Blog

  • Nov. 16th 2013

  • Today we had our first look at agent sheets. Its a different program were you can visually see the model instead of the number in vensim. We took at look at a sickness model and we had a lot of fun playing with the environment to see what happend. Both Phil and Levi did a good job explaining how the code differs from vensim and how it can easily be solved and inputed. At first I found in confusing but gradually I started to understand.

  • Nov. 23rd 2013

  • Today my mentor Joel came to talk about Terminal. We learned a lot about terminal, the mac coding programe. I had never used terminal before other than modding games so it was exciting. Phil was able to help me with any problems I had with plugging in the right numbers or variables. After we all finished the basic methods of moving around terminal we dove deeper into the use of Agent Sheets in preparation of the our upcoming project. We started building a predator prey agent sheets model with foxes and hounds. I had a lot of fun watching each change I made to the commands show up in the world.

  • Dec. 7th 2013

  • Today, we mainly worked on our projects. Me and Ishaan have been working on ours for a few weeks now and we finished today. There a still a few issues to smooth out, such as the farmer receiving 3 million from tickets, but overall it works perfectly. After we finished, we both worked on our websites. I was able to improve mine quite a bit from the instructions given on the Shodor website. I did have a lot of computer problems, mainly being crashs. I worked on two different computers which crashed a total of seven times. I saved all of my work however so nothing long lasting.

  • Dec. 14th 2013

  • Today Elise Dixon and I worked on my website. I was having problems with my blog page and the readjustments for the index. We were able to create a cover page that displayed my name and a enter button. I am very pleased with my work and I hope it will be able to improve my web building skills in the future. All the changes were not drastic, but minor that altered the functionality of the site. The only real change other than the cover page was fixing the blog so it would be in line with the index. I learned good preparation for altering my site such as coloring my div's so I could see how they changed each time.

  • Feb. 1st 2014

  • Today everyone presented their projects for the Winter Section. Ishaan and I presented our Water Cycle project. It went very well and we had no complications. After words Aaron and Phil started to teach us about Java Script. We had to fill out ome sheets and at firs it was rather confusing but I'm slowly starting to understand. soon we will receive new project but in the mean time I am going to continue with HTML, CSS, Vensim, and Agent Sheets.

  • Feb. 8th 2014

  • Today we all learned a lot more about Java Script from Aaron and Phil. We looked through the ants.js file to look at loops and other codes. It is very interesting and I hope to incorporate this into my website. I have seen some cool thing that have been done with this and I want to learn more. In the mean time I will continue work on my website.

  • Feb. 22nd 2014

  • Today was rather low key, people mainly worked on their own work that wasent finished. I continued to expand on my predator prey model. I learned how to add reactions from global actions such as reacting to sound. I added a Hunter, which follows the sounds of barks, and a child which follows the sound of gun shots and barks. Phil and Aaron helped me debug my model and they also taught me some helpful tips with JavaScript.

  • Mar. 1st 2014

  • Today, since I missed the last session I came in on a Wednesday. First Phil and I started working on the pros and cons of Data and Task Parallel computing. next Mobeen and I worked with BCCD and having the different Nodes work together. To do this we turned off all the computers and gave them each a disk with Linux on them. To find which was a better way of solving problems we assigned multiple computers to solve one problem and one computer to solve the same one. It was interesting to see the multiple computers working together.

  • **SPRING BREAK**

  • Apr. 9th 2014

  • Today we got our major project for the Spring Session, the Forrest Fire Model. I was working with Alex and the first thing we did was review our base code. At first we were rather lost but Phil and Aaron were helpful showing us the basic ropes of the course and giving use some ideas on what we could do to improve it.

  • Apr. 12th 2014

  • Today we continued our projects but this time with the help of Nathan Dixon. We first established our goals for the project and set out what each of us were going to do. Alex made the HTML portion of the project, designed for his website. Nathan and I looked over the JavaScript and planed out a list of what we need, and want to add to it. Iain Dixon came over and explained more of the basics of JavaScript so we could get started. He pointed us in the right direction of where our project should go and some useful links fo learning more javascript. We need to come back in and finish our Spring project but overall it was a good work day.

  • Jun. 16th 2014

  • Today was the first day of our six week summer session. We met a new mentor Eric, who worked with Phil on giving out our first week long project of making a HLD (High Level Design Document). We were given a number of options to write our HLD about, I along with most of everyone else, choose the Fashonista Phil Model. After first writing it out we sent it to Eric for review. After we looked over our HLD's we could finish up any work we hadn't done before. I started implementing our JavaScript Fire Model into my Portfolio and Alex started to refine our code to stop the model from spreading fire to every tree multiple times.

  • Jun. 17th 2014

  • Today was a long and difficult day. I didn't finish my HLD yesterday so first I polished it up and sent it to Phil. I didn't have a ODAA job so I talked to Eric and started to observe and document the morning workshop. The students never said more than ten words so it was kinda boring but its work. I didn't receive my HLD till half an hour after lunch and I had a late start on the more difficult model, the Art Walk. I made the basics of the model, mainly the world, art, and the people. I decided to use scent as the key component to drawing the people towards and away from objects but I doesn't seem to work that well. More work is needed tomorrow.

  • Jun. 18th 2014

  • Today was a good day, it took a lot of work but I think I finished my module. I moved my seat next to Sai so we could work with each other on the more difficult Art Walk Module. Most of everyone else finished fashionista Phil yesterday and were reviewing their websites or starting on next weeks work. Phil was a big help in explaining how to fix the problems with the scents. The people wouldn't directly walk towards the source of the scent and at the beginning there was no way for anyone to get happy.

  • Jun. 19th 2014

  • Today was very productive. Sai and I finished perfecting our modules and Phil assigned us to switch modules and try the other one. Sai and had to do the Fashionista Phil modules. Since I was far easier and we had seen others finish them. We were taken away from our work a lot to help the others. I feel that even though it was hard, its easier to work on it from scratch then for the others to look at ours. When I was finished I worked with Alex, Ayla, and Ishaan on the Art Walk. We abandoned the Fifa World Cup simulation when we got our work but a decent amount of progress was before we stopped.

  • Jun. 20th 2014

  • THis morning was where most of the hard work took place. Sai and I finished our models early so we helped other figure out the last little problems. Ayla started her model completely over but soon realized that was not going to help so we all banded together to finish faster. I took a lot of tweaking and logging on to multiple computers but we eventually were able to get everyones model done. After lunch when everyone started working on their logos. I tried a few designes but I wanted to sketch mine out before making it on the computer

  • Jun. 23rd 2014

  • Today was a difficult and long day. I started on the mobile version of my website.I planned out how I wanted it to look and then started implementing the changes suggested by the tutorial. After a short while I gave up on that and asked Ishaan to explain how he got his drop down menu to work. We spent the rest of the day implementing his code into my website and then trying to figure out what was wrong with it. It took the whole day and there were a lot of bugs that had to be smoothed put. We didn't find everything and it doesn't look the way I want it to yet but its getting there.

  • Jun. 24th 2014

  • Now that my mobile version of the website was "stable" I decided to try my hand at alternate CSS. I first tried to go about it the way everyone else was and have a button link to the other CSS but I had a idea. I duplicated all the HTML's and linked the second CSS to them. It worked but it wasn't in good practice, it would also take more work to update my blog and so on. With help from Itai Ayla and I implemented some tricky JavaScript. After we got the different sites to work Alex pointed out a key thing I needed to fix my mobile version, a second container I had forgot about. Now my drop down menues and containers all "fit well" together.

  • Jun. 25th 2014

  • This morning started of poorly, I was an hour and twenty minuets late. I quickly ran inside and stared off documentation, it was a bit different from last time. I was able to get more pictures of the students but the camera ran out of battery quickly. After lunch I went through the code for my mobile version of my website. After some finale additions I started working through the Inkscape tutorial. I found simpler than Gimp but it doesn't have as many tools as Gimp, I ended up forgoing my Batman logo, but I might revisit it in the future.

  • Jun. 26th 2014

  • Alex and I arrived on time today and were able to get right to work. I continued work on the InkScape and Gimp tutorials. When I finished making my pictures, Ishaan and I created a gallery. It looks very nice with a great scroll over effect, the images enlarge and display farther down the page. Along with that we took a quick look at php and continued JavaScript. Alex and I planned to add more features with JavaScript. Alex also started his famous Floating Phil page.

  • Jun. 27th 2014

  • Alex and I started out the day by starting a new website. We wanted to create on to hold the short films we do in the future and since we finished our assigned work we decided to start working. Alex took a look at J query and I looked for fonts and colros that would make our website look good. We made some progress and were able to think up a design for the front page. Afterlunch we spent about an hour working with the workshop kids on their models. When they were all finished we worked on our sites till they presented.

  • **ONE WEEK BREAK**

  • Jul. 7th 2014

  • After a one week break we were all a little rusty. Especially those who havent been here in months. This weeks goal is learning the basic Complex Coded languages and principles. Today we learned how to make a back-up copy of our code through Terminal. It took a lot longer than expected because of how many problems our work presented. It was generally all the same problem but since we hadn't used Terminal in such a long time we needed Joel to help us individually. In the afternoon we looked up tutorials on how to make gifs inside of Gimp. We I was finished Phil had me start on a tutorial of my own for students of Shodor to use later.

  • Jul. 8th 2014

  • This morning Joel introduced us to PHP. He went through a couple pages, looking at different features. We slowly learned the basics to php and how closely it works with HTML. After lunch we were given a couple of projects to do. Make a interactive calandre, random color generator, and a color changer. We all started on the random color generator. For the rest of the day we slowly worked through our errors and fixed our pages to cycle through colors. It took longer than expected but we all were eventually able to do it.

  • Jul. 9th 2014

  • We continued day into more PHP. We were given a lot more time to work on our projects. I am finding PHP a bit more confusing then JavaScript or HTML. Working with Joel we all continued looking at different features of PHP and how they would incorporate into our projects. After lunch individual work went into projects. Several people were able to finish the calendar project but most kept working on color switcher. With help form Ishaan I was able to make a color picker. Hopefully with working on Code Academy and Joel I will be able to understand PHP more and more.

  • Jul. 10th 2014

  • This morning I added a new feature to my Background Color Change page that adds not the colors I put in bu all the available base colors to pick from. You can now type in the hexcode or words to choose a color. After finishing Joels test page of the day I worked with John and Sai on the Dane Joe page. After going through Johns starting code to get the general gist of it, I started to plan out how to write it out. I was having some difficulty with switching the letters from the arrays but Phil and John were able to explain the variable to me and I fixed the problems I was having.

  • Jul. 11th 2014

  • Today people started working on their last page of the week. I finished up work on the dice page and began to look at the Calendar. After working with Joel on a test page, Ishaan showed the basic inter workings of his Calendar page. Ishaan was a big help with this page. He walked me through the code, but not giving it to me. He gave me a problem and I, or at least tried to work through it. By the end of the day I wasent done, but I made major advances in creating the calendar. I want to take this space to thank Ishaan for all the help with the php pages that I have had difficulty with.

  • Jul. 14th 2014

  • This week the workshops start again, and I got stuck with the first observation and break. This workshop is a bit different than other because instead of programming languages they were teaching forensic science. They took Levi's office and turned it into a crime scene.

  • Jul. 15th 2014

  • We continued work today, diving deeper into the MySQL commands with Joel. We learned how to link two or more tables together inside of command line and we took a quick look at the php that goes with it. Ishaan and I also started work on the XML blog page. After some helpful tips from Miguel we were able to finish.

  • Jul. 16th 2014

  • Today we wrote the php document that displays the table inside of a webpage. We learned the JOIN and UNION command to display more information in the one table. After going through more commands to display the info Eric assigned a new project to all the people that were finished. We had to go through word documents and retype them to HTML. It isn't hard, heir are just a lot of documents and it takes a long time to go through and change them all. It was mostly a day of work today.

  • Jul. 17th 2014

  • Joel continued to teach us MYSQL to all the people who missed previous work. I worked with Ben and Rosemary on all the work they had missed. After helping them finish their tables Eric and Levi gave us more word documents. Now that more people are finished with their projects we can spread them around. It didn't take long for people to get bored so Ishaan and Rebecca started making a crossword and Miguel and i took our break to play chess.

  • Jul. 18th 2014

  • For every one that finished their work already today was filled with teaching and rewriting the word documents. After several chess breaks we were finally able to finish all the documents. When we handed them to Eric Miguel went through each of them looking for errors. He did find one, someone accidentally copied and pasted a link without putting it into a href. It turned out to be Miguel himself, a simple mistake made by a master of HTML.

  • Jul. 21st 2014

  • Today we started the third block and our new topic. We took a look at a interns car model. It showed us to different cars and their different attributes. This helped us continue with our work with JavaScript. We have been using php for the past few weeks so we had a little trouble. In the afternoon we started our work with Ron. We got a few legos and started to make structures and talk about construction. After going through several web programs we understood enough of the basics to be able to build our towers tomorrow.

  • Jul. 22nd 2014

  • Today we had our first lecture in a long time from Phil. He talked about Regular Expressions and how they were used. We went to a page where we tested out the commands trying to find specific things. One of our tasks was to find all the emails. No one got it to be find all perfectly but we all got pretty close.

  • Jul. 23rd 2014

  • This morning we worked with Jquery and Java Script, creating a document to read a js and display it in the error console.

  • Jul. 24th 2014

  • This morning we took our first look at recursion with Eric. He introduced us to the Koch snowflake as well and told us to create it with JavaScript. Alex and I took a short look at it then returned back to finishing up the stock. We added to feature to see percentages and differences from the current stock to the opening stock. He then added a X next to each stock that ca be used to delete the company from the array. Sadly when the page refreshes the stock, if it was one of the original, returns. Hopefully next week we can finish the stocks and snowflake. In the afternoon we worked on our slides. Calculating the exact vilocity and height the marble needs to be dropped to land in a cup each time. I worked with Rebecca and Allen, we got very close but were not able to finish testing in time.

  • Jul. 25th 2014

  • In the morning half the class worked with Eric while we built a Little FE with Mobeen. Half out team built the fram and the rest put together the boards. When we finished that the Slide teams were reassembled and testing continued. We were able get the marble in the cup five times, four higher than anyone else. Next we took a look at a density model, putting different blocks into water and calculating there mass/volume. After I paired up with Miguel and we built the PIRATE PONTOON!! We ended up winning the marble holding competition by going first an guessing rather close to the actual number it could hold.

  • Jul. 28th 2014

  • Today was a generale work day for those who havent finished previous projects. For people like Miguel, who were done, they could relax. However relaxation is not in Miguels style so he kept up work on his is website. Ishaan taught many of us how to build the Koch shell. It took a some time but I git a grasp if it much more quickly than other projects. *Cough* Calendar *cough*.

  • Jul. 29th 2014

  • Today we started off our resumes with Kristen. We all didn't have much to put in beyond the little work we have down. Later, Simon Karpen came and spoke with us about technical interviews, which I found very interesting. We were then given a problem to write, Alex and I wrote a sudo code that would solve the problem.

  • Jul. 30th 2014

  • *DAY OFF*

  • Jul. 32nd 2014

  • LAST DAY: YOLO