Paul Sutton

Paul Sutton – personal blog

Updated blogs status

As I have not used or updated either the Code Club or Coder Dojo blogs for well over a year. These have been deleted with immediate effect. You can get Code Club updates from here, and STEM Group updates from here and the STEM Group blog.

I have also updated the LibreOffice blog to combine in to a single curriculum resource relating to each of the various modules. I will create and add more videos for Draw and Impress over time.

The Rocks and Diamonds remains unchanged.

Following

Any manually published blog entry will automatically be shared to the Fediverse (Federation). Please be sure to be following a particular blog if interested.

Tags

#Blogs,#Update,#Changes,#Deletions

WATER WORLDS: Hideouts for Alien Life?

This was posted to the Fediverse earlier, WATER WORLDS: Hideouts for Alien Life? it is on Youtube so I have included an Invidious link too.

Check out melodysheep

I have included links to science forums and the fediverse (mastodon) instance I am on for further discussion.

Links

Tags

#Astronomy,#Space,#WaterWorlds,#HyceanPlanets

Paignton Library STEM Group – May 2023

The next meeting of the Paignton Library STEM Group is

Date: Saturday 13th May 2023, Time: 11am to 15:00

Hopefully more coding, but also more science stuff.

There are some useful links on my code club post for 6th May.

I will post an update to what is planned in due course, of course ideas & suggestions welcome.

We could do something such as this:

Reaction of Vinegar to Bicarbonate of soda in slow motion

Upcoming fsf workshops 3

Reminder of upcoming workshops

Digital colonialism, surveillance capitalism, and a libre software future Monday, May 15, 12:00–13:30 EDT (16:00–17:30 UTC)

BigCode: Open and responsible research on code-generating AI systems Tuesday, May 30, 12:00–12:45 EDT (16:00–16:45 UTC)

WorldVistA EHR version of the Department of Veterans Affairs Electronic Health Record Monday, June 5, 16:00-16:45 EDT (20:00-20:45 UTC)

Code Club followup

So at yesterdays code club we were looking at the new python lessons. So having ago at the roll a dice activity and being asked how to allow a user to choose which dice to throw.

So using stack overflow I seemed to have figured this out, even though I don't fully understand the code.

I have used this stack overflow page to help me.

So far this is more of a copy and paste, with a few edits to get the code working and the menu shorter as there are only 2 options in the menu other than exit.

This may not be all that useful, I will try and break down the code below.

from noemoji import * 
from datetime import *
from random import randint

imports the various modules needed

class switch(object):
    value = None
    def __new__(class_, value):
        class_.value = value
        return True

Allows user to choose options from a menu, by creating an object switch as part of a class

def case(*args):
    return any((arg == switch.value for arg in args))

Something to do with user imput and passing this back to the switch class

def roll_dice():
  print(python, 'can make a dice', dice)
  roll = randint(1, 6) #Generate a random number between 1 and 6
  print('You rolled a', roll) #Print the value of the roll variable
  #print(fire * roll) #Repeat the fire emoji to match the dice roll
  
def roll_dice2():
  print(python, 'can make randome numbers ', dice)
  roll = randint(1, 12) #Generate a random number between 1 and 12
  print('You rolled a', roll) #Print the value of the roll variable
  #print(fire * roll) #emoji to match the dice roll

Functions to roll the dice, so create a random number between two values depending on the size of dice required.

def show_menu():

    while True:
        print ("What do you want to do?")
        print ("1. Six sided dice")
        print ("2. Twelve sided dice")
        print ("3. Exit the program\n")            
        ask_for_input = input('Enter Option\n')
        ask_for_input = int(ask_for_input)
        
        while switch(ask_for_input):
            if case(1):
                roll_dice()
                break
            if case(2):
                roll_dice2()
                break
            if case(3):
              break
            break  

Create a menu system, which uses the case and switch functions we created earlier

def main():
    show_menu()

Function to call the menu

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main() 

Calls the above function to call the menu function

If this is wrong, then remember I am NOT a coding expert. I am just trying by best and struggling.

Japanese woodcraft

This was posted to the fediverse earlier, really interesting set of videos on Open Culture showing how highly skilled Japanese wood crafters are.

Their blog post, from May 3rd can be found here

Worth a view, the Open Culture is also worth a closer look as it has links to lots of free online courses.

Distance learning is the future of education, why go to an old fashioned brick college when you can learn at home or from anywhere. The Open University have been doing this for decades. The last face to face course I did, really did show how bad adult education can be, the printed materials / workbook was barely readable due to bad printing.

Tags

#OpenCulture,#Japanese,#Woodwork,#Fediverse

Code Club 6/5/2023 Write up

We had a lower turnout today, probably due to the coronation. Nevertheless we were actually very productive.

A new member started off with the Free code camp course on scientific computing, which is mostly video with Q&A. This really good, but not very interactive so we moved on to the Code Club Python activities

Using trinket to create a program to simulate rolling a dice

This worked much better, so we they are going to carry on at home, them come back next week to the STEM group.

Useful Links

Beginner Level

Next event

13th March – STEM Group 11 – 15:00 20th March – Code Club 10 – 12:00

New people welcome, as a group we can all learn together and support each other.

It would recommend getting accounts with the following, and bringing the details with you. A parent / guardian may need their phone to help facilitate logins.

Tags

#CodeClub,#Scratch,#Coding,#Hacking,#Python,#Trinket,

Free Software Foundation workshop – 8th May 2023

LeanWeb: A Ruby (out of rails) web framework for static and dynamic content

LeanWeb: A Ruby (out of rails) web framework for static and dynamic content Monday, May 08, 12:00–13:30 EDT (16:00–17:30 UTC)

Links

Tags

#FSF,#FreeSoftware,#Workshops

LeanWeb: A Ruby (out of rails) web framework for static and dynamic content Monday, May 08, 12:00–13:30 EDT (16:00–17:30 UTC)

Code Club 6/5/2023 reminder

The next Paignton Library code club is on Saturday 6th May 2023 10 am to 12:00. We can carry on with what we are doing,

Useful Links

Beginner Level

Roblox

As Roblox is very popular and allows you to develop within the game the following may be useful.

Note you need your own laptop with this installed so you can develop Lua projects for Robox. You can use Replit to learn Lua but need an account.

GNU / Linux BASH

This is something that once mastered can be very beneficial

Python

Web Site Creation

Other

Free Code Camp offer a wide range of follow along interactive courses, tutorials etc. You will need an account but it is probably worth getting on.

Older Links

I have previously included links to other resources, as I have now updated this page then the old links are still on the previous post.

Tags

#CodeClub,#Scratch,#Coding,#Hacking,#Python,#STEM,#Lua,#Roblox

Plastic Recycling

Plastic recycling is a huge challenge, but it looks like chemists may have found a solution. Seems the biggest issue is identifying and separating the different types of plastic. The solution to this seems quite interesting.

Links

Tags

#Chemistry,#Plastic,#Recycling