

As always, please pass this message on to people you feel will find it interesting.

category: Python | permanent link

Thu, 22 Apr 2010

PyCon Australia 2010 update

Here's some updates for PyCon Australia 2010, to be held at the Sydney Masonic Center over the weekend of June 26 and 27.

Registration is now open
Keynotes announced
Call For Proposals proceeds
Several sponsors confirmed

Please pass this message on to those you feel will find it interesting.

Registration Is Now Open

We offer two levels of registration for PyCon Australia 2010:

Full (Early Bird) - $165

This is the registration rate for regular attendees. We're offering a limited Early Bird rate for the first 50 to registration. Once the Early Bird slots are filled registration will increase to $220.

Full registration includes one seat at the conference dinner on Saturday night.

Student - $44

For students able to present a valid student card we're offering this reduced rate. Student registrations do not include a seat at the conference dinner.

Additional seats at the conference dinner may be purchased for $77 each.

All prices include GST.

Information about the registration process is on the PyCon Australia website.

Register here: http://pycon-au.org/reg

Keynotes Announced

We're pleased to announce the keynote line-up for PyCon Australia 2010.

Saturday: Mark Pesce

"Mark Pesce, one of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality is a writer, researcher and teacher. The co-inventor of VRML, he is the author of five books and numerous papers on the future of technology." - Wikipedia

Saturday evening dinner: Anthony Baxter

Anthony Baxter has been involved in the open source community for more than a decade, largely working in Python and on Python. He's working for Google now.

Sunday: Nick Hodge

Nick Hodge is a Professional Geek at Microsoft in Australia. Professional Geek is a polite way of saying he does stuff with software running on computers. Previously, he has worked for Adobe and Apple.

Call For Proposals

We've had a great response to the Call For Proposals but there's still time left and plenty of program to fill.

Presentation subjects may range from reports on open source, academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. As long as a presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the program.

We're especially interested in short presentations that will teach conference-goers something new and useful. Can you show attendees how to use a module? Explore a Python language feature? Package an application?

Submit your proposal here: http://pycon-au.org/cfp

Sponsors Confirmed

We have confirmed several sponsors for the conference:

Gold: Microsoft                <http://www.microsoft.com.au/>
Silver: Anchor                   <http://anchor.com.au/>
Silver: Thousand Parsec Project  <http://thousandparsec.net/>
In Kind: Linux Australia          <http://linux.org.au/>

Thanks to our sponsors for helping make the event a reality.

category: News | permanent link

Sun, 18 Apr 2010

10th Python game programming challenge wrapped up

Another PyWeek is over; congratulations to our winners Alex (for The Street Performer) and team Calipygian (for Oscilliscape).

The theme this time, "Wibbly-Wobbly" was a tough, but the range of different games that were submitted shows how the Python game programmers were quite up to the challenge.

Well done, everyone! See you next time!

category: Python | permanent link

Thu, 08 Apr 2010

PyCon Australia 2010 Call For Proposals

I'm happy to announce that on the 26th and 27th of June, 2010 we are running PyCon Australia in Sydney!

We are looking for proposals for Talks on all aspects of Python programming from novice to advanced levels; applications and frameworks, or how you have been involved in introducing Python into your organisation.

We welcome first-time speakers; we are a community conference and we are eager to hear about your experience. If you have friends or colleagues who have something valuable to contribute, twist their arms to tell us about it! Please also forward this Call for Proposals to anyone that you feel may be interested.

To find out more go to the official Call for Proposals page.

The deadline for proposal submission is the 29th of April. Proposal acceptance will be announced on the 12th of May.

See you in Sydney in June!

category: Python | permanent link

Sun, 04 Apr 2010

Things I did this weekend

This weekend marked the end of the 10th Python Game Programming Challenge. As usual I participated (don't tell anyone but I mostly just run it as an excuse to write a game every 6 months) and produced a game I'm actually pretty happy with. This is a little surprising since I had no idea what the game was going to be until about Friday.

My game, Endless Path, is all about curves (wibbly-wobbly curves). Here's a sample of the gameplay:

PyWeek has been great, again. There's something like 45 games uploaded (there may be some more uploaded before the time runs out). I've already had a look at some and there's some good competition. There's also been a bunch of Python newbies turning in games, and a couple of people mentioned they entered because of the Little Bit Of Python interview, which is nice.

Abbey and I also finished the massive Millenium Falcon build. It's taken three months and it's just amazing. Here's the result of one month:

And two months:

And finally, after three months:

Thankyou Dougal for lending me this kit - it's an awesome privilege to be able to make it. You rock!

category: Python | permanent link