GWT

I need to learn more about the Google Web Toolkit.  So I'm studying that now.  Think I'll make a version of Light's Out or something.

MacBook Pro Report #2

What a sleek machine this is.

I don't know if my productivity has increased all that much, as I still seem to be in the holy-crap-you-just-connect-it-and-it-works phase with videos and garageband...

MacBook Pro Report Day One....

Today I got a brand new MacBook Pro that I will be using to teach Computer Science with.  For the last several years I have been exclusively using Linux, as it is my preferred OS.  However, I pushed for and got a new Mac lab approved for this coming year.  Although Linux was my home choice, the labs at school were all running Windows, and not running it very well. 

So after LMAOing for a while using Photo Booth's special effects, I got to work.  This puppy is gonna hafta be a strong programming machine, and what I learn on here will transfer to the new lab.

Earlier today I was visiting two of my students that have a summer internship with a local high tech firm.  One was writing some Python code on a Mac and commented about the default 8 space tabs.  Well, my first priority in setting up my MBPro, then, would be to get Vim configured correctly.

After struggling a little with those pesky End Of Line errors you get whenever going between Macs, Linux and Windows, I got Vim to do all the syntax highlighting and code completion that I have it do on Linux.  I posted my workaround to our programming forums, and called it a day.

Next step: install and configure Eclipse, Scratch, Alice, and so on....

Genetic Algorithms: Summer Fun!

Just thought I'd drop in for a second and post about what I've been up to.

Today I wrote Java code to attempt to reproduce a Genetic Algorithms study that Melanie Mitchell talks about in chapter nine of her excellent book, Complexity: A Guided Tour.

Right now I'm a little brain fried after using both Python and Java to find an easy way to convert a five digit string version of a base three number to a decimal version. Maybe you've done something similar this Summer? :-)

The project in short description is simply a way to use evolution to produce the best algorithm for a near-sighted bot that picks up cans in a large room. It's not the situation that matters as much as it is the method: Genetic Algorithms.

Image is from the Complexity page at Wikipedia.

This is worth supporting

I try (somewhat successfully) to avoid politics and other hot topics in the classroom.  There are times, though, when something comes along that deserves our support so much that, well, we spread the word:

This recently led me to this.

Chaos in the Classroom

 

 

The classroom can be chaotic at times, especially as Summer approaches, but this time it was all on-topic.  Well, actually it was off-topic, as we were supposed to be working on the Graphical Interfaces for our Spring Semester projects.  Nonetheless, I had been reading about chaos the night before and took the opportunity to show my class the basics of attractors in chaos theory.

I had thrown together a quick Python program that allowed the user to choose values to iterate through a chaotic function.  I pulled up a great image from wikipedia and showed how the numbers produced were just where they should be, according to the image.  One of my students said, "...now I want to make that graph!"  I said, "yeah, go for it." 

That night I did what I often do: code some of the same projects that my students are working on, just to keep sharp.  I used John Zelle's graphics module and produced the above image.  Not bad. 

Of course Josh--my best Java programmer--threw together a Swing version that has about ten times the resolution....

Meng the Finisher!

Sometimes it pays to just let things go for awhile. 

Last week I showed my students a program I was working on in Processing: a simple RGB color tool that allowed you to alter the Red, Green, and Blue values to choose that perfect shade of ... well, for me it's usually purple.

Anyway, I had the prototype user interface and showed it to my students.  It was all there--except the sliders didn't work.  So basically I had painted a pretty, but non-functional, picture.  I told my students that I would get to the sliders soon and post the whole thing--source code included, of course--on our Processing Playground page.  Unfortunately I've had to spend a lot of time lately catching up on four plus pages of emails (most of them completely irrelevant--despite being marked as "high importance!"), so I haven't had much time to write any code.  When I have written code, it usually amounts to simple demos or other small snippets of code to aid some of my students with their Spring 2010 projects.

So I was pretty happy today when Meng showed me his completed RGB slider application.  How nice to see an idea reach fruition via the self-determination and "just for fun" motivation of one of the few students in the US that will graduate high school knowing how to write some serious code.

Step by step.  Paso a paso....