Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Bits to Atoms: Reversing Skewed Triangle

Python Turtle:


LogoTurtle:

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Finally Figured Out How to Write a Class for Python Turtles

This explanation/examples did it. Exercise 4.2. Here is what I ended up with.

Updating Firmware on the Gogo Board V4

I have a bunch of Gogo Boards I've used for 4 years to teach creative making with robotics. Problem is mine are version 4.x and the developer, Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat, has fully moved on to version 5.x. But there is a version 4.x setup that keeps my older boards working with Arnan's awesome blocks coding website, tinker.learninginventions.org. I'm writing this post to keep track of the pretty serious yak shaving necessary to keep them functional, probably only useful for my future fixes as only a small (Trump sized) handful of people ever used these boards. The Gogo Widget doesn't work to update the firmware on these older boards on a Mac, so I have to remove the Microchip PICs to reprogram the firmware. I have a Cana Kit UK1300 PIC programmer. But the software for writing the hex file to the PIC, PICkit 2, is PC only, so this tool is needed to write to the PICs on Mac. However, part of the instructions, adding two files to the root bin folder,

Monday, August 01, 2016

Thinking Through Ideas With Python Turtle

I like that you can program a screen turtle very easily with a straightforward Python installation and no additional setup. I was playing with it on a plane ride and went through a progression of ideas that I figure might be nice for people to see, along with the code. Using the screen turtle is a good way to move from Logo environments like Turtle Art to more challenging text-based coding with Python.