Python A to Z - Blaugust 2026 introduction

Python A-Z is a blog series about Python. Each day, I share insights, ideas and examples for different parts of Python development that match with the letter of the day. Blaugust is an annual blogging festival in August where the goal is to write a blog post every day of the month.

Hello internet friend, and happy August!

It’s the first of August around here and that means it’s time to kick off another Blaugust blogging festival that runs from August 1st to August 31st in various participating blogs across time and space of the blogosphere.

It’s customary to introduce yourself at the beginning so today’s post will be about who I am and what my plans for this year’s Blaugust are. If you’re new to my blog, welcome! I write weekly (and sometimes more) blog posts about technology, software development, community, tabletop and video games, writing, my life and everything else that comes to mind.

It’s me!

I’m Juhis, a community builder, writer, dreamer, adventurer and Pokémon enthusiast.

I built my first blog back around 2002 and over the decades, many blogs of mine have come and gone. This blog that you’re reading right now, I started in 2018 and have been blogging regularly ever since. In addition to my blog, I publish my notes in Garden of Learning and write a board game zine Roll the Zine.

As a writer, I like to dance with words and punctuation (and dance to the music as a human being as well but that’s a story for another day). You’ll find plenty of side notes in parentheses and liberal use of em dashes. The finished blog posts you’ll read in this blog have often taken many turns and spent their time in the merry go round in my mind before they reach the public internet.

When it comes to technical blog posts, I’m like those cooking recipe writers who tell stories instead of purely info dumping the recipe on the page. This is a blog after all, not a tech text book.

I love learning new things and sharing them with others. I believe there’s room for sharing of experiences from all levels of experience and I encourage other people to start blogs to share what they have learn and know.

What’s Blaugust?

Blaugust is a blogging festival and a community of bloggers.

I quote Krikket from the announcement post:

For anyone arriving here for the very first time Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. Above all the goal of Blaugust has always been to prove to folks that they can in fact sit down every day and create something fresh and then share it with the world. Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past. Our hope is to create a nurturing environment where Veteran bloggers can help those just getting started and the cross-pollination of ideas can create something truly spectacular. Your blog gives you a permanent foothold on the Internet that you own and have complete control of, and that is a really good feeling in the midst of shifting trends.

One of the goals — that I aim for — is to publish 31 posts in 31 days. The real goal however is to write and publish. Any number of posts is a win. In the Discord and other blogs, you’ll often hear “The only way to lose is by not participating” repeated.

For me, 31 posts is an intriguing challenge. Outside Blaugust, I’ve found a pretty nice rhythm of publishing one or two posts per week so personally, the challenge of daily blogging for a short amount of time is about wanting to see if I can sit down, come up with ideas and write even more.

If you want to join Blaugust, we have a sign up form and a Discord server. I highly recommend joining if you have a blog and if you don’t have one, this is a great way to kickstart one.

I wrote earlier this summer about why I blog and why I participate in challenges like Blaugust.

Python A to Z

In Blaugust 2024, I wrote about Python’s standard library.

There’s so much more to Python though so this year I’m approaching it from a different angle and pick one topic for each letter in the English alphabet to write about. Some of them will include code examples, often in a recipe style of “how to do X with Python” while others will be about topics that don’t include code.

>>> from string import ascii_lowercase
>>> print(f'There are {len(ascii_lowercase)} letters in A to Z')
"There are 26 letters in A to Z"

With 26 letters and 31 days, this creates a perfect structure for Blaugust. It leaves me 5 days for other things like this introduction post on the first and a wrap up post on the 31st as well as this month’s IndieWeb Carnival entry (Chris is hosting it on the theme of purpose) and a few days for other interesting topics that arise in August.

I have made some preparations and have topic level ideas for most letters but some are still undecided either because there are too many interesting options or because there are very few (unsurprisingly X, Y and Z are tough…).

Welcome along the journey for the next 31 days to learn new things about Python and celebrate the festival of blogging.