...and have you ever (like me) watched Stargate and thought "Those guys can't interfere with this other planet, they're violating the Prime Directive!"
and the closest he's come to geeking out is to leave the store-bought receiver upstairs for his wife. He can work down in the basement and listen to the baby monitor with his own RF equipment.
As a software engineer, I know better than to muck with Proggoddess 2.0 while her system is rebooting.:)
For us, the storebought audio-only monitor was good enough. It is so sensitive, it can pick up the birds and crickets chirping outside when the windows are closed. We pretty much stopped using it after the 3rd month as our little screaming alarm clock is loud enough now at 6 months.
Funny OT story. My parents' rubber plant is made of plastic. *ba-dum dum! rimshot*
If that weren't funny enough, guests who come over don't always know it is an artificial plant. One person asked "How did you get your rubber plant to bloom like that?"
I'm a SW engineer at ATTO Technology, and one of the products here is a RAID-capable disk array. I truthfully don't know all that much about its behind-the-scenes workings as I am on a different project. The Diamond is capable of holding 24 ATA disks for a total of 7.2 TB for less than $10/GB. It does Fibre Channel or SCSI, and it can emulate a tape drive to be used with your favorite backup software.
My mother dislikes gift cards and gift certificates because if the store goes out of business, you lose that money. Would we now get to stand in line before they declare bankruptcy and try to get our money back?
If you're worried about store closings, expiration dates, etc. just send plain old cash as a gift. Cash is good anywhere for anything, doesn't lose value more than "normal" and doesn't expire.
Actually, I agree. In high school, I was a member of the chess club. In college, I joined the roleplaying/boardgaming club. Birds of a feather flock together. All the nerds and geeks would be there and you could meet a lot of new potential friends and learn to interact in an "easier" environment.
As for gaming itself, it is a social activity. It has rules for how to behave and how to react to other people's moves. That is why children are given games. To strengthen their social skills. To learn how to share, be good sports, understand emotions.....
With roleplaying specifically, these games let you be someone else, free to try out certain social actions which you would never do in real life because of the real-life consequences. After awhile, some of this experimentation in social interaction makes its way back into the real world. (Hopefully for the better and not for the worse.)
I remember the days when I was in college at the University at Buffalo and a member of their gaming club. I learned to play Paranoia by signing up for their LARP version of Paranoia. It's a lot more fun with evil props and no rules. Challenges were arbitrated with the use of old land cards from Magic: The Gathering. If you drew a color that was lower than your security clearance, you won the challenge. Of course the "computer" would always stack the deck against you...
I think this is the URL for the club web page: http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/sarpa
There are several things that you might be trying to teach at the same time: 1) mathematics and logic, 2) computer science algorithms, 3) good programming habits, and 4) working hard and enjoying the finished product.
Obviously, any programming language will result in #4 (provided they do finish their project!).
Visual environments take away some of #1 and #2. It's too easy to use a calculator than to learn long division.
Strict and structured languages promote #3. Environments like Emacs can be set up to smartly indent code so it is more readable.
I'm a software engineer (yay, process!), and I think it would be a great bonus if kids worked in pairs or threes, with each one doing part of the program. Then they have to put the two pieces together. Bad indentation, and lack of comments will be frowned upon by the others. I remember in high school, one classmate of mine named all of his variables after his uncles. Try maintaining that code!;)
I grew up with the BASIC book, Blast Off! published (I think) by Sybex, circa 1985. It covered all structures and statements, and some low-res graphics. It finished with a project that put all of the pieces together into a graphical story with animation. Your local library may have this and other "oldie but goodie" out-of-print books.
In summary: I'd recommend a non-visual environment with a strict language like Pascal or Java. Working in groups will use peer pressure to keep coding habits in line. Having a book that starts off small then finishes with a big, fun, graphical project will build a sense of accomplishment.
Slashdot Mirror
...and have you ever (like me) watched Stargate and thought "Those guys can't interfere with this other planet, they're violating the Prime Directive!"
I hope you don't feel this way with respect to humans....
and the closest he's come to geeking out is to leave the store-bought receiver upstairs for his wife. He can work down in the basement and listen to the baby monitor with his own RF equipment.
:)
As a software engineer, I know better than to muck with Proggoddess 2.0 while her system is rebooting.
For us, the storebought audio-only monitor was good enough. It is so sensitive, it can pick up the birds and crickets chirping outside when the windows are closed. We pretty much stopped using it after the 3rd month as our little screaming alarm clock is loud enough now at 6 months.
Funny OT story. My parents' rubber plant is made of plastic. *ba-dum dum! rimshot*
If that weren't funny enough, guests who come over don't always know it is an artificial plant. One person asked "How did you get your rubber plant to bloom like that?"
"Oh, you keep it in the dark and don't water it."
I'm a SW engineer at ATTO Technology, and one of the products here is a RAID-capable disk array. I truthfully don't know all that much about its behind-the-scenes workings as I am on a different project. The Diamond is capable of holding 24 ATA disks for a total of 7.2 TB for less than $10/GB. It does Fibre Channel or SCSI, and it can emulate a tape drive to be used with your favorite backup software.
Here's the link for more info:
Diamond Storage Array
My mother dislikes gift cards and gift certificates because if the store goes out of business, you lose that money. Would we now get to stand in line before they declare bankruptcy and try to get our money back?
If you're worried about store closings, expiration dates, etc. just send plain old cash as a gift. Cash is good anywhere for anything, doesn't lose value more than "normal" and doesn't expire.
Why not combine both jobs? ;)
Newtons are fruit and cake.
Actually, I agree. In high school, I was a member of the chess club. In college, I joined the roleplaying/boardgaming club. Birds of a feather flock together. All the nerds and geeks would be there and you could meet a lot of new potential friends and learn to interact in an "easier" environment.
As for gaming itself, it is a social activity. It has rules for how to behave and how to react to other people's moves. That is why children are given games. To strengthen their social skills. To learn how to share, be good sports, understand emotions.....
With roleplaying specifically, these games let you be someone else, free to try out certain social actions which you would never do in real life because of the real-life consequences. After awhile, some of this experimentation in social interaction makes its way back into the real world. (Hopefully for the better and not for the worse.)
I remember the days when I was in college at the University at Buffalo and a member of their gaming club. I learned to play Paranoia by signing up for their LARP version of Paranoia. It's a lot more fun with evil props and no rules. Challenges were arbitrated with the use of old land cards from Magic: The Gathering. If you drew a color that was lower than your security clearance, you won the challenge. Of course the "computer" would always stack the deck against you...
I think this is the URL for the club web page: http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/sarpa
There are several things that you might be trying to teach at the same time: 1) mathematics and logic, 2) computer science algorithms, 3) good programming habits, and 4) working hard and enjoying the finished product.
Obviously, any programming language will result in #4 (provided they do finish their project!).
Visual environments take away some of #1 and #2. It's too easy to use a calculator than to learn long division.
Strict and structured languages promote #3. Environments like Emacs can be set up to smartly indent code so it is more readable.
I'm a software engineer (yay, process!), and I think it would be a great bonus if kids worked in pairs or threes, with each one doing part of the program. Then they have to put the two pieces together. Bad indentation, and lack of comments will be frowned upon by the others. I remember in high school, one classmate of mine named all of his variables after his uncles. Try maintaining that code! ;)
I grew up with the BASIC book, Blast Off! published (I think) by Sybex, circa 1985. It covered all structures and statements, and some low-res graphics. It finished with a project that put all of the pieces together into a graphical story with animation. Your local library may have this and other "oldie but goodie" out-of-print books.
In summary: I'd recommend a non-visual environment with a strict language like Pascal or Java. Working in groups will use peer pressure to keep coding habits in line. Having a book that starts off small then finishes with a big, fun, graphical project will build a sense of accomplishment.