GRG's Miscellany

In The Beginning... I'd been experimenting with SPI displays on the Micro:bit before now and was lamenting how little RAM they have. So when I read about the Pi Pico 's whopping great 264KB of RAM I immediately wanted to make a DOS-a-like handheld game platform.  It easily has enough RAM for a full 320x240x8bpp frame buffer and at 133MHz it's about the same speed as an original-series Pentium.  Plus, it's dual core! All those figures made me think it would be an absolute doddle to make a DOS-a-like. ...but then I started to think about how it would actually be used.  Sure, I could make it so that C programmers could make games for it, but that might just end up with curiosity value. But what if I could make it so that the students I teach could program games in Python?  That way it would have loads of inspiration power whilst also having high educational value! With the magic mix of both idea and plausible use case, I set about making a prototype. The Hardwa...

Ohoho, so I had my first official lesson observation today. I'd been bricking it all week, but the lesson turned out to be the best yet with that class. They had plasticine to make shapes with and drop through rice flour paste in a measuring cylinder. Only one exercise book was totally soaked with paste, and I managed to avoid getting covered in it too! So it turns out I'm doing okay. I'm beating myself up too much, but I am actually progressing onto targets about the kids' learning as opposed to my lesson survival. So I'm totally chuffed.

I led my first educational workshop today, on invisible ink and ciphers. Developing lemon juice ink with an iron is a FAFF. Shalln't be bothering with that one again. It worked, but took for EVER. It became a serious timing problem with a group of 30. However, Sodium Bicarbonate dissolved in water worked well. I developed that with red cabbage water, which turned the paper violet, and green where the ink had been painted. Very pleasing colours, and it even generated a few 'wow!'s. :D Through a happy accident, it turns out that lemon juice is also developed with red cabbage water, turning quite a fetching magenta-pink. Not as clear as the green, but visible nevertheless. If I were to do this again, I would try both lemon juice and sodium bicarbonate with red cabbage juice, and try to find another ink for a second one. Or possibly use white candles/wax to draw a message and wash over the cabbage water. Anyway, I'm shattered, but I had fun. It seemed like...