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traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body

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A gif of the micro:bit simulator

I just found this post in my drafts, last edit September 2023, the bug mentioned is still there and I think it is worth remembering the creativity shown by my class.

For the past couple of weeks, we have been working on a micro:bit project in class. One of the interesting aspects of working with a diverse group is the need to introduce new ideas and topics to the class, especially when some students already have experience in the area. This year, my class is Primary 5, 6, and 7. The Primary 7s have already had some exposure to micro:bit and other block coding environments.

I decided to focus on the virtual pets project from the makecode site for our first project. In my classroom, we use the micro:bit app on our iPads for coding, and it and the micro:bits has had a couple of useful improvements. Since the last session, the ability to download data to the iPad has been introduced, although we haven’t explored it yet, but I hope to do so soon. Another improvement is a simpler method for resetting the micro:bit when connecting via Bluetooth, making it more accessible for smaller fingers.

I introduced the topic by discussing Tamagotchi pets, which I remember being popular in my class over two decades ago. The virtual pet project is a lot simpler in comparison, with just two features: when a pet is stroked, it smiles, and when it’s shaken, it frowns.

The limited functionality left plenty of room for exploration for the 5 primary 7s with experience. Leaving plenty of time for me to make sure the others managed the basics, linking to. Micro:bit flashing code etc. I did drop the words food and health into the conversation but didn’t go any further.

We ended up having three sessions with the micro:bits and I was delighted with the results. Between them the sevens recalled variables from last year and were off. We ended up with pets needing fed to avoid death, being sick if fed too much and getting annoyed if they were petted too much. The younger pupils managed the basics and extended them in simpler ways, animating chewing and drinking or reacting to different buttons.
One primary six who had previous experience did just as well as the primary sevens, his pet had these features:

  • Sleep
  • Be happy if stroked (press logo)
  • Be sad if shaken
  • Die (wait long enough and don’t feed it)
  • Be sick if fed to much(can be cured using b)
  • Be scared (by making a noise/blowing/filling the red bar 180+)
  • Be fed (using A)
  • Get a health check (A+B)
micro pets on the Banton Biggies

The first three were part of the class instructions, taken from the make code site, the rest were pupil ideas.

Of course lots of mistakes were made along the way, but it was great to see solutions worked out, shared with neighbours and lights go on. Quite a few pupils used wee bits of free time to explore and test ideas completely independently.

On Friday we went to post on our e-portfolios about the work and embed your pets in the blogs. Editing the shortcode to do this is a bit tricky and we also ran into a problem with the simulator not embedding properly. Half the micro:bits were hidden. At first I thought this would be a problem with Glow Blogs, but later investigation showed it to be a problem with the makecode code. We workaround it by embedding the editor rather than the simulator. I do hope the makecode folk sort this out. Since it affects their documentation too I expect they will.

I continue to be a micro:bit fan and will be using them throughout the year, hopefully incorporating it into our makerspace projects too.

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Webpage with description and image of a European Goldfinch on a branch against a blue sky.

Image Accessibility Creator · Streamlit

Impressive ai generated descriptions and alt text from images. I found adding even a one word helped.

Via Doug Belshaw: How to easily generate image descriptions and alt text | Thought Shrapnel

After taking a screenshot I fed it back to the webpage (too tempting) and got:

Image Description: A screenshot of a webpage with the header “asuo-ai-labs.streamlit.app” shown in the top center. The screen is divided into two main sections. On the left, under the heading “Image and Details,” there is a section for uploading an image. A placeholder box labeled “Drag and drop file here” or “Browse files” is visible. Below it, there is a thumbnail of an image labeled “IMG_9865.jpeg” which is 2.8 MB in size. The image thumbnail shows a European Goldfinch perched on a budding branch against a clear blue sky. Below the thumbnail, there is a toggle switch labeled “Add details about the image,” which is turned on. A text box is filled in with the word “Goldfinch.”

On the right side of the webpage, there is a section labeled “Image Description.” Below it, a detailed description of the image is provided, as well as a short alt text. The image description reads: “The image features a European Goldfinch perched on a budding branch against a backdrop of a clear blue sky. The Goldfinch displays vibrant plumage with a distinctive red face, a mix of black and white on its head, a warm beige chest, and brownish wings with yellow accents. The branch, adorned with small, white buds and green leaves, stretches horizontally across the bottom right of the image, while the bird is slightly right of center. The serene sky comprises soft, light blue gradients without any visible clouds.”

The alt-text reads: “European Goldfinch perched on a budding branch against a clear blue sky.”

Alt-Text: Webpage with description and image of a European Goldfinch on a branch against a blue sky.

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In reply to gratefully inspired by joe jenett.

Hi Joe, glad you are good. Your dedication to linking certainly inspires me!

Thanks for the comment. I think of taking photos more like a notepad than ‘photography’. I use my camera for recall, identifying things and quite often instead of binoculars. I use a bridge camera with a 60x zoom. Always shoot auto. My framing is often pot luck especially zoomed in. I occasionally think I should get a DSLR (or some-such) and a big lens, but I’d never learn to use it and could not really justify the cost.

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Scots Pines in the dark

This morning I joined in with the reveil Dawn Chorus Day 2024.

Reveil (2014—) is a collective production by streamers at listening points around the earth. Starting on the morning of Saturday 4 May in South London near the Greenwich Meridian, the broadcast will pick up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following the wave of intensified sound that loops the earth every 24 hours at first light.

I was streaming from Victoria Park, a short walk from our flat. I was on my way by 4:00

I had to change my audio setup a little this year, a new phone put my lightning mic out of action, so I used a h4n recorder as a mic.

It was dark overcast and the ground was pretty wet, but it didn’t rain. All the way to the park the blackbirds were already singing loudly. A shadow fox seemed to be around a bin but no one else was about. There was a bit of traffic on the Expressway making a noise.

Audio setup in the dark. H4N recorder with dead cat, connected to iPhone
I got set up and was streaming by 4:30.

An old sim-less iPhone 6 using my broadcasting phone as a hot point allowed me to listen at the same time. It is quite strange listening to local birds in one ear and ones that are very far away in the other.

Unfortunately although I could hear the main stream the IRC widget on the page didn’t work for me. When I tested it earlier in the 24 hours it was fine, but this morning it wanted a password…

A short clip of my stream.

I could listen and see what was playing, look at the schedule and figure out it might be a little behind. I kept my broadcast running. I think just after 5:30 I heard a shout out for my stream. Unfortunately by that time a helicopter was flying around the park and the result was pretty unpleasant. The broadcast moves quite swiftly on to the next stream.

A clip with helicopter, I think this is what was broadcast, around a minute in!
Dawn view, audio set up with park in background. A path through an avenue of trees.
Dawn View ~ 5:30am

Reveil was a good excuse/motivator to get up and listen for a while. I found it hard to listen and identify any birds locally, while listening to other sites. My bird song knowledge is not good. The old iPhone 6 wouldn’t let me use the Merlin app to sound ID. I am also interested in distributed collaboration so the whole process was good to see. There were some amazing broadcasts form around the world.

Listening back to some of my recordings I can hear just how much traffic and noise pollution there is even with helicopters.

If this is on next year and I join in, I might try going further afield to somewhere with less traffic and thinking about a better second device. I suppose that I could also try getting up and 3:30am all by myself, but I am not sure I’ve got the willpower or my wife would understand.

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I’ve loved RSS since I started blogging. I’ve been using Feedland as an RSS reader since it started.

Feedland is an interesting and opinionated take on an RSS reader. I particularly like the way it makes me think about the interface & purpose of readers.

Dave Winer has been writing a lot about blogrolls recently. He developing a way for you to display a list of Feedland feeds on a drummer blog and now in WordPress. I tried both and they work.

I had been displaying my Feedland feeds on my blogroll page. I am using some Javascript of my own. Inn my sidebar using the links widget and Jan Boddez‘s plugin to sync my links with Feedland. My new Feedland Blogroll uses Dave’s technology.

A Feedland blogroll is a bit different than a straightforward list of links. It is more like a mini feedreader. Each link can be expanded to show the recent posts from a site. The list is constantly reordered to show the most updated site at the top. This reordering points to the river of news idea, I think, as opposed to the completionist way of doing things. There is no marking things as read. It is a handy way to read and a great alternative to other feed readers.

I just added my whole list of Feedland feeds. This is a subset of RSS feeds I’ve followed, some from years ago, it is not yet thoughtful list. All of the recent blogroll discussion has had me thinking a bit about this.

When I started blogging, pre twitter, a lot of my posts were in response to other ‘ScotEduBloggers’. For a while we had a lively community going. Back then I could have really used this Feedland style blog roll in my sidebar. The blogroll then would have reflected this community. The conversation then moved on to twitter and other places, even LinkedIn!

Now I am thinking that my blogroll should go on its own page. To use as a casual feedreader by myself and a source of interesting sources for others.

The perceived audience might affect the feeds I include. If I was creating a blogroll to share links I might skip many of the more popular and well shared feeds and concentrate on ones that might not be so obvious. For example I don’t support many mac inclined people would need a link to Daring Fireball. If the audience is me, I might want a different set of feeds.

At the moment the plugin gets the users whose feeds and categories you display from the settings. I wonder could these be replace/augmented by parameters in the shortcode, for example instead of [feedland-blogroll] you could have [feedland-blogroll user="johnjohnston" category="nature" ] that would mean you could have different blogrolls on different pages.

The Feedland Blogroll interface is rather nice, reminiscent of Mac system 7 in some ways (my first ui and I loved it). It is a perfect fit for a blog sidebar on a desktop/laptop screen. I am wondering about a couple of things:

  1. Since I want it on a page on its own, would it be sensible to add a bit of css to fill more of my page.
  2. Could it be adapted for mobile. That is where I often read feeds. I’d like it to have a slightly bigger font so that the links and disclosure arrows are easier to hit. The interface has a nice tooltips on hover. I wonder could that be adapted for a phone.

I am not sure if these ideas are either practical or possible. I am sure The FeedLand Blogroll is an idea to follow.

Here is the  WordPress plugin and instructions for Drummer.

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The FeedLand blogroll on Drummer blogs was a snip to set up. Here is mine. Looks very nice imo. I’ve not been blogging via drummer for a year, but Dave says there is a WordPress plugin in the works.

I’ve had my feedland blogroll on my WordPress site in a couple of different ways, via Jan’s plugin on the sidebar and my own script on a page. This is more interesting. Like Frank, I hope I can get the blogroll on it’s own page on my WordPress site. I am also just dumping my whole FeedLand list at the moment. I think I’d want to edit that down for a blog roll, perhaps missing out the more obvious links in favour of folk who I interact with.

I’ve had a blogroll on my site for most of its existence. There seems to be a bit of a resurgence at the moment. Hopefully this will lead to a more open and connected web. Dave’s version expands the concept from a list of links towards a feed reader experience. I am wondering if it is heading towards the way Ton’s feedreader seems to work. As it stands it is a great way to get reference links while writing.

Finally I and enjoying writing this post in Drummer, and am going to post it to my WordPress blog with a script Frank shared.

Published on my Oldschool Drummer blog

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In reply to https://x.com/Mr_Minchin/status/1778675103540125929.

Maybe it’s because it’s been the holidays and I’ve had more time on my phone – but the amount of hate speech on social platforms 😥 People like Joey Barton able to tweet with impunity, vile TikTok comments the norm & never removed. More work for teachers brewing

Blair Minchen

And still we are here. It boggles my mind that nations, governments, schools use social media as their main conduit of information, platforms that they have no control of.

Internet pile-ons are pivotal to the plot. Do you use social media?
No, I’ve never had a Facebook account or anything. I find it depressing for people on the left to indulge the mechanisms of neoliberal tech-bro billionaires who make huge profits from algorithms that enable a bearpit mentality.

from today’s observer I’m on the left – I’ve been in a union for years – Sunjeev Sahota

ironically, perhaps, the online title is Sunjeev Sahota: ‘I’ve always been in labour movements – but I’m critical of identity politics’