Greetings from Silicon Forest to this mostly-quiet list. Perhaps listservs
in general have been overtaken in many cases, by technology with a higher
bling factor.
Or maybe it's that listservs (mail lists) are not an obvious vehicle for
blatant advertising whereas Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and such, all
have obvious ways for marketers to break in.
Glad to see about the new release of the physics engine.[1]
Portland has been under a blanket of snow, so the Winter term is off to a
slow start. That's with regard to an after school program I help staff,
more another time (CwK [2]).
The public school system in Portland is a big fan of MIT Scratch, did I
mention?
Where to next after that, if MIT Scratch is how you started? There's more
than one way forward naturally. However if you've started in the cloud and
are used to accessing the same work from multiple devices, then you'll
probably want to keep working that way, at least sometimes.
Have most here heard of Codesters already?
https://www.codesters.com/
Codesters provides a platform very like MIT Scratch, by deliberate design,
providing continuity of concepts and skills (sprites and backdrops, drag
and drop tools, sorted by topic) into a Pythonic environment.
https://youtu.be/Q1hj5XvrfTw
I used the snow days to study up on Finnish history a little, with a spike
in activity on Facebook where I see some of you.
Looking forward to a visit from former PSF director and former Pycon tycoon
(used for alliteration) Steve Holden in a week or so. Many readers here
know him.
He's a UKer now living back in the homeland, who is likewise very at home
in the US, had a cool office and apartment (separate addresses) just blocks
from here in recent years.
Speaking of Pycon, I signed on as a possible co-speaking at two Pycon
talks.
Charles Crosse [3] has devised an ingenius business plan he wants to open
source, plus (and this is what's impressive) a working prototype he's
actually field tested with his own family.
Basically, it's a way for parents to set it up for unsupervised learning
where junior gets more "lives" (time on the Internet) in exchange for
choosing from "pre-approved activities". Translation: "if you do your math
homework, you'll get more time on the X-Box"
Whether the proposals fly or not (as talks), I'm optimistic about the
model. The prototype uses a Raspberry Pi as a stand-in router. That's the
shut-off valve. If you don't do your math homework, the router stops
feeding you lives and you X-box loses its net connection (there's a GUI and
everything).
In addition to Codesters, our program uses Cloud9.
I continue to showcase thekirbster.pythonanywhere.com as a somewhat
functional CRUD application (the skeleton is there) using Flask + Jinja2.
Very minimalist, just showing what a bare bones web application might
consist of.
You've got the idea of "front and back door APIs" i.e. a front door for
human eyeballs, a back door for other computers using an API.
We could call it a "service entrance" like when trucks back up to the
warehouse to load/unload goods (but in this case using JSON).
Kirby
[1] I've been yammering about physics education Youtubes on that list for
physics teachers I frequent, closed archive (for now). Behind those
Youtubes (animations) may be a physics engine.
[2] https://www.codingwithkids.com/#!/afterschool?show=locations®ion=2
[3]
http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2016/09/internet-aware-lcds.html
(another project)
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2016/10/go-by-train.html (picture of Charles,
bottom)
