Newsletter for July 14th, 2010 - "Friends of a Feather"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Well, we've arrived at another DC newsletter, where I provide a peek into some of the best and most interesting posts on our forum in the last 30 days or so.  If this is the first DC newsletter you've received, congratulations you lucky ducky -- your mission is to quickly scan it and see if there are any forum threads you want to stop by and read about or -- even better -- add your comments to.

I've been working on a new website project that is long overdue and should be revealed on DC in the next 30 days, so I haven't been updating my apps as much as I should be.  I hope to be back to that soon and to start working on some new big apps to reveal by the end of the year as part of the NANY event (New Apps for the New Year).  I *really* want to see some bigger applications released for NANY this year, so if you are a coder, please do come by and pledge to work on something.  I'm also looking for a few collaborators for some ideas I have so don't be shy about saying you want to code something but need some ideas(!)

Our feel-good forum thread of the month has to be the one about using a 7" usb touchscreen with the DC program CircleDock.  After a forum member posted a video showing the cool use of the device with the program, other forum members agreed to chip in and donate enough to pay for the two current maintainers of the software to get their own.  It was a great example of how a small donation can make a difference and bring a smile to someone's face.  A big thank you to all who have donated and continue to donate to support the website and the authors who live on it.  Your donations make this site possible.

And Lastly, I would be remiss not to acknowledge a couple of DC members for accomplishments in the last month.  DC member Jody Holmes (aka Skwire) became the recipient of a very generous donation from Chris Hanscom of Veign.com, a valuable Microsoft VisualStudio/MSDN bundle, in recognition of his work over the last year or so writing Coding Snacks for people.  Now I happen to know that it would take a a nuclear explosion to keep skwire from the Coding Snacks section and so he doesn't need any encouragement to keep working on them, but it's nice to see all the people turn out to congratulate him.  And DC member mnemonic became the first person to complete all 10 assignments in the Self-teaching Programming School section for Python.  That's a pretty big accomplishment given that I really hit him with a couple of insane assignments at the end, which went well beyond what I normally assign.  It's great to see the Self-teaching Programming School continue to be a useful resource for coders to get motivation to learn, and I hope it's one area that we can improve going forward.