ShowMeDo Blog

Florian, one of our authors, has written a blog on how ‘How I do my screencasts‘.

“…I log into my tutorial account and start making the screencast, with recording on. It has to be noted that I have no second monitor showing me the code I am supposed to write, so I pretty much write it from memory. With longer screencasts I might have a paper with notes lying next to me. …”

His method is probably shared by most screencasters, though editing tends to follow (at least for me) to clean-up the recording, remove empty space and smooth out any audio glitches.

Lucas’ Club series for Python beginners which introduces the Python standard library is now complete.

Batteries Included - The Python Standard Library has 9 episodes for Club-subscribers which introduce the core elements of file-system access, using the shell, regular expressions, math, dates and talking to websites.

“I will thank you for getting this in-depth basic explanation of the basic modules. It really fills in some missing holes on my knowledge of using this.” - JZA

Each video is around 5 minutes long and includes examples of normal use.

Episodes:

1. Series overview
2. The “sys” module
3. The “os” module
4. The “shutil” module (shell access)
   
5. The “glob” module (file pattern matching)
   
6. The “re” module (regular expressions)
   
7. The “math” module
8. The “urllib2” module
9. The “datetime” module

Other recent Python videos include Making a Django Dev Environment, TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development, Python for Math Education, Database Programming, Google App Engine and pyWin32

Justin Lilly has created a 3-part series on using Vim macros, Vim is a powerful editor that has a bit of a learning curve.

“Thanks! Learning by looking over the shoulder is really a great addition to the help files.”

Screencasts make it easier to see what’s going on for the new user:

1. An Introduction to Vim Macros
2. Vim Selections
3. Vim % operator

These videos form a part of our 330 Python tutorial screencasts.  Most are free, some are a part of our Club which focuses on carefully planned tutorials for Python beginner/intermediate programmers.

Other recent videos include Making a Django Dev Environment,  TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development and Python for Math Education.  Recent beginner-Python videos include Common Variables and Containers, Loops and Iteration and What Does Python Look Like?.

We’ve got new Django screencasts (30 to date), first Eric Holscher has added 4 videos on Debugging Django covering the Django error page, logging, pdb in Django and unit tests.

“Wow! I had no idea Django could do that. Suffering from some serious envy right here. Very, very good screencast. Pacing, structure, content all top notch. When you called up that Python console my jaw dropped a few inches” - Kyran Dale

Second Ian shows Django in Under a Minute to celebrate the release of Django v1 with an easily blogged, music-backed demo.

Andrew Kuchling has created a screencast on Searching the Python Bug Tracker which describes how you can search for bugs in the Python bug tracker.

Searching for bugs helps you figure out if you’ve found a problem with Python rather than in your own code.  Filing bugs is an important way you can help to make Python better.  If you’ve never seen the Python Bug Tracker, take a look at this lovely demo.

“Wow, this is probably the most eloquent/fine-voiced screencast I’ve ever heard of.” - gasto.

These videos form a part of our 330 Python tutorial screencasts.  Most are free, some are a part of our Club which focuses on carefully planned tutorials for Python beginner/intermediate programmers.

Other recent videos include Making a Django Dev Environment,  TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development and Python for Math Education.  Recent beginner-Python videos include Common Variables and Containers, Loops and Iteration and What Does Python Look Like?.

I’m happy to say that I’ve just published the last three episodes for Python Beginners - Loops and Iteration.  This is another of our Club ShowMeDo Python Beginners series aimed at new Python programmers, it takes you through looping and iteration techniques.

By the end of the series you’ll be able to read other people’s Python code more confidently and you’ll have useful examples for building your own loops.

The complete series runs for 30 minutes, each episode is around 5 minutes long and includes examples:

1. Overview (Loops and Iteration)
2. For on a List
3. For using a range
4. For using enumerate
5. For on a set
6. For on a dict(ionary)
7. While loops

Other recent videos include What does Python Look Like?,  Agile Python/Pylons Development for pySvnManager,  Making a Django Dev Environment, TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development and Python for Math Education, Developing emol!.

Lucas Holland joins Kyran, John and Ian as an author for ShowMeDo’s Club.  The Club creates tutorial videos for beginner and intermediate Python programmers.

For his first series Lucas covers elements of The Python Standard Library.

Half of the videos are published, the series will be fully published in the next two weeks.  Each video is around 5 minutes long and includes examples of normal use.

Episodes:

1. Series overview
2. The “sys” module
3. The “os” module
4. The “shutil” module
5. The “glob” module
6. The “re” module [forthcoming]
7. The “math” module [forthcoming]
8. The “urllib2? module [forthcoming]
9. The “datetime” module [forthcoming]

Other recent Python videos include Making a Django Dev Environment, TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development, Python for Math Education, Database Programming, Google App Engine and pyWin32

Lucas Holland has joined us as a Club ShowMeDo author, his first series for Club-members is Batteries Included - The Python Standard Library.  Lucas has been authoring free Python videos inside ShowMeDo for a year.

We’re very happy to welcome him as a Club author and we’re excited to now be offering a greater range of introductory Python videos to Python beginners each week.

“Useful. It couldn’t be clearer.”, Gasto.

In this series Lucas spends 5 minutes per module giving the new Python user an overview of what’s in each module and how it should be used.  New episodes will be published over the coming weeks.

1. Series overview (Free)
2. The “sys” module
3. The “os” module
4. The “datetime” module [forthcoming]
5. The “urllib2″ module [forthcoming]
6. The “math” module [forthcoming]
7. The “re” module [forthcoming]
8. The “glob” module [forthcoming]
9. The “shutil” module [forthcoming]

Other recent Python videos include Making a Django Dev Environment, TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development, Python for Math Education, Database Programming, Google App Engine and pyWin32

The complete Python Beginners - Common Variables and Containers series is now on-line. This Club series is aimed at new Python programmers who want to get their heads around all of the common data-types and containers in Python.  Examples of common usage are given along with links for background information.

1. Overview (Variables and Containers) (Free)
2. Variables are Objects
3. Variable Scope
4. int and float
5. decimal
6. str(ings)
7. unicode
8. bool(eans)
9. list
10. set
11. dict
12. tuple
13. None
14. printing

We created this series to help guide new Pythonistas into the language based on feedback from our Club members.

“Great video, lots of good basic information to help me start learning Python. Easy to watch the videos and then open up an interactive prompt and try out the new features I just learned. I also like the web links for additional details.”

The Club videos are a part of our 330 Python tutorial screencasts, the majority are free and contributed by our open-source authors (all authors get free access to all the Club videos).  If you’ve got something to share, please come and join us - we’re friendly and we work to publicise great Python tools!

Other recent videos include What does Python Look Like?,  Agile Python/Pylons Development for pySvnManager,  Making a Django Dev Environment, TurboGears 2, Agile Python Development and Python for Math Education, Developing emol!.

Lucas has created the 4-part Programmierung mit Python for German speakers.  The current episodes are:

1. Zinsrechner
2. ToDoList-Manager
3. Grundlagen der GUI Progammierung mit wxPython
4. GUI Programmierung: Details

Whilst most of our 330 Python screencasts are in English, we have a small set of German-language screencasts.  We’re very open to supporting other spoken languages, demonstrating Python in a variety of languages seems to be a very sensible approach for advocacy.