Last-minute Chrismas gifts and activities that are emailable or printable or bakeable

 

Depending on where you live there may well be a smaller shop open for emergency snacks. Where I live in Blackheath we have Best One Xpress open in the village (24 hours) and Pravin Supermarket in Blackheath Standard is open from 10 until 3pm. I hear that Deliveroo is likely to be up and running too. 

Here are some ideas for gifts that don't require leaving the house or having them delivered. If a gift for someone hasn't arrived then you can draw or print or email something to give to someone that indicates that something mysterious and delightful is on its way, just currently delayed.

1. Annual Memberships or pre-paid events / courses

I'm a member of the Royal Geographical Society (UK-wide) and a couple of London cinemas. Possibly buying someone a gym membership at Christmas might be a little pointed but perhaps a cookery or photography class or something nice like that, or art gallery membership etc. 

You can buy a ticket for a future event and print out the email to give to someone, or email it to them.

2. Gift cards / book vouchers / iTunes vouchers etc / magazine subscriptions

These can be bought online (you get an e-voucher with Amazon or iTunes) or in shops if you're able to get to one.

3. Bake biscuits / cakes

This one does require a trip to the shops for supplies but works quite well as a last-minute thing if you have a box (cake) or paper bag (biscuits) to put the end product in. Recipes abound on the internet. If you don't have a handy gingerbread man cookie cutter you can cut one out of paper and then place it on your biscuit dough and cut around it with a knife.

Gingerbread men recipe: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/gingerbread_men_99096 and see at 3m in this video how to cut out shapes without a cutter.

4. Make salt dough decorations

Pretty much as above, but non-edible (too salty!).

Recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/salt-dough-christmas-decorations

 

5. Printable decorations and colour-in activities

TES (formerly Times Educational Supplement) has all sorts of Christmas Craft activities for kids, many of which are free. Some also have a bit of curricular learning in there too but this one is just for colouring in.

Free DIY ornament: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/free-christmas-ornament-template-11752205

For work I've also made a Christmas Computing zine (A4, folds into a tiny booklet) and a HexaHexaFlexagon (never stops folding!), free: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/JoBrodieCS4FN

Etsy is full of (paid for) printable things to colour in and decorate, including colouring-in placemats to keep kids occupied while at a table. Be careful about bleed through onto your table if using coloured pens. After you've paid you'll be sent a link to download a digital file which you can then print.

Gingerbread house by ArtbyEmilySkinner (A4): https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1112628257/gingerbread-house-printable-paper-craft

Merry Christmas colouring in placemat (A4): https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1106059506/merry-christmas-colouring-and-activity

Search for more Christmas printables: https://www.etsy.com/uk/search?q=christmas+printables

Note: some products are aimed at a US audience and so print out on US letter size which is slightly different from A4 size. Look for products that are tailored for A4 sizing, or that come in PDF form (which you can just shrink slightly and cut off the extra). 

A4 = 8.27 x 11.7 inches (210 x 297 mm)
US letter = 8.5 x 11 inches (215.9 x 279.4 mm)

If you have a Rymans near you they will print items for you (£2.50 set up charge then approx 30p per A4, or a bit more for A3). Other printers are also available of course, though they'll be shutting soon.

We have lots of printable activities / colouring-in sheets / puzzle sheets, all with a computing theme here: https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/christmas-computing/

6. No printer but have a computer?

Here are versions of our puzzles and colouring in sheets which can be done on a computer :)
https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/12/12/snow-day-no-printer-needed-computing-themed-activities-for-those-at-home-snowday-uksnow/

If you like magic we have lots of free booklets you can download and read as a PDF, plenty of tricks involve a pack of cards: https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/magic/

Randall Munroe of XKCD is doing two talks in London in early November

I was playing on the 'Interesting Talks in London' website last night and spotted that Randall Munroe's doing a talk at the Royal Institution on 5 November.

This surprised me so much (because it seems like the sort of thing everyone I follow on Twitter would already have shared) that I searched on Twitter to find the mentions of it that I must have missed. I didn't find anything for that talk but discovered that he's doing another one on the 6th of November - possibly there are more to be found.

5 November - Ri - Royal Institution
6 November - Union Chapel / Intelligence Squared

The Difference

What if? Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions
http://www.rigb.org/whats-on/events-2014/november/public-what-if-serious-scientific-answers-to-absurd-hypothetical-questions
Wednesday November 5, 2014 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm | Royal Institution
21 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4BS
£12/£8
020 7409 2992 / events@ri.ac.uk

What would happen if the Earth’s rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second? How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun? Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth?

Randall Munroe has been answering absurd questions with serious scientific answers on his website and now is bringing the best together in this talk.

His book ‘What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions’ will be published 2 September. Get your book and ticket to the event for the special price of £20.

Randall Munroe on Answering the Unanswerable

Duty calls

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/randall-munroe-on-answering-the-unanswerable
Thursday November 6 2014 @ 7pm | Union Chapel, Islington
Union Chapel, Compton Avenue, London, N1 2XD
£30

What would happen if you hit a baseball moving at 90% of the speed of light?

How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?

If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last?

These are the kind of questions that people ask Randall Munroe. A former NASA roboticist, Munroe is the creator of the webcomic phenomenon XKCD. Tens of millions of followers visit XKCD every week to view Munroe’s cartoons of stick-like figures musing on science, technology, language, and love. The website was chosen by Wired as one of the 20 key influences of the last 20 years alongside Steve Jobs and online dating.

Munroe attempts to answer his fans’ many questions on his What If? blog using computer simulations, declassified military research memos, differential equations, nuclear reactor operators – and cartoons. His answers are masterpieces of clarity and wit, and often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.

Munroe has now published a book, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which contains new never-before-answered questions, along with updated versions of the most popular answers from the XKCD website. The book has just been launched in the US and the UK where it soared straight to number 1 on the bestseller lists, selling nearly twice as many copies as its nearest rival.

On November 6th, on a rare flying visit to London, Munroe will be appearing on the Intelligence Squared stage where he will answer the questions you probably never thought to ask.

Don’t miss your chance to hear him and get a copy of the book signed by the XKCD creator in person.

Fives - a game I played with my parents when little

I can't remember when I started playing this with my parents, probably in single digits. It's not the most thrilling of games, compared with the excitements of iPads and games centres but it's quite a satisfying logic puzzle, and can probably be adapted for younger children (see below).

• It's a two person game.
• Each person thinks of a five-letter word where no letter is the same, eg house, knife, apron, films etc (generally we excluded plurals but of course "she films the event" gets round that!)
• Write your word down on a piece of paper, kept hidden from opponent, also write, on same piece of paper the alphabet in full.
• The first player takes it in turn to say another five letter word (anything except proper names and this time it can include words with the same letter in multiple times, such as PUPPY) and the second player says how many letters in that word are also in their word, but not which one*.

Eg, your hidden word (my target) is FILMS

• In my first guess I say POPPY - there are no letters in common, and I can cross off O, P and Y from my list of letters.
• (Then you have your turn)
• In my second guess I say PUPPY (I already know that P and Y aren't in this, so this lets me determine if O is there or not - again no letters in common and in two goes I've crossed off four letters, two of them vowels.
• (It's your go)
• I guess POEMS - you tell me there are two letters in common with my word, though I don't know which. I know P and O are not in it, leaving E, M and S so I need to find a word to help me work out which.
• (Your go)
• I try POESY (we're allowed archaic words) and you tell me there's only 1 letter, but is it the E or the S?
• (Your go)
• I try SOPPY - you say 1 letter is there, so I know that S is IN your word, definitely, still have to find a way to guess whether the other letter is E or M.
• (Your go)
• I try QUEEN - you say no letters, so I know it's not the E (and therefore must be the M) and I've also eliminated Q, U and N as well (in total E, N, O, P, Q, U and Y eliminated)
• and so on... 
• You can continue playing until someone gets their word or carry on until both people have.

In fact PUPPY and POPPY were pretty much how we always started the game, so we might as well call it the puppy opening gambit :)
 
Strategies
Sometimes you try a word with lots of common letters, to open things up a bit and find new some letters to work with, other times you're playing a much tighter game (eg POPPY and PUPPY) to try and pin down or eliminate a particular letter. Sometimes you might want to check something and use a word to confirm you're right about a particular letter, eg at the stage I've left it at the word OPENS should have only 1 letter in common with yours. This doesn't really tell me anything new (I already knew from SOPPY that it had an S in it, but confirms that S is and O, P, E and N aren't - assuming I'd not made a mistake).

*Adaptations for smaller people
For younger children who perhaps don't have a wealth of 5-letter words to hand, you could let them pick any word they like, and take turns in saying other words. Or you could just say which letter is there (eg S is there, but O, P, E and N aren't), or even which position it's in in the word ("the letter S is at the end of my word"). You could just guess letters ("is J in it?" and so on).

You could also do a variation of hangman but instead of hangman call it something less murderous, like swing game, so that with each turn (whether or not successful) you're building a swing for a stick figure to swing on.

In both games - fives, and 'swings' you get to see a copy of the full alphabet in front of you which possibly helps with letter familiarity. 'Swings' might be a good way to show the importance of vowels, and letter frequency. Fives has a bit of 'strategic thinking' about it, if played as outlined above, so possibly needs more adaptation for little children.

Finding the hidden sounds in circuit boards - circuit bending

Things that make noise such as children's toys, little piano keyboards, walkie talkies have a power source, speakers and usually a circuit board with some bits and pieces in it like resistors, capacitors, some stuff I don't really know about yet and in some cases LEDs (light emitting diodes). The manufacturers arrange this starting material so that certain sounds are produced when the toy or instrument is played... according to their instructions. But a bit of tweaking can uncover all sorts of other available but currently hidden sounds, many of them truly awful, but some quite pleasant.

Circuit Bending for Absolute Beginners WhenTue, 8 February, 15:00 – 17:00 Bring your old keyboards to make new weird sounds. Think Casio, Yamaha... Noise-making toys also work. Not everything will work but we'll have a bash...may have to ask for a small donation to cover cost of potentiometers/wire etc an introduction here: http://www.oscillateur.com/circuitbending/faq

I spent Tuesday afternoon at the Really Free School in Bloomsbury Square playing around with some circuits and making some noise. The School opened a couple of weeks ago and closes in a couple of days (although it will likely re-appear somewhere else). The people running it have squatted the property which was once offices (and previously a rather lovely house) and unfortunately have to leave and move elsewhere. Their website is http://reallyfreeschool.org and I heard about this because of a mailing list (persons_unknown@hotmail.co.uk) I joined when they ran the Temporary School of Thought a couple of years ago. 

I've blogged recently on the Temp School of Thought - I went to a film showing there but none of the classes, and a talk by Dougald Hine at the Really Free School. Keeping with the theme of creative living and squatting is a post with some scanned images of a groovy book called 'Alternative London' from 1974. 

We sat in a room at the front of the house at large worktables while our tutor told us a little bit about the principles of 'circuit bending' and how to go about getting some bonus sounds from a hacked / modified (modded) bit of kit. She showed us a keyboard which she'd taken apart, added some switches and other twiddly knobs, and from which she could get some eerie sounds possibly not intended by the manufacturers. 

I'd brought along half of a walkie-talkie to tweak. A year or two ago I did an afternoon class, which I blogged about here, in Brighton with Ian Helliwell which included a taster session of circuit bending (along with creating a mini theremin from an electronics kit and playing around with tape loops) and I started work on the walkie-talkie then. 

There were about eight or nine of us sitting at the worktable with people popping in and out to visit. The people in the room next door (well, it's the reception / living room I suppose) were probably making a much more tuneful noise than we were. The people living in the house brought a baby grand piano with them, there was also a cello and a couple of guitars. People seemed to be really rather good at music. 

We took apart the toys that people had brought with them (apparently there's a second hand children's toy shop in Pimlico which seems to provide rich pickings for dismantle-able toys which have circuit boards and speakers in) and got to work with a strip of wire. With the device switched on (might want to be a bit careful here) you basically use the two ends of the wires to poke about and connect both ends to different points of metal on the circuit board. Sometimes connecting them up results in silence, sometimes in white noise, sometimes in a high pitched squeal and sometimes in a fairly pleasant buzz or tone. Depending on your tastes if you like the sound produced you can solder in the connection for keeps. 

Even better, if you have a potentiometer to hand you can connect it to two wires and then, on finding a suitable connection, twiddle the potentiometer's knob to make the pitch or volume (or whatever variable you've discovered with your random connection) go up and down. 

There are also some pictures on my Flickr page - the lighting isn't very good, it's more of a bright spotlight. This is because we're in a squatted propertly with plenty of electricity (all paid for, utility companies are required to connect up properties which have occupants at the occupants' request and I believe connecting the electricity is an essential part of squatting a property to prevent being accused of stealing the electricity) but with many of the ceiling light fittings absent. 

A couple of people in the class dismantled a tiny little plastic drumkit that they'd brought and rewired it so that it made some quite cool sounds when various buttons (that they added) were pressed. You can see them soldering in one of the pictures. 

I've described this circuit bending to a few people and they mostly want to know where they can do it so I've added a few links below in case you might fall into that intrigued category. 

Places where you can go and do or find out more about things like circuit bending (and 'arts computer' stuff) in London  

Dorkbot is more of a show and tell for projects that you've been working on but you'll always find someone in the crowd who can help you but the monthly-ish events aren't workshops. They do usually have an annual event in which workshops feature though. http://dorkbotlondon.org/  

Hackspace - I've not been to these yet but you can find more details here http://hackspace.org.uk/  

Ian Helliwell's Analogue sound course - if and when it runs again it will probably appear here but also see here http://www.phoenixarts.org/courses.htm and http://www.ianhelliwell.co.uk/  

MzTEK ("An Arts Collective for Women in New Media and Arts Computing") hosts workshops for women only on a variety of electronics and other things like laser cutting. http://www.mztek.org/  

OpenLabs - I attended a circuit creating workshop (making some noise too) at the Kinetica Art Fair and Evan Raskob from OpenLabs was teaching it. Lots of fun but against a backdrop of the Kinetica fair it was quite hard to hear what was going on with my own battery operated mini speaker. Given the squealy noises I was making, perhaps not a bad thing ;) http://openlabworkshops.org/about/  

Technology will save us - I spotted a sign-up sheet for this at the Kinetica Art Fair and signed up, haven't investigated it yet but looks full of potential for classes although they might be a little beyond my budget. http://technologywillsaveus.org/ and http://twitter.com/techwillsaveus  

Tinker It - I am not sure if they are still running courses but they have run Arduino workshops in the past (Arduino is a circuit board whose chip is controlled by a computer programme). http://arduino.cc/blog/ and http://twitter.com/tinker_it 

For people who like non-electronic technical crafts but like sewing then these people might have a class for you: The Make Lounge, in Islington. http://www.themakelounge.com/workshops I bet someone's reading this and thinking "but she's forgotten X" if so, do let me know, thanks! You might also like these other posts of mine, tough luck if not :)

• Dougald Hine's talk at The Really Free School in the Bloomsbury Squat 2011
• Temporary School of Thought - the Mayfair squat 2009
• Nicholas Saunder's Alternative London - squatters' / activists' book from 1974
• Geeky things to do in London
• Abandoned Britain - nothing to do with circuit bending but about exploring urban landscapes.