Welcome to my website! I am Brandon Emons. Currently I am in 11th grade and I attend C.E. Jordan High School. I was lucky enough to get into Shodor's apprenticeship program and I hope to create great things! Web design and computer programming are some of my favorite topics and I hope to learn more about them! Shodor has been a really great place to learn about modelling and creating things for people to learn more about computers and STEM. I first started taking workshops at Shodor when I was in 6th grade and I loved it! I just kept taking workshops and now I have become an apprentice. I hope that in the future I will become an intern at Shodor so I can teach people what I am so passionate about.
On this website you will find many things that will teach you about my time at Shodor and what I hope to accomplish. I have a blog that catalogs my thoughts after a day of work in the Shodor building. This website also includes a portfolio which will be a showcase for everything I create at Shodor. I hope that as time goes on, what I create will become more and more advanced and that you will be able to see how much I have learned over my time here at Shodor. This website also has resources that Shodor uses such as a timeclock and a Wikipedia site so that everyone at Shodor can understand the rules.
The goal of this website is to show my growth as I learn more about STEM, modelling, simulations, and overall professionalism. Already I have learned so much and I hope that I only continue to learn at Shodor! I hope this website has been useful to you!
Ron's Office Ethics Project. |
A disease model. My first AgentCubes Online model. |
A disease model. My first Vensim model. |
Group Project #1: Gas Models. |
Code Commenting Mini-project. |
Group Project #2: Forest Fire Model. |
Parallel Computing Notebook. |
PHP Exercises. |
Database Project. |
The Block 1 Project. |
Photo Editing. |
Website Redesign HLD. |
Responsive Webpage. |
Today was my first day at Shodor as an apprentice. I was nervous at first but when I got to know some of the other apprentices I started to feel a lot better. It also helped a lot that Israfil was an apprentice because we both go to Jordan High School and we already knew each other so I had a person to talk to. On the first day we learned a lot of the Shodor rules and etiquette. Most of the rules were what I expected and I could understand the importance of them. Overall it was a good day.
Today was my second day at Shodor. Today we talked about some questions that Dr. Panoff told us to solve. I think the overall message of his questions was to think outside of the box about solutions. Dr. Panoff also gave us some questions to solve which at first seemed like easy questions to solve but he said that we had to be really sure of our answers and check our sources really well. It is very important to always make sure that your source is credible and I will try and make sure that my source is always accurate. After the lecture we went continued on and worked on our websites for a little bit.
Today was my third day at Shodor. We began the day by talking about the questions that Dr. Panoff assigned to us. Dr. Panoff talked about sources and how depending on our source that our answers would have different answers. Toward the end of the day we had some more time to work on our website and I helped out a few other apprentices with problems that they had encountered. Ernie and Joel also showed us how to work on our website at home and showed us a program called Vim. Vim looked really interesting to me but it seems like it has a bit of a learning curve. I will have to practice with Vim a lot to be able to understand all the shortcuts and tricks.
Today was my fourth day at Shodor. Most of the day was spent talking modeling. We mainly used a Microsoft Excel that was made at Shodor to model the population of rabbits when a disease was in the population. I like to create models so today was a really fun day. Microsoft Excel seems like a very useful modeling tool and it is especially useful for creating graphs of a model. Dr. Panoff also told us a fact about how modeling was the #1 experience that the top CEOs want when hiring. Being able to create detailed models is useful and I can see why it is a desired trait in employees.
Today was my fifth day at Shodor. Today we worked on creating a model in Vensim. I had never heard of Vensim before so it was fun to create a model with a software that I was unfamiliar with. Vensim seems like a tool that is very useful when creating models. At first I made a couple of mistakes when working on my model but my fellow apprentices helped me out a lot when I got lost. Once I got the hang of it I was able to keep up with the group and I began to like Vensim a lot more. I hope in the future we use it to create more models.
Today was my sixth day at Shodor. At the beginning of the day we talked about "brain phases" that are used, especially at Shodor. The phases are Expectation, Observation, and Reflection. Dr. Panoff stressed that no matter what we do that we always use these brain phases when working on something. After learning about the brain phases we started working on another modeling tool. When I first saw AgentCubes Online I thought it was a little childish but after beginning to use it I realized that it was an efficient modeling tool. Each apprentice created a disease model and had our disease flow through a population. It is a modeling tool that is really fun to work with but Vensim seemed to be a lot more useful. I can also see a few situations that cannot be modeled by AgentCubes Online. Each modeling tool has different downsides and upsides and it is important to know which modeling tool is more useful in certain situations.
Today was my seventh day at Shodor. It was a really exciting day today because we got to work on our project for the first time. At first glance I was worried about the project and if we would be able to get enough work done on it to be able to finish it on time. Once my partners and I started to work I began to worry a lot less because my group really knew what they were doing and I was able to work efficiently. I really enjoyed today because we were able to work on our own and try and problem-solve by ourselves. I am really enjoying this project and it will be fun to see our finished project.
Today was my eighth day at Shodor and our second day to work on our first group project. My group and I got a lot of work done today. I think that our group will be able to finish on time but we are going to have to work on it sometime during the week. Other than that today was a very productive day. I have learned a lot about modeling in the past few days at Shodor and I hope that I will continue to learn.
Today was my ninth day at Shodor and our last day to work on our first group project. I'm not going to lie, today was a little hectic with everyone trying to finish their project. In the end every group had three working models and each of them looked interesting to me. I learned a lot about meeting deadlines today and working effectively with my group partners. This was an exciting learning experience and I look forward to our next project!
Today was my tenth day at Shodor and the my first Shodor Saturday of the year! It was refreshing to have a break but it feels very good to be back. Today we learned a lot from a former apprentice named Anja. Her lesson was really good and taught me a lot about Javascript. I have learned a little bit of Java so that helped when I was learning today, but there are some very big differences between Java and Javascript. Javascript seems a lot easier to use than Java does and I like how we are able to use it so fluidly with websites. I can understand why websites like YouTube use Javascript now. I hope next Saturday I learn more about Javascript.
Today was my eleventh day at Shodor. Today we learned more about Javascript and how to use loops and arrays. Arrays were tough to understand at first but once I learned the basic rules of it it became a lot easier to comprehend. With a better understanding of arrays I saw the usefulness of them and I hope to use them more. I wonder how Javascript is going to fit into our next project. In the next project I hope to do even better than I did in the last project. I look forward to working with my fellow apprentices and applying the concepts I learned today to a project and to my own website!
Today was my twelfth day at Shodor. We learned about our project today. The assignment is to create a fire model with a partner. I am pretty happy with the person that is my partner. They know a lot about coding and they seem very nice. I think we work very well together and I hope that we will make a good model together.
Today was my thirteenth day at Shodor. My partner and I planned out a lot of our project today. We spent a lot of time on the High Level Design project because if that is very detailed then we can create a lot of added features on our model in the future. Next Saturday we will work on the Javascript a lot and hopefully we will do most of it. My partner and I are working really well together.
Today was my fourteenth day at Shodor. Mostly we just learned Javascript so that we knew more on what to do for our project. When creating a program I made a mistake that I could not fix on my own which really got me upset. After I tried every way I knew how to fix it, it still wouldn't work. So I asked for help and an intern came over and looked through it. It took a while but we got it fixed. I was glad when it was fixed.
Today was my fifteenth day at Shodor. I did a lot of work on the project today since it was due next time we were at Shodor. It took a while to get the project mostly done. I coded in the forest and most of the fire function since we could finish up on our model for the first few hours of the Saturday at Shodor. My partner and I worked really well together so I think our model should look really good.
Today was my sixteenth day at Shodor. Half of today I worked on the model but the second half was spent on presenting our model. I was a little worried at first that I would not be able to finish the model but I put in a lot of work and got it done with a little help from my peers. My partner was not here today so I had to do most of the work on my own. When I had a problem with my code that I could not fix I called over an intern and they helped me out with it. I am really thankful to them because they pointed out a part of my code that I did not think would be the problem. In the end I finished the model and I hope in the future I will add some more features to the model to make it better.
Today was my seventeenth day at Shodor. Mostly this Saturday was just for learning parallel computing. I thought that it was very interesting and I came in having some knowledge on supercomputing since I did a project on that in school. I hope that we are going to learn more about parallel computing next class because I think it would be very useful to learn since they don't have many specific classes on it in school. A lot of people were not here today so I will try to help them catch up on what they missed when they come back next Saturday.
Today was my eighteenth day at Shodor. We mostly learned about nodes and motherboards today. Basically all the parts that make up a computer. It was really interesting to learn the logic behind the operations a computer carries out. We then loaded up a galaxy model on a bunch of nodes (AKA Computers). By connecting all the nodes together we could load the model a lot faster, even if it was hard to get us to all coordinate to type the exact code needed to run certain functions of the model. Today was a fun and learning intensive day.
Today was my nineteenth day at Shodor and my first day of the summer. For the first part of the day we worked on learning how to code PHP. The syntax was a litte different compared to HTML, CSS, and Javascript but after a while I started to get the hang of it. PHP uses the same concepts that the other languages have, just with minor tweaks to the syntax. In the second half of class we worked on completing the challenges to test our PHP skills. I finished a few of the challenges, but I'm going to need to take more time later to finish all of them. Today was a productive day.
Today was my twentieth day at Shodor. We worked on our PHP exercises for the whole duration of the day. I got a two more projects finished up but I had a lot of server problems with the computer. There was also a problem with my code that took a few hours to fix. After getting help from two different people we looked up the problem on Google. Thankfully we found out a solution to the problem after searching for a while on Google. Today was a productive day.
Today was my twenty first day at Shodor. We continued to work on our PHP exercises today. A little bit before and after lunch we started to learn about mysql. Mysql is pretty interesting to learn and I hope to use it for future programs. It is interesting how it is like one big spreadsheet and how you can make so many tables. I mostly worked on the calendar project today. The project stumped at parts but I was able to get through it. Tomorrow I hope to be almost done with all the projects.
Today was my twenty second day at Shodor. I finished a lot of my PHP projects. There are only two more projects that I need to finish and I am half finished with one of them. The calendar is the hardest of all of the PHP exercises and finishing it will make me feel like I accomplished something pretty big. I hope that I am done with these exercises by tomorrow. The mysql project looks really interesting and I can't wait to start on it.
Today was my twenty third day at Shodor. I had my first ODAA today, which was reception duty. Reception duty was pretty fun and I hope I get it again. Mostly I greeted people as they walked through the door and I answered a phone call. Other than that I worked a lot on the mysql table that we are supposed to be making. Mysql is pretty fun and after a little trial and error I was able to get really good at it. This is my first week at Shodor during the Summer and I think I am getting back into the swing of things.
Today was my twenty fourth day at Shodor. For the first half of the day we worked on engineering skills by making a ramp and calculating the velocity. We were able to get the marble to fall into the cup predictably each time. After the lunchbreak we worked on PHP and mysql, trying to get them to work together. It was pretty fun learning how to get the two programs to work with each other. I hope that next time we can work a lot more with mysql.
Today was my twenty fifth day at Shodor. For the first half of the day we worked on engineering. The engineering part of the day included us making ramps and making various electronic circuits. It was pretty interesting to work with the circuits and I think I will look into it more at home. For the second half of the day we worked on our mysql databases. We got our project from Ernie and it looks like a pretty interesting project. I hope my project looks good.
Today was my twenty sixth day at Shodor. For the first half of the day we worked on engineering skills. In the engineering part of class we determined how certain buildings would stand. We also learned how to make bridges that will distribute weight evenly. In the second part of class we learned about svn again and went through a long tutorial on how to set it up correctly. I am not a big fan of svn but I see the use for it.
Today was my twenty seventh day at Shodor. For the first half of the day I had documentation, so I missed the engineering part of the day. I heard that they build structures that needed to hold a certain amount of marbles, but instead I took pictures and wrote up a description of the workshop. For the second part of the day we worked on our mysql/php project. I got good progress done on my project.
Today was my twenty eighth day at Shodor. For the first half of the day we did engineering. In the engineering part of the day, we created mini boats and tested out how buoyancy and density works. Everyone was able to get their boats to hold all the marbles we had in the building, so we all won the challenge. After that, we continued to work on our php/mysql project. I was stuck on a bug for a while but eventually I fixed it. I also added a lot of css to my project. Overall, it was a very productive day.
Today was my twenty ninth day at Shodor. For the whole part of the day we worked on our php database project. It was really nice to be given a full day to work on this becuase it allowed me to get a lot of it done. I just need to make a few more additions to my project and I will be done. Today we also learned about the Google project. It sounds like it's still not fully set in stone yet but we were told to get working on it just in case. The project involves teaching people Shodor Interactivate programs. Hopefully the project will but fun. I think it will be fun since we will be teaching people and I love to teach people new things.
Today was my thirtieth day at Shodor. In the morning I had documentation, so I missed out on some time I could have spent working on my php/mysql project. After I finished documentation I had a lot of time to work on my project. I am almost finished. There is just one bug that I want to iron out and then maybe I might make a little addition to it that would make it more aesthetically pleasing.
Today was my thirty first day at Shodor. We worked on the projects we were assigned to for the whole day. I was able to finish my php/mysql project. There are a few things I want to add to it later when I have the time. After that, I worked on the Google project. I have a firm understanding of the applets I picked and I am ready to teach them to people. I got a lot of work done today.
Today was my thirty second day at Shodor. I worked on my Google project today. I think I have a good understanding of how the apps work and I am ready to present them tomorrow. Today I also wrote up my HLD for my new website.
Today was my thirty third day at Shodor. Today we presented one of our applets to the group and afterward we kept working on learning our other applet. I worked on my website today as well. Today we celebrated Dr. Panoff's birthday which was really nice.
Today was my thirty fourth day at Shodor. Today we made our php form secure from php injections just in case there are malicious people on the internet that want to compromise our security. I also looked into a lot of libraries on css, php, and javascript. There is a really useful library called "Skeleton" that makes css very easy. I am learning how to use this library and I hope I can use it for my actual website. The library also makes the webpage dynamic, so other devices can access the webpage and it will be readable. I hope to learn more about Skeleton.
Today was my thirty fifth day at Shodor. I worked on my website redesign with a css library today. The library is very useful for creating aesthetically pleasing websites. I think my website looks a lot better than it used to. There are still a few things I need to add to my website but I think I will finish those tomorrow.
Today was my thirty sixth day at Shodor. I finished my website, but I might add more to it later. I have implemented all the additions to the website that I wanted. In the afternoon we learned about writing resumes. I learned about this in school, but it was nice to get a refresher. There are a lot of tips and tricks that are useful to writing resumes.
Today was my thirty seventh day at Shodor. I worked on some unfinished projects today. In the afternoon we took a tour of FlareLabs. FlareLabs is doing some really interesting work and I had a lot of questions. It was nice to see how R&D companies work and the skills needed to work in them. After the tour I continued to work on my unfinished projects and completed a few of them.
Today was my thirty eighth day at Shodor. Everyone worked on projects they still needed to finish. At the end of the day the people that we're done with all their Summer blocks gave a presentation of their favorite projects. It was fun to see what my other apprentices created, but it was sad to see them leave. Hopefully I will see them again sometime.
Today was my thirty ninth day at Shodor. It was the start of a new block so we got assigned to new projects. One of the projects is to create an HLD and then give it to another apprentice to follow it through and code it. I spent a lot of time working on my HLD, but it looks very nice and has clear instructions on what to do. After I finished my HLD I helped other apprentices that were still creating their php/mysql project. I was able to help them with the problems they had. Overall, today was very productive for everyone.
Today was my fortieth day at Shodor. I worked on my HLD for the project and got feedback from Ernie. Ernie helped me make my HLD more friendly to vensim, that way the coder has more choice in how they create the models. I also helped my nearby apprentices with their php/mysql projects. Aneesh and Israfil had some problems with their code and I was able to help them out with it.
Today was my forty first day at Shodor. I worked on my AgentCubes Online model for most of the day. I got a lot of progress done on my AgentCubes Online model and I hope to finish it tomorrow. Today I also helped out Israfil with his php/mysql model. He had a lot of errors and I was able to fix all of them. It was nice to be able to help out the other apprentices. I know a lot about mysql and it's fun to be able to apply my skills to people's problems.
Today was my forty second day at Shodor. I worked on my Vensim model for most of the day and was able to finish it. The only addition I might want to add is a graph that stays permanently on the model. Hopefully I can add that in next time. Israfil helped me a lot with my Vensim model because he remembers a lot about the lesson we took about Vensim.
Today was my forty third day at Shodor. I did some final touches on both of my models and I made sure it was all up to speed with the person that wrote the HLD. The only thing I want to do next is make a webpage on my portfolio so that people can access it easier. The SSP workshop kids were doing their final presentations today so we did a lot of clean up around the building to make sure it looked nice for the parents. I am glad I completed my project.
Today was my forty fourth day at Shodor. I completed all of the Inkscape and Gimp projects today. It was pretty fun to edit the images and I think most of them turned out really well. I am still working on creating a logo. My logo design is probably going to be very simple and have something to do with my name or initials. I like logos that are very simplistic because that is just more visually appealing to me. Hopefully I can create a really neat logo design for my website.
Today was my forty fifth day at Shodor. I spent my whole day polishing up my php projects. As I was looking back at them I noticed they could be a lot better, so I went and actually made them better. There used to be errors in some of my code and I wrinkled out all the errors. Tomorrow I need to finish polishing up one more project and then I will have completed all of my work at Shodor. Tomorrow I also need to make sure all my projects are on my website so people can access them easily. I hope to be finished with all my work tomorrow and focus on my presentation plan the next day.
Today was my forty sixth day at Shodor. I fixed my calendar php project so that it works. I completed the project without anyone's help which made me pretty proud. It took a while for me to figure out what to do, but when I figured it out it became a lot easier. I put all my projects on my website portfolio as well. I am glad that I got my work done and tomorrow I am going to make sure that everything is working well for my presentation.
Today was my forty seventh and last day at Shodor as an apprentice. It was odd not having to worry about what I am going to do tomorrow. I focused entirely on making sure my presentation was good. As I am writing this, I have just finished giving my presentation and I think it went really well. I learned a lot from Shodor and I hope I will remember what I learned.