Tuesday, 25 August 2020

Nuffield Placement Researchers work: Twitter and Junkbots

This year I have been lucky enough to work with two Nuffield Placement Researchers one looking at extending junkbots via Scratch the other looking at producing some guidance on Twitter Analysis. They both produced blogs to share there activities:


Extending Junkbots



New blog https://junkbotactivities.blogspot.com/ by Muhammad Vadia on the Nuffield Foundation Researcher Placement Program has been working on developing a series of activities for the Junkbots project. These activities focus on using Scratch to develop coding skills by building up a simulation of the junkbot.

These can be found at:










Twitter Data Analysis


Blog https://twitter-data-analysis.blogspot.com/ was developed by Dilan Patel looking into Sentiment Analysis and getting going with Twitter Analysis.



Twitter Data Analysis (Part 3) - Sentiment Analysis 




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Monday, 24 August 2020

BCS Northampton online event: Agile and Scrum techniques have shifted





A webinar to discuss how the Agile and Scrum techniques have shifted how much of the digital tech industry develops products and services.

Date And Time

About this Event

Speakers

Perry Timms - Founder and Chief Energy Officer for PTHR

Agenda

19:00 – Introduction – Ali Al-Sherbaz -The Chair of BCS (NN branch)

19:05 - Main presentation – Perry Timms

19:40 - Q&A –

20:00 - Close

Synopsis

Agile and Scrum techniques have shifted how much of the digital tech industry develops products and services. Unexpectedly, there's a second life to Agile: In the world of HR, learning and change. Hear from Perry Timms about his work in this area and how there's a growing band of HR practitioners using product stories, kanban boards and hosting retrospectives. And it's surprisingly effective. What can technologists take away from this? A way to let their own Agile methods crossover into creating roles and objectives, adapting people management approaches and designing organisations where people flourish.

Speaker Bios

Perry Timms is a renowned blogger and global speaker on the transformative power of HR professionals. He is the founder of People and Transformational HR Ltd, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Social Media and HR Adviser and TedX speaker on the future of work.

THIS EVENT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

Northampton Branch

Visit https://www.bcs.org/membership/member-communities/northampton-branch/






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Sunday, 9 August 2020

Quick play with Sonic Pi



I often play with the brilliant Sonic Pi https://sonic-pi.net/ for a bit of fun, but let's be clear I have no musical ability.

To get my head around it I tried turning thee one tune I know "Hot Cross Buns" for the recorder into a tune. I found a useful webpage https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/notes.html to turn the notes into the MIDI number (60, etc) . Played with the synthesier sounds and choose tech_saw just because I liked it. The code is below

use_synth :tech_saws
2.times do
  play 71
  sleep 0.5
  play 69
  sleep 0.5
  play 67
  sleep 0.5
end
4.times do
  play 67
  sleep 0.25
end
4.times do
  play 69
  sleep 0.25
end
play 71
sleep 0.5
play 69
sleep 0.5
play 67

Also tried it with changing the synth to prophet

Also tried to make it a bit more mournful (possible slightly aggressive) with minor chords - I used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_chord#:~:text=In%20music%20theory%2C%20a%20minor,is%20called%20a%20minor%20triad. to get the notes in combination with the MIDI notes list (I still think I got it wrong!)
use_synth :prophet
2.times do
  play 71
  play 62
  play 66
  sleep 0.5
  play 69
  play 60
  play 64
  sleep 0.5
  play 67
  play 70
  play 62
  sleep 0.5
end
4.times do
  play 67
  play 70
  play 62
  sleep 0.25
end
4.times do
  play 69
  play 60
  play 64
  sleep 0.25
end
play 71
play 62
play 66
sleep 0.5
play 69
play 60
play 64
sleep 0.5
play 67
play 70
play 62
sleep 0.5


Adding sound effects is great fun - same code as above with a slightly techno sound to it

use_synth :prophet
with_fx :ixi_techno do
  2.times do
    play 71
    play 62
    play 66
    sleep 0.5
    play 69
    play 60
    play 64
    sleep 0.5
    play 67
    play 70
    play 62
    sleep 0.5
  end
  4.times do
    play 67
    play 70
    play 62
    sleep 0.25
  end
  4.times do
    play 69
    play 60
    play 64
    sleep 0.25
  end
  play 71
  play 62
  play 66
  sleep 0.5
  play 69
  play 60
  play 64
  sleep 0.5
  play 67
  play 70
  play 62
  sleep 0.5
end

or alternatively

use_synth :prophet
with_fx :ixi_techno do
  2.times do
    play chord(:b4, :minor7)
    sleep 0.5
    play chord(:a4, :minor7)
    sleep 0.5
    play chord(:g4, :minor7)
    sleep 0.5
  end
  4.times do
    play chord(:g4, :minor7)
    sleep 0.25
  end
  4.times do
    play chord(:a4, :minor7)
    sleep 0.25
  end
  play chord(:b4, :minor7)
  sleep 0.5
  play chord(:a4, :minor7)
  sleep 0.5
  play chord(:g4, :minor7)
  sleep 0.5
end

I am the first to admit I have little musical knowledge but playing with Sonic Pi is still good fun; just changing the sound effects (like changing it to whammy and getting it sounding like aliens) is enjoyable.


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon
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Friday, 31 July 2020

10 most read post (July 2020) on Computing in Northamptonshire




All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon
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Tuesday, 14 July 2020

Winners Young Coder's Competition and you can play their games!





Young Coders Competition 2020 – Winners announced

The competition aims to tackle a national shortage in coding ability by encouraging 8-11 year olds to have fun coding and spark a lifetime interest in the skill that may lead to them to a career developing websites, apps and computer software.  
Organised by the University of Northampton, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and Leicestershire Education Business Company, the Young Coders Competition aims to tackle a national shortage in coding skills. It does this by encouraging eight-to-11-year olds to have fun coding and hopefully spark a lifetime interest in the skill.

This year the challenge was to create a game in Scratch relating to the theme: "Teach your Pals about the Past" that can be used to teach their peers about a period of history or an historical event.




Top three were:-

1st Broadheath Primary School, Altrincham  


 https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/397741431/

2nd Cheddon Fiztpaine Church School, Taunton 


 https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/398098890/



3rd Rothersthorpe Church of England Primary School, Northamptonshire           

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/405125336





All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon
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Tuesday, 30 June 2020

Top 10 most read posts (June 2020) on Computing in Northamptonshire Blog



All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon
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Saturday, 27 June 2020

Heuristic Optimization for Microload Shedding in Generation Constrained Power Systems - IEEE

Heuristic Optimization for Microload Shedding in Generation Constrained Power Systems

Julius Quarshie Azasoo, Triantafyllos Kanakis, Ali Al-Sherbaz, Michael Opoku Agyeman

J. Q. Azasoo, T. Kanakis, A. Al-Sherbaz and M. O. Agyeman, "Heuristic Optimization for Microload Shedding in Generation Constrained Power Systems," in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 13294-13304, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2965819.

Abstract

While the causes of power system outages are often complex and multi-faceted, an apparent deficit in generation compared to a known demand for electricity could be more alarming. A sudden hike in demand at any given time may ultimately result in the total failure of an electricity network. In this paper, algorithms to efficiently allocate the available generation is investigated. Dynamic programming based algorithms are developed to achieve this constraint by uniquely controlling home appliances to reduce the overall demands for electricity by the consumers on the grid in context. To achieve this, heuristic optimization method (HOM) based on the consumers’ comfort and the benefits to the electricity utility is proposed. This is then validated by simulating microload management in generation constrained power systems. Three techniques; General Shedding (GS), Priority Based Shedding (PBS) and Excess Reuse Shedding (ERS) techniques were studied for effecting efficient microload shedding. The research is aimed at reducing the burden imposed on the consumers in a generation constrained power system by the traditional load shedding approach. Additionally, the reduction of the excess curtailment is a prime objective in this paper as it helps the utility companies to reduce wastage and ultimately reduce losses resulting from over shedding. Reducing the peak-to-average ratios (PAR) on the entire network in context as a critical factor in the determination of the efficiency of an electricity network is also investigated. In the long run, the PAR affects the price charged to the final consumer. Simulation results show the associated benefits that include effectiveness, deployability, and scalability of the proposed HOM to reduce these burdens.


DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2965819


Paper is available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8955857 




All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon
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