Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Daniel Roy Greenfeld

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Two Scoops of Django FAQ

Frontispiece for TSD 1.5

The launch of the Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5 book has gone pretty well. The response has been almost entirely positive and sales have been pretty brisk. We've gotten a ton of great, constructive editorial feedback, which we're sorting through as we race towards the BETA release. Here are answers to the commonly asked questions:

When can I buy the book via PayPal?

We now support PayPal. The next part is the historical text that no longer applies:

In order to handle PayPal we need to find a reputable e-publisher that supports it that gives us similar rates, customer service, and product control (updates at any time, uploads of PDF, no surprise charges, etc) as Gumroad. If you know of an e-publisher who is willing to provide that same level of service, please let me know.

For the record, we aren't leaving Gumroad. We just want to support developers and students who don't have credit cards.

note: While we could certainly write our own publishing platform, that would delay work on the book. ;-)

When can I get a Kindle (mobi) or ePub version?

Our plan is to support those formats in either the BETA or FINAL releases. In fact, I really love my Kindle. I can't wait to proof my own book on my favorite reading device.

When can I get a print version?

We hope to have a print version in about 30 days. We need to ensure that the cover and layout actually looks nice, and that involves ordering copies from the Lulu, CreateSpace, whatever and reviewing them and making corrections. Then ordering again to make sure the corrections look okay. That simply takes a lot of time.

We are hoping for a mid-February release. Also, keep in mind we aren't sure yet if we'll do a print version of anything but a FINAL release.

When are the BETA and FINAL releases?

As soon as possible.

We can't make promises, but at the latest, the FINAL should be done by the start of March so people have them in hand at PyCon US.

Is this book going to get updated?

Absolutely!

In fact, we've already sent out three minor updates for grammar and spelling issues, and some bug fixes. Even after the FINAL version comes out, we'll continue to update the book. One of the advantages of self-published books is we have control of content.

How much work went into the book?

Audrey and I put in hundreds of hours writing and testing the content. We worked 12-16 hour days for weeks. It was madness, but a glorious madness. We became like hermits and toiled on the book while ignoring distractions like sleep, food and consistent exercise.

Our amazing technical reviewers also worked very hard to provide us with critical commentary, advice and corrections.

Where should I send errata?

Please send errata to hello@roygreenfeld.com. The first person who reports an issue or makes a suggestion that we adopt will receive credit in the book. If not in the changelog, then in the dialogue of the book itself.

Are you going to PyCon US?

Absolutely! Wouldn't miss PyCon US for the world! Audrey and I met and fell in love at PyCon US 2010! We'll be there for at least the second day of tutorials, all the talks, and all the sprints. I've even got a blog post coming that should serve as a guide for beginning Python and Django developers attending the event.

Shameless Plug: We're both speaking and giving a tutorial. Sign up for the tutorial or attend our talks!

Wiring Up Django Packages (Tutorial)

You just finished the Django tutorial. What do you do now? You wire in Django Packages! Django is part of an ecosphere of over 20,000 packages, which can be leveraged to great effect. This tutorial will teach the evaluation, use, and extension of third party Python and Django applications in your projects. This tutorial will be a lecture with a lot of detailed and annotated code examples. Instructors are Audrey Roy Greenfeld, Daniel Roy Greenfeld, and Kenneth Love (of Getting Started with Django fame).

Advanced Django Forms Usage (Talk)

Django forms are really powerful but there are edge cases, especially with class based views), that can cause a bit of anguish. This talk will go over how to handle many common solutions not currently described in the core documentation. It will also cover useful third-party libraries. Speaker is Daniel Roy Greenfeld.

Using Python To Generate Art And Sound (Talk)

The trick to navigating the overwhelming Python audio/imaging landscape is understanding how the fundamentals work, using common data processing/visualization libraries, in-depth code samples, and simple math operations. I use the stdlib, NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, PIL, and PyCairo to create building blocks, which I then combine to demonstrate advanced sound and image generation techniques. Speaker is Audrey Roy Greenfeld.

Are you going to Django Circus?

We hope so. Django Circus, a.k.a. DjangoCon Europe, is one of the important industry events for us and we're trying to figure out logistics.

Our problem is that 2012 was a very hard year - the majority of our clients have not paid for the work that we did. Collecting is turning out to be extremely difficult, time consuming, and unpleasant. This is impacting everything we want to do in 2013.

How does the ALPHA work?

The ALPHA is a preview version that we are selling at an introductory price of $12. When you purchase the ALPHA, you get access to the BETA and FINAL versions when they are released.

In case you're wondering, we are planning to increase the price of the book when we release the BETA and FINAL versions.


Tags: twoscoops python django audrey pycon djangocon
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