Stuart Spence Blog

Computer scientist and educator. Creator of ChessCraft. Senior computer scientist at Environment Canada.

Fri 04 September 2020

Ode to the Public Servant

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.

-

Are you a zombie?

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Sat 01 July 2017

Your Perfect Code Might Be Terrible for Teaching

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 …

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Tue 21 February 2017

Movie Review: Hidden Figures

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 …

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Thu 21 July 2016

Enjoy the Innocence of Pokemon Go While It Lasts

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:

  • Businesses …

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Mon 28 March 2016

Sorry! I'd Like to Help You but I Can't

Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog   

When I post tutorial videos, I get a lot of requests for personalized help. I want to help! Your project might even sound really cool to me. But here I'm going to explain why I probably cannot help you today.

Unfortunately, It's Inefficient

One of the exciting things about the …

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Thu 24 March 2016

Learning to Code by Writing, not Copying

Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog   

"Yeh, If your a experianced coder, five mins no problem but if your a bigginer it can take hours." - Rowen Henderson8

"it would help a lot if you ppl would copy and paste the code into your videos on the bottom." - Emjay Club

"Fantastic but please add the script somewhere …

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