Mailman 3 July 2001 - Edu-sig

Hofstadter, Escher via Python
by Arthur_Siegel＠rsmi.com 09 Jul '01

09 Jul '01

Doing a Wallpaper Group, Plane Tilings surf (good programming for artists material) and not surprisingly come across what looks like an interesting Python effort at: http://www.andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk/jara/bulli/index.html Will look at it more closely this evenings. ART

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re: Steps for making a Fractal with Python
by Arthur_Siegel＠rsmi.com 09 Jul '01

09 Jul '01

>Did this fractal demo actually work for you? On my >machine, I get a blank Tk box but no image -- no error >messages either. That's when either clicking on the >program in Explorer or when doing Ctrl-F5 with the >source open in a window. Any clues? See what you mean. Its old code, probably incompatible somehow with newer PIL or TK. But to see the image, you can add self.im.save("mandel.gif") to 'def creatImagef', and pull up the gif. I changed w and h params to 800 to make the gif large enough to be interesting. ART

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re: Steps for making a Fractal with Python
by Arthur_Siegel＠rsmi.com 09 Jul '01

09 Jul '01

Kirby writes - >Steps to get a fractal (Mandelbrot) with Python: <snip> You might also look at some demo code that ships with PyOpenGL: >From the source header (demos\dek\MandelImage.py) #!/usr/bin/env python ## This isn't really a PyOpenGL demo, but it's a nice ## example of how Numeric, Tkinter, and PIL can be used ## together to create all sorts of images. ## In this case, it's the Mandelbrot set. ## i used the Numerical python text example, but modified it to ## work with PIL PyOpenGL, BTW, is getting better and better. Version2.0 which is out in beta, will be a pretty complete SWIG of the entire API and the major extensioins. And great care seems to be being paid to distribution\install issues. On Windows, at least, the no brainer install works great. Recommended fun for all ages. ART

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RE: [Edu-sig] Lesson plan collection
by Schmidt, Allen J. 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

So do you teach the Learning Tree course? Guido was promoting it a while back. I would love to take it but have not convinced anyone to pay for it yet. Allen -----Original Message----- From: Mats Wichmann [mailto:mats@laplaza.org] Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 5:50 AM To: edu-sig(a)python.org Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Lesson plan collection >let me know when you find course material on XML and SQL... >i need those purely for selfish reasons as well! :-) I've given some thought to starting to work up something in this area. I've thought about the DB bits, but not written anything; XML is just a dream, so I'm also looking for ideas. What I've got in the current course "belongs" to Learning Tree (if anyone cares, there's an outline at learningtree.com under course 430 which I won't repost here), but I don't mind sharing if I do end up producing anything outside of that framework. No promises that I'll ever actually write anything, tho!!!!! Mats _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig(a)python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig

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Re: [Edu-sig] Lesson plan collection
by Mats Wichmann 04 Jul '01

04 Jul '01

>let me know when you find course material on XML and SQL... >i need those purely for selfish reasons as well! :-) I've given some thought to starting to work up something in this area. I've thought about the DB bits, but not written anything; XML is just a dream, so I'm also looking for ideas. What I've got in the current course "belongs" to Learning Tree (if anyone cares, there's an outline at learningtree.com under course 430 which I won't repost here), but I don't mind sharing if I do end up producing anything outside of that framework. No promises that I'll ever actually write anything, tho!!!!! Mats

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OT - Disney Learning - again
by Arthur Siegel 03 Jul '01

03 Jul '01

If I haven't yet clinched my reputation as a Usenet crank, this should do it. Again, minding my own business - watching the Sunday afternoon golf match. A new ad/announcement for Disney Learning Partnership with a URL ref - www.disneylearning.com To make a long story short, I register to get behind the scenes and there is essentially nothing there. Upcoming "events" listed are only in November and December - I expect 2000, but no way to tell. December 10 - Dr. Alan Kay. Next December, last December? I had already downloaded a Kay presentation. If the guy didn't have Visionary on his business card, you'd have to cart him off. Insanely pretentious presentation about the history of everything - the Gutenberg press, etc all ending in a pay-off of Goofy doing something on a squeak screen. It costs serious money for these TV ads. Little more surfing the site. It was December 10, *1999* - and is an *upcoming* event on the schedule. Probably in fact the one I looked at some time ago. *Today* they spent serious money promoting this hopelessly neglected site. What is the agenda here??????? ART

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Re:Re: [Edu-sig] Post request and Dead-link note - FOLLOW-UP
by Dean Goodmanson 03 Jul '01

03 Jul '01

Stephen (and Edu-sig regulars), Thank you for your reply. I revisited your Oreilly post and found I didn't read enough before posting. I've since drifted through the archives and found that the robotics and interaction portion of my message have been well discussed. The use of physical world interaction and linguistics discussion of a computer language are also well covered. I've found the discussions of teaching math and programming rather mind-blowing. Please forgive my less than detailed, redundant topiced, testimonial post. It appears my application has preceded my analysis. As far as my off-the mark subject line, the original subject was in an email to the list admin. -Dean _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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re: OT - Disney Learning - again
by Arthur Siegel 03 Jul '01

03 Jul '01

>From what I understand, Kay was recruited 5 years ago specifically to >promote Squeak and computer education for kids. This was probably part >of Disney's big Internet push back when it seemed that everything and >everyone was going online. Edu-sig has demonstrated that how one defines "computer education for kids" comes in many flavors. Happens my flavor and what I sense will inevitably come out of Disney are not very reconcilable. Hoping for a level playing field would not be unrealistic. But a distortion of the field on the scale that Disney is able to accomplish - $billions if they are so inclined - is not something I can calmly contemplate. >According to a New York Times article on 6/13/2001, Alan Kay is leaving >Disney and taking the Squeak group with him as "Disney has scaled back a >number of its ambitious Internet plans." Kay and his team reportedly >volunteered for the recent company-wide layoff. That's good news. If Alan Kay wants to pursue his ideas on the merits, great. The Disney thing I feared was not playing fair. And I'm sure he had to be embarrassed enough on his own account at some level. >I'm not sure what relationship Kay had with disneylearning.com. It >seems the advisory council is made up entirely of people outside of >Disney and primarily from various universities. They seemed to have >made a number of grants in 1999 but nothing since then. Small grants - puny relative to the amount they have spent announcing that they have made them. The fact is that a few bucks one can get the attention of the entire K-12 establishment. Any reasonable sense of decorum and corporate responsibility has been thrown to the wind by Disney in handling this. Because they can reasonably be seen to be self-interested - all the more reason to handle it with dignity. But a few $billion in the bank, does breed arrogance and does make friends. There is no reason I should feel like I am pissing in the wind by expressing outrage. Nonetheless, I do. ART

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ANNOUNCE: SciGraphica-0.7.0
by Adrian Feiguin 02 Jul '01

02 Jul '01

I'm pleased to announce the new release of Scigraphica with bugfixes and enhancements. Among other things, embedding images is now possible, as well as setting background images for the plots. Clipboard for plots: copy a plot, and paste it on a different plot window. Improved PostScript and WYSIWYG. It includes pysga.py, a Python module for interacting with plots and worksheets from terminal. New scheme for storing numerical data in worksheets. Examples are included. Scigraphica is a powerful tool for scientific graphics and data analysis. It pretends to be a clone of the popular commercial (and expensive) application "Microcal Origin". It fully supplies plotting features for 2D, 3D and polar charts. The aim is to obtain a fully-featured, cross-plattform, user-friendly, self-growing scientific application. It is free and open-source, released under the GPL license. Main features: -You can plot functions and manipulate data in worksheets. -You can open several worksheets and plots and work with them at the same time. -The plots are fully configurable using a control panel dialog. -The look and feel is completely WYSIWYG. -Publication quality PostScript output. -You can interact with the plots double-clicking, dragging and moving objects with the mouse. -Export/Import features in XML format. -You can insert Python expressions in the worksheets. -Terminal with command-line Python interface for interacting with plots and worksheets URL: http://scigraphica.sourceforge.net Enjoy! The SciGraphica Team.- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TODO for sg-0.8.0: sg-0.8.0 will have a completely different structure, more modular, built ontop of reusable libraries. SGplot, SGworksheet, SGlayer, and SGdataset will be GtkWidgets and part of a shareable library, that could be used by other applications, and from Python.

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OT - Disney Learning - again
by Brent Burley 02 Jul '01

02 Jul '01

ART wrote: > ... > A new ad/announcement for Disney Learning > Partnership with a URL ref - www.disneylearning.com > > December 10 - Dr. Alan Kay. It was December 10, *1999* - > and is an *upcoming* event on the schedule. Probably > in fact the one I looked at some time ago. > > *Today* they spent serious money promoting this > hopelessly neglected site. What is the agenda here??????? First let me say that I don't speak for Disney and I have no direct information about disneylearning.com. >From what I understand, Kay was recruited 5 years ago specifically to promote Squeak and computer education for kids. This was probably part of Disney's big Internet push back when it seemed that everything and everyone was going online. According to a New York Times article on 6/13/2001, Alan Kay is leaving Disney and taking the Squeak group with him as "Disney has scaled back a number of its ambitious Internet plans." Kay and his team reportedly volunteered for the recent company-wide layoff. I'm not sure what relationship Kay had with disneylearning.com. It seems the advisory council is made up entirely of people outside of Disney and primarily from various universities. They seemed to have made a number of grants in 1999 but nothing since then. Curiously, squeak.org hasn't had much attention since 1999 either. Witness the link "Entering 2000" at http://squeak.org/about! Brent

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