Curious as to the current state of affairs i Googled 'computers in UK schools' http://www.bbc.com/news/education-16493929 The reports title aptly named Shut down or restart? The way forward for computing in UK schools was published on 13 January 2012. https://royalsociety.org/education/policy/comput...

Ah , i come from the color TV age, trained from birth for education via moving pictures and still colour images. Tis true we all have our preferred method of knowledge absorption. Those young enough to be my children belong to the sound byte generation. They no not of the hun or the birched rod inde...

BBC Computers where first used in uk schools in the early 1980s In my particular school you had to be in the top maths class to use them. Bear in mind that that at this time Biro pens where banned in some schools and the fountain pen remained dominant even when the ban was lifted, In general ive fou...

Because the real world is floating adrift on large tectonic plates , (think of a spherical Christmas bauble smashed with a hammer and glued back together again) its quite hard to mix large and small scale structures with a singular approach. This is why i emphasized the idea of starting with a larg...

Even Grandmasters with computers can get it wrong :-p Classic example of where Principle says yes but Brute force says no Lecture with GM-Elect Irina Krush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGqaixsLGt8 At 8 minutes she correctly highlights a good principle, knight to F5 blows blacks pawn structure af...

Abundant information about computer chess tournaments
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Tournaments

Chess programmers often set up their program to compete in automated tournaments vs other chess programs as a way to find bugs and generally improve the performance. It is a bit of a hassle getting the protocols right the upside once done there are dozens if not hundreds of compatible chess engines ...

I strongly suspect that beginners are often put off programming by the endless oceans of text that greets them at every turn When it comes to culling complexity nothing beats a sharp, to the point video ! I strongly encourage those with technical programming knowledge to brush up on their video pre...

There aren't too many FreeBASIC vid tutorials on you tube, i just linked to the best of what i found. Learning BASIC Programming: Lesson 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwVAR6HClmI Learning Basic Programming: Lesson 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ZvLAAwBWU&feature=related Learning Basic Pr...

Ive been avoiding football more and more as the years go by but 7:1 did penetrate my radar Ouch ! to the 'n Football scores tend to be quite random and clumpy (part of the intrinsic suspense/hi's/lows) so that scoreline is way out there on the edge. I doubt that any bookie on the planet, or indeed t...

Ideally we would use colored hieroglyphics (icons) instead of words. (based on human vision and universal culture, psychology) ? = print does save a lot of time I guess as there are many variations of integer, a 'longer form' are used to avoid confusion. Cut and paste is your friend. I do get tired ...

Just some random code that shows the effect of different passes The final result is still artificial but it has a nice kind of clumpyness which could be used to seed a primary layer. Random data tends to be very speckly, real world maps tend to be very clumpy. So results look artificial. De noise + ...

idea how about turning all that blue stuff, the water, into low lying land and then applying random rain If altitude < than x then water stays. Then after so many cycles stop the rain and evaporate isolated water pixels, de noise The same technique could be used to add snow to mountain peaks. be fu...

Using colors that are easier on the eye ( but still clear) would help. The Human eye 'goes for' brightness levels as much as colors. No hard n fast rules, have to experiment as colour x and brightness y impacts on the rest of the scene. Colour illusions. they are your friend and enemy, lol http://en...