On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 2:53 PM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 7 February 2014 18:54, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 07-02-2014, at 2:13 AM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> So. Some kind people (GSoC) are willing to throw money at us if only
> >> we have something for people to do.
> >>
> >> We really, really ought to propose projects. We did nothing last year,
> >> and so got nothing.
> >
> > A good point.
> >
> >>
> >> For starters, there's work to be done in finishing porting Cog to ARM.
> >
> > Um, that one's mine. I'm already being paid for that.
> >
> >> What else might we usefully propose?
> >
> > As you mentioned, UI builder. Chris has Maui and it is extremely
> interesting. HPInstitute has Morphic Designer, which is interesting but I
> found a bit hard to do anything with; and it uses some eventy
> infrastructure that made me grimace a bit. Both or either would be an
> interesting thing to take as a start, or inspiration, or even
> counter-example if you're that way inclined.
> >
> > Extended uses of Plumbin' - there used to be a pretty neat digital
> circuit simulator based on the tiles-on-a-grid approach of Plumbin. Bet
> there are quite a lot of simulations of a similar kind. It could be a neat
> way to assemble and simulate rules for control systems; for example the
> programming of a radio control transmitter to make the assorted servos do
> The Right Thing when you waggle a control stick, button, dial, or lever.
> This has the advantage of being a Useful Thing for teaching, rather than
> just a Cool Language Toy. Another approach might be the Scratch style of
> dragging tiles to build scripts; which come to think of it is sort of a
> free-form variety of spreadsheet rules instead of a grid-style per Plumbin'.
>
> I had planned to deliberately not comment on any proposals, but I
> can't help myself: I think it is an _excellent_ idea to get some
> Useful Thing projects. My personal bias is towards Cool Language Toys,
> but those are useless without a Useful Thing project to actually put
> the fancy tech to good use. I would love to see a circuit simulator!
>

I built a circuit/logic simulator using Connectors in the Etoys image and
it worked quite nicely. I made a special morph for scaling down parts to
make it more space efficient. So I could fx. build a half adder and use it
as a prototype. It was fun but had some issues. I'll see if I can dig up
the code.

Cheers,
Karl

>
> frank
>
> > Some things I'd like to se that may already exist or simply need
> bringing up to date-
> >
> > A terminal window to talk to your OS command line; there is a way to
> make the Pi boot into Scratch but once you do that you have a hard time
> doing anything else. A terminal window would mean being able to do things
> like `apt-get upgrade scratch` more easily.
> >
> > A decent email facility. I have this vague recollection that Celeste
> still exists and some one even uses it? Again, in a boot-to-Scratch Pi it
> could be interesting to provide an email system. And maybe use Scratch
> scripting to add rules to it for sorting and filing and stuff? And given
> the utter balls-up that Apple have made of their email app in Mavericks
> recently, maybe now is the time do a good version that non-Squeakers would
> use!
> >
> > Use of host windows. They've been there for almost a decade and ...
> <crickets>. Forget grand schemes to do All Host Widgets All The Time; just
> make decent use of multiple host  window areas to display multiple Squeak
> things.
> >
> >
> > There; that's a couple of university departments of students kept off
> the streets for the summer.
> >
> > tim
> > --
> > tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> > Strange OpCodes: RDRI: Rotate Disk Right Immediate
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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