FRIDAY!!!
7/31/20
Today is Friday! We had a work day before lunch. We said "hello" in the chat. We started presentations at 1:00. When everyone who was going finished, there was some time left over which we could use for anything that still needed a bit of work. Overall, a pretty chill day.
The Day Before Friday
7/30/20
So, for the most part, today was a work day. Levi shared some info on Internships at 11. It took around half an hour. At 3, Sharonda gave her presentation because she is moving into college tomorrow. Her projects were really cool.
Pretty Stormy
7/29/20
Today was another work day. It was a pretty calm day. We said "hello" in the chat. We had no meeting today. Tomorrow at 11 Levi will be talking to us about Internships. Sharonda will be presenting tomorrow at 3. It got pretty stormy towards the end of the day.
Tuesday (But it Feels Like Monday)
7/28/20
It was my first day back from the weekend, so it felt like a Monday. We said "hello" in the chat and got to work. Today was a work day. Ernie started chatting with everyone about their projects, but he started with the Zs today and never got to the As.
The Beach
7/27/20
My brother is movving to Seattle and he is leaving on Friday so my parents decided to go to the beach. I was planning to work on Shodor from the hotel, but the WiFi was really bad. We went to the beach and Fort Macon though.
FRIDAY!
7/24/20
Today was a work day. We said "hello" int he google met and got to work. Ernie updated the project list sheet, so we were asked to fill it out. It's Friday though.
"Is it Friday Yet" -Ernie
7/23/20
The first half of the day was a work day. We said "hello" in the chat, and worked on whatever we needed to work on. After lunch, the people in block 3 joined the Google Meet. I had a problem with joining though, so I missed the first 10 or 15 minutes
Work Day
7/22/20
Today was a work day. We said "hello" in the chat as usual and had a brief Google Meeting. We'll be using the exPeople and the rest of the ex tables tomorrow so Ernie told us to make sure that we had that part done. Other than that, today was a wprk day. At around 11:30, Ernie asked up if we were feeling hungry, so we had an early lunch. I sat outside in the sun for a bit. It was nice.
Day Two of Block 3!
7/21/20
Today was the second day of block 3. We said "hello" in the group chat. The people in block 2 had their coin flip demo, so we mostly just worked. We also had a meeting. We had a new things that we started with a table called exPeople, and then one called exCoinFlip, then had to make exShoe and exColor.
First day of Block 3!
7/20/20
As the title says, today is the first day of block 3! We said "hello" in the chat and joined the Google Meet. Ernie still can't really talk that well, so the meeting was pretty short. He went over the projects of block 3, and told us what we would be doing for the next two weeks. We watched a 40 minute video of a lesson from last year about databases, then had some time to work on finishing up old projects. After lunch, we had a demo where Ernie showed us a bit about what we were going to be using and showed us the SQL Syntax Guide.
Last Day of Block 2!
7/17/20
Today was the last day of Block 2! It was another work day. We said "hello" in the chat and got to work. At some point, Ernie asked everyone to send him a message and tell him our operating system, and how far along we were in all of our projects.
Eyyy More Work Day Fun
7/16/20
TOday was another work day, so we just worked on finishing up whatever needed it. We started the day off by typing in our preferred method of greeting into the group chat and worked for a bit until 9:30, at which point we had a brief meeting in Google meet to discuss a few changes to the projects. We're going to do the resume project next block, and if we're lucky, either Kristen or Levi will teach that, otherwise Ernie will find an old video and edit it a bit. Hetold us that we could start working on some of the projects for the next block if we were finished, but I think that's all for today.
Another Work Day!
7/15/20
As you've probably gleamed from the title of this blog post, today was another work day. We said our usual greeting in the groups chat, then got to work. I worked on finishing the research project. Eernie had some things to do today, so he had a meeting in the morning and an appointment some time after 2. Not much else comes to mind though? I baked cookies during my lunch break, but that's not really related to Shodor work, so...
Work Day
7/14/20
Ernie was still sick today, so it was a work day. We said "hello" in the chat, and then we worked. I spent most of my time on the Krista projects.
Rendering
7/13/20
Ernie was sick today and was losing his voice so he couldn't really talk, so we said "hello" in the chat, joined the Google meet, and worked in silence. The code had some comments to help us along. That's pretty much all that happened.
Dynamic Websites!
7/10/20
Today was a pretty chill day. We said "hello" in the chat, then joined the Google Meet call. We had a demo about dynamic websites that took almost up until lunch time. A few people had some connection issues, but it all went smoothly for the most part. After that, we had time to work. That also went smoothly until about 3:40 when I got an error in PHP about a parsing error: unexpected token *. The only info I could find about exponentiation in PHP was using the ** operator. Isha tried to help, but in the end Ernie suggested I use pow and now everything works fine. Ready for the weekend!
Forms!
7/9/20
Today was a fairly normal day. We said "hello" in the group chat, then joined the Google Meet meeting. Today we had another demo. We learned about how to make forms so that people could input something into the website and the code would do something else with it. There were three documents and Ernie showed us how to protect some of the data an keep people from messing with the code. After that, he told us to go back to yesterday's coin flip model and make a copy which would recieve input from the user based on how many times they wanted the coin to be flipped. After that was more time to work. Tomorrow will be a demo about dynamic webpages.
New Projects!
7/8/20
We did our usual morning greeting by saying "hello" in the chat. Then we joined the meeting. Today, (as I mentioned in yesterday's blog post) we had an hour long demo on making a coin flipping model based on a few rules. We used the rand function and specified that we wanted an integer that was either 0 or 1, and that it should be printed on the screen. Then we had it loop to flip 10 times. Then we changed it so that instead of printing 1 or 0, it would print heads or tails. Then, because it looked pretty bad (there was no spacing between words so it looked like headsheadstailsheadstails... and so on) so we added a break between the words so that they'd beon different lines. Then we created variables that counted the number of heads, tails, and the total so that we coud display it on the screen. We also made a title and displayed the percentages of heads/tails. After that, Ernie introduced the Krista projects which consist of a couple of different projects, then we had our break. After that was a work day, so we could work on whatever needed working on. Tomorrow, Ernie said that we will have a 2-3 hour-long demo on HTML forms and how to process them with PHP.
Work Day!
7/7/20
Today was a work day! We worked on the project where we had tasks we had to accomplish using JS and PHP. Honestly, there's not a lot I can say about today. We said "Hello" in the chat, joined the meeting, listened to Ernie talk about a few things, then worked for the rest of the day. Ernie said that tomorrow we'll be doing a PHP demo about a coin toss.
First Day of Block 2!
7/6/20
So, today was the first day of the second block. We said "hello" in the chat and joined the Google Meet. We're working on programming concepts again, so Ernie started off with a refresher on which things we've done related to programming (HTML, CSS, JS, AgentCubes, Exel, and Vensim), and talked a bit about PHP. He then introduced a project with JS and PHP. There are tasks and we need to complete them using both languages. Before lunch, we started with the JS ones, and after lunch we went over a few PHP ones with Ernie, then just worked.
Last Day of Block 1
6/26/20
So... Today was the last day of block 1. It was a work day
Work Day - Second to Last Day of Block 1
6/25/20
I presume that you've been able to gather from the title that today was another work day. We said "hello" in the chat and got to work. There was no Googl Meet. As Ernie said yesterday, we aren't using the time clock, so we didn't even need to clock in. He told us to work and keep updating the Google Doc he shared with us yesterday in which we document what we have completed. I did the version control for my model and worked on the AgentCubes and Vensim models. I was having problems with Cyberduck, so Ernie told me yesterday he would help me figure out what was wrong. Basically, the problem was that I coouldn't move files around to other folders. The mouse would become a black circle with a line slashed through it, and nothing would move. He ended up having me use FileZilla. I moved the files to the places they belonged. I also worked on the scaling in Gimp a bit. I think I have some extra time, so I think I'll work on the model website so that when I finish the models, I can put them in and add a bit more text and observations/answers to questions.
What??? A Work Day?
6/24/20
So... As the title of this blog post states, today was another work day. We said "hello" in the chat and got to work. A notable(?) change is that Ernie told us he would no longer be monitering (monitoring?)the time clock, and would just make sure we said "hello" in the morning and after breaks. I worked on the abstract logos in Inkscape, as well as the 7 picture collage. I also did some work in Vensim ont he system modelm and thought about how I would make my agent model. I planned to use AgentCubes, but I'm not really sure how to model the 3% APY and financial growth in general using AgentCubes, and I don't really have that much time left before this block ends.
Another Work Day? - Spoiler Alert, the Rest of the Week Will be Work Days
6/23/20
I was kinda bored last night, so I worked on the Gimp project where we were supposed to edit a photo (photos?) of Aaron and/or Ernie. I found apicture of Aaron's face and a picture of his legs and ended up combining them into a not complete Aaron emerging from the weeds, towering over a road which I found in the source images. I had to change his red shirt and make it a dark navy, but overall, it could be worse (spoiler alert - it could also be a lot better.) Anyway, today was a work day. We said "hello" in the chat, and Ernie told us that it was a work day, and that there would be no Google Meet meeting. I mostly worked on the Inkscape projects today. I made the two "Your Name" logos, two "Your Name " Initials logos, and the favicon. After that, I worked on the system model for the modeling project.
Cosmic Turtles!
6/22/20
Yesterday, Ernie sent out an email to tell us what we needed for today. We needed to download the source images and download and install Gimp. We said "hello" in the chat and joined the Google Meet. At some point, my internet cut out and I missed a bit of instruction. By the time I returned to the Google Meet, I had already missed some instruction. It also turned out I was trying to open the carina nebula image from the wrong place, so that took me a while. Abrianna ended up helping me (thank you so much). We went over the rectangle select tool, the ellipse select tool, and the free hand select tool before we took our break. We used the fuzzy select tool on the turtles to trace them, and learned how to additionally erase and paint on whatever the tool missed. We also made the traced turtle a path so we could use it more easily in the future. We then went over to the carina nebula. We learned how to retouch the colors. We then put the turtle into the nebula. We made at least three more turtles. We learned how to rescale and rotate things. We also played around with filters a bit to blurr the turtle and make the background look cooler. he showed us how to export it and then we went to lunch. After lunch was just a work day. I worked on the new Gimp projects. I think we got the last of our projects today. One of the new Gimp projects was to make our own version of the cosmic turtles. I used the sunset background in which I retouched the colors a bit, and had three owls flying around. I made the owls darker, and blurred te ones further away. Because the owls were flying over water, I also gave them shadows. I think it turned out pretty cool. I think that's it for today.
Another Work Day!
6/19/20
Today was another work day. We said "hello" in the chat and then got to work. I had Isha and Akash check over my project plan yesterday, so I spent te morning responding to the questions they left and fixing any mistakes. After that Ernie checked it, and I changed a few more things. After he gave his approval, I downloaded and installed Vensim so I could work on the model itself.
Work Day!
6/18/20
We didn't have a Google Meet meeting today. We said "hello" in the chat and went to work on whatever needed work. At first I worked on the Inkscape projects, but then I decided that I needed to finish my plan for the modeling project and have it approved. When I was brainstorming, I couldn't think of anything really exciting, so I decided to make a model of financial growth. But then when I was thinking about it, it seemed pretty boring and uninvolved, especially if I did an account that just earned interest with no deposis or other transactions, so then I was doing research into types of accounts, and I decided to model a high yield checking account, but then I was looking at possible high yield checkign accounts and looking at the requirements for them, and then when I decided on one I wanted to model, I spent a while trying to find an average amount for how much people spend with debit cards per month, becuase one of the requirements was a minimum of 10 debit card transactions per month, but I couldn't really find any information on that so I had to wing that.
"I had pancakes on the brain" -Ernie
6/17/20
After saying "hello" in the chat, Ernie showed us seven shapes we could make in Inkscape. We went over making a square including rounding the edges), making a circle (and creating a gap between the start and end points to make pac man), a star (incliding rounding the points to make blobs), and polygons (including making the points negative to have them slope inwards). We went over scaling (and what you can use the Ctrl and Shift keys for), and we made layers for each of the four shapes we had made. We also looked a bit at the fill and strokes. After that, we used the bezier curve tool and learned how to make straight lines and curves with it. We also used the free hand tool, and learned how to adjust it so that it could get rid of shaking. The coolest tool was the edit paths by nodes tool because you could go back to things you had already drawn and manipulate them. The only anoying thing about is though is that it sometimes does something it calls "cusp node to node" if any of the nodes get too close to each other. It basically just attaches nodes to each other, but most of the time I didn't want them to be attached to each other, but I couldn't really get them not to be. We also looked at how to make text, and how to bind text to objects. We duplicated shapes and grouped them together too. We went 45 minutes over break, so Ernie let us have a 20 minute break. After that, I mostly worked on the Inkscape projects. Isha asked me to look over her project plan, and she said that she'd look over mine when I finished. That's pretty much all that comes to mind.
It's Raining Today :( - Second Day of Summer!
6/16/20
So... Today started off pretty similar to yesterday. We said "hello" in the groupchat, then we joined the Google Meet. Ernie had talked about a few things, but most important was a brief into to graphics. He talked about the difference between raster graphics and vector graphics. Vector graphics are created mathematically. You have points on a coordinate plane and they are connected using some formula. It's mostly used for line art. Its greatest feature is that it is easy to scale, so it doesn't look pixelated if you have to project it onto a large surface (like a billboard.) Raster graphics are used more for what comes to mind when people think about pictures. Each pixel has a color, and based on that, a picture is created. Its downside is that if you zoom in, it looks really blocky (unless that's the aesthetic you were looking for.) That lasted about twenty minutes. Afer that, Ernie let us work on whatever we needed to work on, but told us to keep in mind that we would need to have all of the projects done by the end of the first block, meaning that we shouldn't get carried away with one of them. I worked on more research on accounts that provide interest rates so that I could work on my plan. I also downloaded and installed Inkscape and Gimp, but I think I downloaded the wrong version of Inkscape the first time around because it wouldn't let me open it, but I downloaded another thing which works. It's pretty cloudy and dark today, and it was raining earlier.
I'm Giving My Blog Entries Exciting Names Now? - First Day of Summer!
6/16/20
Today was the first day of the first summer block! We said "hello" in the Apprentice groupchat then joined the Google Meet linked in the root doc. Ernie went over his expectations for the summer and also some changes. He showed us how to clock in and out. He said that we're going to be starting new projects. Today we started the first project, called "Modeling Project, I can do that!" The first step was brainstorming ideas. I came up with a few, but finally decided on modeling financial growth. Looking back at my idea, it feels like I should have done something more challenging/interesting. I got my idea approved around lunch time, and I spent the rest of the meeting working on research. I researched different types of accounts that earned interest, and tried to decided which one I wanted to use for my model. At 2:30, a few people said "hello" in the apprentice chat, and it turns out that Ernie forgot to call break, so most of us took it at 2:30. After that, I worked on research until Ernie said we could start working on our blogs. So... Here I am!
Blog 17
5/2/20
So... Today was the last day of the spring portion. An email was sent out before the meeting to let us know that we had to download and install some software so that we could get a bit more hands-on with parallel computing from home. I had tried to install PuTTY and Xming the night before, but I ran into some problems, and when I emailed Aaron and Ernie, they told me that they could help me tomorrow (today) so I started off fixing that. At first Abrianna tried to help me (big thanks), but we ran into quite a few issues, so I got Ernie to help. It turns out that I downloaded the wrong thing. After that, it went pretty smooth. We mostly did things with "GalaxSee" which simulated a galaxy. We could run all of our things independantly, or we could run them all at once. Aaron told us that you can specify how much time it would take (max) if you were actually using the real thing, so that people can set up a queue so that everything runs smoothly.
Blog 16
4/25/20
Honestly, I'm getting used to doing everything virtually. I can pretty much wake up and get straight to the meeting. ANyway, because we finished our project, we started learning about parallel computing. After saying "hello" in the groupchat, Aaron told us what we would be doing. He brought back the spreadsheet with the "I'm done", "I'm working", and "I need help" so that they could easily see how we were doing. It was an overall pretty chill day, we watched old recorded videos of teaching past apprentices, and we followed along with what they were doing. We looked at the pros and cons, as well as what parallel computing could accomplish. We looked at the difference in opperating in parallel vs in series with a coin flip exercise. Parallel computing could get more done than serial computing if they had the same amount of time but no 'set' objective, and parallel could accomlish the same amount of work as serial but faster. Cool stuff
Blog 15
4/18/20
After another break, we're back! We had the time before lunch to finish our projects. We decided to have a certain percent of the infected people develop more severe symptoms, so we focused on having some of the 'yellow' people become 'orange'. We ran into a few problems, and I ended up having like five minutes of lunch because I stayed in a call trying to fix some of the issues and finish up our website so that we could present. Abrianna and I went second! Before we presented, we wished each other good luck. Overall, it wasn't the worst presentation I've ever given, but it could've been better. Because there's not a lot of research on the virus, we didn't have some of the data necessary for some things, and we were a bit unprepared for some of the questions, but overall, it certainly could've been worse :).
Blog 14
4/4/20
Today is the second virtual Shodor meeting! It's also the second day of working on our project! After the morning check-up, we started working on the project. Abrianna was the driver this time, so she did most of the coding. We started using Glitch so that both of us could work at the same time. Both of us didn't have much knowledge on programming, so we had to get help from Aaron and Ernie a few times. We managed to change the colors of the particles last time, but today we focused on their interactionsAt first we made them bounce off of each other, but when we looked at that and compared it to what our model was made to model, we realized that people don't bump into someone in the hallway and go off into an entierly new direction, so we let them pass through each other, and had all of the interactions be based on the center fo each of the particles and the distance between others.
Blog 13
3/21/20
We had a pretty long break because we switched from in person Apprentice meetings to doing it all virtually because of the pandemic. The last meeting was the last day of the programming concepts, so we started to work on our second project. My partner this time was Abrianna. We spent the start of the meeting brainstorming and coming up with ideas for what we could use the bouncing particles to model. We thought that te bouncing particles could represent people in a school, and with everything going on, we decided to model the spread of COVID-19 in a school. We came up with the idea that we would have the model represet people movng around in a school hallway, interacting with eachother, and possibly carrying on the virus. We would have everyone start off blue (healthy) and one yellow (sick but no symptoms) and they would bounce around. If a blue person came in contact with a yellow person, they could become a yellow person with some percent chance. We worked on changing the colors of the particles, but ran into a few issues and had to call Aaron for help. I was the driver this time, so next time Abrianna will do the coding.
Blog 12
3/7/20
We started off talking about coronavirus safety precautions, washing your hands, coughing into your elbow, not coming in if you are sick, and so on. Aaron then talked about the projects for the spring semester, and possible stipend deductions if we didn't complete something. Ernie talked about our blog posts and reflections, and said that they would be checked more frequently. We are going to start a new group project. We then continued to work on our programming concepts bouncing particles. I sat down at CASE (or LINE?), but last time I was working on MEAT, and forgot to upload some things to Cyberduck, so I'm on MEAT again. We then created a play button for one of the versions, then we made it bounce off the right, left, top, and bottom walls of the canvas. The play button is disabled after it is pressed once, and the reset one enables it again. We then created an array so that we would have more than one particle. We learned about "if" statements, arrays, and loops.
Blog 11
2/15/20
I came in a bit late, so Ernie helped me. We also switched up the computers, so I moved from either LINE or CASE to MEAT, which is pretty nice. We continued working on the bouncing particles. Mostly on JavaScript. We used variables, and made functions, and buttons. We're getting our stipend forms today. At one point, when we were changing our canvas size, we changed it in the HTML, but I had something in my CSS, so so when I changed it in the HTML, the canvas size stayed the same, byt my particle became really long and stretched. At one point I thought I messed up, but it turned out that I just forgot to press the button for the particle to be drawn.
Blog 10
2/8/20
I missed most of the lesson today because I was taking the ACT. I came in at around 2, so Ernie helped me catch up by uploading the programming concepts file with his notes. I then followed along with the lesson. I'm going to stay until 3 or 3:30 today because I didn't finish my HTML tutorial. I was planning to email myself the code, but I forgot to, so I brought my computer, but I don't know I'll be able to finish it today. Overall though, I was able to follow along with the lesson. If I messed up, Ernie would help me.
Blog 9
12/21/19
I worked on typing up the responses to all of the questions we needed to adress. We then worked on our website. We were having a few issues and had to call Aaron. I chose the colors for the website, and we added them in. I typed up some of the text that was going on the website. I also answered the necessary questions for the presentation in a google doc. I think that our project turned out okay. Bo and Ramsey's project looked really cool, and they had a lot of different variables that affected different parts of the model. It was nice that there weren't any overlapping topics. Everyone chose to make their project about something different, so we didn't have to watch the same thing over and over again.
Blog 8
12/14/19
Isha started off by helping me get caught up, and telling me what she did last time. I had the system dynamics model in my notebook, so I worked on getting it into Vensim. I forgot to save it, and it crashed a few times so I had to backtrack and redo a few things. I guess it serves me right for not saving more often. We finished up the model in AgentCubes, and looking through what we had, I realized that there was no percent chance for people recovering. I also researched and found approximate disease statistics for the Black Plague, and implemented the numbers into the Vensim equations and Agent Cubes model. While I was doing that, I noticed that there was only a rule for sick people dying 60% of the time, and nothing about recovery, so I added a rule before that saying that there was a 30% chance of sick people recovering.
Blog 7
12/7/19
I was taking the SAT (I forgot my calculator), so I wasn't able to make it to the meeting. I talked to Isha and asked her what I needed to do to. I made the system dynamics model in my notebook with all the equations.
Blog 6
11/23/19
Dr. Panoff started off talking to us about the rabbit Vensim model. He added different variables and shadow variables to include time to simulate the seasons. We then started on agent models. We started off by telling a story in our notebooks about sick and healthy people, and then we got AgentCubes accounts. He first showed us how to do it on his computer, and then we did it on our own. He taught us about the importance of documentation. We also created a counter to count the number of sick and healthy people on the screen. He showed us how to add a description and how to clone oter people's work. I had a fun time playing around with AgentCubes and making a model of a healthy/sick population, and adding in other variables. We got introduced to our new group project. I'm pretty excited to make an SIR model with Isha. We are planning to make an interactive model of the Black Plague with one rat (which the person can move with the arrow keys) and some more things.
Blog 5
11/16/19
We started off with a prompt from Aaron in our notebooks continuing the HAVE = HAD + CHANGE. We wrote down as many examples as we could in our notebooks. We then went over the different symbols that we used in Vensim (level, rate, variable, and the arrow) We were then given a picture of a Vensim model and asked to analyze what it was describing. We were then given a word problem and asked to generate a model. We wrote all of the equations for each component, and then we recreated the model in Vensim and added it to the CyberDuck project folder. We did this with a couple of different examples. We then looked at carrying capacity in a population model, and how growing or shrinking changes all of the relationships.
Blog 4
11/9/19
Dr. Panoff taught us about models today. We started off trying to define what a model was, and then we tried to determine what could be modeled using various objects. We had a spreadsheet with hand, ball, straw, and rope, and we thought about what they could represent. We also created a random number generator in Excel of a coin flip, dice, and an 8 ball. Then, we looked at averaging and spreading with a modle of a trailer and colors and heating. After lunch, we looked at predator and prey models of rabbits and wolves. We started off in Excel, and then used Vensim, which is a system dynamics model. He also talked to us about other possible uses for system dynamics models. Then Aaron and Ernie talked to us about reflections and CyberDuck.
Blog 3
10/26/19
We started off going over the ethics statements for different professions, and comparing them to the apprentice rules. Dr. Panoff continued talking about How Do You Know? He also showed us another card trick, this time based on the number 5. We also went over some algorithms with Mastermind and we did something with cryptography and Sudoku. After lunch he showed us how Excell lies.
Blog 2
10/19/19
Ron came in and talked to us about professional work ethics. He first came in dressed rather strangely and used informal language, and then he came in again, properly dressed, and we looked at a slide show. Dr Panoff also talked to us about How Do You Know. We also started off discussing the apprentice handbook. Dr. Panoff also showed us some cool card tricks, some based on algorithms, some based on sleight of hand.
Blog 1 - Orientation
10/12/19
Dr. Panoff started with introductions, and then talking about the Expectation, Observation, and Reflection. He talked a bit about what we are going to learn. Then Ernie came and we all went over the apprentice handbook and expectations. He showed us our email and other sources we needed to be aware of, and then we opened the tinyurl with the docs, and set up the CyberDuck and since then I've been working on setting up this.
It was not the most boring orientation I have ever been to, but orientations in general tend to be rather boring. It was interesting to work with the HTML today, the only coding I've done in a while has been in school for our robot. The people so far seem to be interesting, so I hope it will be more interesting next time.