Scratch

bharvey wrote:

14God wrote:

I don't think I believe in global warming, its too rainy and dreary up here in Washington    Hows the weather in California?

You scared me -- for a moment I thought you actually meant it, until I saw the smiley.

I did (don't feel compelled to watch that, but if you do, realize that its sounds very narrow minded at the beginning before they get into their actual arguments)
I'm goin' camping for the weekend so I better get going 

Last edited by 14God (2011-06-17 15:22:48)

14God wrote:

I did

Have you read the Wikipedia article about that movie?  It's quite comprehensive and, I think, balanced in its discussion of the movie and its journalistic aftermath, with lots of links to the actual scientific reports on both sides.  What I found most compelling is the fact that two of the people interviewed later said their views had been misrepresented, and that the producer of the movie had had similar complaints about misrepresenting scientists' views by misleading editing in his previous anti-environmentalist movie.

It's dangerous to try to learn science on the Internet, but, imho, doubly dangerous to try to learn it from Internet videos.  (Dear Community Moderator: I know we're not supposed to argue about politics or religion, but this is neither of those (I am with great difficulty refraining from comment on the part of the movie in which it is claimed that global warming was invented by Margaret Thatcher), but a discussion of science, which I sincerely hope would be encouraged, let alone allowed, here!)

By the way, it's absolutely true that funding of scientific research is driven by government (which mostly means military) interests and private corporations, and that this inevitably biases the results of the research -- not because anyone lies, mostly, but because the answers you get depend on what questions you're asking.  It's a real problem and I wish I knew a way to avoid it.  But, for whatever it's worth, my observations on the ground (several of my colleagues are participants in huge alternative energy research grants) are that the bias I see is in favor of monopolizable alternative energy sources (e.g., ethanol) and against inherently decentral sources such as solar panels.

ZeroLuck wrote:

Hello.
Is there a way to open BYOB in fullscreen with a command line argument?
Sorry for bad english i'm german 

That wasn't bad english.

fullmoon wrote:

although it doesn't work on my Mac and I don't know where the compiled projects end up.

How doesn't it work?  Do you get an error message, or does BYOB blow up, or does nothing happen at all?

The project should end up on your Desktop with the project's name as the filename (extension .app although most Mac users' preferences are set not to see the extension).

To answer the original question, BYOB does take command line arguments to allow specifying a project but not for use by the project itself -- we'll put that on the ever-growing list of feature requests.  The shell script that we use for "compiled" projects (which aren't really compiled) looks like this:

/Applications/BYOB\ 3.1\ Mac/BYOB.app /Applications/BYOB\ 3.1\ Mac/BYOB.image foo.ypr presentation foo.ypr 2> /dev/null

replacing "foo.ypr" with your project's path.

@Bharvery
Don't get me wrong, I definitely believe in reducing pollution, but I don't believe we are changing global temperatures drastically with our CO2 emissions and I don't believe a slight warming would hurt the earth that bad (it was hotter in the middle ages). What scares me is militant 'eco-activists' for this reason. (still camping but they have internet out here    )

Okay, how come when I try to log into the Scratch Wiki I get this:

Login error
There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please hit "back" and reload the page you came from, then try again.

I have tried deleting session cookies, deleting my cache, restarting Firefox...   

bharvey wrote:

Okay, how come when I try to log into the Scratch Wiki I get this:

Login error
There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please hit "back" and reload the page you came from, then try again.

I have tried deleting session cookies, deleting my cache, restarting Firefox...   

Everyone is getting this. Talk to JSO. I've seen enough. XD

bharvey wrote:

fullmoon wrote:

although it doesn't work on my Mac and I don't know where the compiled projects end up.

How doesn't it work?  Do you get an error message, or does BYOB blow up, or does nothing happen at all?

My mistake! It works beautifully...I just neglected to save the project first. 

Know of any good resources for learning Python? Especially something like a 2d engine for a graphic representation of what I'm learning.

14God wrote:

Know of any good resources for learning Python? Especially something like a 2d engine for a graphic representation of what I'm learning.

If you are looking to make games, animations, or anything of the sort, I would use the library Pyglet. It's pretty amazing, a bit like using BYOB once you're used to it.

There's a tutorial here, though it isn't very in-depth. I like this one, though I recommend you read the tutorial instead of watching the video.

If you have any specific problems, I'd be glad to help. Good luck! 

Last edited by shadow_7283 (2011-06-20 19:04:42)

14God wrote:

What immediate features are going to be in the first snap release? No changes besides platform?

The hope is that it'll be way faster.  Other than that, if anything, 4.0 will be a step backward in features, if we don't get it all done in time.

My dad want me to teach my 10 year old brother to use scratch this summer. Know of any good resources to use?

If he's like most kids, all you have to do is show him how to click two blocks together and then stand back.  When he starts spinning his wheels, teach him a new feature (e.g., how to get two sprites to interact with BROADCAST and with IF TOUCHING etc.).  Or show him a challenge project; the non-BYOB-related projects on my user page (teleport, mommy) are things I did to challenge my fifth graders.  Or things like "using only these five blocks, make it do..."

Or, get him to find a project he likes on the web site and remix it in some nontrivial way.

PS There are a couple of books out, but I don't think you really need them.

PPS There are also handouts galore at the scratched (teacher) site.

PPPS Tomorrow is the start of my big trip, and who knows if they have Internet on boats in the Norwegian fjords, so it might take a bit longer than usual for me to reply to things for the next month or so!

Last edited by bharvey (2011-06-23 01:24:40)

I'm thinking that I don't just want to teach him what to do, but how to tinker and learn what to do after minor explanations. He usually asks me how to do specific things like keeping a sprite from sinking into the floor but I want to teach him to be creative and innovative but it's pretty hard because he really is in a state where he wants you to think for him and he'll just implement stuff (he's only used scratch a little)
I also think I want to start him off in BYOB so that functions become basic and intuitive to him because they make programming so much more like human high level thought.

I have one question: How do I get his attention? He is allot like me and isn't very tenacious.