Final Tags of Fun Lecture of 2013

This is the latest design for the “Tagomatic” box. Expect a smaller one for next year.

We had our last 5:15 pm lecture today. I can’t say that I’ll miss them, although this one was quite fun. I went through the exam paper for last year (you can’t get more fun than that) and gave away four owls, including a “Golden Christmas Owl” to someone who’s name I completely failed to pronounce properly. Oh well, perhaps the next version of the “Tagomatic” can have text to speech. For those that haven’t heard of it, the “Tagomatic” is a little Gageteer powered box that reads the RFID tags of folks at a lecture and then picks a random winner from the assembled multitude. I first used it for the welcome party, where we had it allocating the free drinks, and I’ve been using it in my Friday First Year lectures to make things a little more interesting.

People have seemed to engage very well with the project, bringing along their tags and scanning them for a chance to win small prizes. I even had someone get in touch asking where they can get a tag from…. Next year I’m planning to have multiple tag readers, spot prizes and Bluetooth networking back to my phone.

It almost makes me wish for another 5:15 lecture on Friday. Almost……

You Really Should Be Fiddling with Hardware

Find out what you can do with this, and how much it costs, at the session next week.

In an attempt to stop myself just buying components and start myself actually doing something with them, I’m doing a session at the next C4DI “You really should be..” event.

I’m going to be talking about the joys of making programs that talk to hardware, and just how easy and cheap it is to get started. Expect flashing lights.

The session starts at 6:00 pm on Thursday 12th of December. It’s at the C4DI in The Fruit Market. You can sign up here.

Black Marble 3D Printing Magic

 

These are most of the two groups,carefully stitched into almost successful panoramas, and with Una the Ultimaker in the foreground, as it should be.

I love doing talks like this. The folks above are all Sixth Formers from schools around Black Marble, who have invited them in for some computer based inspiration. They had talks about cloud computing, encryption, built some systems using Gadgeteer and then had a session from David and myself where we talked about university life and showed off some 3D printing.

I’d taken along Una the Ultimaker and, despite me nearly breaking her during the first session, she behaved in an exemplary fashion, printing out the weather forecast in 3D and then, during lunch, a couple of tiny owls.

I reckon that 3D printing is going to change the future and have a huge impact on the way we do things. I made the point that when I was the same age as the audience a printer was someone you gave things to have them printed for you. Nowadays everyone has ready access to high quality colour printing on cheap inkjet devices.

We are moving towards a world where cheap 3D printing is going to mean that physical objects can be customised and built on demand. There will be no reason why the things around you shouldn’t be just the way you like them, and completely unique to you. I told the audience that learning a bit of 3D design skills would be a good idea, along with some programming smarts so that you can write code that will build designs for you, and let you create objects from any kind of data that you like, including of course the weather forecast.

Thanks to all the folks at Black Marble for setting up the event and to David for doing the serious stuff.

I’ve put the slide deck here.

Pythons Duly Wrestled

We had our last “Wrestling with Python” session today. Simon, Robert, Warren, Mike and myself have been helping some teachers from local schools get to grips with the Python programming language. You can find the notes and exercises from the course here.

The six sessions have flown by (particularly the one that took place while I was in Seattle…) We gave out completion certificates and talked about continuing into the future. Everyone seemed keen to come back, which is nice.

The Python programming language is definitely growing on me. Of course my heart belongs to C#, but I do quite like writing Python programs. The C# language is a bit like your mum, always concerned with your welfare, fussing a bit but making sure that everything is just right. Python on the other hand is a bit like your crazy auntie who doesn’t make a scene if you forget to comb your hair and suggests going of and things like parachute jumps. She’s great fun to be around, but if you are actually looking to do something properly you’ll want to work with mum.

Actually I don’t have particularly strong opinions about programming languages. My concept of the “best” language is very simple. The best language is the one that they will pay you the most cash to write programs in. I will quite happily write JavaScript if the money is right. And I might even reprogram my keyboard to produce cash till sounds when I type so that I can remind myself why I’m doing it…..

With programming languages it is often a matter of “horses for courses” and I reckon that a proper programmer should have a good working knowledge of at least two or three, and be prepared to learn a new one if the occasion demands it.

Python is a great tool for learning, it is possible to “play” with Python code in a way that is rather fetching, and it was fun introducing the teachers to the business of programming. With a bit of luck we’ll do some more in the future. If you are a local teacher who wants to get involved in the next tranche of sessions, let me know and I’ll put you on the list.

Hyperspace Cheese Battle

Ask any of our First Year students what is occupying their minds just right now and they will probably give you the response “Hyperspace Cheese Battle”. This is the assessed coursework that they are grappling with for our C# programming course. Above you can see the lovingly drawn board. This is actually version 3 of the layout, after sharp eyed students spotted some tiny flaws in previous incarnations. Ho hum.

The game is a bit like the Space Cheese Battle game that we wrote last year, but this year we are playing in Hyperspace, which means that the directions of movement are given on each square, rather than everyone following the same route around the board. There are special “cheese squares” and you can shoot at other players and cause their engines to explode.

And our students have to make the game work in C#. Most folks seem to be doing OK. If you are having problems I would give you the same advice I give everyone who is working on coursework.

• Work on one part at a time, and don’t get deflected onto other bits until you’ve solved that part.
• Seek help as soon as you have problems. Send me emails, drop round to my office, use the lab demonstrators, go to Peer Assisted Student Support (PASS) sessions.
• And don’t worry.