Ayla's Blog: XML Style

June 17,2014: Today we worked on and finished the HLD for the Art Walk Anew, Ryan had to complete the project and his still working on it. I was assigned the Fashionista Phil projects. It simulates Phil's non-hipster fashion and how the trends change. The hardest part was setting a limit so when any certain color becomes too popular (65% of the people are wearing it) the people "reset" in a sense and are forced to wear a different color. This is cool because extinct colors can come back. After that, I designed my logo for next week. It is a monogram in a circle and a square. I like it. Brazil is tied with Mexico at half time. I'm very excited to see how this match turns out.

June 18, 2014: Today I presented my project to Alex and Ishaan. It went well, after that I worked on my logo and added it to my webpage. After that, I fixed the colors of my website, then Alex added the murder turtle to my website. I'm going to keep it. It adds character to the website. After that we played cards at lunch, and it didn't go so well. Ryan is still working on the HLD that I wrote. He is almost complete with it. Then, for a while, I read "The Outliers."

June 19, 2014: Today we began by creating a England vs. Uruguay soccer game. It ended up pretty bad, but the simulation was fun. After that I began working on creating the Art Walk simulation. It's not going well. I have some major issues, such as the fact that people won't die, and the fact that people cannot become happy. Tomorrow I will hopefully fix these problems.

June 20, 2014:Today we did not do as much work as usual because we are all super ahead of schedule. I worked on my website a little bit and then worked on my summer reading project. The Outliers has gotten very good and I am now about half way through the book. I hope to finish it before next Monday. Also, Alex and Ryan did a competition of sorts. They took a random object that seemed to have one use and tried to find other uses for it. For example, a brick can be used for breaking and entering and to build a stable home for 3 pigs.

June 23, 2014: Today I began working on making my alternate css page for my website. It began by going very well, but then I came to the problem by not being able to get the design to stick. I asked Itai for help, now my alternate css is not working at all. That's okay though, I'll fix it tomorrow. I spent the afternoon doing documentation in the "Modeling Your World" workshop. It surprised me because I know 3 of the students in this workshop. I am proud of my alternate design that I created, if only I could get the JavaScript to work!

June 25, 2014: Today was a pretty productive day. I started off the day by fixing small things on my website, like borders and I made my logo link back to my homepage. all of this went pretty well. After lunch, I worked on making my mobile version of my website. This is going well. The tutorial was helpful. Some problems I've run into are the fact that I cannot get the numerous turtle gifs to disappear without getting rid the entire text box. Also, I have the problem where all of my margins are in line except for my "central" content box. I'll fix these minor problems tomorrow and begin working with bootstrap.

June 26, 2014: Today was weird, I did a lot of work, but not a lot got done. I started the day doing documentation for the morning ACP class and worked on the mobile version of my website and did the gimp and inkskape tutorials that I didn't do at the beginning. Then, I went back to the apprentice lab and Jopsy, Itai, Darshaan, Ishaan, and myself watched both the USA vs. Germany game and the Portugal vs. Ghana game at the same time. We streamed them in spanish on the computers it was disappointing because the US lost 1-0 to Germany but it's okay because we made it through the first round of the world cup. After this Ryan, Alex, Ishaan, and myself helped out the "Modeling Your World" students with their AgentSheets models.

June 27, 2014: Today I began by finishing up all the work from the rest of the week that I just didn't do (i.e. the gimp tutorial, and my final website HLD) those were quick easy things, they took up most of the morning. After lunch I uploaded all those things to my portfolio, and finished up a few final touches on my website. Then Alex, Ryan, and I helped the "Model Your World" students, that went well. I helped Caleb and Paul. Today is my last day at Shodor until August. I leave for Guatemala Tuesday, and I'm kind of nervous, but I think it will be fun.

August 4, 2014: Today was the first day back in the United States! Whoop whoop! Today began by just trying to get back in the swing of things, and looking at the projects that I have left to complete in order to complete the summer module. It was a productive day, I think. I finished 3 of the PHP projects including the random color generator, the Don Joe (aka Clex Alarke) project, and then the dynamic generator. I am now working on the "choose your background color" php project. This isn't going that great as of today because I've made two projects that don't work. One is excellent though because it's called the "Henry Ford Model". Basically, the only choice you have is to pick the color white and then it will take you to a blank screen. But, it will give you the color you asked for. The other will literally just take you to a picture of Friends.

August 5, 2014: I started the day by doing documentation this morning for the SSP class, that was fun because I got to cover the basics of SSP again. Also, while I was in there I got to continue working on my final php project. I am making progress slowly, I have the first little bit done. I am excited to do the engineering project tomorrow. It should be fun to compete against Phil in the Engineer-off. He's going down. We will build a better tower than him. Other than that, today Joel taught my sql to Alex and I. That was fun, I understand the concepts that he was talking about. After this, Jopsy and I gossiped about Cayla. She's mad, I think. Oh well.

August 6, 2014: Today I spent the morning working on my resume for Kristen. I think it's going alright, although, I don't really know what things to definitely include and what things that maybe I should leave out. I think I figured it out though. Also, during the morning, Darshan and I were taught the beginnings of the AJAX stocks project. It sounds pretty complicated, it should be okay though. In the afternoon, Rebecca, Darshan, and I did Engineering. It was really fun. I had done some electrical work before in Physics in our E&M unit. It was cool to review all that stuff and learn some new stuff as well. My favorite part was when we got to build the circuit. Mine ended up not working, I'm not sure what went wrong and I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

August 7, 2014: Today was a good day. I began the morning by finishing my resume and beginning to work on my xml blog. I finished most of it, all I have to do is just do the PHP for the blog. I will do that tomorrow. That took up all of the morning. During lunch, I read Outliers. I am finally on Chapter 7. This chapter was all about "culture of honor" and how people usually from the rural parts of the South get mad easier and stay mad longer because their ancestors had to be intimidating to intimidate others to protect their livestock. Gladwell makes the assumption that the reason this exists today is because parents pass down their habits and teaching to their children. This amuses me. Mostly because it's probably true, and because I'm from the South. After lunch, Darshan and I did Engineering again. That was really fun. It began by fixing the problem from yesterday with the electrical stuff. Turned out the only problem is that one of my resistors was connected on the right line but was also connected in the same line that my resistor for another LED. After that was fixed it worked properly. Next, we began looking and the way buildings are built and structures. What we learned is that you want to have A LOT of triangles. And no squares...EVER. We learned this through the simulation, and through using legos. I happen to have a passionate dislike for Legos because I step on approximately 1000 per day. This happens because they are all over my house. I was happy to see that the Legos we used here were on a table and stayed there. Next, we began building our personal towers. The stipulations were to make it as tall as you could without it crashing. It also had to be able to hold as many marbles as possible. Darshan and I began by trying to build a bunch of 3D triangles, we didn't realize that you could stick the pipe cleaners in the straws, once Miguel told us this our structure held together much better. Our game plan changed from a decent plan to "Just Go for It!", which ended up with a coliseum looking thing. It made a wonderful hat. Our structure ended up holding 50 marbles. Well,actually more but we stopped counting at 50. We were competing against Phil and Eric. They made a taller structure than us and, in the end, more stable as well. Their structure ended up holding over 100 marbles. But, theirs did not make a good hat. So who's the real winner here?

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