Hey Everyone, or anyone that’s still around sorry it’s been so quiet around here lately, I’ve just had so much on my plate. Moving, baby, wife, work, a new homebrewing passion, reading, writing, and so on. All of this has led to very little time spent on this blog.

I have some things in mind for this blog, but I never seem to get around to writing the posts or doing the work. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into it soon.

At work we’ve delved into the Android platform and created an online app builder called andromo, which means I’ve been writing a lot of Java and hanging out on smart phones and tablets. If you are interested you can see some of the apps that have been built and added to the Android Market in our showcase.

You can keep up with what I’m doing on twitter: @MarkAtAndromo or add me to a circle on google+ under Mark Mruss and yes I follow Guido. If you are not on Google plus and need an invite let me know in the comments.

Oh and I also write on the Andromo blog from time to time as well.

Just to let everyone who still reads this blog that it looks as though I have been hacked again.

Please don’t believe the rumours, I am not selling, nor will I ever, levitra online.

If you notice anything strange in the text on this blog, or you end up redirected to some strange site, please let me know.

Sorry about the lack of updates and responses here everyone. I’ve been away on holidays so I haven’t had any time to access this blog or work on the level editor at all. I’m going to try to get the code up as soon as possible so that anyone interested can start playing with it and hopefully fix all of my mistakes.

Thanks for you patience everyone, I’ll be back with more soon!

Note: The blog was hacked. I spent all night trying to clean it up. If you have registered here you may think about changing your password. Sorry about this folks it pretty much sucks.

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know there is a strong possibility that this blog was hacked recently. A helpful user (Eoin) informed me that when trying to visit the blog from Google he was re-directed to an advertising website.

In response I’ve updated the blog and tried my best to ensure that anything that was hacked is back to normal.

If anyone noticed anything strange happening on this blog please let me know.

Thanks.

Fraking hackers…

Is there anyone else out there that is looking for this? A simple Python (2D) game engine? I’m not talking about something like PyGame, PyGlet, or Rabbyt, all of which are very good at what they do. What I’m talking about may use these technologies (I’m thinking PyGlet and Rabbyt) but would do so in a way to create an actual “game engine”.

This is something that I have tried to do many times in the past, and I’ve always gotten stuck on the idea of trying to make it very very flexible, so that you could use whichever technology with the engine that you wanted to. But lately I’ve been thinking of a different approach. What about a very specific engine? Something that is very geared to performing one task well. Lets say a 2D scrolling engine. Something with a set level format, easy save and load, a screen system, and maybe some widgets.

Basically I’m thinking of something that will let people who are interested in creating simple games do so very easily. Something that isn’t that doesn’t necessarily do everything, but if you follow some simply steps you can get a “game” going very quickly.

Anyone else interested in something like this? Anyone else interested in working with me on something like this? Or perhaps you have information on a technology that is already there? Or maybe you have information on simple game engine design? I’ve feeling the itch to create some games again using Python, but I havn’t yet found the tool to scratch that itch…maybe the solution is to create on? If you are interested, or have some information, drop me a comment or shoot me an email.

mark…signing off after a long day on the computer not programming Python or video games, and definitely not doing it for himself.

I’d like to thank everyone that commented on my last post, and everyone that has emailed me ideas. They are all very much appreciated. It’s hard keeping up with everything that is happening in the Python world, and sometimes the coolest things are happening in far off places.

I got a few suggestions for Pycairo, which is something that I have considered in the past, but I’ve found it a little bit difficult and time consuming do to the lack of Python specific documentation.

The MDP toolbox also looks pretty cool, I just have no idea what I could possibly do with it!

If anyone else has anymore ideas please let me have them. Anything graphical, non-graphical, game related, swarm theory, random generation, AI, a Rorschach test creator…anything! I’m collecting ideas for this blog and my monthly column so anything that would also really interest new Python programmers would be a huge plus.

Take care and get ready for 3000!

No I’m not dead…even after the recent car accident….I’ve just been busy. Busy writing for columns for the monthly Python Magazine. But that does not mean that his blog is dead! In fact I’ve been spending the last hour looking around the web for something new and cool in the world of Python.

I’m looking for something new to sink my teeth into, something different. I’m looking forward to Python 3000, I’ve been trying to keep up with many of the changes and so far it’s looking really good. But in the mean time there must be something happening in the far off corners of the Python world…where someone is doing something extremely cool.

Please if you have an idea let me know, send me an email, or add a comment to this post. Is there anything that you want me to cover here? A tutorial that you would like? A tutorial that you have written? A new module you wrote? Whatever it is let me know! A new visualization tool? More Python on the web?

I’ve been spending too much time in the world of C++ lately and I’m hungry for some Python…

The first issue of Python Magazine is finally available and they’ve made it freely available via PDF.

The magazine is quite good and I’m please to announces that I’m writing a monthly column for it entitled “Welcome to Python”. So if any of you are wondering why the posts on this blog have slowed down a little, well it’s because I’ve been trying to do double duty lately, writing posts and columns!

Hopefully I’ll be able to balance the two a little bit better in the future, but for October you can check out my article!

I just stumbled on this and I thought I’d pass it onto my fellow python programmers, it’s a python 3000 status update from Guido van Rossum.

Personally I’m looking forward to Python 3.0, I don’t know if I’ll like the break in backwards compatibility but a lot of the changes seem great.

Making the print statement a function is a good choice in my opinion.

So instead of:

print "this is printing"

We’ll be using:

print("this is python 3.0")

Also instead of % to format strings, there will be a format() function, which is so much clearer in my opinion.

There are many other changes (say goodbye to old-style classes) so give the link a read and let me know what you think!

Hello everyone,

I know that this blog has been rather quiet lately, but you can talk to my boss about that…but I think things are going to cool down a bit soon and I will be able to start posting here again regularly, and not just tutorials.

For the next little while I will be away from the computer so I won’t be able to read any posts or moderate any comments…sigh…this means that I will have to turn the comment moderation off and try blocking some words or phrases.

In the meantime please ignore the spam as best you can.

I hope you are all doing well and that you python programming is good.

Also, if anyone has any python projects that they would like me to highlight or take a look at please let me know.