[Edu-sig] More Brainstorming in Portland

[kirby urner]

I've been brainstorming with Ki (as in Master George) about the Civ IV
bindings class that'd put Saturday Academny students in the driver's
seat vis-a-vis a game engine that popular.  He dug up the API, which
is C-like in flavor, reflecting a lot of work already done, suitable
for commercialization by way of open source testing.  Those coming to
the fore as prime movers of the open source version could then dive
more deeply, with more capital support, into a more proprietary
offering.  There'd likely continue to be subversive cast offs or snap
shots of the latest code.  Anyway, that's one possible scenario.
Perfect for our interns.  I've been thinking of inviting Joyce
Cresswell to our meeting.

On another front, the acronym to track is XRL, the livingry (gear)
associated with "extremely remote living" i.e. wilderness survival
type camping, but with more aerospace input, more an alternative to
cubicles than just tents i.e. you can have your computer and fat pipe
Internet access.  Watch for REI involvement.

I think Ki's idea of what'd be a really fun and optional use of one's
time on a bright sunny Saturday Morning in the prime of one's life
(most of my students are very lustily youthful) is very much more
likely to catch on that what I'm doing now:  boring dry vector
graphics of the type you should be getting when confined to school as
a part of your more mandatory day.  Saturday Academy should be for fun
stuff, not like regular school.

But then I exaggerate.  Per the write-ups in my blogs and elsewhere
(here for example) I think it's clear that my classes aren't quite
that boring.  Already I'm free to allude to and project the Civ IV API
(thanks Tim) which helps boost their imaginations (and mine).  We
listen and watch Animusic, talk about ray tracing versus real time
scenery and action computed on the fly, and use Python in a
kind of "cave painting" mode to just start to get our feet wet in
these subjects.  POV-Ray is good for still renderings, VPython for on
the fly.  My classes do fill, sometimes.

Kirby