Blog
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July 20 2012
The HLD is ALIVE!
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The HLD is done at long last. Today I finally actually finished the HLD. I also got the background selector to finally after all the work I put into it read cookies to some degree of success.
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July 19
Finishing the HLD
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Today I finished up the HLD for the apprentice portal project. I also revised and edited it along with fixing various typos and errors.
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July 18 2012
HLD and Spring Stipend
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Today I worked on the HLD for the apprentice portal project.I also got my spring stipend approved, I have also been working on re-writing some parts of my scripts to make them more code efficent.
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July 17
JS updates
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Today I added some to the javascript stuff on my portfolio and I also worked on my HLD.
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July 16 2012
New HLD and JS script fixes
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Today I fixed my Randomwalk script with some help from Andrew and put it up on my website. I also am working on the HLD that ernie asked us to make for our next project. It is coming along quite well.
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July 13 2012(aka friday the 13th)
The end of the third week
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Today I finished up the xml blog and kept working on the background switcher. I should be very close to completing it now and will have it done before monday. We presented to the other apprentices today also.
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July 12 2012
Dane Joe
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Today I finished the Dane Joe program and put it up on my portfolio. I am having a little bit of trouble with getting cookies to work in my background selector.
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July 11 2012
Dynamic Content
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Today I finished the dynamic content project and am now working on the background selector. Dynamic content has been added to the portfolio page.
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July 10 2012
PHP programs
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Today I finished two PHP projects and started working on the third. I have added all of them to my portfolio except the one I am still working on. I also fixed a few errors in an old javascript program.
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July 10 2012
Introduction to PHP
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Today we were introduced to PHP and started to work on some new projects using PHP. The projects are mostly the same as our javascript projects only now we have to write them in PHP.
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June 29 2012
Logos and Weblayouts
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Today I mostly played around with Logos and Weblayouts but I disliked most of them so I only put a few ones up in the photoshop page. I also have been working on making a new image of Ernie with his face on a picture of a devil.
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June 28 2012
Of Javascript and webpage layouts
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Today I finished making two webpage layouts and started to fix the different scripts that I worked on earlier. So far I have fixed half of the scripts but the others look like they will take quite a bit of work.
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June 27 2012
Logos, Web banners and website layouts
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Today all i did was make a couple of different logos, web banners and website layouts. They were pretty well done(in my opinion) and were made in GIMP and Inkscape. Also Ernie taught us how to use the mask select tool in GIMP that allows you to customize your selections using the paintbrush tool.
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June 26 2012
Day 2 of Week 2, The photoshopping of Ernie
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Today at Shodor we tried to photoshop Ernie in such a way that it appeared his head was on a variety of different objects and people. That is about all we did today with my personal favorite being Naim's "School of Erine"
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June 25 2012
Inkscape begins
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Today we started week 2 of the first block at Shodor. Today I worked on creating a image of what my site should look like using Inkscape and Gimp.
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June 22 2012
The last day of week 1
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Today I fnishied my model. I changed around the sprites and spent most of the day working on just that. The model now has a slightly better way of plotting data with the amount of grass decreased so it does not screw up the scaling. Also I made the deer follow scent much more closely.
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June 21 2012
Data collection and Scent Following
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Today all I did was collect more data on how often the deer or lynx won and I changed the way that scent was followed by having a litle bit of scent being subtracted every time it is averaged, then if the lynx or deer have less than a specific amount of scent they will just move randomly.
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June 20 2012
Excelerate
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The Agent Sheets model has been completed. I am currently collecting data to use in my excel model. The Agent Sheets model currently has a 51% chance of the lynxes to win. I am going to be working more heavily on the excel model and adding more to my portfolio tommarow.
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June 19 2012
Finishing The Model
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The agent sheets model has almost been finished. Most of the major glitches have been fixed. I am currently trying to gather data and determine the chance of deer being the last alive versus the lynxs. Currently the lynxs appear to have a significant edge. The model is mostly done with only a little bit of balancing left to keep both populations living together for longer than just a short amount of time.
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June 18 2012
The First Week Begins!
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Today Ernie gave us a sheet that had all of our assignments for the next two weeks. We have begun progress on the first project which requires us to make a HLD and then make a Agent Sheets Model. Today I finished the HLD and worked on the Agent Sheets Model, I should finish it tommarow.
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May 5 2012
The Last Day and Presentations
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On this day there were presentations for the fire spread model and the predator prey model.
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April 21 2012
Work, Work!
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Today at Shodor we just worked on the project that was assigned last week, that is all!
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April 14 2012
The Dawn of a New Project
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Today at Shodor Ernie introduced the next big project to us. We have to remake one of the models that we went over earlier in the program using only Javascript and PHP. My partner in this project is Chase Yuan. We also had to write a High Level Design Document. This is going back to one of the very first blog entries here where I went over what a High Level Design Document actually was(HLD). Chase and I wrote the HLD for this project today and e-mailed it to Ernie.
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Mar. 17 2012
The End of Javascript
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Today at Shodor we did our very last javascript lessons. We not only learned about Javascript today but also HTML5 and the new Canvas tag. The canvas tag lets you use Javascript to manipulate an area in the webpage on a very fine level. We learned how to make rectangles do a random walk across a canvas. We also went over the dice script that we wrote last week.
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Mar. 10 2012
Javascript and more!
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Today at Shodor we started off by working on a Dice script. This script was supposed to prompt the user to enter a number. This number was the amount of times that dice would be rolled. If the user pressed the button to roll the dice two times then every whole unit that was specified would mean that the dice would be rolled twice and the amount on both dies would be added together. Then this would be plotted by the total number of times that a number was rolled. This could also be done for just one die.
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Mar. 3 2012
Starting Javascript
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Today at Shodor we starting going over Javascript. We learned about if and if else statements. We also learned about the proper syntax for these statements. We also learned how Javascripts handels variables and strings. We went over basic operations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and deviding with variables and learned how to add strings and variables. Then we went through a few scenarios that we needed to create a script that would fufill a goal.
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Feb. 18
N/A
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Out today for NCSO
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Feb. 11 2012
IPv4 and Hex!
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Today at Shodor we learned how the internet works. We also learned how to calculate the different IP addresses within a single network using the subnet mask. After the lunch break we learned about falling cats and how to model the falling of a cat off of a high building. We used excel to model when the cat would hit the ground. We also created a "family" tree of a species where every organism could produce two offspring that each had an independet chance of surviving. We then used algerbra and calculated the chance of the species NOT going extinct. Then we subtracted that value(1) from 1 and found the chances of the species surviving indefinitly which turned out to be zero, nada, zlich.
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Feb. 4 2012
Building a Computer
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Today at Shodor we started the day off by finding a pre-built computer on the internet. We were then compared the prices of the different computers(mine was $20,000). We then were shown the different parts of a computer and treyc gave us a quick summary of the functions of each part. We also covered the different wires and cables and why people switched from using serial cables to ribbon cables and back again(it's all in the timing). After this we went back to our "dream" computers and were tasked with finding individual parts that had the same specifications as the "dream" computer but was cheaper. For the computer I personally chose I saved about 8,000 dollars. When all of this was over we compared prcies and found that building your own computer is much cheaper then buying it pre-built.
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Jan. 21 2012
What's the chance of that?
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Today at Shodor we were given more time to work on our models and websites for the presentation that is rapidly approaching. We got alot of work done on Monday but still have some work to do on the website that we will present. After Lunch Rob Hochberg taught us about probability and how to calculate the probability of both independent and dependent events. Independent events are events that do not influence eachother while Dependent events are events that are dependent on other events occouring. We calculate the chance that you would get a flush given that you were delt five cards from a playing card deck as an example of dependent events. While we flipped coins as an example of independent events.
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Jan. 14 2012
Water Cycle Models
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Today at Shodor Ernie told us all to make models and gave us the option to pick between two different high level design documents that detailed about a model that we would have to make in both Microsoft Excel and Agent Sheets. Andrew and I worked together to make both of the models and were very productive today. Most of today was spent building the Agent Sheets model and then debugging it.
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Today at Shodor we worked on making our own models. We first started off by writing down exactly what the models were going to do in our notebooks and then started to actually make them in Agent Sheets. Andrew(my partner) and I decided to model the Bubonic Plague otherwise known as the Black Death or The Great Mortality. We had Rat agents that would chase after all people simulating how rats like to eat trash and crumbs that humans leave behind. If they touched a person then that person had a chance to become infected. Infected people had a chance of becoming a dead body every step and also had a lowwer chance of becoming recovered. People ran away from infected people, dead bodies and rats. Recovered people would reproduce and make more recovered people while healthy people would reproduce and make more healthy people because the healthy population would never completely die out as one person could reproduce the model would go on indefinitly however a constant pattern emerged where the healthy and recovered people would clump in one area and then the rats would come and all the healthy people would die causing everyone to run. At the end of class we then shared our models with the class.
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Dec. 10 2011
Dr. Sheets we need to operate
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Today at Shodor we started off the day visiting a website that did not work at all and then trasitioned back into models. We downloaded a "new and improved" Simple Epidemic model and then we proceded to finish what we had started on the third. We finished making our own modifictations to the simple epidemic model and collected the data from the model that we had modified and comparedit to the unmodified model data. We then presented what we had changed o the class and conjectured about what is most effective in stopping an epidemic. We then proceded to go over functions and how to build models based off of functions. We then ate lunch and came back to listen to a lecture about how to turn the model into a formula. Then we created theoretical data based on the model and compared it to the experimental data.
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Dec. 3 2011
Agent "sheets"
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Today at Shodor we started learning about Agent Sheets and how it can be used to create models. Agent Sheets works by having Agents that follow specific rules that the person creating the model gives them. these rules come in the form of conditional statements. These statements are in if P then Q form. After learning that we downloaded a Agent Sheets model from a website and ran it five times. We then compiled the data and were shown how to remove the outliers from the data. We then were seperated into different groups and tested individual parts of the model. We then shared what we had found while looking at the different aspects of the model.
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Nov. 19 2011
Sho(rt and)dor(ky)
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Today at Shodor we listened to Dr. Panoff talk about how people know. Dr. Panoff demonstrated that there are very few standards by first showing us the different estimates in the sizes of the earth and how different websites gave different figures. Then Dr. Panoff asked us all to measure the distance between two lines on a sheet of paper with different rulers. He used this to explain that an inch is not a standard unit of measure as different ruler have differences in the length that is an inch. He also told us about sorting algarythms by having volunteers do seemingly random tasks(e.g. put the cards into two piles and draw from the piles.)
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Nov. 12 2011
High Level Design Document
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Nov. 5 2011
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An Introduction to Shodor
Today at Shodor we learned about how to navigate in a Unix Terminal. We also learned how to use a Secure Shell to logon to the Shodor servers. We also learned how to make and edit files in VIM. We then used VIM to make a basic HTML skeleton. Prior to this Ernie went over all the doom and gloom about how to get kicked out of the Shodor Apprenticeship program. Immediatly following the session about Terminal we went back to discussing doom and gloom with Ernie including but not limited to the following: Legs getting cut/hacked off, ODAA, and expulsion from the program.
We also got our very own mailboxes during the day and got to put fancy labels on them. Right before we went to lunch we had our pictures taken. Then during lunch Ernie told all of us about the Legs getting cut/hacked off part of the program if we don't keep all four chair legs on the ground. Eventually we all got to go home and do paperwork! Luckily I still have both my legs intact.
End of Summer Blogs
Dec. 17 2011
To Make a Model From Scrach...
Today at Shodor before class began we were changing the settings of our computers to be much more accesable and easier to use when we were forced to have fun and talk with people by throwing around a bloopy. After this Ernie started to lecture to us about what a Requirements and High Level Design Document(HLDD) was. After learning that these were not just a "Shodor thing" and that we were stuck with them forever if we chose to go into a computer field we were handed one of these documents and told to follow the sheet and make this website and blog. (That's why I'm writing this).