[Visualpython-users] Re: Demons exorcised, and an offering

[John B. <jb...@te...>]

> From: Joel Kahn <jj...@ya...>
> To: vis...@li...
> Subject: [Visualpython-users] Demonic Computers
> John Brawley wrote:
> >I am close to thinking computers and
> >their programs are actually demons
> >viciously sitting on our desktops
> >waiting for the moment we are most vulnerable....
>
> You are only *close* to thinking this?!
> I run the computer lab at a public primary school. In
> this case, "primary" means kindergarten through second
> grade. If you are only *close* to thinking that
> computers are demons, you have clearly never seen
> twenty-five Windows PCs being used by twenty-five
> children (say, five and six years old) all at the same

.....I can't even come up with a word horrific enough to apply to such a
situation.
You must be either a saint or a masochist.
If my troubles with my computers, and me being well-versed in their innards,
is anything typical, I shudder to think what a roomful of seven-year-olds(?)
could do with 25 of them....
You have my sympathies.

> Still, I have had some limited chances to use VPython
> in the lab; and the kids seem to like what they've
> seen so far. I'm hoping to use it for more instruction
> in solid geometry and computer graphics as time goes
> on.

Then perhaps you (and anyone, including your students) might find this
useful and/or fun, since it's pretty simple (written in my commented and
_sophomoric_ (read: 'beginner's') Python using the latest VPython (which has
the "scene.stereo='crosseyed'" keyword) and Python 2.4.1 (but it should run
on any back to v.2.3 or so).  If you don't have the latest VPython, you'll
have to go into the script and change scene.stereo='crosseyed' back to
scene.stereo='passive' (same as walleyed).

In the zip file is the script TVLiveST.py, and Kirby Urner's coords.py
(which is required for various reasons, is small, is useful, and is a decent
example of coordinate-transformation functions written in Python).
Just put both where VPython can find them at run time.

http://tetrahedraverse.com/tverse/engine/TVLiveST.zip

Use from VPython's Idle.  I have not tried it from the command line.
It's a very stripped down and simplified version of my much larger program
intended to explore a certain philosophical/geometric guess at what
'reality' (spacetime) actually is.
Certain deprecatory correspondents of mine call it "a ball-packer."  It lets
you put a number of balls into a larger ball, then allows you to shrink or
expand the larger ball, compressing the set of smaller ones.
To me, the balls represent repulsion-fields around dimensionless,
non-coalesceable points (I call them "pionts," to keep the math-language
police from my doorstep), but to you et.al, they might as well be rubber
balls being squashed into spherical containers too small to hold them.

I'm not sure this list is the proper place to put this, but then, I'm a
beginner and this might be a good example of a reasonably complex idea
presented in simple form, and my code is very (very) readable.
(If anyone has suggestions where else this might find use, please tell
me....)

But for you and the seven-year-olds, it might be fun 'cause they can make
the balls go crazy and can observe what happens when you squeeze 'em into
too tight a space.  I'm also curious to know if the thing even runs on other
machines than mine.  You can't, though, make any data entry errors (it asks
like, four simple questions), or the program will crash and need a restart.
Also, I stongly suggest keeping the number of balls somewhere under a couple
of hundred, and numbers below 13 will show relationships between
balls-in-sphere ("packing") that are geometrically educational.

Peace
JB
jb...@te...
Web: http://tetrahedraverse.com