Just a single pick this time but it is quite exceptional.

Podcasts:

• Talk Python To Me, Episode 71, Soft Skills - This episode has everything: solid advice for entrepreneurs, info on being a good employee, tips for interviewing. This podcast is excellent well worth a listen. I have not read John Sonmez's book yet but can't wait to after listening to this podcast.

Recently attended Abstractions Conference in Pittsburgh. This was my first software-only conference. A few quick highlights from the convention:

• While I have no particular application in mind yet, Elixir sounds intriguing. For embedded systems, Nerves sound neat but maybe not quite ready for prime time.
• Joe Armstrong's idea of ubiquitous solar powered computing devices is quite interesting.
• Scott Hanselman gave a highly entertaining talk on the Cloud, JavaScript, and the evolution of web technologies. Think …

Something a little different this week. Picking a single software developer this week and showcasing a few of his/her projects.

The developer this week is Lu Wang, coolwanglu on GitHub.

Software:

• pdf2htmlEX - Fantastic PDF to HTML converter. I've tried a few similar utilities and this one produces the best results by far.
• neovim-e - Electron-based GUI for Neovim.
• vim.js - Port of VIM to JavaScript. Looks like Emscripten is being used for the transpilation.
• OK …

I have been thinking over some updates for Doctrine. In it's current state, Doctrine is a functional proof-of-concept of an application that renders AsciiDoc files while also applying some Unified Style Guide (USG) concepts. In the next iteration, my goal is to further integrate USG ideas to help set Doctrine apart from other AsciiDoc tools and also promote a standardized USG toolchain.

Here's an example of a USG idea that is currently implemented in Doctrine …

Couple of video game related picks for this week.

Games:

• Salt and Santuary - I recently finished this on PC but it is available on PS4 also. This game is basically 2D Dark Souls and does not shy away from that fact. It is well made and quite fun!

Podcasts:

• IGN Unfiltered Episode 8 - Ed Fries - Excellent interview with Xbox co-creator Ed Fries. I had not heard of him previously but he is very fascinating. He …

Yesterday marked the release of my first video game. Rollout is an Android port of the project I started during the YSU game jam in April. Releasing the game on Android was an exercise in bringing an idea to completion and learning Unity. Big thanks to the Youngstown Game Developers group and all the wonderful artists that provided assets free of charge (see the credits screen for more info).

Overall, I am pretty happy with …

The Unified Style Guide (aka USG) is a side project I've been slowly piecing together over the past few years. It started mainly as an effort to document my personal preferences for structuring files and folders. A special file reserved in the style guide is the directory information file which simply provides a plain text description of the directory contents. When necessary, I have been using these files to describe the naming convention of the …

While mostly straightforward and simple, Python still has its share of gotchas and gremlins, one such explored in this post. Familiarizing yourself with common gotchas can help avoid issues and aid debugging.

Articles:

• The 10 Most Common Mistakes That Python Developers Make - Earlier versions of my Qprompt library suffered from mistake #1 (facepalm!). In my defense, there may be a violation of the principle of least astonishment here. However, I also understand that changing the …