Alfalfa Cam

As Martine was sprouting some [wikipop]alfalfa[/wikipop] seeds I borrowed some to make a [wikipop]time-lapse[/wikipop] movie of their sprouting. You can watch the live updates on the Alfalfa Cam page as we capture individual images to build the time-lapse movie or just come back here:
Alfalfa Cam

Martine says “A watched alfalfa seed never sprouts”.

Painting patterns

I watched a video by the late [wikipop]Benoit Mandelbrot[/wikipop] while the girls were busy painting

[video:http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/paintlapsekaleido1.mov|http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/paintlapsekaleido.ogg|http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/paintlapsekaleido1_conv.flv http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/paintlapsemovie-poster.jpg 680 550]

Itching to programme?

Someone asked yesterday how to make sprites move up and down when using Scratch. I have not done anything with Scratch for a while so I was inspired to download the latest version and give it a whirl.

Scratch logo
Scratch logo

Scratch was developed at the [W:MIT Media Lab] Lifelong Kindergarten (doesn’t that sound like a great place to work?) and it provides a simple drag & drop means of building a [W:Java applet]. These can uploaded to the Scratch website and shared with others.

If Scratch is too basic for your needs then I can commend Greenfoot which is a step closer to proper Java programming. Another option is the RunRev’s RevMedia which uses an English like language. All of these options are free.

Although there are a lot of examples with Scratch there still seems to be a need for an introduction to creating a simple game. So here it comes 🙂

My infallible guide to Scratch page will answer some if not all of your questions.