Code4Pizza – Page 2

Raspberry Pi: some useful links for doing more than playing around.

Miranda Sawyer at the Guardian: Everyone wants a slice of Raspberry Pi The £25 programmable computer invented by British scientists has turned into a global sensation. Will it encourage kids to teach themselves code, or just end up in the hands of nerds? Kit Buchan at the Guardian: 12 things to do with a Raspberry … Continue reading “Raspberry Pi: some useful links for doing more than playing around.”

Miranda Sawyer at the Guardian:

Everyone wants a slice of Raspberry Pi
The £25 programmable computer invented by British scientists has turned into a global sensation. Will it encourage kids to teach themselves code, or just end up in the hands of nerds?

Kit Buchan at the Guardian:

12 things to do with a Raspberry Pi
From keeping tabs on your baby to brewing your own beer, here’s a dozen DIY jobs for a Raspberry computer

Nixie Clock

Robot Slave

Weather Station

Rocket Launcher

Portable/In-Car PC

Jukebox

Radio

Arcade Game

Baby Monitor

Home Brew Beer

Bird Box

Near-space craft

Liam Fraser from LinuxUser.co.uk

Use Python to make your first game on Raspberry Pi in our easy to follow step by step tutorial
In this tutorial we’re going to be remaking the classic game, Pong. To do this, we’ll be using a Python module called Pygame. Pygame is great, because it allows the programmer to create 2D games without having to worry about things such as rendering the graphics in too much detail. The main portion of the code will be the code that makes up the game’s structure and logic.

Rob Zwetsloot from LinuxUser.co.uk

Build your very own media centre out of a Raspberry Pi to save on space and money using XBMC
One of the great things about the Raspberry Pi is that it not only has plenty of power to play back high definition video, but it also has the HDMI output to allow you to do so. This would naturally lead the media enthusiasts among you to think of the possibilities for using the RasPi as a media centre, but the list of advantages don’t stop there. It has network support to stream video, has a ridiculously small form factor so you can tuck it out the way, and of course the low price doesn’t hurt.

CoderDojoBelfast kicks off for 2012-2013

This is a morning briefing for all prospective mentors for CoderDojoBelfast. It is being held in the Gerald Moag Campus of Belfast Metropolitan College at 10 am on Saturday 22nd September. This briefing will include details on the 2012-2013 programme and the plans and expectations for each mentor and opportunities to get involved. http://digitalcircle.org/events/coderdojobelfast-mentor-briefing Related … Continue reading “CoderDojoBelfast kicks off for 2012-2013”

This is a morning briefing for all prospective mentors for CoderDojoBelfast. It is being held in the Gerald Moag Campus of Belfast Metropolitan College at 10 am on Saturday 22nd September.

This briefing will include details on the 2012-2013 programme and the plans and expectations for each mentor and opportunities to get involved.

http://digitalcircle.org/events/coderdojobelfast-mentor-briefing

Free Public Transport

This is an email I sent out tonight to twenty people who work in the public sector (or are interested parties) in Northern Ireland: Hi all, Sorry for the anonymous email. Thought this might be of interest considering the difficulties we have had getting route and timetable data out of Translink. Three years later and … Continue reading “Free Public Transport”

This is an email I sent out tonight to twenty people who work in the public sector (or are interested parties) in Northern Ireland:

Hi all,

Sorry for the anonymous email.

Thought this might be of interest considering the difficulties we have had getting route and timetable data out of Translink. Three years later and we’ve still not managed it.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/estonias-capital-pursues-free-public-transit/1883/

Considering the support Translink gets and the ever-increasing fares (coupled with increasingly empty buses), it seems reasonable to assume that full buses are more valuable to the economy than the poor system we have in place. It would be possible to monetise the service through advertising (we have tried to communicate options for this to Translink with, as usual, no response).

The benefits of free public transport would mean, inevitably, reduced congestion on the roads across the province. If anyone can provide me with information on the subvention or the numbers of actual passengers and/or tickets sold in conjunction with passenger and bus numbers out on the network, I’d be very appreciative.

It’s a real vision of the future to make transport across the province free of charge. A bit like making sure we have free WiFi at every tourist location (especially areas of the country like Donaghadee which is badly served by mobile carriers).

Please pass this on to interested colleagues or by confidentially suggesting other folk who may be interested.

At the very least, it would make a great gesture to make every bus in and around Derry free for the whole of 2013.

Matt

This is science. Wipe-out Style.

“Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe’out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe’out race.” Amazing stuff – this is the … Continue reading “This is science. Wipe-out Style.”

“Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe’out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe’out race.”

Amazing stuff – this is the sort of inspired stuff that hackerspaces were invented for.

Getting Kids Coding

I’m in a bit of limbo at the moment as I’m not sure where things are going to end up. As I mentioned earlier, I signed on as a STEMnet ambassador and I’ve got a few wee projects keeping me busy. In the interim, I’m kinda interested in this stuff: http://codingforkids.org/ http://ruby4kids.com/ruby4kids http://www.kidsruby.com It’s a … Continue reading “Getting Kids Coding”

http://codingforkids.org/
http://ruby4kids.com/ruby4kids
http://www.kidsruby.com

It’s a lot closer to what I originally envisioned code4pizza to be about. An after school/work club for people of all ages, from 16 up, coming to write code for the public good, in return for pizza.

I intend to intro these links to Izaak and Meggan this weekend.

Translink: just close the doors and turn off the lights

From the BBC: Fewer bus services and reducing the number of full-time drivers are among cost cutting measures being introduced by Translink, it has emerged. Although frequency is being reduced, Translink said no routes will be cancelled. So, in essence, rather than three buses coming all at once, there will just be two… … Continue reading “Translink: just close the doors and turn off the lights”

From the BBC:

Fewer bus services and reducing the number of full-time drivers are among cost cutting measures being introduced by Translink, it has emerged.

Although frequency is being reduced, Translink said no routes will be cancelled.

So, in essence, rather than three buses coming all at once, there will just be two…

I have absolutely had it with Translink. For the last two+ years, I have attempted to talk to them, to reason with them regarding opening up their data. I firmly believed that if they opened their data and made it easier to get access to their timetables and routes then more people would take buses and trains.

We have worked through DETI, DRD and other organisations. We have attempted to deal with their arcane IT infrastructure and their obfuscatory marketing department. We have spoken to their management, to their mid-level managers. We have even been vaguely complimentary about their awful web site.

But at every turn, Translink have blocked our access to the data. They gave an instance of the data to OpenDataNI, a project within the DFP (which has since fallen by the wayside with the cuts) and have flatly refused to give the local community access to use the (now outdated) timetable and route data for anything other than developer demos. The local developer and designer community invested hundreds of man hours of work into decoding the archaic file formats, into developing an API and a database, in writing code to make the data accessible and developing designs for user interfaces for the web and mobile. All of that effort has been wasted, all of that effort has been blocked.

Translink, an active go-co (government-owned corporation) have systematically blocked local industry from using the innovation they were giving freely to create opportunity and enterprise.

So, in light of todays news, I am sickened. I give up.

Computer Programming for Everybody

@mdhughes sent this to me: In the future, we envision that computer programming will be taught in elementary school, just like reading, writing and arithmetic. We really mean computer programming–not just computer use (which is already being taught). In this “expedition into the future,” we want to explore the notion that virtually everybody can obtain … Continue reading “Computer Programming for Everybody”

@mdhughes sent this to me:

In the future, we envision that computer programming will be taught in elementary school, just like reading, writing and arithmetic. We really mean computer programming–not just computer use (which is already being taught).

In this “expedition into the future,” we want to explore the notion that virtually everybody can obtain some level of computer programming skills in school, just as they can learn how to read and write.

They recognise that if everyone is programming then the number of poor programmers will increase. By the same token however, programming talents will be more able to be discovered (and will have increased resistance to cultural gender bias) and there will be a greater awareness of how hard it is to make really great software.

I’m still looking for the names of folk who would sacrifice a few hours to help some complete noobs, including some young kids, and get them on the road to programming. How about you?

[UPDATE: This has been retweeted a few times. I’ve created a Twitter list here. Mail me or DM me if you want to get added to it. ]

City of Tomorrow

I launched a new blog today: City of Tomorrow designed to help capture ideas for the development of cities in the near future. What is City of Tomorrow? City of Tomorrow is a Civil Imagineering (as opposed to Civil Engineering) project to have individuals imagine the city of tomorrow and then explain this from the … Continue reading “City of Tomorrow”

I launched a new blog today: City of Tomorrow designed to help capture ideas for the development of cities in the near future.

What is City of Tomorrow?

City of Tomorrow is a Civil Imagineering (as opposed to Civil Engineering) project to have individuals imagine the city of tomorrow and then explain this from the point of view of an observer in the future. We want to think of, and describe, features of our future cities and hopefully imagineer dates by which these things will be achieved.

What do we hope to achieve?

We’re at the Imagineering stage so we’re just looking for ideas. As we get closer to the dates mentioned, then we’re going to look for ways to implement these things.

When?

For the purposes of this web site, the date is now 2025 AD or later. We all live in magnificent cities which have witnessed more than a decade of revolution in architecture and design, in transportation planning, in social re-engineering and a complete re-write of the planning laws.

The writers here will provide a retrospective look at what happened in the past to get to where we are (in the metaphorical) today. We’ll provide important dates of when things happened, attempt to give links and credit to people who made the greatest changes and at some point in the future (in real time) review how much we got right, how much we got wrong.

Part of this comes from attending a CityCampLDN (CityCamp London) in February and meeting some of the “civil entrepreneurs” who attended.

CityCamp LDN brings together city leaders at all levels from government, business and community organisations to reimagine the way in which technology can help to reshape the future of London.

I know we have more folk who are interested in this – and this is definitely not a Belfast-centric piece of work – but we have to think about our cities first just due to the population. I hope that progressive town and borough councils will steal these ideas – I hope even more to get them engaged.

Later in 2011, I’d like to hold a City of Tomorrow event in Belfast and/or Derry-Londonderry to see if there are others interested but for now I’d appreciate any comments or tweets you have.

#ImprovingCodersFromColleges Fundamentals

Stephen Houston (@egeek) contributed this to todays meeting – some things that need to be considered or taught and things that have been lacking in his experience of recent graduates. #ImprovingCodersFromColleges Fundamentals – How does a computer execute your code? – What does the OS do? – Where does your code execute? JS, server side, … Continue reading “#ImprovingCodersFromColleges Fundamentals”

Stephen Houston (@egeek) contributed this to todays meeting – some things that need to be considered or taught and things that have been lacking in his experience of recent graduates.

#ImprovingCodersFromColleges Fundamentals - How does a computer execute your code? - What does the OS do? - Where does your code execute? JS, server side, etc - Network/Internet, TCP/IP, etc - How your further your own knowledge, blogs, etc - Writing your own projects, advantage of doing so for interviews - Self-starting, own initative - How are the large sites architected? - Scale, how much data do the big guys handle? - DBs, relational, schema-less, etc - Agile methods - Handling requirements - Professional behaviour and attitude - Different languages, what are they used for? Advantages/Limitations of each - Why you need to be a polyglot Software skills - Version control - Team working - Emphasise the need to understand projects during placement, how they fit, team dynamics - Language fundamentals - Coding standards - Unit and integration testing - Code patterns - don't just know, understand - Multi-threading/concurrency - Deadlock - Documenting your code - Thinking maintenance
Local Industry - Who is out there? - What do they use and what do they need? - What can they do for you? How will they further your career? - Your own ideas? - Your internet profile - A good interview

I reckon this is a good start. I have toyed with the idea of getting hiring managers (not HR) to contribute to the process by essentially sponsoring spaces which will turn into jobs. So if CompanyX needs 10 enterprise Java guys, then maybe we find training for 20. And if CompanyY needs 5 PHP or Ruby guys, we train 10. We have to remember to not only fill the job pipeline but also to provide training to supply our growing startups.

All in attendance were agreed that software engineering is vocational and not academic and that more could be achieved with training courses and input from industry than with a 3 year degree. And for the most part an honours project is a complete waste of time.

I’ve spoken to Momentum and BMC and I believe we can do this if we have enough support from local industry leaders. It can’t be just the usual suspects – we have to engage with the little companies as well as the big ones. I left with a few actions to go speak to people. In all a very positive meeting.

Very happy to also meet today with @bndouglas, @andyboal and @hamstarr to chat about this subject.

This is supplementary to the Code4Pizza FreeSchool. We need everything working in unison.

This is, to my mind, the best way out of the Age of Austerity.

So do we need more/better software developers?: 1 pm, Starbucks Cornmarket, Belfast

After the debate the other night on twitter, I proposed the idea of a FreeSchool for extra-curricular programming guidance. I’ve spoken to both Momentum and Belfast Metropolitan College about how they can support this and both seem keen to help industry find the software developers they need. Momentum and the colleges have some experience in … Continue reading “So do we need more/better software developers?: 1 pm, Starbucks Cornmarket, Belfast”

After the debate the other night on twitter, I proposed the idea of a FreeSchool for extra-curricular programming guidance.

I’ve spoken to both Momentum and Belfast Metropolitan College about how they can support this and both seem keen to help industry find the software developers they need. Momentum and the colleges have some experience in this with their Software Professionals Course that ran in previous years, funded by DEL. It was designed to take graduates from non-IT backgrounds and give them the vocational skills (over 6 months) to have a sustainable career in software. This is, in theory, similar to other courses – such as the Rapid Advancement Programme (RAP, originally by BIC Systems) and the Advanced Vocational Training in Information Technology course (AVTIT, originally by the University of Ulster). These courses were popular pre Bubble 1.0 but seem to have fallen by the wayside even though we seem to be heading for a larger (and slightly more sustainable) Bubble 2.0.

We’re meeting at 1 pm today, in Starbucks at Cornmarket, to generally see what level of interest there is in industry lobbying for a renewed commitment to turning non-IT graduates and non-graduates into professional software developers using an industry-focused vocational course.

If you can’t be there, comment!

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So, in essence, rather than three buses coming all at once, there will just be two…

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What is City of Tomorrow?

What do we hope to achieve?

When?

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