Associated with an educational website at http:\\JHIGH.CO.UK owned and developed by the Computing and Business Education Faculty of Johnstone High School. Provides content, lessons and instructional videos across a range of Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) courses with a computing or business orientation.
I've always admired people who could play musical instruments. As my father said to me, if you can play the guitar, you'll always be invited to parties. Unfortunately, I started to play the violin and not, it has to be admitted, terribly well. Nevertheless, I clearly remember being in the Student's Union bar. A Music student played the piano and he had the ability to play by ear. With a few hummed notes he could reproduce any tune requested by the remains of a late night audience. To this day, I remain impressed by the casual confidence with which he did something truly well.
I was reminded of this recently by one of the Wonga adverts, featuring a highly talented guitarist - Ben Lapps - playing against a CGI (computer generated imagery) old man character. Initially, I was struck by the musical talent on display and especially by the apparent lack of effort it took to produce such a bravura performance. Later on reflection, it was the quality of the CGI and the skill taken to reproduce the old man playing the guitar that surpasses the musical ability on display.
It was computer science that made it all possible and it was with the support of computer technology that helped CGI artists to produce such a misleadingly simple advert. I mean, how would you go about producing such a high quality CGI character that apparently plays a real guitar with such skill?
So there are plenty of creative as well as technical jobs in computing, but what skills do you admire and what would you like to do really well?
Fresh from the cutting room floor, another ABSOLUTELY STUNNING, MUST WATCH film by Morgan Spence Give yourself a treat and watch it.
Be able to tell your grand kids, that you knew Morgan, before he was world famous, because you can be sure, we are witnessing the birth of a great talent.
What are your favourite moments?
Among many a few stand out scenes for me, include the security film footage where the viewing perspective changes to that of security camera and the film switches into grainy black and white: then the fabulous detail of the animate screen on the laptop: the scene at the bar with the glasses filling up, and finally the fireworks at the end. The music is good, but the film is better.
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?
