I spent yesterday in Okaihau, teaching HTML and CSS to high school students.

The workshop was put together by Gather and worked beautifully. We had 16 students for the whole day, and there was about one mentor for every three students, so we had time to give plenty of individual help.

It was cool getting to know everyone in my little group. They were really keen, interested, and hard-working. (And clever and cheeky; one girl teased me with the classic “Is she your girlfriend? Do you want her to be your girlfriend?”)

We had lunch with the students as well, which was a nice touch. Lunch was catered by another group of kids who take food technology, because schools are great like that.

Getting all those angle brackets and quotation marks in the right place can be hard work. But I think everyone had fun, and I reckon a few of them will catch the web dev bug. Let’s keep an eye out for their work in a few years :)

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Games I’m playing:

• Thomas Was Alone – A very simple indie platform game, put together with lots of love and care. I’d like to make games like this. The narration is charming and reminds me of Old Bear and Friends.
• Path of Exile – I’ve heard so much about the game’s economy and complex character system, but I didn’t realise that it was so pretty. The environments and creatures are varied and sometimes striking.
• ChatChat – I love this game. I logged in and someone was counting up to ten for some reason. Later, I found another cat hiding in a corner and realised that they were playing hide and seek! This is totally emergent, not part of the underlying game. The players just decided to do it. Awesome.