Darryl Gove's blog
Search terms
A while back, AOL released a bundle of search data, this turned out to be rather controversial. The data has been put up as a searchable archive. The top keywords are interesting - coming in at number 9 is "http", number 23 is "m"! Most of the terms seem to be just looking for a company website (e.g. the top search term is "google").
Posted at 12:10AM Mar 30, 2008 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Balancing California's budget
A mail about Next 10 appeared on one of the aliases that I lurk on. The organisation aims to raise awareness of the state budget, and part of this is an on-line 'game' to balance the state's budget. The game presents various scenarios together with their projected costs. It's interesting to see some of the options that are available, and to learn a bit more about the history of the current budget and the discussion around the future options.
Posted at 08:15AM Mar 26, 2008 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Old computers
My father surprised me by mailing a couple of links to 'old home computer' sites. The Obsolete Technology site, which fails to mention the Dragon 32, which I had for many years. And World of Spectrum - although I never had one. I think it means that he's clearing the garage. So anyone in the UK want a ZX-81, Dragon 32, or, I think, a Commodore Pet? 
I guess he missed old computers, vintage computers, our local computer history museum (which I think also lacks a Dragon), and the computer exhibit at Bletchley Park (I last visited there about 10 years, ago so can't say whether they also neglect the Dragon! .
Posted at 02:13PM Mar 23, 2008 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Multiplication
Learning the times tables is a pain, we found this software, Timez Attack which combines 3D video game with multiplication practice. Certainly the game appeals to the kids, although I'm not certain that they 'learn' the multiplications.
Posted at 10:08AM Mar 22, 2008 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Programming for kids
A while ago I started looking for ways to get my oldest coding. My first machine was a zx-81, with 1k of memory, and most of this was used by the screen, there was a big incentive to learn assembler. I'm not out to force him into assembler programming, but...
I evaluated a number of possibilities, one was the Kid's Programming Language (or Phrogram) which can do some impressive things in few lines of code. A sample 3D space 'game' takes about 30 lines most of which look like:
If IsKeyDown( Up ) Then Ship.TiltUP( moveAmount ) End If
I also looked at squeak, but it didn't grab me as being easy to use.
An interesting alternative to real coding is c-jump, which is a programming board game. I'm not quite convinced by the syntax, or the jumping around the board.
The first thing I tried with him was Java. Which was pretty successful, but I couldn't just leave him to get on with it. There's quite a bit of syntax to have to handle. So while it was a success, it relied on me finding the time to work with him.
We then tried scratch. This has been quite successful for the following reasons:
- It's all drag-and-drop, and the programming constructs are coloured/shaped so it's easy to put them together correctly.
- Its all graphical, and the interface is very intuitive. You can see the object that you're programming.
- It has an integrated graphics editor so he can draw his own sprites. Changing the look of a sprite is a step towards looking at the programming of the sprite and from there modifying the programming.
- The biggest thing has been that he can work on this autonomously, I just have to see the end results.
The downside of scratch is that it seems a bit limited in what it can do. He really wants to do 3D games - so perhaps Phrogram is the next stop.
Any other recommendations for kids programming?
Posted at 12:11PM Mar 21, 2008 by Darryl Gove in Personal | Comments[2]
Haunted clock
This is weird tale - just in time for Halloween. We have (or had) a kitchen timer, it has controls to set the duration of the time-out in hours and minutes, and a start-stop button. Once the time-out's set it counts down and eventually goes beep. That's all it does.
Or did, until about two weeks ago, when it stopped being a timer and started being a clock. For no readily apparent reason the buttons stopped working, and it started showing the time. Initially I thought 7:07 was an error code, but I looked back at 7:30 and realised that it was showing the time, not any time, but the correct time. And that's what convinces me it must be haunted :) I can understand that it might share sufficient circuitry with a clock for it to become one with some kind of random event, but to become a clock that is showing the correct time is just too unlikely.
Posted at 09:59PM Oct 31, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal | Comments[1]
Magnitude 5.6 quake
Just after 8pm we had a magnitude 5.6 quake near Alum Rock, about 10 miles east of here. Most of the quakes I've previously felt here have been more like the base of the building being hit with a large metal hammer; this one was much different. There's an earthquake simulator at The Tech where you stand on a small square platform which randomly judders from side to side. This quake was much more like that.
The USGS provides a couple of online resources for earthquake information. A map showing the location of recent earthquakes. A shake map, which shows how the amount of shaking detected around the epicentre. A shake map which is reported by people. There's also raw seismograph data; the link is for Stanford telescope data, other stations can be selected.
Posted at 09:06PM Oct 30, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
16 billion pixels of last supper
Saw this article on the BBC about a 16 billion pixel digitised version of The Last Supper being available on line.
Posted at 10:00AM Oct 28, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Crime maps
Couple of interesting sites that put crime data onto the map. One for Oakland and that does various cities including San Jose.
Posted at 10:07AM Sep 28, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
That which
One of my colleagues pointed me to this resource on grammar in reference to the appropriate use of which and that. An error that I commonly make.
Posted at 01:27PM Jul 18, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
OpenLearning at the Open University
The Open University in the UK has placed a considerable amount of course materials up on the web.
Posted at 12:42AM May 25, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Global warming disrupts chess match
Interesting article on Britian/Russian chess match where the pieces were made of ice on the BBC.
Posted at 08:57AM Jan 11, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Junior First Lego League
Last Sunday was the Expo for the Junior First Lego League. This is an annual event where teams of up to six children (aged between 6 and 9) work together to build a model out of lego.
We had a team of 5 kids who had put a lot of effort in to meet this year's challenge. The challenge was to design a model that demonstrated three levels of detail, the model had to fit in a 15"x15" area, and have at least one moving part. Our team chose to do a spider. We had a view of the spider on its web which had the least detail. A view of the spider's body, which actually had the most identifiable parts of the spider. Finally at the closest view we had a spider's head.
For me, one of the fun parts of the exercise was getting a bundle of kid-friendly reference books on spiders and learning about them. Spiders are one of the many things that we see on a daily basis, but it's not often I get the opportunity to really learn about them. The advantage of using kid-friendly books on this, is that the level of detail is just right for picking up the interesting bits, without the huge amounts of detail that might be found in text books on the subject.
Sunday's event was organised by playingatlearning which is a local group that specialise in supporting this kind of event. It was an enjoyable experience to be able to see all the other teams from the area who had all done stellar work in meeting the contest rules.
The organisers of the event had also got one of the teams competing in the First Lego League to come along and demonstrate their robot. Needless to say a robot eclipsed all the JFLL models, and quite a crowd gathered around the tuning that the FLL team was doing in preparation for their competition in San Jose on the 20th.
The whole experience was very rewarding. It took a couple of months of meeting up to decide on the model and to build it. But it was thrilling when, at the expo, the team was given the challenge of designing a fourth level of detail, and they really worked together as a team to achieve it.
Posted at 11:12PM Jan 08, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Celestia
Also looked at Celestia (Josh also suggested this), which is an open source space simulator. It allows you to see very detailed images of the objects in the solar system, and beyond. There are plenty of add-ons, which include fictional items such as the space stations from 2001.
Posted at 10:00AM Jan 01, 2007 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
Stellarium
I've spend a few minutes playing with Stellarium. It's open source planetarium software. It allows you to set up your current position and get a labelled view of what you will see in the night sky from that location. What is particularly nice about the package is that it includes detailed pictures of many of the objects, so not only can you identify them, you can also see what they should look like.
Posted at 10:00AM Dec 31, 2006 by Darryl Gove in Personal | Comments[2]
Edward Scissorhands
Got out to see the Edward Scissorhands ballet on Tuesday evening at the Orpheum theatre. Parking at the Holiday Inn was very convenient.
The show was excellent, I'd seen it billed as a musical; but it isn't. There's no singing, or songs in the show, just a mix of new music and music from the film. The choreography was excellent, there were some great set pieces, and the scenery (and costumes) were very impressive. The UK site has a pretty complete gallery of pictures.
Posted at 10:00AM Nov 23, 2006 by Darryl Gove in Personal | Comments[1]
Going underground (or water)
A friend pointed out to the home page of Subterranea Britannica (subbrit - not to be confused with an equally odd site britsub). SubBrit is a somewhat bizarre site documenting all the underground shelters, and other subterranean facilities spread over the UK. It seems surprising how many tunnels and underground bunkers there are around.
On the topic of concrete relics. I was given a DVD of the BBC series Coast. It's a very good programme,for example, one part that caught my attention was the segment on sound mirrors. These were some huge concrete reflectors made during World War 1 to allow a listener sat at the focal point to detect the sound of enemy planes flying over the channel - before the plane was visible. The programme demonstrates them working. However, RADAR was invented about the same time, and the ears fell into disuse.
Posted at 10:00AM Oct 22, 2006 by Darryl Gove in Personal |
