My second Coursera MOOC course, Creative Programming for Digital Media and Mobile Apps, which I introduced back in the post Knob Twiddling, finally concluded at the end of July. It was very fulfilling, and I learned so much, but also came up against the imitations of my own nascent skills as a coder (also documented […]
Author Archive | crispysmokedweb
Back to School
So we actually got a summer in the UK. I mean a proper, like-what-I-remember-from-when-I-was-a-kid summer. Hot days, not so hot days, but pretty much no days when you couldn’t make plans and still actually act on them. For me as a family man this has been great. I have worked some, played some, but studied […]
Word Synth
For my Creative Programming Course, I have completed my final project. See it here, along with a description. For me this is quite an achievement. I am not sure the code or the result bears witness to the more critical reader
Coding is tough
Bearing in mind I have, so far in UoD, only had to complete online code challenges and smallish take-home exercises from online courses that were largely based on work done in class, it is a big ask to suddenly try to take a new concept and code it from scratch. The thing is there are […]
Grade Me! Grade Me!
“Grade me! Look at me! Evaluate and rank me! I’m good, good, good and oh so smart! GRADE ME!” So cried Lisa Simpson, so desperate was she for the external validation that we get from scoring and ratings. We all need feedback, to know we are doing OK, to know when our extra efforts paid […]
Knob Twiddling
My second Coursera MOOC course, Creative Programming for Digital Media and Mobile Apps, which I introduced in this post, is nearing the end. The final set of lectures, for week 6, went up today, and probably covered my favourite subject so far: a basic 808-style sequencer with lots of virtual knob-twiddling (actually slider-wiggling) features. It’s […]
MOOC #1: Done
The First of my Coursera Mooc courses, snappily entitled Developing Innovative ideas for New Companies: The 1st Step in Entrepreneurship, has come to an end. In fact the lectures finished a couple of weeks ago, but then there was a final peer review assignment, and the reviewing period takes a while due to its nature. I’ll explain more […]
Summer Tech School – What was I thinking?
It is well documented here that there is a lot I don’t know about software. And yet, I should respect what I do know, and consolidate what i am learning. I have decided to run a small Summer tech School over the school summer holidays, for my wife and children and a couple of friends/colleagues and their children. This […]
Nand2Tetris: Expertise is Relative
It’s funny how whether you are a techy (geek/nerd/expert) is a matter of perspective between you, your audience, and those who know more than you along the particular subject at hand. To me, for example, a car is effectively a black box with a wheel on each corner. I have no interest is demystifying anything […]
Processing – creative toolbox
Processing is a Java based language geared towards creative (visual, video, audio) pursuits and which, to put it bluntly, aims to cut out some of the grunt work needed to code in other languages. It is a real language, and like Java, it is strongly typed, but it also allows a lot of short cuts. […]