Computer scientist and educator. Creator of ChessCraft. Scientific programmer at Environment Canada.
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
What's more important to you: climate science or social justice?
Canadian politics is better when all parties are strong. How can the Green Party of Canada (GPC) recover its legitimacy and relevancy? Here I describe a simple and likely controversial membership test. I can't think of any other way forward …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
I often see these questions online:
"What are the differences between private and public sector IT?"
"What makes you stay in government IT?"
"Aren't government IT workers underpaid?"
This page is my list of the best things about public sector IT.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own, and …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Most training videos are really bad. This is troublesome to me because I must constantly re-explain my philosophies and processes to colleagues or volunteers. This page aims to help.
Over the years I've made over a hundred training videos for public servants, high school and university students, workshops, and the …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Richard Stallman may be a legend in the world of software, but he also has decades of history promoting a toxic environment in software communities. Due to this, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been pressured to kick out Stallman from the board of directors, which they did, though he …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
The privately employed
May say they're annoyed
about public servant perks.
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What they fail to note
(and it's fair that they don't)
is that zombification lurks.
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Zombies are not happy,
humans need to be scrappy.
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Hold on to your fire,
stir the pots and aspire.
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Are you a zombie?
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
When I post tutorial videos people often make suggestions on how to improve my computer code. Thank you for your code suggestions! However, we may have a problem.
I often find that code suggestions are not teaching suggestions. Almost all computer programmers are not experienced educators, so this is understandable …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Hidden Figures is a 2016 movie about the 1960s space race, the early days of computation, and segregation. It's an uplifting movie - described by some as "cheesy". However the cheese serves to distinguish it from other films in its genre which are typically very dark and gritty. It's an underdog …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Name one thing you liked about Trump's campaign. If you can't, consider the possibility that your political views are unbalanced and biased. If you look hard enough, you should never agree or disagree 100% with a political platform.
Name one thing you disliked about Clinton's campaign. If you can't, similar …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
This is an incredible century to witness the births of technologies. The past couple weeks I've been observing the world's first augmented reality global hit. Enjoy the innocence while it lasts! In this post I'm going to talk about aspects of Pokemon Go that aren't being talked about much:
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Are you excited about automation yet? You should be. Here's a great video to get us started:
But I'm tired of all these misconceptions about automation replacing jobs! Consider these statements: