Guest Post by Jamie

Here are the answers. The first few don’t need an explanation, but the additional question does:

1) 2.0085482698775510204081632653061

2) 90090090

4) 49

5) 137.2953021774598

(Question 5 uses Pythagoras’ Theorem, which you can find out about here)

Click here to see the original questions.

legoless: Don’t forget to read my Scratch eBook Review too.

Posted in All Tagged: ≠, hi :3, Jam Head McLolwin, maths ]]> http://legoless.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/so-you-think-you-know-maths-answers/feed/ 2 51.032873 -2.268400 51.032873 -2.268400 jam_ie http://legoless.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/scratch-ebook-review/ http://legoless.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/scratch-ebook-review/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:58:18 +0000 legoless http://legoless.wordpress.com/?p=2716 ]]>

I’ve been asked to do a review on a new programming book published by Packt Publishing and written by Michael Badger. Normally I’d probably have multiple heart attacks over anything to do with programming, but this book teaches people how to use Scratch. Some of you older readers might remember me blogging about this a couple of times (in fact, my very first post writes about it). I’ve been using Scratch for a few years, and even though I don’t actively play around with it now, I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning how to program.

Anyway, on to the review. This book covers everything from installation to using things such as a PicoBoard to bring the real world into Scratch. Quite literally. It walks you through all the different features of Scratch at an appropriate pace. I liked the fact that it didn’t go into so much depth that you were lost in tech-speak land, but it explained it enough so that you understood how the commands worked.

It covers all the major commands and treats them each as a separate ‘experiment’. It would be a good idea to have Scratch open while reading, so you can simply switch windows (or if you get the actual book version, just look at the screen) and try it out for yourself. The book also explains the basic concept of how Scratch is layed out (sprites, the background, blocks, etc.) which I feel would be useful to a beginner. Sometimes screenshots of blocks are used instead of words to explain things (mostly examples). These are useful if you get stuck, but I like to try to figure out how to do it myself first.

After a while, you’ll move on to entire projects. These get harder and harder, and I found myself discovering new ways to use blocks that I had never thought of before. I also found some useful notes about new blocks that I had no experience with, as I had a very old version of Scratch and hadn’t updated it in a while. My favourite addition is probably the list feature. It opens up a ton of new project ideas that usually would have needed complicated variables and a lot of fine tuning to get right.

This book is very content-rich, and would be a great help to learn how to program, whether you’re an educator or simply someone wanting to know a bit of programming. Younger readers probably wouldn’t be interested though, as it seems to be aimed at a higher age. (But that doesn’t make it any harder to learn!) One problem I had with it is the eBook format. I found it very hard to read from, as I constantly had to scroll down to the next “page”. Books are books. You can’t turn them into downloadable webpages – it just doesn’t work. However, this is just Adobe Reader’s bad layout. But I’d recommend getting a real book anyway, even if it is more hassle having to order it.

Overall, this is a good book to learn from, and it doesn’t have that “school book” feel that most educational books do. The author doesn’t strive to make every sentence contain at least one 15-letter word, and the language seems very laid back.

Click here to be brought to the Packt Publishing website if you’re interested.

-legoless

Don’t forget to read my Poptropica post and Jamie’s maths post if you haven’t already.

Guest Post By Jamie

Let’s test the brain power of you guys. Below are 4 equations, each relatively hard. If you can get all four right, I’ll, err, umm, well, I’ll sort out a prize.

(Find answer)

(Find ‘?’)

(Find ‘X’)

(Find ‘?’)

Don’t forget to read Legoless’ Poptropica Post Update, and Halloween Post

**UPDATE**

Since no-one believes 3 is possible, I’m adding a 5th question, which will replace 3. It’s quite an easy question, and only needs about 3 calculations to work out:

Find ‘C’

The Haunted House quest on Poptropica, which was only around for Halloween, is here to stay! The button on the map has disappeared, but you can get a special teleport card in the Poptropica store. And the best part is, it’s free!

Hurry and get it though, because I have a feeling it won’t stick around for ever.

With it, you can visit the Haunted House anytime you want. I have a feeling there will be more teleport cards to come, but I can guarantee you that they won’t be free.

That’s all for now!
-legoless

Don’t forget to read my original Haunted House post if you haven’t already.

Happy Halloween!

…

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I’m not doing much this Halloween – just sitting at home and watching a movie, eating a couple hundred chocolate bars, maybe reading a scary book or something. I’ve put back up my Meebo widget for a few hours, so if anyone wants to have a chat I’ll probably be here. ANYONE WHO ASKS ME FOR CLUB PENGUIN MISSION GUIDE HELP ON IT WILL BE EATEN.

Yay for Halloween activities:

• Go read my Chicken Smoothie and Poptropica Halloween posts.
• Suggest a post for Jamie to write. CLICK HERE.
• Watch the new Homestar Runner cartoon.
• Talk to me on the Meebo widget.
• Comment what you’re doing for this Halloween.
• Follow me on Twitter. (My name is McLego on there because some jerk stole legoless.)
• Click mah dragons!
  

-legoless

Update: I’m heading to bed, so the Meebo widget has been taken down. Maybe I’ll put it up again at Christmas.