Programming for Kids

Got kids who seem to think computers are nothing more then an expensive entertainment device, and the occasional source of copy and paste information to get tonights homework done quickly? Back when I was a kid with my little Apple //c there wasn't that much choice gaming so I tended to spend a lot of time programming in BASIC and Assembly Language. Nowadays there isn't quite the incentive for the kids to start programming which makes Scratch a neat starting point.

Scratch is a drag and drop style simple GUI programming environment and is available for both Mac's and PC's. It lets kids animate objects on a screen (much like Logo) using simple programming logic that they link together on a graphical scripting pad. A sample program might be Repeat 10, Move 10, Rotate 180, Move 50. Sounds effects can be added as well as cartoon dialogue boxes and a few other special effects. Scratch can be used to make little movies, simple games or animations and you can import your own photos and draw your own pictures. They'll learn programming topics like procedures, looping, sequences etc without even realising it.

I've only let my kids have one turn each so far but so far the interest seems to be there.
The main problem is going to be keeping there attention span up by encouraging them to work on small and achievable projects. Left alone at it and they'll get bored pretty quickly.

StoxWorth

In my spare time I'm trying to polish off a little application I've been developing to help people see of snapshot of their share portfolio. Usually I use MS Money to keep track of my shares but it has a annoying limitation of supporting online updates of shares from a limited number of countries, like the US, Australia and some places in Europe. If you own shares in any other countries then you need to make the updates manually.

To give me an instant overview of where my portfolio is right now I've created a little Mac OS X widget that shows you the current value of your investments (from just about any stock exchange) and shows you how much money you've made or lost on the day. It'll even convert foreign currency shares into your local currency so that your overall gain/loss can be calculated. Now that I've got Windows Vista installed on my iMac I'm going to get started writing a Vista Gadget version of this Mac Widget, prehaps with a pretty graph that lets you see your portfolio value over a pre-specified date range.

A competitive worldy footprint

One of the less pleasant aspects of living in a remote, isolated place like Wump does is that from an early age international travel as a certain allure and fascination. Travelling to a new country takes on a slightly competitive form as people try and outdo each other by claiming to have visited more countries then anyone else. Gradually as this friendly rivalry becomes more and more serious overseas holidays are not planned in the interests of having a great time or a break but rather as a scheme to get extra stamps in the passport and thus leapfrog ones opponent in the "most countries visited" stakes. btw: You can generate your own country maps like these on world66.

Wump has, unfortunately, fallen victim to this obsession and finds himself locked in battle with Bernie and Galbs (who's real names will be withheld here) to lay claim to the title of "he who is most widely travelled". Currently the lists stand as:

Wump (33): United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Macau (Portugal), China, Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Greece, Albania, Austria, United States, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Fiji, Singapore, Brazil, Chile, Argentina





Galbs (22): Belgium, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Austria, Switzerland, Latvia, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, Denmark, Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina,Luxembourg, Germany, Czech Republic






Bernie (29): Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Cuba, United States, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, United Kingdom, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Australia, Mexico, Guatemala, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belize