ShowMeDo Blog

I have just recorded my first of two ShowMeDos on Wingware’s Wing Python editor. Here I show how to write some code, use code-completion, navigate with the Source Browser, seek help with the Source Assistant, run the code and view the output.

Now that we have reached 50 ShowMeDo videos, Kyran and I have learned a great deal about making screencasts (or podcasts as they are sometimes known). Here are my Top 5 Tips for recording your own screencasts:

1. Plan each video to be 5-10 minutes on one subject - longer videos can be split into a series
2. Know your subject - to be authentic you have to know what you’re talking about
3. Have a rough plan and run through it several times - if you know your subject then you can record almost off-the-cuff with just a rough plan in mind
4. The ‘pause’ button is your friend - take a breath, clear your throat, drink some water, then unpause when you’re ready to continue
5. Start with a quick introduction to yourself and the subject, say what you’ll be covering, run through your presentation (umms and errs are fine) and conclude at the end with a ‘thanks for listening’.

That is all there is to it. If you know what you’re talking about, then making a video is terribly easy on Windows with free software, is very easy on MacOS with some paid software, and easy-enough (if you’re ok at the command line) and free under Linux. We handle all the post-production, transcoding and hosting, all you need to do is share your knowledge and we can do the rest!

Artist Shardcore has contributed a ShowMeDo on how to make your own copy of his popular BushFinger piece in a beautifully produced 10 minute video, featuring fine assistance from his daughter and an unforgettable soundtrack.

We have two sets of new Linux videos courtesy of Bruce Cadieux (itsyourpc.com).

The first videos are for installing Windows games under Linux with Cedega and the second for file and printer sharing using Samba. Both sets are based on the Suse Linux distribution. Thanks Bruce!

We seem to have lost the root of ShowMeDo, all incoming links and videos work fine except for the root page of http://showmedo.com/. I shall update further when I’ve had time to look into the problem. Sorry!

Update: All fixed now. We had a subtle kid rendering problem, now taken care of, sorry for the downtime.

The TurboGears section is growing, we now have 9 videos - Ronald Jamarillo’s Docudo joins the earlier TurboGears and CatWalk videos. There are some Selenium videos coming too…

I have added two new forum posts: A wxGlade ShowMeDo, pyInstaller and py2exe ShowMeDos.

Would you dip into the forum and leave some feedback on what you’d like to see in these demos? If we get enough feedback, it becomes easier for us to arrange to have someone make these new ShowMeDos which (we hope!) is beneficial to the entire Python community.

Kyran and I are rather proud to say that we have a new site design, we brought it live at the weekend. Kyran has been busy designing a new, bolder look for the site.

All of the underlying CSS has changed - the video page sports a new colour scheme for comments, the requests page has had a make-over and the front-page has easier-to-use navigation icons. What do you think?

Kevin Dangoor has offered to let us host his TurboGears videos, so now we have a TurboGears section containing three videos - Wiki in 20 Minutes, TurboTunes, TurboTunes example.  We have more on the way…

André Roberge has added a second RUR-PLE ShowMeDo, this time introducing the tricky concepts behind recursion with a graphical example.  We have promoted both videos to a new category, so now we have a brand new RUR-PLE section!