I think one reason there aren’t better resources for 8-12 grade CS education is a reluctance to admit that it’s a core subject— but the other issue is so many CS people are largely self taught: creating a kind of RTFM gate keeping only matched by higher mathematics.
@futurebird
We love it, and we'd love it even more if it didn't feel to us like a very clever riff on the Sorcerer's Apprentice! (Which we also love, to be fair.)
Uranus is my favourite, in part because it's underplayed and good fun and a little gremliny, but we get pretty powerful visualisations with Jupiter.
1: “… a big sexy fireman.”
2: “oh no girl”
2: “… even has one of them spotty dogs. Takes it jogging.”
3: “Dalmation! Dalmation!”
1: “Yeah!”
2: “You shure he’s a real fireman?”
1: “He’s got the dalmation!”
3:”he got 101 bitches!”
1: 😡
2: 🤭
@futurebird@lisamelton meh, mozzarella sticks aren’t even proper food for a cat anyway; not mean. It would be annoying when a past cat would be like that with smoked salmon though. Because it’s actually quite expensive but I gave her some anyway and then she’d do that.
Bookbags! They are too deep. They eat pencils, they eat pens. And I am not going to stand for it anymore.
Why is it so hard to have shallow pockets near the top for small items? What do they think people put in bags? Huge long boards? Footballs? Long footballs?
I've had enough. I'm going to sew in extra little shallow pockets or maybe fill the bottom with foam IDK. This is the crisis of our times.
I have a bit of a problem with buying too many blank journals & notebooks. And as my taste has grown more fancy (I'm a paper snob for the ages) I've realized that I will never write in any of the notebooks on several shelves at home. But they are very nice blank books.
I could have maybe sold them as a lot on ebay for like $50 ... but that's annoying.
I took them to work and put up a little sign on the book cart in the hall "Free blank notebooks. Take one!"
I was a little worried they'd just sit there and someone would be annoyed ... but a bunch of students and teachers like notebooks. Go figure.
And now I'm not stressed about them not being used anymore.
And I can buy some more notebooks that I like better and will use.
(At least I don't have that disease where some people get scared to use a notebook that's "too nice." What's more nice is looking at your old notes in a nice journal... even if some pages are messy or crossed out.)
@futurebird Same here! I have books that I use for journaling, and I stocked up as they were discontinued. I now have a journal for every year for the next three decades :)
A big part of programming is boring details, language idiosyncrasies. For example, I wanted a java program to tell me the coordinates of the last mouse click. In Swing presents more options than I want— it’s too much control. So I have StdDraw to make the graphics & UI options less complicated: even then it wouldn’t work until I added pauses— This took like an hour.
How do I teach this miserable skill whatever it is?
You know it can be done, you keep isolating & eliminating until it works.
@futurebird Ah, this is so much of my teaching life!
I think the answer to your question is “lots of practice.” Specifically, practice in the context of problems that have enough flexibility, open-endedness, and self-direction to be investigatory tasks (as opposed to contrived problems that •will• have a correct answer). Ain’t no substitute.
@futurebird If that’s the case, what can an instructor do?
(1) Create contexts where this learning can happen.
(2) Be available to help get students unstuck once they’re in a good pickle, modeling the necessary problem-solving in the process.
There’s lots of specific meta-learning that can support this, both structured and informal, but that’s the heart of it there. I could go on for approximately another 6000 posts, but will stop there. Happy to answer Qs if you want.
Imagine architecture for creatures who easily climb vertical surfaces: a main entrance for a building could be in the center of the 2nd or 3rd floor— heck, you might not have floors, rather a system of depth: the number of major chambers from the main entrance— Theater ‘in the round?’ Try theatre in the sphere! Meeting rooms would have ceiling seats for the interns…
(If creatures are climbers & have fair sight the tension between natural light & space-efficiency produces incredible spaces)
Imagine public spaces like stadiums: a stadium could still have a bowl shape— but why not put an inverted bowl with even more seats on the ceiling?
Same for subway cars: seats right up the walls! Of course, accessibility would be an issue too (one of my queens has five legs and can’t climb in the ceiling anymore— Her daughters help her to move)
Maybe ceiling seats would be seen as something for the young and reckless a natural upside down peanut gallery. Nosebleed seats? Try headrush.
@futurebird I only saw this second post and not the first one. I was still on board with it. Some opera houses are most of the way there already. Let me sit on the ceiling!!!
My other colonies are thriving. I have the Camponotus nicobarensis colony fully moved into their new nests. The Camponotus pennsylvanicus colony has produced an alarming cache of eggs. The Formica subsericea colony is growing every day — and the Camponotus discolor colony is eating me out of house and home gobbling an extra large dubia and flask of sunburst nectar every three days! The Peronopsis imperis queen I found has eggs — but they seem stalled. But, overall good anting all round.
I estimate there are at least 100 eggs in that pile. I will try to see how long it is until the queen makes another— It’s interesting to me that they move the eggs to their second nest— you’d think they would keep the eggs near the queen but they don’t— the second nest is heated— they keep eggs there— but then move the pupae back to the main nest—
which is odd normally pupae are heated and eggs are not. But I assume the girls know best!
I’ve been putting off making this post because it’s not what I wanted to report and I’m disappointed. A few weeks back my Dorymyrmex bureni colony showed tantalizing signs of a miraculous recovery from the loss of their queen. I love this colony, I wanted it to be true— (Antdrew on formiculture.com tried to warn me not to be too optimistic: Just because female workers continued to emerge weeks after the queen died did not guarantee the new queen were fertile.) He was right.
For the past two weeks all the new workers have been tiny males. It’s exciting to see & record the male form of this species: I will have a set of all casts in my pinning box… but these winged boys mean it is likely the end of the line for this colony. If only I could take them down to Florida so they could fly!
I’m going to update my old posts about the matter; see if I can find another queen, keeping these ants has been a wonderful adventure and they have and continue to teach me so much. 2/2
E-bikes are very cool and I'm glad they are getting popular.
However.
There is a big difference between a crash at 12mph and one at 20mph.
Your ebike can give you injuries normally only found in motorcycle accidents. And there isn't enough advice on what constitutes sufficient maintenance for ebikes.
If you don't get balding tires fixed on a regular bike you could fall off and bruise or break a leg.
At ebike speeds that same fall will shatter your leg in dozens of pieces.
Keep your tires and breaks in top condition.
The breaks on ebikes wear out very fast since they have to grip tires moving much faster and I don't think they have the ideal material selected for that task as of yet. Do not balk when you find out you need to get new pads every single year if you ride daily.
The same is true of the tires. They wear out fast, and can get smooth and dangerous.
Since you can ride an ebike at 20mph without being an athlete, it's just more dangerous.
Another issue is they are much heavier! Yes when I was a bike messenger I probably broke 20mph on the regular. I was also very fit and when I'd crash (which I did often) I'd just tumble around and grab the bike and get back up.
An ebike can weigh five times as much as a fixie. Even if you use pedal assist, you are still going very fast.
The bike is another object in the crash that can hurt you.
Of course if a car is involved forget it. But I'm talking about solo crashes.