Was it ‘bingo time’ for the Raspberry Pi?

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[flickr]5841341403[/flickr] “It’s bingo time for Arsenal!” exclaimed Gary Neville during his punditry for the Arsenal-Milan Champions League clash last night. It certainly was – except they just couldn’t get the last number on their card filled. I know just the feeling – the uncomfortable, yet tantalising sensation of being so near to a goal, yet so far. And so it was with the ‘release’ (a term used in the loosest sense) of the Raspberry Pi. All of the hype, the preamble, the hyperbole of how this diminutive device will be the saviour of computer science, how it will reignite our passions for programming and quite possibly halt the destruction of western civilisation as we know it all came to a head on February 29th at the much anticipated hour of 6am GMT. The release announcement revealed that two electronics companies, RS and Farnell would handle the distribution of the initial run of 10,000 units, and that they would also be handling the manufacture of the devices from then on.

With the full weight of expectation of the computer science community pressing down on them, the online storefronts dutifully cracked under the strain. When most customers were able to gain access, it was too late, and only ‘expressions of interest’ for the devices were being taken. As has been blogged elsewhere, the failure of online commercial storefronts to handle heavy customer demand is a concern for retailers of products with massive expectations from a more-than-willing, paying public. The levels of expectation for this product were known well ahead of release. A more managed approach, giving customers a clear level of expectation would have been received much better than overloaded servers.

I will stick to my emulated ARM cpu within QEMU full system emulation running on Ubuntu for the foreseeable future (see here or here for excellent info on setting a system like this up). The saving of western civilization will just have to wait a while.

Raspberry LMP(i)

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[flickr]5841339401[/flickr] The latest update from Raspberry Pi is that they will be receiving manufatured devices from the Chinese manufacturer on 20th February. This is great news for the everyone interested in these groundbreaking devices. In my School of Computer Science we are looking forward to using them in many ways with undergraduate students, and also with local schools. Their novelty aside, the sheer affordability of the devices and their relevance to the ongoing computer science education debate is a compelling story which is unfolding. I hope we see a new generation of young computer enthusiasts start to emerge and follow in the footsteps of those who went before them in the 1970’s and 80’s. Their achievements paved the way for the modern day computer games industry, the social media revolution and pervasive mobile device proliferation we see today.

You have got to be in it to win it…

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[flickr]5841344401[/flickr] On Friday 27th January, I am heading down to The Deepings School with John Murray to speak to sixth formers about computer science as part of their post-18 options day. We will demo some cool robotics gadgets and a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), as well as talking about what students typically study in a School of Computer Science and where it might lead to in the future.

The current prospects for computer science related careers is improving. Statistics from ITJobsWatch report a steady increase in demand for computer science related jobs over the last three years. Salaries have remained broadly constant over the last two years however, which is no surprise given the current economic climate. Demand for graduates and post graduate qualified applicants are the top two qualification requirements for jobs, while skills in areas such as Java, C#, C++, OO methodologies and mathematics all rank at the top of the skills most needed.

It is a good time to get into computer science. A rapidly evolving platform landscape is seeing traditional workstations, mobile devices and tablets now joined by cloud-driven Chromebooks, open API’s in new and exciting areas for example – all providing new and interesting uses of technology to support our everyday lives. Studying computer science is a great way to get into this exciting world – a choice that I hope many students will be making in this coming application round.

The choice that Peugeot have made is a disappointing one. Demands from their retail sections and an economic tightening of belts has seen them cancel their hugely successful endurance racing programme with immediate effect. It is not only bad news for their drivers and support teams, but also for the fans of endurance racing – no more Pug-Audi head to head battles a Le Mans for a few years at least. What compounds this disappointment though is that the sport is at a turning point – hybrid petrol/electric and diesel/electric cars are in an advanced stage of development. We will surely see history at Le Mans this year from a car with hybrid technology. Endurance racing is no stranger to pushing boundaries though. The American Le Mans Series (ALMS) has sanctioned the use of ‘alternative’ fuels in their race series for a while, with major breakthroughs coming in the last year for cars running on renewable fuels. Peugeot will now be out of this hybrid development programme, and with racing being the ultimate test programme for new technologies, surely Audi and now Toyota will will see their commitment to hybrid development research  bear fruit.

Computer Science: Should we be looking forwards or backwards?

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[flickr]5841341251[/flickr] A high profile campaign to introduce a more rigorous computer science curriculum to UK schools has resulted in the UK Education minister, Michael Gove announcing that he will ‘scrap boring IT lessons‘ in schools. The core of the argument is that pupils emerging from the compulsory education sector do not have requisite skills in computer science to build software applications – rather, they are led through a curriculum which develops their skills in using productivity tools such as Microsoft’s Office suite.

Gove cites the achievements of Alan Turing as a legacy to which our school children should be aspiring. Turing was a remarkable figure indeed, a gifted mathematician, logician and computation expert. Yet his path to computer science hero status was similar to which many of our school children follow today. Classical school education followed by degree studies in mathematics at Cambridge and PhD achievement at Princeton. The foundation of all Turing’s work was in mathematics, yet this fact is strangely missing from many of the statements issued by Michael Gove and his advisors, who include Ian Livingstone, OBE, a veteran of the UK video games industry.

The underlying principles of all computer science disciplines, be they software design, programming, testing, programming language development or operating system design are mathematics. Without a strong mathematical support in areas such as logic, algebra, number systems, set theory and so on, then yes, school pupils may be able to undertake some programming activity (and I firmly believe they should!), but the defining principles which explains why their program works, or how to design their program to solve a particular problem will be lacking. Lets give our school children more programming in ICT lessons, but lets also give them the mathematical tools to be able to do it effectively.

Glancing in our metaphorical rear view mirror to cite Alan Turing is one way of looking at this problem. I believe though, that we should be focusing forward on the road ahead, giving our school pupils the mathematical skills they need to understand and support their software development activity and interests. Not all school leavers will want to become programmers or developers of software, but those that do should be given the right support to enable them to build their careers effectively.

 

A lot of bits and pieces….

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[flickr]5841887374[/flickr]The pitlane during the Saturday morning pitwalk at Le Mans is a very busy place. It is a ‘must do’ activity for many fans, so the narrow pitlane gets very congested. I took this opportunity to look along the pit garages from the end to get this show to the bodywork panels laid out on show in front of the garages.

The state of that pitlane is a bit like the state of my EuroITV2012 paper which is loads of bits of interesting stuff, but not organised, or put together in any workable (or more importantly, submittable) form. Grappling with the conundrum of exactly why we tweet while watching TV is proving allusive to many researchers right now. It is interesting to see that PR and marketing gurus are now homing in on Twitter as a new landscape to exploit particularly when combined with TV viewing (http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2012/01/02/4-ways-to-optimize-the-tv-twitter-connection/). With that in mind, and the contributions of others in the world of Twitter research I am steadily bolting my paper together, clipping on the relevant parts and fine tuning the prose.