So I am trying to capture what it is I want to do with my emerging knowledge. I need a project. It is clear I cannot advance very fast or to a very satisfactory level purely as a coder. There are brighter, more hungry, more available, younger people out there wanting to become developers. That […]
Back to Square One
It’s been tough today. It’s my first proper day of study since the end of July. Following a summer break, work commitments in September and the start of this month have pushed back at the UoD. The fight back started today. It’s tough, of course, when I am ten weeks out of the habit of […]
The Upper Crust of Technology Enthusiasts
Raspberry Pi Bootcamp at @Bristol Just had a great day out at the Raspberry Pi bootcamp at @ Bristol with my 12 year old Son. The Raspberry Pi is the central, loose theme that brings together geeks and wannabe geeks of various persuasions. In fact there was a fair representation of Arduino, ARM controller and […]
MOOC #2: Done
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 […]
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 […]