Blogs
Fall Session
Blog Entry: Nov 5, 2011
Blog Entry: Nov 5, 2011
Today I have finally been able to attend my first class as a apprentice at Shodor. it was very exciting when i first arrived. we started off by just getting to know each other and lerning the rules and procedures that when on at Shodor. it seemed simple enough to follow, just do your work and dont cause trouble and things will go well. we also talked about some of the things we will be learning about, for instance how to make a profesional wesite using html and css, some programming, and making simulations to gather data and information. around 12:30 we took a break and ate lunch. being the first day, many people didnt talk much but i did get to read a couple of chapter in my book. after lunch, we went back into the classroom and got to start making out websites. we started by using text wrangler ( a program used for writing script) to create a html folder in which we would manage our websites. the last part of the day was spent making our reflections which we had to do at the end of every class. all in all, the day was well spent with much information learned, and much more to come in the following weeks.
Blog Entry: Nov 12, 2011
Today is the second day working as a apprentice at Shodor. I arrived pretty early and as more students began to arrive, we played a short game to start us out as a sort of ice breaker. following that, we bagan class. Mr. Ernie told us about our first project. the project was to make a website, including a blog and some quick information about us. this website should just be the basics of making a website so we would be able to familurize ourselves with the programs and figure out which one we liked the best. i chose to make this website using text wrangler. Later, we continued to work and finish up our starter websites. I have currently finished my website for the most part and im looking forward to finishing a new project over the next couple of weeks.
Blog Entry: Nov 19, 2011
Today we had a discussion with Dr. Penoff and went deeper into some of the work ethics they expect out of us at Shodor. In the beginning of class, Dr. Penoff talked to us about science and how we use science in life and work. We also watched some videos on how things in science affect us, and perspective views that people have (one video including a magic trick where everytime the camera changed angles, the set would change design and no one would ever notice.). Later, we had a presentation on ethics and the standard work proceders in a office setting. Ironically enough, the presentation was led by my mentor, Ron Broadnax, who did a great job keeping our attention and getting us involved. Concluding our day, we were given our first homework assignment to do over the thanksgiving break. We were tasked with reading a prompt about running a company and the different problems we were facing with different coworkers and how we would fix these problems.
Blog Entry: Dec 3, 2011
Today we worked a lot on gathering data and making models to gather that data. Our primary software program was AgentSheets and a little bit of Excell. We started off by get a short introduction about Agentsheets and how to us it. We learned all about the behaviors of agents and how to program them a lot of the things we learned in the introduction were basically a good review and refresher from what we learned from the SSP workshop over the summer. Later, we started to gather data from a agentsheet model we made about a pandemic. After that, we ended the day starting a group project about how we can make our model of a pandemic more realistic. We started our project in the last 40min of class, so my group just made a very detailed description of our model. We decided to add hospitals, doctors, vaccines, and more traits for the sick people to follow.
Blog Entry: Dec 10, 2011
Today we got to finish our small group projects to improve our simple infection models and we learned a lot more about plotting data and finding formulas. To begin the day, me and my group got together and made the agents from the design we came up with last week, except we didn’t have as much time so we took some things out (like the hospital). It was then my job to perform many test of the simulation and record all the data, which Eric then averaged up. After a quick break, we then presented the data that we got and showed how adding doctors to the model would help get rid of the pandemic, which it did. Later, we took the data that we took some data from the original pandemic model and made a graph using Excell. After that, we used formulas to get what we believe is the standard formula for this model. Lastly, we compiled both data tables to see how close our originally data was, to the formula’s data by putting both graphs together (which came out to be surprisingly close.)
Blog Entry: Dec 17, 2011
Today we started off by reviewing the different things that we did last week, including the Excel data sheets and the different agentsheets models we worked on. After that, we looked at making formulas for the Excel data we had and added a formula for is we were to add doctors to the graph. When comparing the Excel data graph to the agentsheets data graph, adding the doctors to the graph made them more accurate and almost had them line up together. After that, we had a quick snack break and then started making models from scratch. The objective of the model was to create a pandemic with any type of disease you want. This was a partner project, so my partner Eric and I decided to do the Ebola Pandemic. This virus was a very deadly and contagious virus in the 1970’s. There was never a cure made, and about 90% of people that got it would die. After choosing our disease, we started by drawing out a plan of action and made the agents for the model. We made a lot of progress in the beginning and almost had it complete (besides someminor problems) before lunch. After lunch, we finished our pandemic and decided to add people exploding in the end as an added touch. Then we started compiling data of the model and putting it onto Excel to make a graph and present it to the class. At the end of class, we basically summed up the day by presenting our data and talking about the different models we did (ranging from the common flue, to a full blown zombie apocalypse).
Blog Entry: Jan 14, 2012
Today we started off class with a short briefing about the upcoming project we would be working on for the next 2 weeks and later, presenting it to our parents. The task that we had was to get in groups of 3 and make a model of either a cops and robbers scenario or a water cycle scenario. My group desided to go with the cops and robbers because we thought it would be more entertaining and fun to program using agentsheet. As we began to work, Eric, John, and I began to make the different agents, and quickly began writing the rules they would have to follow. it was a lot of fun, but we hd a couple of problems along the way and ended up changing some of our annitial plans, into things we might actually be able to do for now. We amde great time, and hopefully will be able to finish the project early next week.
Blog Entry: Jan 28, 2012
This week, my team and I finished up the final details on our project and still had a lot of time left over before the presentation. We ended up using that time helping others finish their projects. We got a lot for work done and it was actually pretty tiring but ended up doing most of what we could help with. As we finished lunch and were starting to conclude the working times we quickly went into the back room and started to practice our presentation. After fixing a few bugs, we were finally ready to present. The presentation went pretty well with very few problems (we had everything on one big website for quick and easy access). All and all I am very proud of everything that my group and I were able to accomplish, and I am even more proud that we were one of the few groups able to complete the project on time.
Blog Entry: Feb 4, 2012
Today we started off with a presentation from some of the interns giving us some info on the hardware of the desktops we use everyday. It was a very well put together, and flowed quite nicely. We started off by looking online for our dream commuters. Most people, including me, got their computers from alieware, easily raking up past $5000. Following that, we talked about some of the basic hardware components (i.e. the hard drive and the CPU) and later went more in depth with the different cablings and what each component actually does for the computer. After the presentation, we were assigned to look up our dream computers again, but this time we would build it from scratch. The computers we made were pretty much as good if not better then the ones we got before, and for a much cheaper price. After that, we learned a lot about Terminal and how to use it and its different functions. After lunch, we finished up our presentation and concluded the day with reflections.
Spring Session
Blog Entry: Feb 11, 2012
Today we basically just expanded what we learned about computer hardware last week and expanded on the different types of networks. We learned about OSI and TCP/ IP networks and learned about binary code and ho to read it.Binary to me was pretty difficult, but after spending a good 30 minutes using it, i eventually got the hang of it. Later, we talked about probability again and talked about mathematic probability in the real world. It was pretty interesting to see how probability could affect us and how we can use it to almost predict the future or look at patterns from the past.
Blog Entry: Feb 18, 2012
Today I have finally been able to attend my first class as a apprentice at Shodor. it was very exciting when i first arrived. we started off by just getting to know each other and lerning the rules and procedures that when on at Shodor. it seemed simple enough to follow, just do your work and dont cause trouble and things will go well. we also talked about some of the things we will be learning about, for instance how to make a profesional wesite using html and css, some programming, and making simulations to gather data and information. around 12:30 we took a break and ate lunch. being the first day, many people didnt talk much but i did get to read a couple of chapter in my book. after lunch, we went back into the classroom and got to start making out websites. we started by using text wrangler ( a program used for writing script) to create a html folder in which we would manage our websites. the last part of the day was spent making our reflections which we had to do at the end of every class. all in all, the day was well spent with much information learned, and much more to come in the following weeks.
Blog Entry: March 3, 2012
Today I have finally been able to attend my first class as a apprentice at Shodor. it was very exciting when i first arrived. we started off by just getting to know each other and lerning the rules and procedures that when on at Shodor. it seemed simple enough to follow, just do your work and dont cause trouble and things will go well. we also talked about some of the things we will be learning about, for instance how to make a profesional wesite using html and css, some programming, and making simulations to gather data and information. around 12:30 we took a break and ate lunch. being the first day, many people didnt talk much but i did get to read a couple of chapter in my book. after lunch, we went back into the classroom and got to start making out websites. we started by using text wrangler ( a program used for writing script) to create a html folder in which we would manage our websites. the last part of the day was spent making our reflections which we had to do at the end of every class. all in all, the day was well spent with much information learned, and much more to come in the following weeks.
Blog Entry: March 10, 2012
Today we started off by expanding our knowledge of java scripting even more. We made two different scripts; the first thing we made was a calendar that showed the days of the week and the current month. My calendar came out pretty well, although I started off slowly, once I got the hang of it I could complete any task we had with relative ease. The second script we made was for a random dice rolling script. This script turned out to be extremely difficult. I had almost completed it but eventually just had to put it to the side for later. Later that day, we had a lesson on fractals and the different kinds we could make.
Blog Entry: March 17, 2012
Today we started off by finishing up our work on the rolling dice. I am still struggling a lot on that, and for some reason, I think it might have to do with my user because at the end of the day I tried to run someone else’s exact script and it still wouldn’t work at all. Aside from that I have a lot of fun making some dancing boxes. I was also really happy to actually understand how I made them, and ended up playing with the script enough to change the boxes colors when they hit the walls. All in all, I think I learned a lot from this Javascript session and I’m looking forward to eventually mastering and expanding my knowledge of this program.
Blog Entry: April 14, 2012
Today we started off with a brief overview of the final project we would be working on. Basically we were allowed to pair up into pairs and we were tasked with making a JavaScript version of a previous model and put it onto a website. My partner was Eric, and we decided to use our favorite model, the ebola infection model. I m looking forward to being able to put together this model and to practice and stretch my skills using JavaScript.
Blog Entry: April 23, 2012
Today, we continued to work on our projects that would be due next week. Since me and eric were basically done, Ernie gave us a challenge to make the mode run smoother, and have the squares not shake so much. This was a real challenge, and I am still very much stumped to how to do this.
Summer Session
Blog Entry: June 18, 2012
Today was the first day of the shodor summer class! We started off like normal with Ernie telling us what we would be doing for the weeks ahead. But instead of the normal instructions and the lessons for the day, we quickly broke off into individual work. We were all assigned with the same task of making an agent sheets model of the interactions between deer, grass, and lynxes. The lynxes ate the deer, and the deer ate the grass. The deer and lynxes also had to produce offspring. I started off pretty well, but ran into some major problems half way through the day. To get around these problems, I consulted with some of my peers and see how they were able to do it. In the end, I had incorporated some of their ideas with what I had done and got some work done on the final product of the deer. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to finish working of the deer, because it has the same basic code as the lynx.
Blog Entry: June 19, 2012
Today we continued to work on our projects for the week. It was a lot of fun today, mainly because we were able to continue to collaborate and discover the different ways that people came about to solve the same problem. For instance, many people came with the problem of making their deer age. Some people (like me) used a variable for a time step and at a certain time, the individual agent would turn into a new depiction. Other people however, used some sort of a timer for each agent to make them change.It was a very productive day and I got a lot done on my deer and hopefully I’m pretty much done. Tomorrow I plan on finishing the basic elements of the project, and will begin advancing the project and making the situations more realistic.
Blog Entry: June 20, 2012
Today was day three of working on our projects. Many people were stating that they were “finished” but Ernie encourages many of us to go above and beyond, so I am neglect to stop with the basic model. I am currently working on trying to make the deer create a scent in order for the lynx to chase and kill them. This task has proven to be very difficult for many of my peers. Hopefully tomorrow I will figure out how to get the scent, because I know once I do I will be able to incorporate many of my other ideas.
Blog Entry: June 21, 2012
Today was a big improvement over yesterday. I finally was able to finish the scent tracker with the help of Eric and I also added a lot of touches to the behaviors of the different agents and how they would interact with one another. After lunch time, I was mostly done with my model until Ernie told me I needed to add global variables to the model, so that I would be able to change different agent attributes when I put the model on my website for others to use to learn. This was at first pretty tough since I am used to just keeping the agents attributes in the code, but once Eric explained how to do it, it became very simple. After I finished this, I was done for the day working on my model and decided to help others. I helped out a couple of people but mainly Sunjeev, who needed a lot of help with how his agents interacted with one another. After working out all the bugs, we had made progress.
Blog Entry: June 22, 2012
Today was the final day of working on our agent sheet models. I feel as though mine was really good, I had a scent that the lynx chased after for the deer, baby deer and baby lynx followed their parents, and there was a small percentile that the parent deer would fight the lynx back and kill it. But all of these things couldn’t get the mock ecosystem more realistic and representative of what really happens in the wild. To combat this, I decided to try and make the deer form herds, in which they would move in and protect their young. The only problem with this was that the scents in the code were somehow flawed and I wasn’t able to make them move in herds. Hopefully we will have some time next week to do some final tweeks to our model and I will be able to get this cool feature in.
Blog Entry: June 25, 2012
Today was the first day of the second week of block one. We are starting a new project which involves making designs for our website. It sounds very fun and I’m excited to use gimp and inkscape again because graphic design is what I really like to do. The project had to include a new logo, a new banner, and a new web design. I worked on my logo for most of the day and had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do, so I decided to do what many others were trying to do, which was make a logo based around what our hobbies were. My main hobby (especially at the moment) is football. So I made a sort of futuristic football using inkscape, and put a almost 3-D lightning bolt on it which is sort of my logo at school. It came out pretty good, and I’m looking forward to what I will create tomorrow.
Blog Entry: June 26, 2012
Today was the second day of our graphics design project and we basically continued on what we needed to have done by the end of Friday. Since I was done for the most part with my logo, I decided to do my banner. Just like with my logo, I was having a small brain fart as to what I wanted. However, since I already seemed to be going with the theme of my hobbies, I decided to make my banner look similar to my logo and have it as a football theme. To start off, I added my logo to it, and added many different versions of my logo to the banner and put some stars behind them. It looks pretty cool, and I think it will be a great banner once I add it to my website tomorrow.
Blog Entry: June 27, 2012
Today we continued to work on our graphics design project and I am still having a lot of fun with it. Since I was almost done with the actual project, I began working on another part of the job, which was changing a picture of Ernie’s face into another photo using gimp. I thought this was going to be very interesting because I had a lot of ideas of what I would do. To start off, I began looking all over the Internet for pictures that I could crop Ernie’s face on, and downloaded a lot of pictures (from Michael Jackson to Ironman) and began work mashing Ernie’s face on to their bodies. The starting photos looked all right for today, but I plan on finishing the rest tomorrow.
Blog Entry: June 28, 2012
Today was a very stressful yet kind of productive day. I was having a lot of problems with finding my saved file of my logo and banner, and I also had some problems with putting it up on my website. In total, I was able to get my banner up, and I also made it so that if you made your window smaller, the banner and page changed with it. I am almost done with putting everything on my site. Tomorrow I plan on adding the last things to my site, which would be Ernie’s pics, my website designs, and my agentsheets model.
Blog Entry: June 29, 2012
Today was the final day of block one. In total, we made a fairly complex agent sheets model with a HLD, multiple web designs to implement in the future, scaling our websites, making a new logo, and cropping Ernie’s face into different pictures. I have just finished putting everything onto my website and I’m just trying to fix some of the final touches and perfect the design. I am looking forward to implementing my designs for my website, because I think they would look great, and very professional. Since I’m leaving early today though, I didn’t get to try and at least start putting my designs to work, so hopefully on block 2 I will be able to.
Blog Entry: July 9, 2012
Today was the first day of block 2. After spending a very fun vacation week in Disney for the fourth of July, I was glad to be back and starting a new project at Shodor. Today we began using a new scripting program called php. This scripting program appears to be very similar to the javascript, in that they use some of the same (or very similar) code. The first half of the day was led by a lesson from one of the interns who showed us how to make a mad lib website using php. He did a great job explaining many functions you can use in php and showed us step by step how to write php. The last half of the day was used to work on the 10 projects for this block. I started to work on the dice-rolling project, because since php and javascript are very similar, I thought the scripting would be similar to the old dice project we had done with javascript. As I worked, I found php to be pretty difficult, and wasn’t able to finish the model today. But hopefully, I will be able to finish it tomorrow before I leave for camp.
Blog Entry: July 10, 2012
Today was the second day of block two and I still have a lot of work to do. I started off trying to finish the dice rolling game, which proved to be harder than it looked. Some people were able to finish their dice rollers, so I ended up asking them for a lot of help. By the end of the day however, I still haven’t been able to completely finish it, although I was able to get much of the initial code done. I was also able to finish another one of the projects today, which was making a calendar for the month of July. Since today was my last day for this week, my plan to try and finish all the projects for this quarter on time will depend on how much help I can get from my fellow apprentices and how much I am able to learn in the last week with out falling to far behind.
Blog Entry: July 16, 2012
Today I was able to finally finish the dice roll simulator, and I completed 2 other project which include a background changer, and another project that switches the first letter of your first and last name. I think I did a fairly good amount for today, but I am hoping to be able to do more tomorrow. I was also able to start looking at another project that I will probably start doing next week which is called apprentice fun. This is a project that we will use to put our website information and projects into the shodor servers so we will always have it, even when they delete our websites. It is pretty hard to understand, mainly because it uses a lot of php, but I know I will be able to understand it more once I finish my current projects.
Blog Entry: July 17, 2012
Today was a pretty productive day, as I continued to work on the different projects I had to do from last week. Out of the 9 projects due, I finished 6 of them. Tomorrow I have some of the harder ones to do and I plan on finishing all of them tomorrow. Hopefully though, I will have a little more focus and time because I will be receptionist. The only problem I will be facing is if I need some help, the people that helped me out a lot today wont be around, so I will have to take everything that I learned from them today and expand on it to try and finish the final projects tomorrow.
Blog Entry: July 18, 2012
Today was a very difficult but productive day. I was able to get 2 of the projects done (for the most part) and I got a lot of make up work done as well. Since I was receptionist for half the day, I didn’t get any outside help, so I had to look at a lot of the older php scripts and get some new functions. Over time though, I was beginning to get the hang of it, and I plan on finishing the last project tomorrow morning.
Blog Entry: July 19, 2012
Today was a fairly productive day, as I just had to fix some glitches on my previous php projects, and I finally finished the final php project. Since I got help on quite a few of the other projects, I decided to test my knowledge and try to finish as much as I can on this one. I got pretty far, and when I came across some final problems, I just got one of my friends to quickly point out the error (which was normally just something small like missing a semi colon). Tomorrow I plan on writing my hld for Ernie, and then doing as much as I can on my snap2 project.
Blog Entry: July 20, 2012
Today I began working on the apprentice portal project. It took a lot for time, and was kind of hard at first. I started off the day by making a HLD and emailing it to Ernie for approval. Then I began reading through the first tutorial, which taught us how to use terminal to open our website into the apprenticePortal. My next step (which I will do next week) will be to add all my blogs and my home page to the website. I hope to get that done Monday, so the rest of the week I will be able to work on getting my portfolio onto the website and then finish with this project and start on the movie library for Dr.Panoff.
Blog Entry: July 23, 2012
Today I continued to work on my apprentice portal project. I was able to get quite a few more things done ( like I added a lot of my pictures to my portfolio) but I didnt get as much as I wanted done. The hardest thing about this project is the fact that you have to load everything onto snap2, which is a sort of database that shodor uses, and then from their you have to tell your index php file to load that information onto your website. A small error on either document can cause the whole site to mess up, and can take a long time to fix.
Blog Entry: July 24, 2012
Today was the first day that I had to do documenting as my ODAA assignment, so I spent much of my time taking lots of pictures of the workshop students use Xcode, Interface Builder, and Simulator to make a Iphone application. It was interesting to watch them use these programs and learn coding because I can remember being a workshop student and having the same feelings they had (mainly some confusion and a lot of satisfaction when I actually did something right.).
Blog Entry: July 25, 2012
Today I continued to do work on my apprentice portal project. Which is continuing to be a complete pain. The main problems I seem to be facing is that I am used to coding directly using text wrangler, but with this project we have to put the code on snap2, and then upload that code onto a php file. This can become very hard and confusing because both pieces of code have to be right in order for it to appear correctly on the website. I managed to get some done today (which would be my blog and some of my photos onto my main page). Tomorrow however, we are supposed to be having a lesson on databases, or something along those lines.
Blog Entry: July 26, 2012
Today we had a a special guess come in and teach us about databases. The instructors name was Monte, and he is a former intern from shodor (now grown up and I believe if not going though, done with college). The presentation lasted the whole day, starting off with him telling us the basics about databases. I learned a lot, and after lunch, we were able to put what we learned to the test by using terminal to program a mock database of a store.
Blog Entry: July 27, 2012
Today I started off working on my Apprentice Portal and Snap2 projects. Since I had a documenting class for my ODAA though, I only had half the day to really get work done. I ended up putting on 2 more php projects onto my website and procceded to do my documenting. The class I had today was the designing your world class. The software they used in their lesson was AgentSheets. It was similar to the class that I went to when I was a workshop student at shodor. Since it is the last day, the workshop students had to use the knowledge they had gathered from the whole week in order to create any model that they could think of. A lot of the models were based on fantasy, and were quite interesting to watch them create from scratch. I could tell each student learned a lot while they were here, because when they finished their basic ideas, many of them attempted to do more complex ideas and expand from what they previously thought they could do.
Blog Entry: July 30, 2012
Today I continued to work on my Apprentice Portal and Snap2 project. It went pretty well today, and I didn’t have as many problems with the software. I added some more to my website, but I also ended up helping Aiden with some of his php problems, and adding things to his website. I also received some help from Anwesha, with changing my background to change from page to page. We got some good work done, but I wasn’t able to finish it.
Blog Entry: July 31, 2012
Blog Entry: Aug 1, 2012
Blog Entry: Aug 2, 2012
Today was a productive day working on my projects. I was able to get a lot done, and I’m just about done with all the projects that need to be on our website. I am only having problems with adding my canvas to the php models. I will probably see who can help me tomorrow. I am also thinking about what I can start to do to make my website better. I am thinking about making my background picture change every time someone refreshes the page, but I will have to try and do that on a later date.
Blog Entry: Aug 3, 2012
Today was a fairly slow day. Since I have been coming in around 12:00pm all week, my days have been shorter. I am just about done with adding my projects to my website, but I have decided redesign my website because it seemed to be extremely cluttered and jam-packed. My new website layout is going to be much smaller, and have a small list of links that will direct the user to the desired genre and application that they want to see.
Blog Entry: Aug 13, 2012
Today I continued to work on my Apprentice Portal project. I continued to re design my website format. The new format will make the website look cleaner, and organize all my stuff more. The new website will also provide more information on the different projects and how they were made. I think it is coming out nicely, but I am having a few problems with reloading some of the projects now. Hopefully I will be able to fix this tomorrow or Wednesday.
Blog Entry: Aug 14, 2012
Today was yet another day for working on any unfinished projects that we have, which for me was to continue to work on my ApprenticePortal project. I was continuing to edit the website, and make the new layout of the links, when I started to run into a couple of problems with uploading my Agentsheets models. For some reason, the first model I tried to put on came up with an error saying that it was to big. I have no idea what it was the error was referring to, so I tried to add another model to my site, and it uploaded just fine. I plan on asking someone tomorrow about this mystery error and see what I can do to fix it. I also plan on putting on the last of my javascript projects onto the site (I believe I have about 4 more to put on) and then I will be just about done.
Blog Entry: Aug 15, 2012
Blog Entry: Aug 16, 2012
Blog Entry: Aug 17, 2012
