[Edu-sig] news & views

[kirby urner]

Regarding Logo, there's an esoteric genre of Logo
where the turtle swims in a 3D tank, has roll,
pitch and yaw type parameters, more like a small
airplane.  I'm pretty sure we had open source free
versions.  Lemme go check:

... found some links.  Anyone recommend a
3D Logo page?

My approach was to write turtle like commands
that would parse into static instructions in ray
tracing language, so you didn't see any output
by the turtle in real time.  Very low budget (zero).
The L-systems paper I wrote captures some of
the flavor:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/lsystems.html
(lotsa broken links)
http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/numeracy3.html
(scroll down for fractal tree)

These days I'm interested in 3D/4D Logo because
of the Mite, Syte and Kite discussion.**  These are
space-filling shapes, with the Mite being a center-
piece of some of my Saturday Academy classes
in so-called Martian Math (wherein Python gets
used):

http://wikieducator.org/Martian_Math
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/sets/72157622961425831/

Also, I'm anchoring for Holden Web while Steve
sojourns at Pycon / Singapore, which is starting
today.

http://pycon.sit.rp.sg/

Holden Web is part of an OST group developing
curriculum for intermediate Python students
(beginner already on-line).  The interface is Ellipse,
a student version of Eclipse.  Steve is the
curriculum writer, packs a lot in.

Here's a screen shot from earlier today:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/4686547486/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Python1 module comes with a 2.x version of
Python in a Nutshell (Martelli).  I need to go find
a 3.x version, suggest OST use that instead,
given course content.

This is state of the art, meaning Python 3.1, with
all the related challenges of finding drivers and
adapters.  I'm glad for that PEP moratorium, giving
library maintainers more of a chance to keep up.

On another front, I've been helping my friend in
Indonesia with his wxPython + Visual connection.
The wx GUI is to set parameters only, with
VPython hosting its own window (embedding
the latter in the former is a trick I've not seen
done yet -- they say use PyOpenGL).  Some
kind of physics problem (he's in a technical
college).

On yet another front (or more on the polyhedra
front), MIT's ConceptNet is ready for business with
Python bindings.  You'll find a huge database of
words associated with other words -- not the
same as a thesaurus, more like "free association"
semantic webs of olden days.  They kind of goof
on "tetrahedron" though, suggesting it's a polygon
and/or "sides" must all be the same (both
assertions false):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/4680326861/in/photostream/
http://csc.media.mit.edu/docs/conceptnet/overview.html

Saw some action on Diversity, with mention of
edu-sig.  Maybe someone wants to report (some
overlap in foci & concerns).

Kirby

**  (explaining my cryptic nomenclature more):

Mite (minimum space-filler) = AAB (plane nets on-line)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/4676742214/
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s09/figs/f5400b.html

Sytes = Mite + Mite
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/4679491702/in/photostream/

Kites = Syte + Syte
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/4678858801/in/photostream/

OST = O'Reilly School of Technology