Welcome, for fun (or despair) we will write a program in Scratch to indicate real-time world population changes…increase or decrease. At the current rate, based on data, it’s growing…the net population is ever-increasing. However, this is a real-time world population simulation…simulation. The data is based on CIA World Factbook but the data are NOT connected […]
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Text-to-speech, Interactive Shopping List (in Scratch)
Welcome! Today, we’re going to try a program with a little more complexity and twists in Scratch. In this program, I demonstrate the following tips/tricks: How to use a List control real-time How to get inputs from user and take action accordingly How to convert Text-to-speech How to read variables real-time from calculations and let […]
Creating Custom Buttons Glyphs & Behavior (for touchscreens)
Howdy, today I continue the discussion on designing fun web applications using MIT’s Scratch platform. In my earlier blog about Scratch piano playing game, I mentioned how Scratch apps that listen for keystrokes only won’t work on smartphones and touchscreen only devices and that Scratch platform does not support Buttons or touchscreen natively, so it […]
Get Kids Excited About Coding!
Hello again, 10 years ago I coded some simple games for my son to show and tell and explain how fun and simple coding can be. These were not heavy duty coding I delve into as part of my work, rather to demonstrate logic and how to code, design basic interactions with users. I used […]
If A=2, B = 10, C=30, D=68. what is E?
Hi again, time for a break 🙂 Fun little quiz, nothing to lose your sleep over because you can solve in a minute or two if you think about it, and it’s NOT a trick question. It has a definitive answer. The problem: If A=2, B = 10, C=30, D=68. what is E? (Assuming A-Z […]
How many thirds in a 3-quarter?
Recently Quora notified me with this question and I thought I’d do the honor of answering it first. So here’s the answer and explanation. Now, how about a different way solving it? Put another way, we can pose the problem as 1/3x = 3/4 and solve for x. If 1/3 = 0.333 (approx.) Then the […]
Analytics From Text?
Yes. From simple text “dump” of data, we can do some amazing things. Well, that’s what they’re already doing…the data scientists and other variants. I only present a simple example of the possibilities here 🙂 First, you should read my post about XML here. Then, I take that to another level here in this post. […]
Making A Favorites List…
We all have favorites…movies, shopping list, tv shows, clothes, etc. etc. etc. Ok, welcome! Today, I’ll show you how to create a favorites movie list in XML…why XML? Because from this format, I’ll do some amazing things like analytics. First on this post though, I’ll show you how to store the list in a structured […]
Which Day Were You Born?
Hi again, today I’ll show you how you can magically tell anyone what day of the week they were born! No matter how long ago, even if they even didn’t know 🙂 The magic is in coding (I’ll use Python here) and its calendar module. The complete source is below along with a challenge at […]
Winning The Lottery! Automatically :)
Howdy! Ok, I’m not guaranteeing you’ll win the lottery every time, or even ever, but I’ll show you here to generate automatic lottery numbers…for Mega Millions, Power Ball, Hit 5, and Lotto. This time, I’m using Python (a favorite among data scientists). Remember, I am NOT a programmer, but I’m a computer scientist. Difference? A […]