Here we have some updates on the summer projects which are going on.

Sagie wrote a tutorial on pygame.sprite.Dirty and pygame.sprite.LayeredDirty, as well as a blog update on his progress.
    dotfile.n0nick.net/quick-dirty-using-pygames-dirtysprite-layered
    dotfile.n0nick.net/gsoc-journal-weeks-1-2

Szymon wrote a blog post on the networking project:
    pygame-networking.blogspot.com/2012/06/gsoc-journal-introduction.html

Sam wrote a post on the "SCG" beta release of the GUI project:
    blog.sambull.org/sgc-0-1-4-beta-release

Sam has also written to the mailing list asking for feedback on his work.
    https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/pygame-mirror-on-google-groups/AQiDPF_rINo

Sagie has also been getting into some conversations on the mailing list, and in the irc channel about the sprites project.
    https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/pygame-mirror-on-google-groups/KhaV8V6o4Js

Sam, Szymon, and Rene started on a little game for pyweek to be used as an experimental sandbox for testing out gsoc project ideas.
    https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygamegsoc12

Thanks to the students, and mentors donating their time, along with the PSF, and Google, the following pygame related projects are ongoing over the summer.

"Pygame: GUI toolkit" by Sam Bull (sambull), mentored by Mike Fletcher(mcfletch) and with backup mentor Robert Deaton (masquerade). (Proposal | Blog)

"Pygame: Improved Sprite and Scene system" by Sagie Maoz (n0nick), co-mentored by Robert Deaton (masquerade) and Katie Cunningham (kcunning). (Proposal | Blog)

"Easy networking in PyGame" by Szymon Wróblewski (bluex), mentored by Rene Dudfield (illume) and with backup mentor Mike Fletcher (mcfletch). (Proposal | Blog)

Details at the www.pyweek.org/14/ website.

Also congrats to tartley who has a newborn, so can't take part in pyweek this time.

www.ludumdare.com/compo/ <~-,. it's all there. ♥♥♥♥♥

Pygame is offering 1 BILLION free licenses to LD48ers. Check out the pygame.org download page.

The Google Summer Of Code is where students are mentored to do an open source project over the summer. The other nice part of it is they give the students $5000 to do the projects.

* April 6th deadline to get your proposals in. *

We are collecting details about ideas for projects, notes on how to apply, and a list of mentors, plus anything else about the GSOC on the gsoc2012ideas wiki page.

So drop by the irc channel, or the mailing list if you want help with your proposal, or just want to find out more about it. There's plenty of information in the gsoc2012ideas wiki page too.

Many thanks to Arc Riley, and the Python Software Foundation for taking the pygame project in under their umbrella. Also, big thanks to Mike Fletcher, Katie Cunningham, Rene Dudfield, and Robert Deaton for volunteering to be mentors.

A new pygame book has been released by Al Sweigart, author of the book Invent your own computer games with Python.

[“Making Games with Python & Pygame” covers the Pygame library with the source code for 11 games. “Making Games” was written as a sequel for the same age range as “Invent with Python” Once you have an understanding of the basics of Python programming, you can now expand your abilities using the Pygame library to make games with graphics, animation, and sound.]