The Free Universal Construction Kit Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and much more. Announcing the Free Universal Construction Kit: a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys. Fig. 1. The Free Universal Construction Kit. Overview Video by Riley Harmon for F.A.T. F.A.T. The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Motivation Our kids are already doing it! Opening doors to new creative worlds is one major reason we created the Free Universal Construction Kit. The Kit offers a “best of all worlds” approach to play and learning that combines the advantages of each toy system. Finally, in producing the Free Universal Construction Kit, we hope to demonstrate a model of reverse engineering as a civic activity: a creative process in which anyone can develop the necessary pieces to bridge the limitations presented by mass-produced commercial artifacts. Download Figure 2. We (F.A.T. Implementation
Learnable Programming Here's a trick question: How do we get people to understand programming? Khan Academy recently launched an online environment for learning to program. It offers a set of tutorials based on the JavaScript and Processing languages, and features a "live coding" environment, where the program's output updates as the programmer types. Because my work was cited as an inspiration for the Khan system, I felt I should respond with two thoughts about learning: Programming is a way of thinking, not a rote skill. Learning about "for" loops is not learning to program, any more than learning about pencils is learning to draw.People understand what they can see. Thus, the goals of a programming system should be: to support and encourage powerful ways of thinkingto enable programmers to see and understand the execution of their programs A live-coding Processing environment addresses neither of these goals. Alan Perlis wrote, "To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program."
Danc's Miraculously Flexible Game Prototyping Tiles RPGs love PlanetCute So do platformers... One of the commenters on the SpaceCute posts wondered what would happen if you visited one of those delightful spa-like planetoids that decorate our little galaxy of cuteness. These are Lowest Common Denominator graphics. Some of the fault lies with the existing graphics, be they free sets scrounged from the internet or leftovers from a previous project. 3D graphics are notoriously difficult to convert between formats, are optimized for use on a specific platform and often present a confusing technological challenges to student developers. Even 2D graphics are tricky. The PlanetCute set attempts to wiggle past many of those problems. Building blocks, not tilesets: Instead of having complex tilesets, each block stacks nicely with pretty much any other block. This set is also quite amendable to original games. Why does the world need nice graphics for prototyping? Many developers are driven to improve their graphics. take care,Danc