It’s been a lot of work, but the second edition of “Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python” is now ready. The book’s new website is http://inventwithpython.com

“Invent with Python” is a free book that teaches kids (and adults) how to make computer games in the Python language. It’s aimed at people who have had no experience with programming before. The website also has some nifty features: online diff, a tracing tool, and (soon) video tutorials to accompany the book.

Thanks a lot to everyone who’s helped out!

Hi, I’m Al. I’m an atheist. I believe that God and gods are superstition and do not exist.

Fear is incredibly useful tool for persuading others to your views. It’s really convincing to tell a population of people that there is an imminent danger that is going to personally affect them, and that you alone have the cure they need. They might suspect you’re full of crap, but can they really take that chance? (more…)

I had an email interview with Grindstone Journal a couple weeks back. The interview material was used in the article “Atheists find challenges, notoriety and community on Youtube.”

Posted below is a transcript of the email interview in full: (more…)

TraceyText’s home page is http://traceytext.sourceforge.net

TraceyText is an HTML-based teaching tool for visualizing single-stepping through source code. TraceyText can also double as a text/HTML slideshow library implemented in JavaScript. With TraceyText’s features, you can create web pages with a text or HTML slideshow and TraceyText will minimize the file size. TraceyText can also combine multiple “views” in the same slideshow to adjust in sync with each other.

The best way to see it in action are the source stepping demo and the picture slideshow demo. The demo runs through the Dragon Realm game from my book that teaches Python programming. You can either create these web pages with TraceyText by hand, or use the included TraceyText Python script to create a source file that generates the web page.

TraceyText is a useful tool for visualizing source code debugging or any presentation with HTML content. TraceyText has an API which opens itself to user-created JavaScript as well. TraceyText’s name comes from its original purpose as a way to demonstrate debugging traces through source code.

I created this tool as a way to demonstrate how programs run line by line, and what it outputs and the state of the varaibles. Simple text was way too verbose, and video would have taken too much bandwidth. In addition, TraceyText makes for a very nice and simple HTML slideshow.

On the downside, this is a tool mostly for programmers who know JavaScript. I’ll put together a user-friendly authoring tool later if there is interest.

This is playing off of this post on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/7u9mx/hey_reddit_think_its_easy_to_link_an_online/

The joke of course is that my name is plastered all over this website and the web in general. I was planning on donating to the EFF anyway (and, hey, so should you.) But it got me thinking about identity online. (more…)