My penchant is car boots. Who doesn’t like a bargain? I’ve acquired so much at car boots now, I just think I’m paying a fair price and now high street shops seems like a scam. Just because I get things cheap, doesn’t mean they’re cheap items though! Car booting is great fun and I sincerely can’t remember when I last walked into a shop and bought anything other than groceries for a ‘normal’ retail price.
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It’s not the first time I have extolled the virtues of Scratch. It is a fantastic platform by which people can be introduced into programming. I fancied doing something creative this evening and playing about in Scratch. I was going to make a little game but then I thought about illustrating an aspect of the Collatz conjecture in Scratch.
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I’ve always romanticised about the idea of living in a commune but in reality, perhaps setting up an open minecraft server is the closest I’ll come. If you’re not familiar with Minecraft, it’s an open world (well, an infinitely procedurally generated world) that enables participants to build and create things. It’s as complicated as you want it to be. There’s a misconception about video games being for children. Most video gamers (including myself) are adults. The average age of a Minecraft player is 24! The beauty of Minecraft is that kids and adults can play the game and get totally different, yet satisfying, experiences from it. But it’s this inter-generational nature of Minecraft that can be problematic.
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Deciduous trees are slowing down production (photosynthesis) in readiness for the winter but they seem to burst into life with colour during autumn. This is the time many trees bear us gifts so it is a great time for foraging. Autumn enables me to combine a passion for photography, a love of hiking and a, somewhat spiritual, appreciation of trees as the ancient life that enables our biosphere to live, with oxygen and energy.
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Hedgehogs are adorable little creatures. I acknowledge that all of God’s creation deserves awe and respect and that it’s important to appreciate that every species has a valid role to play in our ecosystem. But hedgehogs, well, they’re lovely aren’t they? Sadly they’re endangered in the UK so I set about to help out some of these prickly little friends.
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On a few occasions, I’ve bought a game and found that I already have it in my collection. To mitigate this, I decided to maintain a list of games. (I seem to have inherited this propensity toward collecting and cataloguing things from my Dad). I found a great website that has information on a massive array of titles; and this has invoked yet more nostalgia for me.
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Halloween brought a collaborative effort to carve the traditional pumpkin and serve sweets to the local children dressed in costumes (that looked more endearing, than scary). I have never understood the trick or treat paradigm. Is it that they do a trick for a sweet? Or do they do a trick on you if you don’t give sweets? Well the kids don’t know either, like moths to a literal flame, they’re just after sweets I suppose.
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I was heading out to grab a couple of wooden pallets, that somebody had offered for free, which I’m going to use to build a hedgehog house ready for this year’s hedgehog cam live stream. My Mum called to say that town was busy and there was a Spitfire near the church so I thought I’d pop in and have a look.
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Back in 2019, I needed a new bed. My requirements – cheap, simple, sturdy, solid wood and untreated: Research led me to the Heavy Duty bed frame from strictly beds. The untreated part was because I didn’t know what bedside tables I wanted at the time so I planned to treat the bed to match the bedside tables.
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I have been interested in chaos for a long time. I like swarms – they are chaotic. Each individual in a swarm has a very simple set of rules to follow but overall, the swarm seems to move in a coordinated fashion. As such, I wanted to provide a simple and visual explanation of swarm behaviour that was accessible for people to interact with – MIT’s Scratch seemed the ideal platform then.
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