A couple of questions.

[Heart_Flame]

I looked at the about Alice page, but I still don't get it... so this is a program for making 3D worlds, like an interactive game?

Also... why no animated images for avatars and signatures? D: and only 19.5 kbs? =[ that isn't enough for a 500x100 sig pic...

[thetrippster]

alice really inst a image editor. its a #D animation tool. Its primarily used in classrooms to teach visual basic programming. IF u want a program to make decent sigs look up GIMP.

[DrJim]

When I first read your message, I looked for a reference to the URL for main page - to my surprise there doesn't seem to be one in the obvious places to look :confused: , although I'm sure there are many throughout the forum.

Anyway, see http://www.alice.org/ for an overview of Alice's history and goals plus other interesting links. As thetrippster says, Alice is primarily a classroom tool for teaching basic object oriented programming principles. (It's also heavily oriented to Java when it comes to implementation details.)

As far as high resolution, animated avatars, it's probably not a priority for the forum administrators since most of the members don't even have a non-animated one. I personally don't belong to any forums that do support them - could you give me an example and also say what file format they use (animated GIF or ???). I think you could use Alice to generate a nice one, even if you can't use it here (I tried using an animated GIF here and was not allowed to upload it).

[DrJim]

I could upload the file as an attachement and it is animated! :)

Note: If animation has stopped (it only cycles 10 times), refresh page.

[Heart_Flame]

Thanks DrJim, ill check it out, when i first came here i only looked at one other page...not the history lol...

and Trippster... the image and alice question were two seperate questions... i wasn't asking if alice was an image editor... i was wondering why this forum has such high standards for avatars and signatures....

EDIT: i cannot upload my animated gif image because the filesize is too big, no good animated image is under 19.5 kb....

[lanceA]

Heart_Flame:
In answer to your question:
" i was wondering why this forum has such high standards for avatars and
signatures....: "

I would offer that we are more IMPRESSED with a person's ability to solve a problem then we are with worrying about "cute" avatars. ANYONE can do that - But can they code their avatars to recursively solve Fibonnaci equations ? That would impress us.

Avatars are cute for middle-schoolers.

Just my thoughts on the subject, plus I would hope this forum maintains HIGH STANDARDS,

[Heart_Flame]

Screw this place, you don't have to be mean. Forget alice, I'll find some other program for this junk...

[DrJim]

Looks like the forum may have lost Heart_Flame, for whom this was originally intended, but I decided to post this anyway.

My animated avatar is only 6K and I didn't think it was that bad. :mad: (OK, this release doesn't calculate numbers from the Fibonacci sequence - but in the next release (incarnation?) the avatar will say "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 … who do we appreciate.")

Seriously, I don't work much with the GIF format and I was impressed :eek: that I could get the animated file size down that low. :cool: I started with a single bitmap drawing that was nearly 60K - and I'd already limited the colors and textures to get it that low. The program I used - Animation Shop 3 (which comes with Paint Shop Pro) - has a file size optimization feature that is really nice. It will preview the resulting image as you work and also give you estimated download times at various bit rates.

If anybody wants, you can upload a zipped version of an animated GIF - the image just won't be shown on the forum page. If you'd like to do that, I'll run it through the Animation Shop routine and see what it can do. :)

[gabe]

I guess I should probably chime in. Most of the forum settings are the default, although I personally made sure animated avatars and large sigs were kept out. I find that they are very distracting and will probably deter more people than attract. And as of now, we need all the support we can get.

This is the first case of someone asking about avatars/sigs. If this turns into a trend, I will consider modifying the constraints.

However, for now, I hope you don't leave the forums because of these rules. Your contributions to the forums are very much appreciated.

[Heart_Flame]

Oh, I am not leaving because of the rules, I am leaving because of LanceA... I can't be in a forum that has an unfriendly enviroment... I will, however, check this topic.

I am an artist, I am sure there are many others here who are artists and would understand why LanceA offended me by what he has said.

[lanceA]

Far be it from me to hurt someone's feelings, especially over something such as an animated avatar. I will let myself out of the forum.

cya,

[Shadow Sovereign]

Well, I'm coming into this conversation a little late (which seems to be a routine fashion for me these days :rolleyes: ), but I do have a short list of opinions for those who are interested in hearing from me:

1. To Tripp - Thanks again for GIMP... I'm still trying to figure it out, it being a complex image editor and all, but its kinda fun to see what happens to my Rise of Legends pics with these kinds of tools... :D
2. To Dr. Jim - I like that animation. It is a shame you can't import a .GIF animation image into the forums like you attached it, or else Tripp would have a radically different Avatar right about now. :cool:
3. To Heart_Flame - Part one - I agree with Tripp that Alice is far from just being another image program... it is one heck of an awesome program that has helped me to understand programming quite better than I did before (now if only I could figure out C Programming for my Neverwinter Nights Scenario Editor!:rolleyes: ). Therefore, its purpose as an educational tool definitely shines here!
4. To myself - I need to wrap this thing up... it's already longer than this entire text box. :eek:
And 5. To Heart_Flame - Part two - I don't think LanceA intended to offend you in any way when he said the avatars weren't the most important thing on the forums, though I happen to be a bit picky about mine too. Took me 2 whole days just deciding which pic I should've used! :D

.....Instead of two cents, I pretty much handed out the whole dollar.... :D

Oh, one other thing... what's 'Fibonnaci'?

[Heart_Flame]

OMG do any of you speak English, I never said that Alice was an image creation program, I never asked if Alice was an image creation program, I HAVE PHOTOSHOP, GIMP AND EVERYTHING ELSE, all I was asking was WTF IS ALICE. AND WHY CAN"T I USE ANY GOOD PICS FOR AVATARS OR SIGS. I am not going to apologise because I am pissed off, I have made myself clear, it is not my fault if you are a noob and won't understand me, I might be banned for saying these things... and I am moving friday and have to pack my compy.

Good day, sir or madam or w/e you are.

[Shadow Sovereign]

.................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ..........................................ummmmmm. .... what did I do wrong? :confused:

[Heart_Flame]

3. To Heart_Flame - Part one - I agree with Tripp that Alice is far from just being another image program... it is one heck of an awesome program that has helped me to understand programming quite better than I did before (now if only I could figure out C Programming for my Neverwinter Nights Scenario Editor!:rolleyes: ). Therefore, its purpose as an educational tool definitely shines here!
Fibonnaci?

I might have misread that, maybe you meant something else, if you did I am sorry, but I am going through a really stressfull time atm.

also,shadow, you'll be wanting to check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonnaci
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonnaci)

[Shadow Sovereign]

Perhaps I did not make myself clear, and if so, then it was my bad. I simply meant that Alice is a good way to learn programming because it is simple enough to understand and use as a program creation and compiler device, and that simplicity is its strength.

Anyways, I do have a bad habit of rambling on in details, so I'll just shut up for now. Thanx for the link. :D

Edit: I'm not too good with hyper-advanced math, so now having looked at the link, I'll just shut up with anything to do with math over an Algebra II level... lol

[DrJim]

Glad you're still looking at the forum even if it does give you occasional stress - don't think most of us do it intentionally.

Hope your move goes well :) - they are always a pain.

[Heart_Flame]

Sorry for any trouble I may have caused, I am not usually like this.

[gabe]

Moving definitely is a stressful thing...I've done it 6 of the past 7 years. Yuck!

[Heart_Flame]

ouch =[

[Shadow Sovereign]

Wow, gabe's got it as bad as I do.... I have moved about 15 times in the past 5 years because my dad is in the military and my parents had gotten divorced, and my mom is too lazy to get a job. There's plenty more reasons, but I'm not gonna go into too much detail. :rolleyes:

[RealityEscapeArtist]

The makers of Alice are generous geniuses whom I personally am grateful towards for allowing me to pick up something that normally would take me about two years at some tech school to master. The idea that you could create games, stories, etcetera with relative ease and learning during the process is a great concept.

But if the idea was in fact to have people experiment with making they're own stories or games then you must consider the want for personalization from the developers of those games.

It only makes sense that people want to have the ability to create or modify they're characters who most of which already have background story attached to them (i.e. game-daydreamers who have 20+ notebooks all filled with character designs, plot, side stories, and npc's waiting for the day they'll become a game).

Alice has a vision but most of the people who use Alice do as well and "silly Avatars" as some may put it help the game come to life fulfilling the vision of the developer.

In other words, I personally believe that instead of shunning the avatar, we should welcome the creativity of the developer and allow customizable avatars or avatar upload within the Alice2 realm.

Thank you for you time :)

-RealityEscapeArtist

[gabe]

RealityEscapeArtist,

Can you point me to a couple alternative forums with fewer restrictions regarding avatar size/type?

I feel that avatars are a small, but important part of forum communication, as they help form one's online identity. But I also want to take into consideration page load and page size.

The template has a static layout so the page doesn't stretch into an unreadable mess as it would using a liquid layout in combination with a large, widescreen monitor.

If avatars take up too much room, there won't be enough room for text to fit comfortably. I could try moving the avatars to the top of a post, but stylistically, I like all the personal info on the left for easy scanning.

If others have comments on this topic, please share them.

[DickBaldwin]

Ditto to LanceA's posting on 10-20-2006, 09:51 PM.

Dick Baldwin

[RealityEscapeArtist]

As far as the forum goes, the avatar space allowed is really the norm for most forums. It's actually a fine forum, clean & efficient. I can't really think of anything I'd change. My last post really regarded incorporating original characters in 'game play'.

So in other words, good job with the forum Gabe. I like having a place to go where obviously-more-experienced-programmers can communicate with the rest of us without us worrying about looking stupid for asking a question.

For as much as I've seen it's a very open and welcoming forum. One that actually has an English interpretation to the 'Digitalese' I'm usually confronted with when asking a technical question.

So Thanks :)

-RealityEscapeArtist

[DrJim]

Ditto to LanceA's posting on 10-20-2006, 09:51 PM.

Put me in the dissenter group regarding that. While Lance A has made a lot of very good contributions to this forum, I really don't don't consider that post to be one of them.

First, the calculation is of the members of the Fibonacci Series http://library.thinkquest.org/27890/mainIndex.html . There is no such thing as "a Fibonacci equation". Although several equations are available to calculate the members of the series, it was originally discovered (at least per the accepted legend) by Fibonacci's observations of breeding rabbits.

Second, the Fibonacci series is used as an example of a practical application of recursion although recursion is only one of many ways to perform the task and certainly not always (if ever) the most efficient way to perform that task. If recursionion is to be introduced in introductory CS courses - a bit more discussion as to its advantages and disadvantages, as well as risks (!) is needed. Also, at least as far as I have seen, no distinction is made in the Alice texts between "tail recursion" and the more general case.

Finally, since recursion in the general case can require several methods to operate simulatneously (calculating the Fibonacci series does not, see https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/David_Hellam/7746 ) - I personally would avoid it in Alice, since Alice does not seem to handle multi-threaded code well. The alternative of using a list to emulate a stack also wouldn't work well due to the problems with lists - and numeric arrays don't seem to work well at all.

For a relatively good discussion of recursion (and several other topics), see the Scratch thread: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=789 .

For the type of issues that you get into with multiple methods running simultaneously, again see the Scratch forum: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1611 .

In both cases, the discussion - in a forum primarily targeting grade schoolers (and which allows - and even encourages (gasp) - very cute avatars) - is better than anything I've seen in this forum, which is supposedly targeting high school and first year college students.

[lanceA]

... If recursionion is to be introduced in introductory CS courses - a bit more discussion as to its advantages and disadvantages, as well as risks (!) is needed. . .

Point noted DrJim - as well as the fact that most of the sources you quote are from Scratch.mit.edu., however you might have missed my intent in posting the previous message. I was not specifically talking about having an avatar compute Fibonacci numbers or even circular linkedlists. (I have an avatar that allows anyone to click on it and play the old game of Pong. Gabe's setting prevented me from using it when I joined :) ). I was simply making a statement about using Alice ,and hopefully this forum, to present a good understanding of programming techniques.

As to the use of recursion, it is a requirement of the AP that students have a good understanding of how to solve a problem using recursive calls and shows up more than once on both the A and AB Exams. I do concurr with you that it is incumbent upon the person presenting the data to make the student aware of stack overflows, out-of-memory errors, etc. which can occur if the programmer does not have a good understanding of when and how to use recursion in a program.

What makes it even more confusing is trying to explain to young "programmers" the difference between linear recursion and exponential recursion or infinite recursion and conditional recursion - knowing when to use each recursive method is important, but you already know that. Unfortunately for the students. the AP requires that we teach them recursion.

I use the Sierpinski gasket (C. Herbert), Towers Of Hanoi (Dann, et al) and exercises in Joel Adams book as introductory examples of how to use recursion. I have found that if students can visualize how recursion works they can understand it better once they move into a pure programming environment and prepare for the Advanced Placement Exams.

Keep up the good work in responding to all of the questions appearing in this forum.

lanceA

[DrJim]

Lance A - to borrow your opening sentence - "points noted." I also share your desire to use Alice and hopefully this forum, to present a good understanding of programming techniques, and you and Dick Balwin have really been major contributors towards that goal.

Never having taught programming and with almost no understanding of Java - about all I can contribute is to help overcome some of the initial problems and maybe keep a bit of interest up in those forum users who share my own interest in animation, graphic and related subjects. But Alice is only a tool to learn how to use tools designed for those application. It is only a marginally useful tool for those applications themselves - one of the messages that seems to get lost in the technical details - and not just for animation and graphics but for many other applications as well.

Similarly, recursion is an excellent subject to use to as a basis to explore a lot of interesting math and CS concepts - it would be really nice if a student, as he prepared for the AP's, really had time to get exposed to these. If you can acomplish this - and meet the challenges of "teaching to the test" - you will also have acomplished what seems to me to be a minor miracle. I continue to wish you the best of luck and give you, and all of the others trying the same task, high marks for even trying.

[lanceA]

Thanks DrJim -

I don't qualify as one who can ". . . meet the challenges of "teaching to the test".
I don't teach to the test - I teach Critical Thinking, Deductive /Logical Reasoning Skills, Problem Solving, Critical Questtioning, Computer Science, etc.

I am using ALICE to help students new to computer science visually "see" what happens when a program executes.

What do you do for a living?

:)

PS - My 9th grade class this year swelled to 18 from last years 9. I believe it had something to do with ALICE.

[DrJim]

I'm sure you're faced with the challenge of "teaching to the test." If you can meet that pressure without actually "teaching to the test" - and instead acomplish what you list as your goals, more power to you. Hopefully you can insprire others to do the same.

Personally I'm a retired engineer and engineering manager interested in animation and filmmaking. My "hands-on" engineering background was almost exclusively with hardware, however as a manager my projects included several medium-scale software programs for "trusted system" avionics and medical electronics. Fortunately, I had a great bunch of experienced programmers as the core team for those projects.

My interest in Alice came about from observing the problems with computer science education as a "consumer" of the "product." It was not at all unusually to see a new grad (assuming you could even find and hire one in this country) with a "deer-in-the-headlights" look about six months into his first "real" program.

I think you are right about one of the benefits of Alice being that it gives the student quick, highly visual, real time feedback as to what he has actually programmed. It's embarassing - but nothing worse(!) - to see your object just sit there or go off in the absolutely wrong direction. In less graphics environments, even figuring out you have a problem can be a challenge.

[lanceA]

DrJim - - -

I think we both want the same goals ---young people to first understand the problem, break the problem in to solvable pieces, and then solve the problem. Most young people do not even understand the problem.

Have a great DAY!!

[DrJim]

Very well put!