100 Top Tips: Microsoft Excel
Power up your Microsoft Excel skills with this powerful pocket-sized book of tips that will save you time and help you learn more from your spreadsheets.
02 May 2024
I've just published a new EP called Songs About Coding, created with artificial intelligence.
In the last few years, we've seen the rise of generative AI, including ChatGPT that generates text and tools like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion that create images. I combined them for my Bedtime Stories project. Now an app called Udio enables you to create complete songs based on a text prompt, including the lyrics, melody and musical performance.
It's more audacious than I dared dream when I was writing my novel Earworm, originally published in 2007. In the book, a record label comes up with a way to create computer-generated music, tailored for each fan. The book predated the rise in generative artificial intelligence, so the story uses a combination of technologies including lifting blog posts for lyrics, using melodies created with a decades-old type-in program, and naming bands after spammers, who were prolific then and often had highly amusing names.
Crucially, in my story, there still needed to be a human element. Is that the case now, with the rise of AI?
I tasked Udio with creating a series of songs in various styles about coding. In particular, I prompted it to create an 80s pop song about programming the Amstrad CPC computer, an acoustic song about debugging, and 1950s style songs about the Raspberry Pi.
The results are impressive. I did do some editing to fix the song structure, but I've featured some of them without any changes (apart from mastering).
Technologies like this are empowering for people who want to make music and don't have the skills to do so. You can give Udio your own lyrics, so if you're a lyricist without a collaborator, you can still create finished songs. As a musician, you can create music or loops that you incorporate into your own creations.
However, it seems likely that this will take work away from some professional musicians. Those working in library music and commercial commissions seem most vulnerable. Illustrators who are members of the Society of Authors are already reporting that they're losing work to AI.
Listen to the EP here! It's a fascinating demonstration of what AI can do today and it raises many questions. I woke up this morning with one of the songs in my head, so they're quite catchy, at least after a few listens.
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22 February 2024
I've released a new visualiser for Out of Mind, one of the most popular songs on my album of electronic music Artificial. The album explores what happens beyond artificial intelligence, when the machines acquire emotions. The visualiser provides a convenient way for people to play the song on YouTube. There are now videos or visualisers available for Out of Mind, Broken Shell, Input/Output, and the near-final ambient track Waiting for GOTO. See all the videos and play the album here.
I also released a companion EP of tracks that didn't belong on Artificial. That EP Is called Artificial Additives and includes an early poppier version of Out of Mind. I made a video for the track Do This that shows my film of the lifeboat coming in at St Ives.
Both the album and EP are available to buy and currently available to stream at all the usual places.
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03 January 2024
You might have heard the news that Walt Disney's early version of Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain. The copyright on the 1928 film Steamboat Willie expired in the US, UK and many other countries on 1 January 2024. As a result, you can now use the early Mickey and Minnie Mouse versions from that film in your own creative works.
This a great opportunity for young people looking for inspiration for their Scratch games and other coding projects. It's not easy to get the film content into a useful format, though.
That's why I've created a Scratch project that features two of the Steamboat Willie characters as individual sprites. I'd love to see your remixes of that project! You can write code to move the characters around the screen and I've made some simple edits to add animation (Minnie blinks and Mickey taps his toe). The sprites are little bit fuzzy because the source material is old and it's hard to create a sharp outline from it. If there is enough interest, I'll look at doing some additional grabs of other poses and creating other sprites. The demonstration project uses my tune Cottoneye Cat from my free music collection for coders, Press Play.
If you're using a compatible browser, you can preview the Scratch project here:
Find out more about the sprites, including how I made them, here.
For ideas for making games and other projects in Scratch, see the updated 2nd Edition of Scratch Programming in Easy Steps, which is out now. Find all my Scratch sprites, tutorials and projects here.
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21 November 2023
My latest article for the BBC looks at how AI can help to negotiate contracts automatically. It's based on a demonstration I saw of a new technology called Luminance Autopilot, which uses artificial intelligence (AI). In the demo, I saw two computers running the software to negotiate a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The tool is trained on an organisation's repository of previous contracts, so it can learn the terms that the organisation routinely agrees to, and can make edits to terms that are unacceptable. Technologies like this have the potential to free up lawyers to focus on negotiating the clauses or contracts that really need their attention.
This is the second piece I've written about AI recently, following my earlier article about using ChatGPT to create computer code.
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27 October 2023
I've written a new Amstrad CPC type-in for a one-off collectors' magazine called Amstrad Addict. The program is a simple version of Space Invaders called BAS Invaders, which was written 100% in Amstrad BASIC.
I remember trying to do a Space Invaders type game when I was just starting to learn Amstrad BASIC in 1985. It took so long to draw the characters on the screen that it was impossible to get anything resembling a game working.
For this type-in, I revisited the challenge and used colour swapping so that I don't need to redraw the aliens on the screen. They're all there, in every position, all the time, but most of them are drawn using an invisible ink. You can change the ink colour of something on the screen instantly, so fast animation becomes possible. It's a bit like a version of those early LCD and LED games where all the character positions are fixed on the display and light up in turn.
You can play the game in your browser, or download it to try in your emulator (where it runs a bit faster).
It was an interesting challenge to write something that makes sense as a type-in in 2023, when we can download any software we want easily. I hope that the listing and its explanation in the magazine make for an interesting read, whether or not you type the game in or run it.
Several of my other Amstrad games run in your browser too:
You can order Amstrad Addict here.
I also contribute to Amtix CPC magazine, a regular publication. If you're curious about what it's like, you can view a flipbook of issue #7 of Amtix CPC. (I don't have anything in that issue). Order back issues and subscribe here. Also available is the Amtix CPC Annual, a hardback A5 publication.
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07 June 2023
Did you know that millions of storage devices are shredded each year to stop their data leaking? Yet, even fragments as small as 3mm still have data on them that could be recovered. It's actually safer to use secure deletion today, which also means the drives can be reused.
I explored this concept in my latest article for BBC News Online: Why millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed.
This year, many of the 375 million hard drives that were sold in 2018 are ending their warranty period. Large data centres are disposing of them, mostly to landfill. I spoke to the Circular Drive Initiative, storage company Seagate, and security company ESET about alternatives.
Devices that have left warranty are often still fully functioning, and can be reused by others. Smaller data centres would love to get their hands on the cast-offs from the hyperscalers, for example. My article looks at purging by deleting the encryption key, and offers advice on planning for the end of life of storage and other digital devices.
I hope the article helps to raise awareness of the new standards for secure deletion, and the work that the Circular Drive Initiative and its members are doing to improve storage sustainability.
This my second piece on tech sustainability for the BBC, following my previous article about website sustainability.
Thanks to Benjamin Lehman at Unsplash for the photo
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01 June 2023
Here's a round-up of articles I've written recently. ChatGPT features in two of them, and one of them gets under the skin of classic 80s computer games.
I've also recently redesigned the articles page on my website, so it showcases some of my favourite pieces more clearly. At the bottom of the page are the links to take you into the sections for articles on topics such as Raspberry Pi, Scratch and web design. For updates on new articles and projects, please subscribe to my newsletter!
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Visit www.sean.co.uk for free chapters from Sean's coding books (including Mission Python, Scratch Programming in Easy Steps and Coder Academy) and more!
Power up your Microsoft Excel skills with this powerful pocket-sized book of tips that will save you time and help you learn more from your spreadsheets.
This book, now fully updated for Scratch 3, will take you from the basics of the Scratch language into the depths of its more advanced features. A great way to start programming.
Code a space adventure game in this Python programming book published by No Starch Press.
Discover how to make 3D games, create mazes, build a drum machine, make a game with cartoon animals and more!
Set up your Raspberry Pi, then learn how to use the Linux command line, Scratch, Python, Sonic Pi, Minecraft and electronics projects with it.
In this entertaining techno-thriller, Sean McManus takes a slice through the music industry: from the boardroom to the stage; from the studio to the record fair.