9 quintillion stops
Have you every got onto a train and given a heavy sigh as you realise there’s still 9,223,372,036,854,775,798 stops until you reach home? It seems someone made a mistake. This video goes nicely into how this mistake could have happened and looks at some of the binary etc behind it. Worth a watch for years …. Read More
Games are good for learning
Excuse the clickbait title, it isn’t to mean ANY game is good for learning, just that there are principles in games that we can use in learning to help you learn better. In Computing we want students to try things. In Python, Flowol, Kodu, Spreadsheets, Audacity and more, we want you to try things. If …. Read More
9 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Programming
Some good tips for starting out, when you’re moving from junior coding at GCSE into proper programming at A-level. Watch and learn sixth formers. You need to be programming cool stuff for at least a year to be ready for your programming exam.
How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation
This video looks at not only the game design principles, but also the tricks the developers used to get every bit of performance and push boundaries to make Crash Bandicoot a really ground breaking game for it’s time. Contains a nice section which compares the CPU and GPU. Also comparing RAM to secondary storage (CD)
Game making tutorials in Python
http://kidscancode.org/lessons/ The above page is essentially a link to loads of videos which are going through making specific games. One series is a space shooter, one is a platformer, one is a zombie shooter. It covers a lot of really advanced concepts but shows you every line that’s being written. Useful for anyone interested in …. Read More
PC building mistakes
A lot of my students consider building their own computer at some point. It’s a fantastic exercise for multiple reasons. This series of videos (this is just number 3, it’s worth going back through the others) give you a few good tips on what to look out for. My advice would be the PSU part. …. Read More
Hard drive disassembly
Want to take a hard drive apart and put it back together again? Want to take the data from a broken hard drive and put it into a working hard drive? Don’t. This video shows how an independent repair shop does it properly. A great look at the inside of a working disc. You can …. Read More
Making a CPU
This is a fascinating series that creates a computer from a single chip. It gets very deep on the electronics very quickly. Proceed with care.
Moonpig Hack
Customer details were hacked from Moonpig, this is a breakdown of what happened, but also important thoughts about what should be done when someone finds a vulnerability.
Who Invented the Keyboard and is the Dvorak Really Better than the QWERTY?
If you’ve done lesson 6 of the understanding computers module in year 8, you may have seen the history of the computer include the typewriter which is where the weird order of letters on your current keyboard comes from. If you’ve wondered why they’re placed in this weird order or if there’s a better way, …. Read More