[Chicago] Thanks Daisychain

[sheila miguez]

On 11/10/06, Brian Ray <bray at sent.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the great meeting all.
>
> For those of you not brave enough (ehm, too busy, i mean) I wrote it up:
>
> <http://tinyurl.com/tk35n>
>
> Regards,
>
> Brian Ray

daisychain and python brain dump

It would be cool to collaborate on an art/computing/community project
with daisychain. If there is interest I could start a brainstorming
session but I am not sure what media is best for it. probably a wiki
page since I would prefer not to impose upon people in the mailing
list who wouldn't be interested. I have a lot of nutjob brainstorming
for different projects I'd like to try with information visulation not
just on a desktop platform but in hardware that I've been saving up in
my brain (and del.icio.us account and other various places) so I don't
want to continue to braindump on all of you in the mailing list. in
any case, I've run the gamut from programming c and assembly on HC11
and ARM processors to doing a desktop thing using tcl and itcl (with
iwidgets as the gui box of tools) to doing some backend web service
thingees (for only a year now) so anyway, I have

a wide-eyes view of doing some stuff down in the hardware layer which
is controlled by a higher level language over in application-land and
the hardware layer could be accessed by whatever is later chosen --
e.g. for testing some of the stuff I worked on I simulated a SPI and
SSI interface with a control board on a test fixture driven by an HC11
and talked to the test fixture over RS232 using tcl -- but before
Brian has a cow, it doesn't have to be tcl, basically any Turing
complete language will do. ha ha, that is a joke. so anyway

low level hardware shit with cool blinky lights and sensors or some
other fun qualities (cf Hello Wall in March '05 issue of CACM in one
of the articles, can provide ref or bring mag to next meeting if I
find it) which is talked to by some simple protocol -- serial,
whatever, probably spiffier than the pathetic HC11 thingee, but not as
spiffy as ThreadX, besides, TinyOS or something else is free, and not
ThreadX -- and maybe we can get some wireless cheap piece of
hardware... and then on top of that, a high level language like python
-- easy for naive users to learn, e.g. kids in daisychains
neighborhood -- we catalyze bloom of geekdom in the minds of those who
would not otherwise have had a sense of wonder about programming and
computers and things with wires.

art can do that. Jake mentioned that he's teaching someone turtle
graphics (logo? can't remember) and I'm sure there is probably a
python implementation of logo, so something simple would be to have a
kid learn logo (or some other small language (forgot the TLA for
that)) and watch as trails of LEDs follow the turtle curser on the
computer screen. cool. this is just a simple idea of what is possible.

I've tried tutoring young refugee kids in computer literacy and found
the experience to be so frustrating, the vision of the class was way
too limited. I know I could have done better.




-- 
sheila