Part 1 -Evaluation

During our year 10 control tech class we have done a variety of things for this semester and i blogged about them. Below are the things we have done and links to my blogs for them plus my personal rating that i have given for each section.

Part 1

Guest speaker: Rosemary about Timor Leste Rate : 4/5

Link : http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/07/timor-presentation.html

Guest speak: Joel about the xo Rate: 4.5765

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/08/joel-stanleys-talk.html

Physics Rate : 5/5

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/08/physics-make-game.html

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/07/sugar-physics.html

SVG icon and Linux command line Rate: 4.33/5

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/09/creating-own-sugar-icon.html

Turtle Art Rate: 5/5

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/09/sugar-turtle-art-activity.html

Other activity evaluation Rate 3.987/5

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/07/sugar-memorize-activity.html

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/11/sugar-colours-activity.html

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-impression-on-sugar-operating-system.html

Etoys Rate 3.456/5

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/10/sugar-etoys-activity.html

Scratch Rate 4.68/5

Link:http://namelessurl.blogspot.com/2009/10/sugar-etoys-activity.html

Part 2

Three things that you learnt:

Three things that i have learnt are how to use Sugar Operating System, how to hack Sugar and how to use various activities in Sugar.

Three things that you enjoyed:

Three things i have enjoyed are working with Sugar, Working with turtle art and working on Physics.

Three things that you didn’t like :

Three things i did not enjoy are blogging (XD), Sugar freezing while you're working and Working with the messy "Etoys" activity.

Part 3

State which was the following with reasons:
best: Working with Sugar Operating System because it was something new for me.
worst: Blogging because it was very time consuming.
most interesting : Exploring new Sugar activities because it was interesting, finding out the activity's unique features
most difficult: Working with Etoys because it's an unorganized version of scratch

Part 4

Is the X.O or O.L.P.C a good idea for the children of the developing world? State your opinion and give reasons.

Yes, I believe it is because it gives children in developing countries a chance to experience the technology of computers because i can't imagine what i'd do without my computer. I have grown up with computers, so they should have an opportunity to experience this wonderful thing called the "computer/laptop"

Sugar - Colours activity

Our class has been trying some new games.

Activity – Colours
Personal rating – 3.95/5

Colours, is an activity similar to paint except the drawings you made are able to be played back to you so that you can see how you've drawn something.

The positives of this activity are that it allows a user to see their progression after they've drawn a picture. It is a fun program for people who enjoy drawing as this activity has a play back feature that no other common drawing programs, such as Photoshop and Paint would have.

The negatives of this activity are that there are not as much drawing tools as the other drawing programs and the brush options to change colour and change its opacity were hard to find.

In my opinion I thought it was an interesting game, simply because of its play-back feature and I have also had experience with drawing with a mouse at home.

This is a good activity for practicing your art skills because it allows you to see your errors. It is also good to help you explore when using a new activity because most the features are pretty hidden.

I would recommend this programs to all ages and for all art lovers.

My drawing i did:

The screen you work on :

Half way finished while at playback mode:

Final product :

Sugar - Etoys Activity

For the past 2 weeks our control tech class had been working with the activity from sugar, Etoys. Etoys is an activity that allows us to animate pictures that we draw by using scripts. In each script we put in commands, similar to the turtle activity; commands such as forward and turn by a specified number. We could also change the speed in which an object moved either by a set number or random.

Our task was to draw cars and make it move and do this according to each task. All the tasks involved cars or race cars.

One of the tasks was to simulate a car race using many commands from the command window. We had to use variables for the cars speed and make it random and we also had to make a time variable to create a time that started and stopped whenever the race started and ended.

The cars were able to stop using the "Test" command which allowed a car to do certain things whenever a colour on the car touched another colour (both colours are chosen by us). In this racing case the test command made all scripts (time scripts, cars scripts) stop whenever one car won the race.

All cars had to move on their own. This was made possible by using another test. That test would work by if the colour on the car touches the colour of the sides of the lane it would bounce and turn left or right depending on what side it bumps into (If it hit the right side it would bounce left to put it back in place).

We also had to make a timer to time how long the race went for and it would stop when the race ended. It was pretty simple, we just had to make a time variable and make a script telling it to increase its value by 1 each second.

All this is started by a start button which we could create. It was simple to create a start button because the script for the start button only consisted of "start" commands, starting all scripts (time scripts, car scripts).

We also had to make a reset button, similar to start except it would put all cars and time to its original position and value. I used a script type called "World" because that way it was able to start the same scripts if they were under the same script names and I found that this way was easier. To reset the positions of each car we had to go to each of their command boxes ( a window with commands) and take their coordinates X, Y and heading so that when the reset button is pressed the car would return to those coordinates and facing/heading the same direction. The time would have to reset to 0 as well, which was done by putting values of 0 from the timer variable into the script.

This is my script of the great race, racing 4 cars with all random speeds.

My thoughts on Etoys are that it was pretty simple and easy to follow. The only problem was that we could not view the script while the race started because it would have gotten in the way with the test commands and it would just put the cars off course.

The race without the script in the way.

Sugar - Turtle art activity

Our class spent about three weeks looking at the activity, Turtle art on the sugar operating system.

Turtle art is an activity that allows a user to create pictures/shapes using various commands and values using a little turtle icon as the pen (e.g. forward 100 would move the turtle 100 steps forward from where it was). To get a command to work you had to double click on the command. Every command has bumps on them so that many other commands could join up with each other like Lego pieces. Once commands were joint together when we double clicked it all the commands would act at once.

This is the panel containing all the functions and commands:

There are also two modes, turtle mode (slow) and rabbit mode (fast). The rabbit mode made it so that with a click the shape co ordinates are drawn in immediately. The turtle mode made it so that we could view the movements of the turtle and that gave us a better understanding of what was going on.

Our 1st task was to create shapes that were shown on a page we were given and we would receive marks depending on the difficulty of shapes that we did. All shapes had to be drawn using one click instead of us clicking one command at a time and drawing it. To make it so we wouldn't have a long line of different direction commands, a function called repeat made this easier. This function had a value box next to it and whatever number was inside it, the repeat command would repeat whatever was under it, the number of times specified by us. Using one click prevented the lost of step because there was no way to undo something, we had to simply clear the whole shape and do it again. There were also other commands that did their own unique thing.

After we had gotten used to drawing more difficult shapes we were ask to add variables to draw shapes. A function called 'store in box' made a number variable of our choice. Next to every direction command there was always a value telling the turtle how far to travel, if that value were to be replaced with a 'box ' command then the value changes to whatever was in the 'store in box' command. This was helpful for changing a shape's size because we could just change the number in the 'store in box' and it would change the size of the shape depending on the number placed in the command without have to go to each value and changing their numbers.

The shape i drew on Turtle art using variables:

The command script i used to create the shape:


All the shapes we did had to be extremely perfect and precise to what the pictures on the sheet looked like, therefore when adding variables we must made sure we used divide and multiply commands in order to keep a shapes dimensions. Some shapes may only have looked the same but they weren't exactly perfect. There were two ways to work out what values were needed in order to create a shape which could change in size and still keep it's correct dimensions. First was to use trial and error and we had to simply guess each value until we got it correct. The other way was to use mathmetics and actually calculate the values. I mostly used trial and error because i was too lazy to do the maths but in the end i found that using maths i got a much more accurate shape.

Tutle art:

My thoughts on Turtle art is that at first it was hard to understand but I gradually began to understand how things worked ad i became easier for me. It was enjoyable working with this activity although the sugar occasionally froze when we tried to save a finished shape.

Creating own sugar icon

Learning about SVG (scalable vector graphic), we were told to create our own sugar icon using the same concept as an SVG. An SVG is a picture format which is small in size and uses maths to create its unique property. It's unique property is that when re sized, an SVG does not lose it's picture quality and pixelates.

Using Html kit we learnt about basic x and y co-ordinates of simple shapes, lines and curves and a 55 by 55 grid. We had done a few practices using coordinates to draw in shapes and lines. using what we had learnt it was then time to create our own icon to that we could later use that picture and put it onto the sugar operating system as our icon.

This is my icon i made using a few straight line co-ordinates and many curve/arc co-ordinates ;viewed on opera an internet browser:

After finishing our icon, all we had to do was using terminal activity on sugar to insert the picture as the icon. We could then make it change colour to what ever we wanted and demonstrating that we have done this to our teacher. Below is a screenshot of what my changed icon looks like, a bat looking creature.

physics- make a game

As a group or single our task was to create a game using the activity 'Physics' on sugar. Me, Airsokand DarkDragon had created this game.

The aim of the game is to try and get three balls of any size (your choice) and using the rubber band like tool to throw the ball over the wall and get the ball to land on either of the three platforms which have points on them (5,10 and 20 points). The ball must be on one of the three long platforms in order for the point to count. Once all three balls have been thrown it is the next player's turn to throw.

After all players have had a shot throwing the points of each player is added up and the person witht he highest total in the end is the winner.

My views of this game is that it can be quite challenging trying to get the 20 points.

Sugar- Memorize Activity

1st August

Today i am trying the Activity, Memorize Activity.

Memorize Activity is a match the cards type of game where you click one square and another and they reveal themselves. once you click another square the two go back to being concealed. Once you get two matches the two correctly matched squares light up a colour and stay there. You repeat until all matches are found.

The game can also be altered in difficulty by selecting how many squares you want. options are 4x4, 5x5 and 6x6. There are also choices in what type of matching you want. Choices are matching maths sums, matching noises and matching Letters.

This game is designed to train the mind into memorising things and help develop memory. Overall i think this game is very good for training the mind but it gets boring because things get repetitive.

Sugar - Physics

27th July

Today I'm trying out the activity "Physics"

Physics allows you to draw shapes or create them using various tools. There is a play and stop button stopping and starting gravity. When played, all the shapes would fall down as though they were real life solid objects. When stopped all the shapes stay still as though they would in any drawing program.

There are also other tools used to delete shapes, rotate any shapes, keep them still in one place, connect shapes or move them as though they were attached to an elastic piece of string.

Many games can also be created using this activity.

Overall i think this activity is a great activity to use when wanting to have some fun playing with gravity and shapes. Although it does have a problem of not being able to save.

My impression on "sugar" Operating System

Sugar is an operating system from X.O with off-line and online activities. Sugar I used for a small laptop (X.O) which looks like a children’s laptop worth $180 dollars U.S. The Organizations in developing countries plans to give these laptops out for every child as the OLPC (One laptop per child) project.

My first impression on Sugar was that it was pretty hard to find all the icons/buttons because it some of the functions were hidden. Some of the icons are hard to understand, but when explained to i got the hang of things. The games were enjoyable and entertaining and easy to play because of many different things such as puzzles, speeches, animations, memory games, free cell, python program and many more.

Overall it was a good operating system with unique functions and i look foward to working with sugar in the future.