Anyone for Wiff-Waf

It's the rise of the machines!

If you didn't know, Wiff-Waff was the original name for table tennis, and is, surprise surprise, another sport invented by Great Britain as far back as the 1880's. Made popular as Ping-Pong, table tennis requires incredible hand eye co-ordination, tremendously fast reflexes, the ability to predict where the ball will be from a millisecond's worth of seeing where the ball is in relation to the table, fantastic athleticism and flexibility to be able to stretch and reach for those apparently impossible to reach for balls, and finally unbelievable sense of touch, knowing when to hit the ball hard or change the pace by hitting it softly so it just falls over the net.  In short not something you would associate with robots.  But you'd be wrong!

The video shows an epic match between Timo Boll, the best player in Germany, and a Kuka robot. Apparently the fastest robot around. While Timo is pretty good - I'm sure you could all give him a good game - what the robot does is amazing.  It must have motion detectors (cameras) to give it vision, incredibly fast processing power to handle all the calculations necessary to predict where the ball will be, fantastically quick motors to get the bat into the right position in time and sensitive touch sensors to be able to control the ball.

While Timo wins, just, what sport or activity do you think you can do better than robots? Chess, Snooker perhaps.  When do you think robots will take over the world?

Man, Machine in Perfect Harmony

Forget 'One Direction', forget the latest X factor favourite, Justin Bieber or any other talentless wannabee.  Do yourself a favour and watch the movie below.

It may seem humdrum at first, but watch how it develops.  It shows true creativity and technology in action.  All you need is coupla' of robots, cameras, a computer, fancy software, shed loads of talent, together with that extra something that makes all the difference: Imagination.

So don't bother with ridiculous haircuts, throw away those Voi Jeans - they're so last year -, dump the Ugg boots, if you want to be sub-zero COOL, grab yourself a computer, embrace your inner nerd and start creatin'.

What you you make?

Your teachers are past it?

Everyone who's made it big, did it while they were young.  Richard Branson (Virgin), Albert Einstein (Theory of Relativity - don't be misled by the famous picture of him as an old man), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Bill Gates (Microsoft),  Steves' Wozniak & Jobs (Apple), Hewlett & Packard (guess what they did!), the list goes on and on. Well they've just been joined by one of the newest and youngest internet millionaires, Nick D'Aloisio.

Nick D'Alosio

Young Nick at 17 has just been given more than £20 million by Yahoo for a phone app he developed when he was even younger at 15.  Developed at home, the app he called Summly uses clever programming to produce a daily digest of all the main news stories on a phone, providing users with quick links to more detailed articles.

It was only released in the Apple Store four months ago, but since then its gathered over one million downloads.  Amazing stuff.

Nick's success, again proves that it's the young, the one's closest to new developing trends, that have the coolest ideas: age is not a barrier to success.  And with technology, armed with a simple computer, any one can produce world beating apps in their bedroom.

So what's stopping you?  What ideas have you got for a phone app?  What would you like to see on your phone?

Ignorance is no longer a barrier. You'll find out to develop phone apps  in a new upcoming unit on android programming.  All that's missing is the starting idea, so get your thinking hats on!

How would you spend £20 million smackers?

The End of the World is Nigh!

No its not Armageddon, nor the end of the Mayan calender.  Rather, could it be the end of the desktop computer as we've come to know it and love.

Back before the tablet, further back before the notebook, and even further back before the relative cheapness of laptops, most people's first contact with computers, was through the tower and screen of the typical desktop computer.  While not mobile, the desktop computer retained lots of advantages when compared to the developing laptop market.  To begin with, they were a lot cheaper.  With more space in the tower, they could have bigger hard disks giving them greater backing storage.  They had more powerful graphics cards giving them greater game playing ability and with more input and output sockets they could connect to almost every type of device, from joysticks through full sized keyboards to the ability to output to multiple monitors. More memory could be packed in and with space for big cooling fans and heat sinks faster processors could be used.  In almost every way, apart from portability, desktops had the advantage over laptops.

More Poowwwwerrrrr!!

For Power Users

For Steam Punk Fans

For Motorbike enthusiasts

And best of all.  Desktop PC's could be fully customised and be easily built at home according to your own needs or specifications. They could be game orientated or built especially for web or program development. Or for video editing or for business needs.  For example I know someone whose desktop computer has 24 Gb (shed loads) of RAM memory and backing storage of 48 Terabytes (48,000 Gigabytes, more than all the school desktop computers put together)

Nowadays, the key aim is for mobile computing and so development is focused around small laptops, tablets, 4G smart phones etc.  And manufacturers - Samsung, HTC, Lenovo and Apple in particular etc - don't like people messing with the innards of their machines and anyway, there isn't any room for custom bits and pieces.  So more mobility means being less fixed to desktop machines which means less need for for desktops which means an end to customisation and so fewer people building their own computers.   So it's not so much video killed the radio star, its more mobility killed the desktop!

Is this true!  Are we at the beginning of the death of the desktop?  Or if you have a desktop, how would like to see it customised?  What would you add or remove to make it your own?  It has to be more than a sticker!

Computers. Huh! What are they good for? Absolutely nothin'!

Has Santa been kind to you this Christmas? Did you get the gadgets that you wished for?

Nowadays, thanks to scientists, computer engineers and programmers, you can get truly amazing mind 'fizz-boggling' tech. From robotic pets with artificial intelligence, through cameras with inbuilt GPS that can tag your pictures with the exact position you took them from, to tiny phones with the same processing power of 5 year old desktop computers. But the question has to be asked what is all this tech used for?

Surely, given the heavy duty expense of developing all this tech and the real cleverness of the people involved in making it all work - they are a cut above the usual Big Brother, reality game show fodder desperate for their 15 minutes of fame. - it has to be used for more than watching yet another 'You Tube' vid of tipsy Granny's attempting to POGO to Firestarter by The Prodigy

And while its sometimes good to play games and blow up stuff.  There has to be more to making use of this life changing technology than using it to blow up even more stuff.  Skype, incidentally developed in Estonia by Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn showing that the web isn't all about the Americans and the British (although Skype is now owned by Microsoft.) is great for keeping in touch with friends and the 'rellies' over long distances.  But really, do you need to 'skype' your friends who you've been talking to and text messaging all day and are seeing later the same evening.

Everyone knows that 'it's good to share'.  It's this principal that's made social networking popular.  People like sharing: sharing their knowledge, helping others, showing off and keeping in touch. Sometimes though you can 'overshare' as the recent program "Don't Blame it on Facebook" demonstrated.  People can be arrested and loose their jobs as a result of comments made through social networking.  And there is such thing as 'too much information'.  Believe it or not, not everyone cares about your latest bowel movements or that your chances of getting a girl friend is listed as 'mission impossible' unless you want everyone's pity or your status is listed as the 'original wild child' - no you're not.

So what do you use your computer for?  Are there any creative's out there?

Does anyone use their computer or tablets for photo-shopping pictures, composing music, creating 'mash ups', building websites, writing essays, books or poetry, solving maths problems, analysing data, research or finding out how to do things.

Come on: tell us what you do with all this tech!

The future's bright, the future's orange!

In the beginning, you could have any colour computer you liked, as long it was beige! I've no idea why why. It may be designers wanted computer's to blend into the background and offices being bland soulless places meant that computer's had to be beige. Or, it may have been something to do with chemistry - the only colour they could get to work with plastics, or more likely they simply weren't concerned with what computers looked like:  they were too busy trying to get them to work.

To think the world used to be this beige!

With the reliability of computer parts improving, laptops appeared on the scene and lo', a whole new world of colour was opened up - not!. Now you could have any laptop you like as long it was black, or various shades of dark gray.

At the same time Apple was falling into economic trouble while it was trying to launch the ill fated Newton hand held.  But then a saviour appeared.  Not Steve Jobs, but a true British hero Jonathan Ive, now head of design at Apple.  He looked around him and saw all was dark and he walked upon the face of the dark, and said 'let there be light' and the coloured see through IMAC was born.

Imac computers in their various colours

Known by some, as ladies' computers, because they chose them by the colour, they could have heralded a new age of colour, but then Jonathan Ive gave up on colour.  Now everything Apple, has to be abattoir white. But there is a rebellion under-way   Some computer manufacturers  are beginning to produce laptops in different colours and with lots of coloured covers for tablet computers appearing, we could be moving into a bright coloured future.

Which colour would you choose?

The thing is, what colour would you like for your device(s)?  Do you prefer the binary world of black or white or do you want a different future?  If you could design a cover for a tablet or computer what would it be like?  Produce it in Fireworks or a similar program, and have it featured on this blog.  Can you be the next Jonathan Ive?

Apples Are Not the Only Fruit

In an earlier post, the cheap and cheerful Sinclair Spectrum was mentioned as one of the  triggers for the rapid growth in popularity for home computing in the late 70's and early 80's; at least in the UK. A simple box with a built in keyboard, it came without a monitor and had to be plugged into a TV.  With only a few commercial programs about, most programs had to be written by users.

The lead that Britain had in home computing was quickly lost, as companies like Apple led the way in making easy to use, powerful, but expensive computers.  Putting companies like Sinclair and Apricot - another fruit - out of business.

Now though, those sunny upland days may be here again with the new Raspberry Pi  computer which costs only a measley £15 to £25!  Yes folks! You’ve read correctly: they really are that cheap.  Admittedly a screen and a keyboard is needed, but everyone has a TV and keyboards can be had for under £.5.  Compared to hundreds of pounds needed for smart phones, tablets and laptops, they’re cheap as chips. And Raspberry Pi’s only weigh 1.5oz (42.5 in new fangled grams ) so they’re light on your pocket in every sense of the word. See here for more specs http://gdgt.com/raspberry-pi/a/specs/

Linux provides the operating system which makes the Raspberry Pi work.  Some see this as a disadvantage, but I prefer to see it as an opportunity. Linux is, in my humble opinion, the best operating system around and free too.  But it does mean that  many programs and apps  have to be created by users.  An excellent way of mastering programming skills and as the country is short of programmers, becoming one, represents one the of best ways of guaranteeing a job as you can possibly get.

It strikes me then, that we have travelled a full circle. Moving from the Sinclair Spectrum through expensive bigger boxes running overpriced programs created by multinational corporations, back to cheap, small but still powerful computers - they work at around  the same speed as an IPAD - which have to be programmed by their owners.  So the future is Raspberry flavoured and the question is: If you were to invent a computer, what fruit would you name it after?

What does Justin Bieber, the Mona Lisa and Computing have in Common?

Okay.  I might have made a mistake with Justin Bieber.  Some might consider him a pop sensation with a shed loads of talent.  Others might think he artificial internet media construct created  by Simon Cowell wannabees to sell as much bland insipid music to thoughtless teenagers with no taste in or knowledge of music.  Me.  I couldn't possibly comment, but if you want to see real music made by a real band, check out the video below.

Anyway, wandering off the point. Which is, what do music, art and computing have in common?   The answer is of course, CREATIVITY.

What?  Computing! Creativity! Surely that's all wrong.  Not at all.  You might have been told by teachers and some of them, whisper it quietly, might have been computing teachers, that computing is a technical subject.  And that like all technical subjects such as maths or physics, things are either right or wrong.  Well in computing, the real answer on most occasions may be, Maybe.

Computers and computing software are nothing but tools created by programmers to help us do a job.  And like nearly everything in life, there is more than one way to solve a problem and whether one way is better than another, is often a matter of opinion.  Even programmers will disagree about the best way to write a program to solve a task.  And the best bit is, if there isn't a piece of software to help you, programmers will create one, perhaps even make up a new programming language to help them do it.

If you have any doubts about this, look at the huge number of apps appearing not just for the iPhone/iPad, but also Android and Windows devices.  They're all similar, but different, illustrating the creativity involved in making them and enabling the creativity of those using them.

But what do you think?  Do you think computing is creative?  Have you used software and computers to create something different?

And what about Justin Bieber.  Is he wunderkind and the future of popular music or what?

Is Computing Unique?

In maths, two plus  two has always equalled four; at least in the real world it does.  In history, William has been known as a Conqueror  from 1066, when Harold couldn't see the point and lost at Hastings. And Wellington still gave Napoleon a thrashing at Waterloo in 1815, no matter what the French say.  In Geography, Paris has been where its always been since about 250 BC and plate tectonics has been with us for about 12 billion years.  And, although I'm waiting for the Tarantino version, Romeo and Juliet was still written by Shakespeare in around 1594.  So as you can see most subjects don't change a lot.

ZX Sinclair Spectrum 

Computing on the other hand, changes all the time.  Despite Mr Thomas Watson believing "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." (chairman of IBM, 1943. - Ooops!, got that wrong), computing has gradually taken off and started to move into the home around 1982 with the Sinclair Spectrum, one of the earliest home computers in 1982 which you had to program yourself.

From there, computing has experienced growth like nothing else. Moving from Spectrum, to the desktop, to the laptop, the palm top and now the smart phone and the tablet.  In fact, things are changing so quickly that by   the time any hardware and software hits the shops, its already out of date; the IPad 3 is just about out and people are already talking about what's going to be on the IPad 4.  This inbuilt obsolescence is also true of text books which, by definition can only illuminate past technology not what's happening today.  So, if you want to be part of an exciting rapidly changing subject, leading at the cutting edge of technology and social development, requiring mental flexibility and a problem solving approach to life - we have no problems, only solutions - you've got to choose Computing.

Or do you, prefer the old certainties of other subjects where nothing happens very much?

What do think?  What are your favourite subjects?

A New Look

As everyone in Scotland knows, qualifications are a'changin:  out going is the Standard Grade and Intermediate's to be replaced by the Nationals.

To coincide with the change over, we in the Computing and Business Education Faculty at Johnstone High School are experimenting with a new look to our growing website at JHigh.Co.UK.

The current look is beginning to look old hat and in cutting edge web design there has been a move away from the old banner plus 3 column main content structure, which is still a very flexible and easily adaptable construction.

As you can see the new look is very different with broadly speaking two different panels.  On the left hand side is a picture of an urban street dancer, which is intended to convey a sense of dynamism.  Computing and technology is unlike any other subject in that it is so totally dynamic.  The age of a the 'dancer' is intended to indicate the main orientation of the site in that it is intended for Secondary School age young pupils.

some happy shiny and smiley folk

Although the image might be a bit gritty and urban for adults and educators, it represents an attempt to break away from the clichéd representation of  bright, shiny, smiley young people that most designers use in 99% educational web sites.  Not that they are not at bright and shiny at Johnstone High School, its just that the usual pictures chosen are orientated more towards parents and adults rather than young people who attend the school.  And we hope that the continued development of the site is going to be very much under the influence of those who use it.

The right hand panel contains category headings (plain boxes with text headings) and images.  The images are links to different courses. For example Computing contains links to Standard Grade, Intermediate and Higher courses.  The construction of the panel in this way allows great flexibility, with new courses just requiring a new image to be added to the page with very little HTML code.  The page will automatically adjust to the new link and not require a major revision.

Anyway that's fairly lengthy explanation as to why we've changed our look.  You can still gain entry to the old look through the about us link.


What we want know from visitors and everyone else who uses this site is "What do think of the new look?  Like or dislike?