Programming: make your own virtual pet

Hey! Here we are once again, being annoying.
If you are interested into start into the word of the programming this article could interest you. So please, take out the lazy part of your personality, put youself comfortable on the chair or on the sofa and read the steps that I followed to learn something about this.
 Our teacher before starting with programming he explain us the base of all the programming, the way that we can write it, the symbols and their funtions.
This is a little resume more or less of the symbols that we learnt.

Here you have a text writted into the computer's symbolism

And now the way that we representate it

First step
First of all you must log into the page web http://scratch.mit.edu . In this page you could create your own virtual pet. You must crate your own count and get into it each time you want to work with your pet.

Second step
After logging in you should start a project. We are going to make our pet move with the arrows from our keyboard.
Seleccionate into the tools wall the section of events. Here you must seleccionate "When the up arroy key get pressed" (it's a piece that looks like a car). After that into section you must select "change y by 10".
Now each time that you press the up arrow botton your pet will go up 10 steps.
You should do this with all the arrows into the deifferent directons. Finally you should have something like that:

Note!!
If you want to add or change the background you have to click on the left-down corner.

Third step
Now our peet have to get hungry etc. So let's do it. First you must select the elf that apears next to the place where you change the background. You can see it into the last picture, where it says "New spirite".
Then you must select a icon. In this case you should select one object that is going to represent the food, so choose one like the salad.
After that you need to follow this steps:
1)Select the cat
2)Select on the tools wall the part of data
3)And press the "Make a Variable" botton
4)Write variable name: Hunger
5)You must add more things to create something similar to this picture:

And write "getHunger" instead of message.

Now like when we created the broadcast "getHunger" we will create another one called "get full" under the Hunger one.
And you must form this:

And finally you have to ccreate another broadcast called "Game Over" and create:

And this is the end. With this you can continue learning new things about programing.
See you, but I don't know if this is the last post, because this is the end of the course.
Bye!

Digital audio - Audacity

Hey guys! How are things? Great I soupose.  This second trimester we started a new amazing unit, the audio. To learn about that we have worked with a program called Audacity, that's a bit difficult to work with it, but more or less, comparing others, it's one of the most easiests to work with.
This awesome program has a lot of options and I'm going to show you the activities that a did to practic, It consists in nine activities that utilize (aproximetly) all the important and the best options that this programm has. Okay, let's start:

The first activity is the only one that we didn't utilize calc, okay, really in that activity our treacher wont to learn to search for effects surfing in the net. He told us two legal webpages to found differents types of sounds. In that pages you had to search specialy ones and organize it tn that folder. After that you had to comprime the folder and send it by Gmail.

That were the two wegpages:
 · http://recursostic.educacion.es/bancoimagenes/web/
 · http://soundbible.com/royalty-free-sounds-1.html


So we had to organize the audios in two folders:

In the first folder (Recursostic) we had the next audios to search for:

1. People laughing
2. The sound of a mosquito

3. The sound of the sea
4. The sound on an electric guitar
5. A thunder
6. Raining sound
7. Applause
8. Lion roar
9. Trumpet
10. A plane

In the second folder ((BibleSound) we had the next audios to search for:

1. Lion roar

2. Rooster crowing
3. News intro
4. Silbato de un arbitro
5. TV Off air
6. Crossing bell
7. UFO takeoff
8. Metal gong
9. Thunder sound
10. Countdown

We start using Audacity, now yes, with the second activity. This activity consists into create a bucle, so the only one thing we should do is first, seleccionate the part of the audio that we want to ultilize to the bucle, press Shift and after that you could compreove that the play botton now is a bucle.

 Finally you must exportate the audio-bucle to another pist and exportate it like an mp3.

On the third activity we only had to mix two audios, one with an ambiental music and the other with a recitated poem. We should modificate the volume when the poem starts and modificate the ambiental music again when the poem comes to the end.

At the forth activity we must simulate a tennis match, with people shouting at the bakground, the sounds of the ball, etc.
To make the audio more real we modificate some sounds. For example, we change the volume of the balls sound and we applicated some effects too, because every time you kick it, the sound isn't the same.


The fifth activity was more or less the same, because in that exercise you should transforme one audio that said "¡Vivaaa!" and applicate effects and others to simulate a group of more or less, six or seven people saying at the same time "Vivaaaaaa".

 

On the activity number six we had to do something like in exercise 3. We had to mix two audios, one that was a mexican instrumental song, and other witha explaneixon about broadcasters. As in exercise 3 we should modificate the volume, etc.

Activity number seven consist into transform your own voice saying "Excuse me sir, but that R2-D2 is in prime condition, a real bargain" in a robot voice. We can make this with an especial effect and accelerating the audio.


And finally the final activity!!! The most difficult activity that we should made by our ownself.
1- We sould seleccionate an interestind theme to talk about.
2- After that we had to build a text that inspire other people to buy the product or to be interested into it.
3- We record our voices with enthusiasm reading the text.
4- We seleccionate two instrumental songs, one fot the begining and other one to the end.
5- And finally we mix all the parts of thet complicate exercise.

My advirtisement sounds like this:



 All this activities where explained in a document that the teacher gave to us, of course, when we were doing it at class he helped us to do something. All the audios except the ones from the last and firs exercises where in a folder that he (the teacher) gave to us too.

in my opinion, this unit is good, because we can do lots of different things with this programe called Audacity. I had some difficults to utilize it specially at the beginning of the unit and at the begining of the course. But little by little there is no impossible.

I hope that this unit could help you to do lots of amazing things. And I soupose that that's all. I will be back in a few months, explaining all about the next unit!
See you friends!

Margaret Hamilton

Who is she?

Margaret Hamilton was the lead software engineer for Project Apollo. The one that travelled to the moon. So the software that had that rocket, was designed by Hamilton.

I have been sourprised about this article about Margaret Hamilton. When I herd that name I thought that was the actress of the Wizard of Oz, the one that interpretates de green bad witch.

But after that I saw the link that our Computer Sciences' teacher send by e-mail to us. I was wrong. There was another Margaret Hamilton that works in the NASA and was one of the firsts women to demostrate that the girls are the same as the boys, that the girls could do all things as men do and that the girls can be very clever and not silly, us the boys thought.

I was sourprised because he made a really good job with a computer, when she didn't study Computer Science. She studied maths at the university.

Really she is a very strong woman, she oviously had to change some ideas from her head that tell her that she couldn't, I think that she had to be a bit headstrong to afront the difficulties that the women had in that moment.

LibreOffice Calc

LibreOffice Calc

Heeey!!! How are you guys? Last day of Computer Science's class we did the exam off the new unit called Calc, it's a spreadsheet, It's like Excel in Windows, but there are some diferences, like that Excel cost money and Calc not, because it's free, of course, Excel has more options than Calc, because a free program, at normally, is not better than one where you have to pay.


A spreadsheet is a program for computers, and as with all things, there are different "brands". One from Windows, from LibreOffice, etc.
This sheet is squared, each square is called a cell. In hat cells you can write.
With thhis program you can do basic operations, like additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions; or more difficult things, like with 10 numbers selectionate the maxim one, etc.
These program, can made all this things automatically with some especifically codes.

Now you know what is a spreadsheet, and you are going to understand better what did my class and I with Calc. In total we did seven exercises that our teacher prepared to us.

Activities:

 First activitiy:

In that activity we had to calculate how much does th picnic cost. That's the most easy activitie, because to calculate this you only had to multiplicate the price by the quantity and finally you had to add all things. 

 





In that activity you can make some triks, like, if you don't want to calculate each row you can "sweep along", it consists in do click into the right down corner and sweep algong the number of cells you want to copy the code that is into the first one. You must play atention because sometimes it's wrong. The majority of times that doesn't wotks is because is changing the cell. To change this and transform a normal cell into a permenent one, you must press: CNTRL+F4.





Second activity:
 
In that activity we must search the information of each country (GDP per capita and population). After that, we had to calculate the percentage of the average US$ that had the habitants from these country.









Third activity:

That activity was the same as the last one, but we add:

·The number of countries that there where.

·The maximum GDP per capita.

·The minimum GDP per capita.

·How many countries name start by "S".

·How many countries namecontent "an".

·How many countries end in "a".





Forth activity:

In that activity we must calculate:
· If each GDP per capita was Above or Under respect the average.
· Colour each GDP per capita green if its GDP it's Above the average or red if it's UNder it.
· Put a code that tells you how many countries have its GDP per capita above the limit, or below it.

Also in this activitie we did an extension where we must calculate how many countries are very poor, how many poor, how many that are in development, how many are rich and how many are very rich.

Fifth activity: 

This activity is about graphics, it's about how to create a bar code, or in circle form, etc.

And we had to create the next graphics:

Sixth activity:

This is the last activity we did before the exam. This is the most difficult, because we must to:

· Put a code that tells the day it is.

· Put our day  of birthday.

· Calculate how many days I have.

· Put a code that tells you a random number.

· Put a code that transforms roman numbers into arabic ones.

· Put a code that transforms arabic numbers into roman ones.

· Finally  we must to calculate series:

          Arithmetic series:

              · One that sume one to the quantity into the previous cell.

              · One that sume five to the quantity into the previous cell.

              · One that sume one hundred to the quantity into the previous cell.

          Geometric series:

              · One that multiplicates the quantity into the previous cell by two.

              · One that multiplicates the quantity into the previous cell by three.

          Date series:

              · One that sume one day to the date into the previous cell.

              · One that sume one month to the date into the previous cell.

              · One that sume one year to de date into the previous cell.

              · One that count all the labour days since the first date where the serie        started.

That's all folks!

I hope that you have learned a lot about this unit that I work into. I want to tell tu you that this kind of pregrams, the spreadsheets, are very usefull to many situations along your live, because you can make since a picnic list, etc., to to use it for accounts. If you are thinking abaut to be a secretary or a counting person, this will be very important to you.

See you in the next unit.

Bye!