Alan Turing

Hello again. We've been told to post something about Alan Turing, who was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. 

Alan Turing, considered father of modern computing, was born in 1912 and he was homosexual. That's why he is supposed to have killed himself ingesting cyanide in 1954, because that time homosexuality was punished (he was chemically castrated and condemned for 61 years). He's recently been reprieved by Isabel Queen.

He influenced the end of the second world war because he cracked the "unbreakable" nazi code Enigma through his electromechanical machine, which is considered as a precursor for modern computers. This machine made a set of logical deductions for any possible combination.

Another important thing he did is create the first detailed design of an ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), a computer of programmed storage. Analising this and wondering whether a computer could compose music or think, he made an experiment, the Turing Test, which considered a machine "smart" when a person was unable to distinguish computers' answers from real persons' answers. Nowadays we know the CAPTCHA, which is the reverse of Turing test.

He also made a chess programme, studied the Fibonacci numbers in nature, worked in cybernetics and started programming, for instance, so he was a great man with a sad ending.

In brief, Alan Turing made great progress in computing and science in general, and maybe, if it weren't for him, we wouldn't have all these smart gadgets or be so computing-developped.

I hope you learned a bit more with this post, have a great day.

QCad

Welcome again in this second term, and happy new year, by the way. We've been working with QCad, which is a free Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software application for 2D design and drafting.

We've copied some already-existent designs and learned how to make lines, angles, circles and arcs, how to dimension, fill and move figures, how to force positions or splay corners...
This is a very visual programme and I think it's easy to use once you know a bit about technical drawing. You have an icon menu on the left of the window where you can choose the action or the figure you want. Then, after you choose the figure you want and the way you want to draw it by clicking on the specific icons, you can draw it two ways:
-By just drawing it on your own on the work space, which has a black background divided in squares of 10x10 units, separated by points
-By writting the coordinates it asks you on the gap below. The points are inserted as x,y, the distances as @x and the angles as <x. Depending on the function you choose, you may have to insert the radius on a gap above.

When you already have something drawn you can "snap" (force) the speific point you want to choose so that it's more accurate and you don't accumulate errors, for example snap endpoints (when a line ends), grid (the spots given on the workspace), middle, intersection (where the lines get crossed)... and restrict the area.

To work in different colors or with different types of lines you can add several layers on the column on the right, and edit their characteristics.

And more or less these are the basic things we've learned in our IT class, but if you have any question you can comment this post and ask. I leave here my practices.
I hope it was interesting and useful, have a nice day.