squeakland November 2009

squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org

22 participants
35 discussions

Re: [squeakland] kedama tutorial by linda kao
by Korakurider 21 Jun '10

21 Jun '10

It is really great we finally "rescue" historical contents! The tutorial have example projects attached. Where will we maintain them (revised for newer version of Etoys)? of course Showcase is one option, but it seems better if flossmanuals can manage such materials for translation and distribution, /Korakurider On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Kim Rose <kim.rose(a)vpri.org> wrote: > Yes, this work was created by Viewpoints and a graduate student at UCLA who > was an intern for us at the time. > We hope it can prove helpful to any Etoys users. > > Kim > > On Nov 25, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: > >> At Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:25:56 +0100, >> Karl Ramberg wrote: >>> >>> On 2009-11-25 18:08, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: >>> >>> The "source" of the PDF version, the Word document file was found. >>> So, I uploaded the file to: >>> >>> >>> http://wiki.squeakland.org/pages/viewpageattachments.action?pageId=16844 >>> >>> -- Yoshiki >>> _______________________________________________ >>> squeakland mailing list >>> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >>> >>> Great, >>> can we use this on http://en.flossmanuals.net/ ? >> >> Kim (the executive director of VPRI, who funded making the >> document) says it is perfectly fine to make it public so it should be >> fine to use it for the FLOSS manual. >> >> -- Yoshiki >> _______________________________________________ >> squeakland mailing list >> squeakland(a)squeakland.org >> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland > > > _______________________________________________ > Squeakland mailing list > Squeakland(a)squeakland.org > http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland >

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seymour papert joins squeakland
by Timothy Falconer 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

Hi everyone, I'm very happy to announce that Seymour Papert is now a part of the Squeakland Foundation: http://squeakland.org/about/people/ The photo is a recent one of Seymour. He's doing well, reading the New York Times each morning, working on projects from home. We are of course thrilled to have him part of the team. Take care, Tim -- Timothy Falconer Squeakland Foundation http://squeakland.org 610-797-3100 -- "Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do." ... piaget

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SuperSwiki2 2009 November version is available
by Masashi UMEZAWA 12 Dec '09

12 Dec '09

Hi all, SuperSwiki2 (2009 November) is now available: http://swikis.ddo.jp/SuperSwiki2/3 This version supports Etoys4. You can upload/download projects via Etoys4 (and older versions). Other new features: * Filtering by target age and region * French translation (Thanks to Hilaire Fernandes!) * Bug fix of wiki database * Performance tuning * Small bug fixes and improvements You can see a sample site here: (in Japanese) http://squeakland.jp/super2 (More than 650 e-toy projects) Platform Independent Downloads: http://swikis.ddo.jp/SuperSwiki2/19 Windows installer: http://swikis.ddo.jp/SuperSwiki2/18 Enjoy! -- [:masashi | ^umezawa]

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The Squeakland Tally Contest (win an RC plane with video)
by Timothy Falconer 08 Dec '09

08 Dec '09

Hi everyone, As we prepare for our two month Etoys publicity drive (starting November 1st), I'd like to make things a little more interesting. Let's have a contest. The winner gets a brand-new HobbyZone Super Cub LP with a lightweight Fly Cam One attachable video camera, shipped anywhere (that's legal) in the world. I'm personally donating both. The plane is very fun, and very easy to fly. Also, if you win, you'll be able to do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiNxzXixlOc Here are the rules: 1. you must be 18 years or older to enter the contest, or have the signature of a guardian or parent. Proof will be required upon winning. 2. you must guess three tally totals as they will appear at midnight, New Year's Eve, as the Times Square ball drops in New York City. The tally totals are: a. Squeakers (number of people that have signed the squeaker list) b. Accounts (number of people that have signed up for a showcase account) c. Projects (number of publicly visible projects on the Showcase) see: http://squeakland.org/tally 3. Lowest score wins. To determine it, subtract your guesses from the corresponding new year's value for each total, then add the absolute value of the each difference. Example: squeakers ... joe's guess (5000) ... new year's value (4500) ... abs diff (500) accounts ... joe's guess (3000) ... new year's value (3500) ... abs diff (500) projects ... joes guess (1000) ... new year's value (7000) ... abs diff (6000) score = 7000 4. These bonuses will apply: a. subtract 500 from your score if you're the last publicly visible project in 2009 b. subtract 300 from your score if you're from the top NON-USA country in the list at new year's b. subtract 200 from your score if you're at the PURPLE level at new year's d. subtract 100 from your score if you're at the BLUE level at new year's see: http://squeakland.org/showcase/ranking.jsp 5. Initial guesses need to be emailed to me before November 1st starts (midnight) in New York. 6. You'll be allowed three "mulligans" before December 1st where you can change any one of your guesses (one per mulligan). 7. Each mulligan will enact a 100 point penalty, which will be added to your final score. 8. Any obvious attempts at cheating will disqualify you. (Adding Squeakers or accounts yourself, reposting duplicate projects, etc.) 9. Disputes will be decided by me. I'll try to be as fair as possible, though I suspect some will see things differently. My plane, my call. 10. The winner will hopefully agree to send some fly-by video of a "Squeak if you love Etoys" sign, that we'll send, which we'll later use on the Squeakland website. Anyway, I hope this remains friendly and fun. The trick, of course, is making good guesses. A few hints . . . * we currently average about 300 web visitors a day, some new, some returning. We've peaked at 6000 web visitors in a single day. * the peak was because of a magazine article. We *will* be seeking multiple magazine articles and other forms of publicity during this time. * the addition of multiple languages on the website will greatly increase our possible audience * we will have "tell a friend" functionality to allow for some social networking, including facebook, twitter, and blog buttons for individual projects * schools will create multiple accounts, usually in one shot (I just now saw 14 accounts from the same school create accounts). So ask yourself . . . How many people do you think like Etoys in the world? How many can we reach before the end of the year? How many new people will we reach before the end of the year? How many will create accounts, or share projects? I've already made my three guesses (though I can't win), which will remain private like everyone else's. All will be revealed on New Year's Day. Have fun! Tim -- Timothy Falconer Squeakland Foundation http://squeakland.org 610-797-3100 -- "Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do." ... piaget

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2 for Etoys5
by Randall Caton 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

Here are two suggestions regarding the next version of etoys: 1. If you add a new collaboration tool, I have had many teachers impressed with certain ways that Nebraska worked: they liked the receiver and ears and the fact that you could drop anything onto the badge (including an etoy with scripts) to send it to someone. I also think making the IP address visible was valuable. 2. When you change the text font in a button, the button doesn't resize to fit the new text - it would be nice if it did. And when you edit the text in a button, the text size reverts to a default - it would be nice if it stayed the same because you probably wanted to keep the new text size. Randy Caton -- The views expressed in this email are my own and not necessarily those of CNU. Randall Caton 41596 Bald Eagle Drive Bigfork, MN 56628 218-832-3490 email: rcaton(a)cnu.edu web: www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton

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Collision detection, only one object detects the collision
by Carl Cravens 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

Hi there! I'm a professional developer, and recently discovered Etoys while looking for a language/environment suitable for my 9-year-old son to learn to code in. (These kids raised on Flash games don't seem to want to write programs with boring text-based interfaces.) Scratch is really cool, but it quickly became too limiting. Etoys, while a little less inviting than Scratch, has a lot of power hidden under the hood once you manage to find it. Many thanks to those who have made it happen... I've been having a lot of fun with it. I've been writing a space-invaders clone (one of my first video games; I'm 41), and it's going pretty well... I've got dynamically created siblings for the invaders, and they change costumes (for the "marching" animation and the explosion) selected from a Holder, the "bullets" are dynamically created siblings. The shields are stamped onto the playfield, and when a bullet collides with one, an "explosion" the same color as the playfield is stamped onto the bullet's location to erase part of the shield. All of that is working very nicely. But I'm having a problem with collision detection between the bullets and the invaders. The invaders don't actively watch for collisions. Each bullet does collision detection on each move, and I'm using the "bullet overlaps any invader" test. When it collides with an invader, it fires the "am I hit?" script on all invader siblings, so each invader checks to see if it's the one that's been hit. (I can't figure out how to find a handle for the object I've collided with so I can send it a message directly. That would be useful.) But here's the problem: My invaders are shaped like an 'M'... if the bullet hits them in the center, it detects a collision well before it touches any of the invader's non-transparent pixels, parallel with the lowest visible pixels. That is, if I draw an invisible box around the invader, the bullet detects "I overlap with" when it crosses the invisible line, not just when it collides with the visible pixels. But, none of the invaders detect this hit. They only detect it if the bullet hits the leg of the 'M', so that the bullet is touching visible pixels of the invader. (To be clear on that, my code is working just fine if the pixels actually overlap.) So at first I'm thinking that collision detection is "any of my pixels overlaps an invisible box drawn around the 'target'". Except I've done a lot of experiments... setting up an invader and bullet object with scripts that update a "I'm colliding" variable, so I can watch their status. The weird thing is, I can put the bullet between the legs of the 'M' so that it's not touching any invader pixels, but it's well past the line at which it normally registers a collision. In this little experiment, I can't get either to register a collision (using "I overlap with any foo") unless they actually have overlapping visible pixels. So that contradicts my "invisible box" theory. (Unless somehow the scripted "move and check" is different from the check happening when I use the mouse to move the bullet around. I wouldn't think so, but obviously something is different between the two situations.) I'm sure I could switch to testing "I'm over color", but I'd like to be able to use more artistic invaders... I don't want them to be a uniform color. And I could redraw my invaders so that they don't present such a large "opening". Or I could give the invaders a background color that matches the playfield instead of a transparent background. But it seems to me that something isn't working right (collisions should always be mutual, not one-sided), and I'd like to understand why it's not acting as expected, and why "move 5 and test" gives different results than manually placing the objects. And if what I'm having trouble with is "normal" behavior, I'd like to know that so I can quit beating my head against this wall and implement a workaround instead of searching for the "correct" solution. (Yeah, I prefer an "elegant" solution. But if it's clear that I have to work around a known behavior, then I have to work around it. I just don't want to write a kludge if there's a known best-practice that solves the problem properly.) I'm not sure what the standard is for sharing code... I can post the project if looking at it would be helpful. Just tell me where and how. Thanks! -- Carl D Cravens (raven(a)phoenyx.net) A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

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Re: collision detection
by Carl Cravens 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

I didn't join the squeakland mailing list to get recommendations for alternative platforms by private mail. I run Linux, my son is on Windows. I need, prefer, and want to promote a cross-platform solution to teaching programming. Windows isn't the only/obvious solution to every problem, and I don't want to promote the idea that it is. Etoys may be rough around the edges, but it does the job I need it to do. forster(a)ozonline.com.au wrote: > Hi > My reply is not about etoys so is not suitable for the list. > > Try Game Maker the free lite version from yoyogames.com > > collision detection works every time > > education resources > http://www.rupert.id.au/schoolgamemaker/ > > list of other possible programming languages > http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2007/02/game-programming-tools.html > > Tony > -- Carl D Cravens (raven(a)phoenyx.net) New Mail not found. Start whine-pout sequence? (Y/N)

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Forum access
by James Davis 29 Nov '09

29 Nov '09

This might be a bit off-topic, so please excuse! I have tried to join the forums, but when I tried, I saw an error message about an email not being sent, which I assume was the confirmation email requiring a reply? In any case, the forum software recognizes my email, but my account is inactive (or not activated). The only "administrator" account I could find went to "noreply(a)squeakland.org " which I am guessing maybe isn't monitored? The user id I used was: jd555 If anyone has an email address I can reach to pursue this, I will appreciate it... jd

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Interesting animated films
by Carlos Rabassa 27 Nov '09

27 Nov '09

This is the YouTube channel of the Museum Of the Moving Image in Astoria, NYC, New York. They conduct animation workshops. There are some interesting films here. http://www.youtube.com/mmieducation Carlos Rabassa

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Vacation reply
by cal1riv＠hotmail.com 26 Nov '09

26 Nov '09

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squeakland November 2009