I will be back for two days next week, and still plan on writing blog posts, but this is my last required one! Four people, I think, presented today. Their websites all looked really good, so now I have to go back and make my presentation ready too. I have decided on some projects I am going to use, so that's good. I just have to make them perfect, and nice looking. A lot of my code is still not public, and does not have any CSS, so I will be doing that next week or this weekend. I made so much progress on the database project this morning. The table actually works now! Yay! I think my favorite part of this summer has been learning PHP. This is because I went from knowing no PHP, to being able to write some pretty functional programs in it. I do kind of wish we had done more Java Script though, and had more time for SQL.
Today I made some actual progress on my database. I got through a lot of problems and got to the point where I have a chart that has the right values, except for the number of rolls column, but I'm on that. I can enter data on my PHP form and then it will appear in my table! I am very happy with this progress, I was starting to think that I would never be able to finish and move on from this project. Ernie was very helpful in trying to help me de-bug the program. I will definitely be able to finish this project tomorrow. My plan right now is to present on Tuesday. There are a few projects I have decided to get done over the weekend, and a few more that I plan to do Mon/Tues. This includes re-designing my website because I anticipate needing a little bit of help with that. If I weren't coming in next week, this would be my second to last blog post.
Today was my mock interview with Jennifer. I don't really like interviewing and I was really nervous. I had my resume printed out and and was dressed professionally. I also thought of some responses to the "common interview questions" before hand so that I would have the things I wanted to talk about on the top of my head. The interview was more casual than I thought it would be. Yesterday and this morning, it seemed like a really big deal. Maybe because we were all so dressed up? Anyway, I was glad that it went well. It also wasn't a very long interview, I felt like it was pretty short, I guess it was a "mock" interview. I was very relieved when it was over and Jennifer said it went well. I asked Jennifer about the process of becoming an intern and she said that you could apply to be an intern anytime of the year, but if you wanted to do it over the summer you should apply in January so they have enough time to interview you. She also said that sometimes people come in during the school year to work during the day or afterschool on projects. I am interested in interning at Shodor during my winter break. Since I will be in college, my winter break is really long-- it goes through the entire month of December. She said that interns do a lot of work preparing for workshop lessons, as well as maintaining Shodor websites. I have pushed my presentation back to next week, it was going to be on Friday, but I need more time to get all the projects I want to get done, done. I have to start thinking about what I want to do to my website in the next few days. I want to move the navigation bar to the top and change the color scheme. If I have time I might use a library, I was thinking I might use Bootstrap. Even if I don't use a library I still have to research a library, so I think I will research Bootstrap, whether or not I have enough time to implement it in my website. I have a lot to do in the next few days. Ernie gave me a kind of to-do list of important projects that I should make sure I get finished. I was a little bit nervous about the presentation I have to do sometime next week, but after Nara went today, I think I know what I need to get done, and I think I can do it. She just did a little overview about the apprenticeship program and what she got out of it. I also remembered to write Jennifer a thank you email, which I had remembered to do before Ernie spoiled her test.
Today Jennifer came in and talked to us about interviewing. Tomorrow, I am going to do a mock interview with Jennifer at 11:30 am. I am a little nervous. Interviews are not my favorite thing. I had to do a lot of them for college admissions last year. For my interview I have to dress professionally, and I need to bring a copy of my resume. I also have to go over the questions from the powerpoint that possibly might happen to appear during my interview tomorrow.
What is computational science?
Hmmm... Computational science is the applying computational tools like math or computers to solve problems or make discoveries in science. It often involves observations, data, and modeling.
Other than my interview I also have a lot of other important stuff to do in not a lot of time. I have to improve my website, which I need a plan for first. For the improvements to my website I am thinking I definitely want to move the navigation bar. I am also going to change up the color scheme.
Today I worked some more on my database project. After not thinking about it all weekend, I was ready to start working on it again with a fresh perspective. In the morning, I made a lot of progress, I fixed a bug from last week, and I added the next part. After I asked Ernie a question about an error I was getting I ended up learning a lot about objects and arrays in PHP. The error I was getting required a little bit of knowledge about how PHP and SQL work together to retrieve data from the database. Unfortunately, at some point in the afternoon I ended up breaking my program again. So I will be fixing that problem tomorrow morning.
I also talked to Ernie about my plan for finishing everything up for Friday. I think my plan is to mostly work on what I want to include in my presentation on friday, and then come in a bit in block four and finish up everything else, because I do want to complete all the projects, I think they are all very beneficial. For my presentation, I know I want to present the database project, once I finish it, because it's pretty cool. I also want to show off some of the graphic design from block 1. I'm still planning what I want to do for the other three projects.
Today we got the whole day to work on our database projects. I like how much freedom we have with this project, and I do like researching how to do it myself, although I do wish I had been given a hint about a few of the functions like the last_id one. I also think the program itself is interesting, it's really cool getting to work with databases and I hope I get to do more of that.
I successfully implemented the solution I thought of yesterday. I made functions that would take the information from the forms and send it to the database. It took forever, but I got all the form boxes working correctly! If you go fill out my form, I can confidently say that your information will be stored in my database! My program still needs a little bit of work, I still have to make a webpage that gets the information back from the database. Our other project from this block is to fix up and improve our personal portfolio website.
This morning Ron and the engineering interns came in and taught a lesson on electrical engineering and circuits. They gave a presentation on the similarities between a water wheel/mill and the simple circuits we were going to build. Then we got bread boards (why are they called that?) and some wires, resistors, tiny lights, a battery and some other pieces. Then we had to build a very simple circuit to get the light bulb to light up. That was a little confusing. I have never worked with bread boards before, and had no idea how they worked. I took physics for two years in school, but we never really did any electricity stuff. It was a cool experience, though. At my school, during our brief electricity unit, we did some circuit stuff, but we used kind of childish giant wires with clips, the breadboards were way cooler, and felt closer to actual electrical engineering, and I think I learned more about what was happening with the circuit.
In the afternoon I went back to working on my Dice Roller Database. I fixed some of the big problems from yesterday, but I ran into a new problem. I think I have a solution for it, though. But I'm saving that for tomorrow.
Today I spent a lot of time working on my Dice Roller Database project. First, I re-wrote my dice roller program because the version I had was for multiple dice and it was unnecessarily complicated. I wrote a much shorter one that only rolled one dice, although the user still got to decide how many times it was rolled. Then, I sketched out a ER Diagram for this project. That was pretty easy, it was very similar to the one I did yesterday. Then, I created the SQL tables and that also went well, it was just like yesterday. But after that, things got really confusing and I did not make a lot of progress. I am trying to make the information from my PHP form go into my SQL database, and it isn't working yet. I was able to enter data by putting it in "", like I could enter "Caroline" to the database correctly, but I couldn't get a variable to be stored in the database. I am going to have to put some more research into that.
Eventually I needed a break from the Dice Roller program, so I decided to work on something else. Right now we only have one project assigned, and I like it when we have multiple projects at one time. That way, if I hit a wall with one of them, I can still be productive with another project, and when I come back to the first one, I see something I didn't before and am able to fix it. Since there wasn't another project to do I worked on adding projects from block 2 to my website. I didn't have time to put them up last week, so I am doing it this week.
Today we did more SQL! We made four new databases to play around with. But before that, we had to draw out some ER (Entity Relationship) Diagrams to plan them out. Yesterday we had one table with all the information in it, but today we spread the information out so that each "category" of information got its own table. We made people, color, coin flip, and shoe tables. With my four new tables, I was able to do the second half of the syntax guide. I learned about the JOIN command. I did inner join, left join, right join, and full join. I think I need a little bit more practice before I completely understand all the joins. I was playing around with changing the join code, and switching stuff around, and seeing what changed. After I finished the syntax guide I started working on the next project. For this project we are combining the PHP dice project from last week with the new SQL databases from this week. I started changing my old dice code (after duplicating it of course) so that it would only roll one dice. Tomorrow I am going to build on the PHP form so that it asks for the user's favorite color and their shoe size. Then eventually I am going to add a SQL database to store all the information I will get. That means I am going to have to make anther ER Diagram!
Today we started block 3, which means we get to start learning SQL! We are learning SQL through mySQL. We used Ernie's code to make a starter table. The table displays information, such as shoe size and favorite color. I am working on completing a SQL syntax guide that will help me learn the different functions/commands of SQl. I finished the syntax guide early today. I think SQL is interesting. I like pulling up combinations of of the information from the table. It reminds me of statistics. I am excited to make a table that stores practical information, so that I can use SQL to analyze some data that makes sense.
I also had a mentor meeting with Dr. Panoff, today. We talked about what I have been doing in the apprenticeship this summer, and a little about college. This block is my last block for the summer, so I will have to give a presentation and do a mock interview by the end of next week.
Today I spent an another entire day working on my Background Selection program. That thing is really giving me trouble. On the up-side, today was Aaron's birthday, so we got cake! But back to my program- I had it divided into three different files because I had been thinking that it was supposed to be that way, but apparently, according to Ernie it was unnecessary. I mean, I think if they were organized correctly, three separate files could work well, but I'm not there yet. I did come up with some creative solutions to my bugs, maybe a bit messy, but still creative. However, I think I have gotten to the point where I can't generate the HTML until I have called a function in a different file, but I can't call that function unless I have generated the HTML. So I think I have to break up the HTML. I did have it broken up at one point, but for some reason that wasn't working, so I changed it to the way it is now...
Today, doing all this did lead me to learning about the scope of PHP variables which I found interesting, but which was actually very helpful to making my program work. Surprise, surprise they are different than in Java.
This morning the other apprentices and I got our own engineering lesson. We got to use an applet that allowed us to build our own structures and then test how much tension or compression would be put on a member depending on what load we put on it. It was an interesting applet, and it was really helpful in learning about structural design. I think an applet like that would be helpful in a physics class. In fact, I think I used applets sort of like that or my physics class, except they were less engineering related. After that, we got to build our own structures to test. Claire and I built a short, but very sturdy structure that held up 125ish marbles. We got second place overall, ours could hold the most marbles, but the other team got more points total because their structure was very tall.
After engineering we got the afternoon to work on all our projects. I decided to take a break from the background selection program that was giving me problems and work on a different one. I decided to do the XML Blog project. I started out very confused because I didn't get what XML was, or how to setup the file, but once I got the first part done and figured out how the whole thing worked, it was pretty easy. There was one moment where I deleted one closing element and then I got a webpage full of orange error bars. I think that was quite an overreaction on the part of PHP, since all I did was forget or delete one little word. Anyway, I eventually noticed that it was missing, added it, and then the page was fine again.
Today I worked for most of the day on my background selection program. I am doing a rendered HTML technique which has been giving me a lot of pain. I still don't understand what combination of HTML and PHP is bad, between embedded and rendered. However, despite an entire day of orange errors, I am making progress. I think yesterday I really did not understand how my rendered HTML program works, but today I understand a lot more, which is important. I have a working version of the background selection program, however it clumps the HTML and PHP together, so I think that makes it badly written code, which is why I have been trying to make it rendered HTML. The good thing about having such buggy code is that every time I figure out what was causing an error, I learn something.
In the past week and a half, some programming projects I was able to finish very quickly and some took a very long time. I think there was a learning curve for me this second week of block two because in the first week I was writing programs I had spent a lot of time writing in other languages like Java or JavaScript, so I was very familiar with the concepts, but this week we got into some different PHP/HTML/CSS specific concepts that I have never had to think about before.
Block three is my last block, so I'm almost done, but I'm thinking of coming in for a day or two of block four if I don't finish all of my projects. I have a couple days in the beginning of block four before I leave for college, and I really want to finish everything.
This morning Ernie did a demo on rendered HTML. Since I have been watching videos for the lessons I missed while I was doing documentation, I have been having all the new lessons at once, and I need to go back and review the differences between what we did for rendered HTML and embedded PHP.
After I finished the review videos, I worked on finishing the random Hex Generator which I am basically finished with. Since that was the last of Krista's Projects Part One that I had to do, I moved on to part Two. I picked the Background Selector to start with.
This morning I started off by doing documentation. I was excited to do it because this week's workshop is an iPhone Development app-making workshop, which sounds interesting, and is something I've never gotten to learn about. In the workshop they looked at an app that was basically the same forest model we made in JavaScript, but it was in Objective C. Shodor really loves their computational models. I thought the objective C was interesting. I didn't know iPhone apps were written in objective C. I also liked getting to see X-code because I've heard about it, but since I don't have a Mac I've never used it. Ernie has talked about a program that converts Java to JavaScript, I wonder if there is a program that will convert JavaScript to Objective C, or if somebody just did that by hand.
After documentation I had to watch videos of this morning's tutorial to catch up. I have to say, the lesson's are more interesting when you do them live and in person. But I did get through the first one, it was a long video, but there wasn't a lot of code to write. I updated my PHP coin flipping simulation so that the information would be stored and formated in a table form.
I'm not sure I completely understand embedded PHP. Ernie said that it was a bad thing that if we put all the PHP there in one big chunk. I had missed the first half of the day, so I think I missed something, which I guess I will probably watch in the next video, but I thought we already wrote an example program that had a little bit if HTML and then a whole chunk of PHP.
Today we got the entire day to work, so I got a lot done. I am basically finished with my Dice Statistics program and my Dane Joe one. I might need to add some more validation to both of them, to make sure they can't be broken or corrupted, or whatever people might do to my beginner PHP code. But they're pretty much done. I also have a slightly broken hexcode program, which I decided to just re-write with more planning and simplicity. The dice program was my favorite because I think it does the most interesting thing. Also, I'm proud that I managed to debug that one, because yesterday it was pretty flawed, but I managed to fix it today. I planned out some changes, and tried to make the program simpler and that helped a lot.
Today, I got to work on Krista's projects for a little bit in the morning. I am almost finished with the hex code generating project, I just have one last bug to fix. Writing my own programs is definitely helping me master PHP. Later, I also started the dice statistics one. I have enjoyed working on this one because I took statistics in school last year and we used applets in class to help us visualize the lessons we were working on, so it's cool that I get to make a mini statistics program kind of like that.
In the morning we also did a lesson on php forms. Compared to Java, user input seemed like a lot of work, because you had to make sure the HTML and the CSS and the PHP were all working together, and then you had to validate the PHP to make sure make sure people can't mess up the page by writing weird code in your forms. Although user input is probably more useful in a program that is connected to the web, as opposed to Java.
This morning I also volunteered to do anther documentation session next week, because another apprentice might not be there.
Today, I spent the morning working on various coding projects. First, as a class we made a coin flipping simulation in PHP. That was really cool, I liked writing the program for that. I understood it really well, partly because I remembered doing the coin flipping simulation in excel that we did in the fall, and partly because I am becoming more familiar with javaScript. Whenever I write for loops I start with "int i..." and then I remember that I am not programming in Java and I change it to $i or var i.
Right before lunch Ernie assigned us Krista's projects which I am really excited to do. I started the random hex code project today, and I will keep working on it.
After lunch we learned about resumes, and even started writing our own. I have written one before, because I needed to for college applications, but this will give me a good reason to update it.
I worked on my PHP guide all morning. I'm making pretty good progress. I have found that doing the testing part has been very helpful because I have been making a lot of mistakes when I write code in the guide, but then when I put it in my testing HTML page, I see that there is an error and can go back and fix it.
In the afternoon I volunteered to help out with the Engineering workshop that was going on. It was interesting to get to see the interns run a lesson for the workshop, especially since I am interesting in being an intern. We built marble holding towers out of straws and pins. The interns told us that triangles make the sturdiest structures, although the lesson on that was in the morning so I didn't get to hear why. The other apprentices, who were helping out, and I got to build our own straw towers. We did incorporate a lot of triangles in our design, which turned out pretty well, although it was slightly crooked. In the end, our structure was 11 centimeters high and could officially hold 101 marbles, although after we stoped the count we found out that it could hold upwards of 120.
Today I got to do a ton of programming, which I really enjoyed. When we did JavaScript for the agent models in the winter we mostly copied code out of Aaron's library, but today I was mostly coming up with my own examples, which was more interesting. I have been enjoying learning more about JavaScript, although I am confused as to whether it is object oriented or not, because I have now been told both. I also really liked that we just jumped into learning PHP because I have been wanting to start learning it. I like doing the tutorial because it is interesting to see how the different programming languages compare to each other. This is especially true because so far PHP seems a lot different than JS. Also, for my other programming language to research, I chose Bash, and that is a lot different, but really interesting to me.
I started off today by doing workshop documentation. I really liked doing documentation for a programming workshop because I found the material interesting too. I actually learned a lot from the workshop. Towards the end of the workshop Aaron talked a lot about just programming in general and how to keep learning and programming outside of the workshop and I really liked hearing about it. I ended up learning a lot about programming languages in general and that is something that I have been curious about for a while. I really liked the programming concepts section that we did in the Apprenticeship, but we weren't able to go very in depth because there is so much to cover about programming and we didn't have a lot of time for the unit. But today I learned about the languages that Aaron thinks it would be most helpful to learn, which was Python, C, Java, PHP, HTML/CSS/JS and then a less common language that not a lot of people know. I've decided I'm going to be a Computer Science major in college, because I really like learning about programming and CS in general.
After documentation I started working on Agent Cubes. I've been having some problems with agent cubes. I keep getting bugs because my rules are in the wrong order, I still don't know what order they are supposed to go in, but I've been moving things around until they work, which is time consuming, but usually ends up eventually being effective.
I spent all day working on my Vensim model. I had wanted to get Vensim and a Agent Cubes done today, but vensim took all day. Before this morning, I hadn't used vensim since the Fall block, it took me a second to pick it back up again and find all the buttons. In the end, I was pretty proud of how quickly I figured out how to use Vensim again. I pulled up the predator prey example I did in the fall and used that to figure out how to do all the equations correctly.
This morning I got this really interesting error called a floating point error when I was doing vensim. I googled it and found out that it was because my value for the amount of sick people had gotten so large that the computer could not remember it anymore. I started changing some of my factor values, to smaller more realistic values. For a while I still got the floating point error but it occurred at later and later times, so I was making progress. I also realized that the problem was also coming from the fact that I forgot to connect a factor to the decreasing rate of sick people and so there were way more sick people than there should have been. I think I made an infinite loop in Vensim.
I am finally done with Inkscape. Graphic artist should definitely not be my profession, but I did make some cool things. I am excited to put the favicon up on the web browser. I got all of the inkscapes up on the website. I also have all of the Gimp images up except for the inscape banners that I am not finished doing. I have to say, I don't really understand the point of a web banner. To me, I am just turning one rectangle into a rectangle with different dimensions, but I guess it must be better for web design if you have very specifically sized images. Tomorrow I will be working more on modeling, because I have to get that done.
I got my HLD approved today. I am modeling the Flu. I picked the Flu because I wanted to do an infectious disease and I had already thought of some interesting additions I wanted to make to the basic disease model such as coughing and quarantine. I started working on the agents cube today, but I didn't get very far. I spent most of the afternoon working on Inkscape. I can always work on agent cubes at home, but I don't have the software for GIMP or Inkscape, so I am trying to get those done here at Shodor. Working with Inkscape I have found that I do not enjoy making logos of my name with hand drawn letters-- it takes so long. I did manage to make a pretty good looking logo of my initials today, and a favicon. I intend to be completely done with Gimp and Inkscape stuff tomorrow and to be on my way making the models. That way I can finish them Thursday, and not be rushing to finish everything on Friday, which I can't do because I have documentation. Speaking of ODAA, I was on backup reception this morning, although I didn't have to do anything for it.
I went back to working on Gimp projects today. I watched Ernie's tutorial from last year. It was a little bit frustrating at first because my setup was different than his set up and so I had to take some time to get it set up first before I could work. I have never edited pictures before so I think even a few simple skills I can pick up from this project will be helpful. I did the cosmic turtles one and made my own design, so the only thing left to do is the mess with Aaron or Ernie assignment.
I checked the ODAA assignments this morning and I have to do back up reception tomorrow and a workshop documentation on Friday. Friday is going to come very quickly and I still have a lot to do , particularly regarding my model. I also worked on my Inkscape this afternoon. I have a hard time making it look nice and professional.
Today I worked on the responsive web design tutorial, and I FINISHED! It took me a long time to do this tutorial because I kept getting bugs and it took a long time to fix some of them. The website does look really good when it is finished. I also set up a webpage to display my Inkscape images on, which is what I'm going to start doing on Monday. It was interesting to do this video tutorial because most of it was just typing code exactly as I saw it on the screen, but then when I realized there was a mistake somewhere I had to go back and really try to understand the code to find what was causing the problem.
This morning I continued working on my responsive web page tutorial, it went faster today, and I started to recognize and understand everything I was writing. I got quite a few bugs, two of which I handled beautifully, I found the missing semi-colons pretty quickly. There were others though, that were very frustrating, although I was able to fix every problem I encountered. It was helpful that I would frequently reload the page I was working on to check if it looked like it was supposed to. That way I could make sure my changes were updating correctly and catch problems as they happened and not code for a really long term and then realize there was a problem, but not know where it was. The webpage I’m making in the tutorial is really nice, I hope I can make my final portfolio website as well.
In the afternoon I had my first ODAA. I documented the workshop that was going on in the afternoon. It was interesting, I got to see what they learn in that workshop. There was only one girl in the class, which is sad.
This morning I started the responsive web design tutorial on youtube. I can't say I understand everything that I've seen in the tutorial, but nothing has been horribly confusing either. I think I want to try to make my final portfolio website responsive. I think it would be challenging, but do-able. The tutorial has been taking awhile because I have to pause the video and type up all the code in sections.
In the afternoon, Ernie did a Inkscape tutorial. I can see Inkscape being useful because of all the stuff you can do. However, it is also kind of hard to learn for the same reason.
For my HLD I have to pick a specific disease to model. I'm not sure which one I am going to do. Tomorrow I am going to try to finish the responsive web design project and get it linked to my portfolio. Today I also started setting up the webpages where I will display my modeling project once I finish it. I thought about copying the code from the forest fire model website, and just re-use that, but I thought that it would be good practice to try to make the website myself. I am still going to try to find the specific part of the code from the fire model website that gave it the horizontal navigation bar because I think that worked well for a model website.
This morning I started to make a mistake I made yesterday. But I recognized what the problem was and remembered how to fix it. It was a file directory issue.
Today I spent most of the day learning how to edit pictures using Gimp. I did scaling, file re-sizing, and cropping. Editing the pictures didn't take very long, Gimp was easy to use. However, setting up a new webpage to display the images took me a little bit longer to do. This time, I knew how to get started on the web page, which I see as an improvement. I was actually able to do it myself this time, instead of depending on a downloadable template, or just getting confused and immediately asking for help. I really liked that I got to add a page to my website today. It was great practice. Since it was a small page that didn't have a ton of components I was able to work on it in one day, but I feel like I learned a lot about HTML just today. I learned how to break a line, without having to do paragraph or sections, that will probably be very helpful in the future. I ran into a little bit of trouble when I was trying to add stuff to my new webpage. I created a new folder in my public html for my summer projects, and I forgot how to navigate through the different levels of files - easy fix though.
I have to admit, HTML is growing on me. I decidedly did not like it when I first started, but after working on it for a while, it's okay. I actually enjoyed working on the pictures and webpage today, more than I did planning out my model yesterday. I am excited about improving my website this summer. I hope there is a lot I can do with my limited knowledge of HTML and CSS. I am, of course, willing to learn a little bit extra to make my website look cool. I am also curious about the different libraries that I can use to make my website more interesting.
I found out that I get to do afternoon documentation and workshop break on Thursday afternoon. I'm actually pretty excited. Today I could hear the workshop going on and it sounded really cool. It seemed like something I would have enjoyed doing and I wish I knew about Shodor earlier so that I could have done a workshop.
I basically finished today's section of the Gimp tutorial, and I shared my agent model HLD with Ernie so that he can comment on/approve my plan. Tomorrow, I want to move on with the HLD plan and hopefully get started on the Agent Cubes. I also might get the model website set up and ready to display the model, if I am not approved to move on by tomorrow.
It's been so long! Today was my first day back at Shodor in a while. Between now and April I have chosen a college, graduated high school, and have now gone back to work! I enjoyed coming back. I like it when the office is a little quieter, and I also like getting to work on my own projects. This morning we did a mini orientation part II, but there wasn't a ton of new information. So far I haven't been scheduled for any ODDA tasks, but I'm sure my time will come. I did volunteer to help out with an engineering workshop that will be going on at Shodor sometime this summer. That should be cool, I am interested in engineering, and I do want to be an intern, so I thinking helping out with an engineering workshop would be really good.
My first project for the summer is another modeling project - I should be pretty good at that by now - I am making an agent model and a systems model with the tools of my choice (for the most part). I also get to chose the subject of my model, which is great. I decided that I want to do a disease model, but a more complicated one than we originally learned. I want to add in some details, like having more agents than just healthy and sick people. I am going to have healthy, sick, and immune people, doctors and hospitals. I am going to have the disease spread when the healthy and sick come into contact, but also by coughing. The coughing is going to be harder to do. I'm making all this in Agent Cubes, by the way. I have to figure out a way to make the sick people infect a larger radius then just the healthy people that are immediately next to them. I am also going to add in a quarantine , so that when there are a bunch of sick people together, they are no longer infectious. Based on the models I have made before, I have noticed that by the time the model is almost done, one agent has usually taken over the population. I am curious to see whether the quarantine will slow down that process by targeting large groups of the dominating agent, in this case sick people.
I have to get my model plan approved by another apprentice, an intern, and Ernie or Aaron. I got Adya to look at it today, so that's one down. I also looked at Adya's for her. She suggested that I keep working on my cough method because it's not totally thought through yet.
I also had to fix something from the spring that I didn't know was broken. I didn't check to see if my code validated on the HTML validator website. I was so focused on making sure my HTML and CSS code worked well enough to open the pages that I forgot this step. It turned out okay, though it was a very easy fix. A few months ago I followed Ernie's HTML instructions too closely, and didn't realize that I was replacing something and not adding to it. I find that I do that with code a lot, if I am not familiar with it I worry to much about writing the code exactly as I am shown it and I don't stop to learn about what each piece means.
Today we continued learning about parallel computing. We did another activity to help us understand about parallel computing. I wrote instructions on how to make a snowman in serial steps, and then in parallel. My favorite part of today’s lesson was getting to learn about the practical applications of super computers and parallel computing. It was really cool. I liked the video we watched about HPC. It was really interesting to see different possibilities of what could be done with it. All the applications to science were especially cool.
Even more than that, I really liked learning about super computers. I liked learning about Blue Waters and the top500 list because it seemed really relevant and interesting. I also liked that I was able to see examples of really cool things that have been built with parallel computing since I am learning the very beginning parts of it.
Today Kira and I presented our forest fire project. We went first, which turned out really well because we were able to get it over with, which was nice because I was kind of nervous. I thought the presentation went pretty well, we knew our information and our project was done. We used Kira’s website when we presented and I still need to update my website with all the information. It was hard to work on the project together because our spring breaks were on different weeks and we were both traveling.
I really liked the introduction to parallel computing. I think it’s really cool when we get to start learning about that now. Whenever I hear about parallel computing on the radio or TV or something, people make it sound very fancy and complicated. It was awesome that we were able to begin understanding it with a few simple examples. I am excited to learn more about it in the future.
Today Kira and worked on our project a lot more. The first half of the day was super productive. We came in and started working on our Agent Cubes. Last week we had gotten our plans approved by Aaron, so we were ready to start implementing. We got the Agent Cubes section done, which was really good. We also set up the project page on our websites and added the link to our agent cubes model. After lunch we started working on our Java Script model. That did not go as smoothly. We downloaded the example file from the project website, but we had some trouble getting it set up right. As we were editing the files and saving them. We had to use a lot of creative methods to get the files to save. By the end of class we realized that although we were getting an error message, the files did seem to be saving. I am excited to start working on the code part of the javascript model and not just figuring out to save it. I am interested to see how the things that can be done with Agent Cubes are actually done in Java Script code. Kira and I have different spring breaks, so we are having trouble finding time when we can both meet together to work on the project.
Today I got to start the second project because I wasn't here last week. Kira and I worked on planning our Agent Cubes code. Aaron checked it several times, but we are still working on improving it. It got a lot better, though. We are close to having it ready to implement. I thought it was really interesting to learn about methods in Agent Cubes. It’s a little hard for me to understand, because I think of them in the context that I learned them in Java, but I think if I learn to also think of them in the context of Agent Cubes, I will have a better understanding of what of what they mean across lots of programming languages and not just what they are in one programming language. I also opened up the Java Script and started looking at it. I am excited to see how we change it.
I wasn’t in class today, but Kira emailed me telling me we were going to be partners for the second group project. I got caught up on what she worked on when I wasn’t here. She came up with some of the Agent Cubes code. After looking the Agent Cubes plan over, I understand it pretty well. At first when I saw it, it looked really confusing, but it makes more sense. I am now helping continue the Agent Cubes plan. What we have so far doesn’t deal with the nearest-neighbors problem. When we start the simulation, all the trees burn up in one time step when only the nearest trees should catch on fire. I will have to work outside of class to make sure I contribute my fair share to the project.
Today was our final programming lesson. I missed last week, which made the beginning of today's lesson a little bit difficult, even though I watched the videos, but by the end of class it was fine. I really like the programming unit. I am taking a java class in school, so I have to do a lot of programming ever week, but the way it's taught here is really good. The differences between java and java script are really interesting to me. It was cool when we were refactoring a program today and it felt pretty easy because of my experience doing loops in Java. However, I actually didn't know that Java Script wasn't an object oriented language. I want to know more about the differences between object oriented programming languages and the rest of them. In my statistics class we sometimes use little Applets to see statistical concepts that use graphs and stuff. I always wanted to know how to write a program that would be able to do something like that. I couldn't really see how I would be able to do that with Java, because the programs were on the internet, but know I see that I would probably be able to make one with Java Script.
I wasn’t in class today because I was attending a Mock Trial conference with a club at my school. I watched the video of class that was posted online. I am really liking the programing lessons so far. I think it’s so interesting to see how different programming languages compare. I found the DRY concept really helpful for thinking about writing how to plan a program.
Today we started out intro to programming lesson. I found it really interesting. I have been learning Java in school, and I really enjoyed seeing how JavaScript compared. I also liked how we started out by looking at a complete program that worked and used it to see how individual parts of the program worked. I like how we talked about memory and bits, things like that. I don’t get to learn about that anywhere else, so it’s really helpful to me. Binary is a little bit difficult to understand, but I think it’s really interesting. Once I had t o write a program for school that converted numbers to have different bases. This kind of reminded me of that.
Today Monique and I came in to present our project. We both spent a lot of time on it and I think it turned out really well. I was a little nervous to present, but there weren't a lot of people there, so it wasn't that bad.
Monique and I decided previous to this meeting that we were behind on our project and would need more time to work on it. However, some groups were ready today and in class we got to watch them present. I thought they were all really well done and interesting. I especially liked the one about zombie ants and the one about China's population.
I missed Shodor today becuase I had to attend a pre-conference for a school activity. However, I watched the video and talked to my group, and found out that the class consisted of working on group projects. I made up my work by working on the project on my own time that week.
Today we started our group projects, Monique and I are working together. We decided to do our project on something environmental, probably to do with fish popultions. We talked about who was going to do what and planned out how we are going to complete our project.
We stated today by reviewing our Vensim models from last week, which was good because I was a little confused. We then started talking about different kinds of ways to study something, like with abstraction or seperation. After that we learned the basics of modeling with agent cubes online, which was fun. The example we did was with a healthy and sick population.
Today we started class by getting more practice using excel as a modeling tool. We used equations and graphs to show the rise and fall of a rabbit population. Dr. Panoff had some really good advice about math and calculus that I wish I had heard before. Later on we moved on to using Vensim. We learned the different words we needed to know to build a simlple model. We worked in building a model that would show the change in a rabbit populaton over time and then we started making our own models to show the spread of disease.
Today was my fourth Shodor Class. Today was one of my favorites days so far, I really enjoyed playing around with excel and using it to make things that actually worked. I made a small model that could demonstrate how the temperature would change if heaters were placed in certain spots around a room. It started out showing the temperatures with numbers, but I changed it so that it would show the distribution of heat with color. I struggled a little bit to get the equations right to make the model correctly show the heat spreading, but it was really rewarding to finally get it to work.
Today was my third Shodor class. We finished our How Do You Know lesson with Dr. Panoff. We did another activity comparing answers that we found from google to demonstrate that it can be hard to find reliable numbers and information. We also played around with exel and google spread sheets to understand how they compute numbers. We set up excel so that it would change one number in an equation and show the new answer without having to type the whole thing again. Dr. Panoff also showed us two mathmatical card tricks, that was pretty interesting.
Today was my second Shodor class. In the morning we listened to an office ethics presentation. Mr. Broadnax was really funny, he did a good job. After that Dr. Panoff did a lesson called How Do You Know. We started off googling scientific facts to see how inaccurate they can be. Then we looked at the accuracy of computer calculators and excel. That was my favorite part of the day, I really liked thinking about the mechanisms behind technology I usually take for granted and questioning its accuracy.
Today was my first Shodor class. I had a really good day. First we went over the rules, and then we woked on setting up our accounts and changing our passwords. I really liked setting up Atom and Cyberduck, I thought it was interesting and it was very new to me. I'm excited for next week!