I’ve been checking into the Raspithon (this link is for a live feed) every few hours (time for sleep aside), and it’s surprisingly engrossing watching the video stream and chat channel as Ryan, Luke, Edward and Ben develop the game they’ve set themselves 48 hours to write. I heartily recommend it. They’re nearly a day into the project now, and last time I looked all kinds of interesting physics to do with bullets and explosions was going on. I don’t remember having that much trigonometry when I was 12. You can read more about the project here.
The guys have been suffering a DDoS attack which has taken their website down. I remain absolutely bemused that there are people out there who think doing such a thing to kids who are raising money for a charity is smart or funny. I could say a lot more about this, but I suspect that those of you who are reading will say it for me in the comments. Sam Nazarko, who is developing Raspbmc, a media player for Raspberry Pi, has also been a victim of a particularly nasty DDoS attack; the site you’re reading this on has been as well, but we are lucky enough to have a superb host in Mythic Beasts, who move very swiftly to address these problems when they occur and are surprisingly nice about stuff like this when it happens.
Fortunately, the Raspithon live feed is hosted elsewhere, so all they’ve lost is the wrapper that the feed lives in; the Raspithon itself is still going on, and the game (which I did advise them not call Rasperroids, but was overruled on) is developing nicely. Hanging out in the feed gives you a fascinating look into what it’s like to learn a new coding language (if you’re wanting to learn yourself, or if you’ve forgotten what it’s like). And if you’re there at the right time, you may find Eben, me, Alex or one of the other Raspberry Pi developers in the channel too; and we like it when people come along and engage us in conversation, be it about pizza or Python. You can find the feed at http://livestream.com/raspithon - Ryan et al hope the main site at www.raspithon.org.uk will be back later.
