making apps, making webs.

I haven't read this book about making games with python and pygame yet, but I think it seems like a good one for beginners. The free chapter is fun to read. Which is the essence of making games I think. It should be entertaining to make a game, and to read about making games. This book looks like it covers most basics of programming a game - with python and pygame. Like it's title suggests it is for beginners, which is great.

Have a look at PyGPU http://code.google.com/p/pygpu/ With it you can code the GPU using python. It translates code from python into GLSL (the opengl shading language). It's amazing what type of algorithms you can quickly write using the GPU these days. There are papers describing it's implementation and other information here: http://www.cs.lth.se/home/Calle_Lejdfors/pygpu/ It takes a similar approach to psyco or pypy... in a way. But is different from both of these. Very cool.

I saw this on the pygame mailing list the other day about girlstart.org ... "... Project IT Girl, a program that teaches 60 high school girls in Austin, Texas, about how they can change the world through the use of technology. This year, Project IT Girls learn basic programming through designing and developing their own unique educational games written with Python and **Pygame**! ..." Looks like a cool project.

After the Galcon T shirt design competition, Phil has decided to send me one of the winning designed shirts for helping out with testing. You can see some of the winning designs here: Galcon t shirts . Galcon is a multiplayer, and single player game kind of like risk, but with space ships. It's made with python + pygame by Phil Hassey.