Code Club 25/11/2023
The next Paignton Library code club is an extra session on Saturday 25th November 2023, 10 am to 12:00. We will carry on with coding, help new attendee, and do more work on the netbooks.
We may look at FreeBSD, and Ventroy or at least figure out which ISO we would like a multi-boot installer for.
I have added more links below to try and reflect our current set of activities.
Useful Links
Next Code Club
The next code club is on 2/12/2023
Tags
#CodeClub,#Python,#HourOfCode,#Scratch,#Minecraft,#Themes,
#Java,#Programmng
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Code Clubs in Torbay
I have been running a Code Club, for several years. When this first started up, it was run by a teacher, who saw the young people attending were quite proficient, so allowed them to do their own projects and supported this.
Since I took over, this has pretty much carried on. New users now have access to a wider range of activities, we can use the code club materials as either activities or reference guides to help with other projects.
I think there is a real opportunity for Torbay and we NEED more Coding clubs in Schools.
For this to happen, there needs to be three things.
- Venue
- Learners
- Volunteers to run the sessions
If any schools are interested, please go to the Code Club and sign up your school and flag you are looking for volunteers, you may want to chat to the pupils about this first to get a group who are interested.
As code club requires working with children and young people, then DBS checks are required in the UK. Schools can either find staff to run the club or contact Graphic Science who are coordinating the Ambassador programme in the South West.
Potential volunteers can also contact the above to sign up, complete the sign up process and then sign up to the code club website and find a school to help at.
Lets get Torbay coding
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Advanced Programming in the #UNIX Environment
This was posted to the Fediverse by Jan Schaumann, @jschauma@mstdn.social
Tags
#Education,#Learning,#Unix,#Advanced,#Programming
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Plastic waste
Interesting article on Knowledge magazine, looking at solving the plastic waste problem
We need more thinking like this that leads to action and results rather than simply keep talking about it.
Study STEM and be part of the drive to develop solutions.
Links
Tags
#Science,#Plastic,#Waste,#KnowledgeMagazine
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NFL 2023 week 11
NFL week 9 fixtures can be found here
Links
Tags
#Football,#NFL,#Week11
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Free BSD
FreeBSD 14.0 is due for release very soon, you can find out more from here. The home page will show 13 as legacy and 14 as production once release is completed.
I will update the ventoy usb stick with the latest version in due course.
Tags
#Software,#OperatingSystem,#FreeBSD
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Code Club 18/11/2023 Ventoy
As Paignton Library code club is more advanced than normal code clubs, I undertook some research in to how to create multiboot USB sticks.
Problem
The average ISO file for a Linux ( or similar ) distribution is usually < 4gb, as we have USB sticks larger than 8, in fact I have a few 16 and the library just sent for some 32gb sticks, having 1 ISO per stick is rather wasteful.
Research and solution
My research led me to a tool called Ventoy this is a small, open source program that, when run, creates file system on the target USB stick to facilitate booting more than one installer.
Notes and warning
The target USB stick will however be Formatted and all data wiped as the program is windows, I used an old netbook with windows still installed to do this.
Current status
ISO files can be added / removed as required. So far I have a 16gb usb stick with :-
Debian 12
Linux mint 21.2 xfce
RescaTux.
With space for more. This has also feed up some of my USB sticks.
This should be good going forward, so hopefully we can have one or two installer disks, and free up the other USB sticks for data.
The following image is from the Ventoy Boot Menu.
Tags
#Coding,#Ventoy,#Linux,#MultiBoot
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Ultraheavy particle dark matter
Paper on the production of Ultraheavy particle dark matter
Daniel Carney et al.
* SciPost Phys. Core 6, 075 (2023)
We are the community behind #SciPost's #physics journals
Tags
#Physics,#Particles.#Ulytsheavy.#DarkMatter,#Production.#Science
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STEM GROUP – November 2023 Write up
Today we had a talk from Chris Thorpe, this covered the topics below.
- What is light?
- Why is measuring it important?
- Ways to measure light:
- Properties of light
- Measuring the speed of light:
- Via Snell’s Law
- Microwave Method
- Interferometric
- Error Analysis.
So we used a bar of chocolate to work out the speed of light, by putting in the microwave for about a minute. Then measuring the distance between two of the areas that had changed. Using this measurement and the frequency of the microwave, we calculated a figure that is very close to the speed of light.
Result : 294,000,000 m/s -1
Actual : 299,792,458 m/s -1
Side on image of the interferometer.
This image of the interferometer should show a green dot on the paper on the wall. When a liquid is place infront of the laser, the beams trajectory changes due to the refraction of the liquid. .
The results for both experiments are shown here.
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STEM GROUP – November 2023
The November event takes place on the 11th November. We will be joined by Chris Thorpe from Thales Alenia Space and we will be looking at :-
- What is light?
- Why is measuring it important?
- Ways to measure light:
- Properties of light
- Measuring the speed of light:
- Via Snell’s Law
- Microwave Method
- Interferometric
- Error Analysis.
The target audience for this is going to be A'level upwards, Undergraduate and also those working within industry as well as anyone else interested.
Please note I am NOT planning any other science activities, but am planning activities that are related to the above.
As a result while the STEM group event is usually 11am to 15:00 it may be cut short so there is more time to pack away at the end.
Paignton Library Room 13.
On a related topic, this is a Transit simulator for looking at how we find planets around other stars.
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