Pixelh8

Pixelh8 @ Creative Computing Club Week 2 Game Maker

Pixelh8 — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:10:20 +0000

I am so pleased with the students today, not only because this was an enormous and complex task, but it was their first session under my direction, and they did brilliantly. Admittedly one of the students had prior experience with Game Maker, and few of them had tried it before, but this time all of them left having learned how a basic platform game engine is put together. I really think they got a real sense of achievement from doing it.

The full blog and resources are here (the blog is currently locked and invite only for funders, sponsors, press, parents and participants only for the first eight weeks and will then go public. This was the reward you got for helping fund the club on Peoplefund.it.).

Pixelh8 and teaching kids how to use Game Maker

Pixelh8 — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:46:02 +0000

So this morning I spent two hours or more precisely two lots of approximately 55 minutes teaching two nine year old girls how to use Game Maker. I am currently in the process of making free downloadable resources for the Creative Computer Club here. (The blog is currently locked and invite only for funders, sponsors, press, parents and participants only for the first eight weeks and will then go public. This was the reward you got for helping fund the club on Peoplefund.it.) The resources are for any and everyone to use under a creative commons license and will be available in around 8 weeks time. You can find more information about the Creative Computing Club here.

The hour long plan has notes and a slide show to accompany it and it takes you through the basics of a platform game, with items to collect, level progression and bad guys. It was great going through it twice as I found a few typos to neaten up, but most importantly it was perfect for the job. It was the right amount of time and depth of information for an introduction to Game Maker. The two girls now understood what was going on behind the scenes of games. It is important to note they only had five minutes max in the session to draw out the characters as this was not Game Design, but game programming. Despite this constraint they managed to make some lovely little characters.

The lesson plan is only an introduction it doesn’t feature sound, backgrounds or animation those things however should become fairly obvious after working your way through the lesson. Many thanks to YoYoGames for sponsoring Creative Computing Club with a copy of their excellent software and thanks to all those who helped fund it, it is going to be an amazing project.

Pixelh8 @ Springfield Juniors Augmented Reality Project Session 2

Pixelh8 — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:41:05 +0000

So today was divided in to four activities the first three were about QR Codes. The first activity was a short 15 minute talk about how QR Codes work, how they are read by machines and error correction. The second part was getting the students to hide a secret message in a QR Code that they could take home, and the third was getting the students to colour in A4 size QR Codes with a giant question mark below it and to hide around the school, just to get people asking about them (the code sent anybody who scanned them to the school website). It was really good fun and the students definitely learned how they worked as I quizzed them on it all afterwards. The last thirty minutes was spent planning out more of their Augmented Reality games which we will reveal in a couple of weeks. You can download the talk as a .pdf file here. We are covering QR Codes, AR, pattern recognition and facial recognition in this series of workshops. Any questions just ask me twitter @pixelh8 .

Pixelh8 @ Creative Computing Club

Pixelh8 — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:34:10 +0000

So today was the start of Creative Computing Club, it was a relief to finally get started. Today was just the introduction to the sessions and already there was a good feeling. The blog here will go live in eight weeks time to the public , until then it is invite only to those who sponsored or supported the event in some way. Next week we will start looking at Game Maker, then Processing, then Arduino, LEGO Mindstorms, sound, animation and finally the exhibition.

We now have all the things we need for the sessions and that is all thanks to those who supported the project. You can follow Creative Computing Club on twitter @CCCSuffolk.

Pixelh8 @ Horizons: A Celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the ZX Spectrum

Pixelh8 — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:13:18 +0000

I was asked to give a talk at Horizons: A Celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the ZX Spectrum at the BFI in London. The talk was about my career which started with coding on the ZX Spectrum, how it has lead me back to the classroom and the importance of teaching children to code and be creative with technology. Other speakers included Rupert Goodwins, and Eben and Liz Upton of the Raspberry Pi foundation. It was good to see Rupert Goodwins again (I didn’t realise how involved he was with Sinclair) and to meet the people behind the Raspberry Pi, I look forward to using it in teaching in the future. It was a great event organised by Imperica so well done to them and thanks to all those who attended and all of the nice tweets.

Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Photo by PeriniNetworks used under a Creative Commons License.

Pixelh8 @ Springfield Juniors Augmented Reality Project Session 1

Pixelh8 — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:04:13 +0000

So today was the start of something new for both me and the students, Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality or (AR) “is is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. ” (Wikipedia). In short the phone or computer adds pictures or information to a live image, augmenting it. I was a bit apprehensive about doing this workshop as I had never run it before, I have done loads of work with the age range which in this case was 9-year-olds but you never know if they are going to get it or not. They did, they really did. I started the session explaining it in words only, then I showed them a few pictures of existing apps that use AR, and then revealed to them just how wonderful it is by running some demos on the iPad 2. They were blown away, not only by the AR but by the fact they over the next 5 weeks would be harnessing this system to bring their ideas to life. AR can be a tricky subject to get your head around but we managed and the 12 students, divided in to four groups of three have already set about planning out their ideas for their augmented reality projects. We have started to talk about how AR markers work, we are also learning about QR Codes (as shown in the picture), facial and object recognition software and next session they will be designing their own QR Codes to act as markers for their games.

The head of the school popped by to see how it was all going and asked one of the students who simply replied that it was “Awesome”, so I think they are enjoying working with AR.

As I mentioned I was a bit apprehensive about running the project, as I myself am new to the subject and I needed to know I could do it, before they put forward their ideas. I had also pre-made some ideas just in case the concept proved too much for them to take on board, but they really weren’t necessary. I can save those Ideas for another time. I am now really pleased and really excited about the project and can’t wait to see how they progress next week.

Pixelh8 @ IPRUG

Pixelh8 — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:49:47 +0000

Yesterday I got to give a talk about my wide and varied career as a musician / coder at the Ipswich Ruby User Group (IPRUG). It is a great group who meet monthly and talk about all manner of computer related subjects not just the Ruby programming language. The talk before mine was given by Kerry Buckley about the Seven Programming Languages in Seven Weeks which looks like a fantastic book and was nice to see people trying different languages and to hear him discuss what the pros and cons were with each of the seven languages. Although I must admit I wasn’t able to follow everything there were certainly somethings I really liked the look of like “lazy evaluation”, I also quite liked the look of Io programming language. I had a great time and I was genuinely made to feel welcome (even though I had openly admitted never programming in Ruby), the group meet at the Brewery Tap Pub in Ipswich, which has really amazing food (I will be returning with my kids to eat there) , so what are you waiting for? You can get more info on the group here from their website.

Pixelh8 @ The British Museum for the Game Design Workshops

Pixelh8 — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:28:22 +0000

I got to go back to the British Museum today (first visit) to teach game designing, however this time we ran it slightly different. Firstly we got families to organise themselves as companies/groups, which was wonderful to see parents and sometimes grandparents get involved in the decision making of the games. Secondly I was able to use my recent experience of creating OCARBOT to help teach them them stages I went through to make a game. Thirdly I taught it from my iPad so I was able to show them OCARBOT in action instead of a just a video of it (I think I will do this for all talks in the future). Good fun was had by all in the two SOLD OUT and fully attended courses, I hope they all enjoyed their experience planning out a video game and hope they will begin to look at video games in a different way. Many thanks to the excellent support staff at the British Museum for their help, I look forward to returning in the future.

Pixelh8 @ Leeds International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition

Pixelh8 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:19:30 +0000

I was very fortunate to deliver a paper at the Leeds International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition today. The paper “Handheld Orchestra” details a system which allows novice musicians to interact with a professional orchestra without learning traditional notation or music theory. Additionally the system uses a device familiar to them, their internet enabled mobile phone. I would like to thank Room 1 Studios for funding the project and for allowing me to disclose the nature of the work I have been doing for them. Additionally I would like to thank Chris Wheeler and the Heritage Orchestra for their moral support of the project. The system in “mock-up” form is available to interact with here and the paper is also available to read in draft form here. My aim was to allow a greater access to a world of music for the novice musician, when the software is stable I hope to release it. It was a short but sweet visit to Leeds, but I got to bump into one of my former music students enjoying his time as a student there. Any comments tweet me @pixelh8 on Twitter.

Pixelh8 @ Bacon – Things Developers Love Conference

Pixelh8 — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:47:12 +0000

I was recently asked to give a talk about what I have done over the course of my career using code from making music, instruments, art installations and now teaching how to do it. I never really like talking about what I have done in the past, but today was different as the talk ended with what I am going to do and maybe even hopefully what some of the audience members may go on to do. The talk was really well received and several said it was very inspirational which is always good to hear.

I had never been to a developers conference before and by all accounts this one was “different” and I think it was a really good experience. Even though I don’t understand anything to do with web development there was a lot of common ground shared by all who attended. The whole conference had a great feel about it and I was made to feel very welcome by everyone I met. Sadly I had to leave early but judging by the twitter comments they have a success on their hands. Well done Bacon, Mint Digital and all the speakers and sponsors, have a wonderful second day tomorrow.

Photo by @rodreegez