Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Aspie On

Hilary Stace

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:54:27 +1300

And Temple is happy with it, which is most important.

Russell Brown

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:02:53 +1300

I wonder now whether that person would be been better accepted had we known.

Without doubt. I'm convinced of the importance of talking freely about this.

It makes a huge difference for people on the spectrum if their actions can be understood as something other than rudeness or stupidity.

BTW,…

Stephen Judd

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:36:10 +1300

Holy crap. One of the people featured in the introductory clips was moving in the same circles as me some years ago. Their odd behaviour was cause for comment and disquiet, but without the "explanation" that the autism label provides no particular tolerance was extended. I wonder now whether that…

Russell Brown

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:35:02 +1300

Priceless, Mr. Brown. Great show.

Glad you liked it. I felt very good about it.

giovanni tiso

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:41:37 +1300

"Asperger's – a form of autism characterized by extreme usefulness to screenwriters."

Priceless, Mr. Brown. Great show.

Paul Williams

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:54:31 +1300

I've not followed this thread closely, so apologies if I'm covering old ground.

Melvyn Bragg's done an "in our time" interview on the infant brain development (I have an infant who's brain seems not to have yet developed a "sleep" function). It's interesting podcast for parents of young-uns but I…

David Hamilton

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:22:21 +1300

Depending on how much of a console gamer he is, he might like the XNA framework for developing windows and Xbox 360 games. It uses C# with DirectX, which is one of the nicer ways to interact with DirectX. The development environment Visual Studio Express is pretty friendly too, especially…

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:06:30 +1300

So much of the "time" thing going on. Soss

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:52:34 +1300

The show went really well, feel good about it. Watch it tomorrow (Thursday) at 9.10pm, TVNZ 7.

I thought it was excellent Darlin'. You make it easy. Nice to see Jimmy. Still prefer 2 subjects with same show, so I said my bit to Sara ?h.Look forward to another time.…

Russell Brown

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:33:29 +1300

The show went really well, feel good about it. Watch it tomorrow (Thursday) at 9.10pm, TVNZ 7.

Hilary Stace

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:55:58 +1300

We pulled one out of the lucky bag; our small is currently present, participating and ORRS funded. I could write a book about how that came to pass.

Congratulations. Perhaps you might like to write a post for humans sometime about that (but send it to Russell directly, not through…

Rich of Observationz

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:50:58 +1300

I recently wrote a chunk of assembly – to process the output of an array of optical shaft encoders. It was quite fun, and I do think the GOTO was unfairly ditched on the whim of a single Dutchman.

If one wants to learn programming with the aim of creating…

BenWilson

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:10:19 +1300

Professional games developers I know suggest they must at least know some assembly, just to really tweak up the inner loops. No other way gives you that power. But they're writing Playstation games, the hardware is fixed.

Neil Graham

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:56:18 +1300

Picking a programming language as a learner is fairly irrelevant. For better or worse, you get taught what your teacher (or tutor) prefers.

Having said that I'll throw in my two cents as a self taught game programmer.

I'm really not very fond of the dumbed down 'Its for kids…

BenWilson

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:37:07 +1300

We pulled one out of the lucky bag; our small is currently present, participating and ORRS funded. I could write a book about how that came to pass.

I'd read it. Nice to hear from you, btw. Another one takes the plunge!

giovanni tiso

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:16:10 +1300

Okay, I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to wrap my head around the notion that Roger Douglas is a spokesperson for disability issues.

Berry Binnie

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:00:17 +1300

Islander-

We pulled one out of the lucky bag; our small is currently present, participating and ORRS funded. I could write a book about how that came to pass.

Pete Sime

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:19:10 +1300

Not really programming per se, but in terms of game development, perhaps Leo might like to try Blender (http://www.blender.org/) an open source 3D animation and game development suite.

David Waters

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:54:48 +1300

Regarding teaching programing I recently herd an interview with the authers of a book to teach programming, the interview is at http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=212
and the book is at http://www.manning.com/sande/ it uses python as the learning lanaguage. It may be worth looking at as a starting point or a text book to…

Islander

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:01:35 +1300

Berry Binnie – in my family the young aspie has been catered for by very local school & health/family support – are you within ANZ?

Berry Binnie

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:53:56 +1300

Heh, well I tried many months ago to engage said gentleman round 'Disability Issues' as Act's spokesperson on such....he's yet to get back to me.

Graeme Edgeler

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:40:10 +1300

I'm coming from the perspective of a parent who loves a little person on the spectrum (and a human rights enthusiast).

School vouchers as a human right ... don't talk to Roger Douglas.

Berry Binnie

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:31:54 +1300

Howdy folks, longtime lurker!

Russell, I'm interested to know if the Ministry (MinEdu) makes the funding that would otherwise be earmarked for Leo (were he accommodated within the system) available to Leo?

I'm coming from the perspective of a parent who loves a little person on the spectrum (and a…

Lucy Stewart

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:23:19 +1300

I wonder if the panellists are fans of the 'Big Bang Theory?

I was surprised at how highly it ranked in weekly ratings when I glanced at them in the Press the other day. It obviously has wide appeal in NZ (caveats about the Nielsen system aside.)

Hilary Stace

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:20:06 +1300

I wonder if the panellists are fans of the 'Big Bang Theory?

By the way the Autism NZ conference is on 10-12 September at Te Papa. One whole stream for speakers on the spectrum.

Stephen Judd

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:13:48 +1300

Scratch seems very appropriate for a younger child. But I think at 15, things aimed at little kids are demeaning and toy-like. By that age you should have the intellectual horsepower and stickability to tackle "real" programming if you want to. There's a bajillion easier or more interesting pursuits out…

Lucy Stewart

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:09:19 +1300

Just some observations for anyone teaching programming to young people.
When my 11 year old daughter needed to learn a computer language for analysing images for her science fair project, I taught her Python.

My brother-in-law (who is 15 and high-functioning autistic) seems to have got quite a bit out…

Russell Brown

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:54:44 +1300

Hi Russell. Have you had a look at Scratch? It's been developed by MIT specifically for kids and is very visual and has an appealing entry-level approach.

By the time I was aware of it I'd decided that entry-level kids' programming environments weren't the way to go, for him at…

Stephen Judd

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:47:01 +1300

Heh, actually he may also enjoy Try Haskell. Although Haskell is not for everyone...

Joan White

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:34:07 +1300

Hi Russell. Have you had a look at Scratch? It's been developed by MIT specifically for kids and is very visual and has an appealing entry-level approach.

It's free and has a busy online community who trade bits of programming etc back and forth. My 8 year old girl has…

Russell Brown

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:32:27 +1300

Apropos Ruby — Russell, have you pointed him at Try Ruby! ?

Just did! It's really nice. Leo's having a poke at it now.

(I also took the liberty of forwarding your request to the NZ Python User Group).

Thanks. It looks like Ben Wilson might be able to help…

Stephen Judd

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:59:20 +1300

Apropos Ruby — Russell, have you pointed him at Try Ruby! ?

(I also took the liberty of forwarding your request to the NZ Python User Group).

David Hood

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:44:19 +1300

Just some observations for anyone teaching programming to young people.
When my 11 year old daughter needed to learn a computer language for analysing images for her science fair project, I taught her Python. You can get up and running with a basic understanding of the language in a couple…

Russell Brown

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:48:23 +1300

This group of people will in future come under the global heading of Autistic Spectrum Disorder-

Which seems intuitive to me. Are there any other implications of this change, Dylan?

Dylan Mordaunt

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:03:04 +1300

The Asperger's construct is proposed for removal from the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in edition 5 (APA DSM V), due to be published in 2013- edition 4 of the manual is what most mental health professionals in Australasia use for diagnostic criteria.

This group…

Russell Brown

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:03:49 +1300

We've just confirmed the third place on the panel: Edwin McRae, the storyliner who oversaw the entry of the Asperger's character Gabrielle on Shortland Street.

Russell Brown

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:32:59 +1300

I've also added a note to the post about my quest for some programming tutoring for my 15 yo son Leo

Russell Brown

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:58:01 +1300

It was in shops (or at least a shop) yesterday.

Thanks. Amended accordingly.

Graeme Edgeler

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:54:46 +1300

It was in shops (or at least a shop) yesterday.

Public Address

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:54:46 +1300

Discussion from blog post.