Worst Week of My Life

Ugh, if ever a moment in my life where I felt like I wanted to die is this week. But that is another issue, not about computer programming. Now I will talk about computer programming, let's see it was mainly about working with Scratch in more complicated areas, primarily working with variables. I have no idea how I even got through all of this. All I know is that variables are blocks that we make and can customize it to other blocks. We have mainly used variables with loops but I am sure that we'll get to more complicated topics later. Another thing is that we took a quiz over Scratch, and I did not do as well as I wanted to. I missed 3 out of 10, so that means I got a 70. 2 of the questions I would have gotten right if I had just noticed that "say" was at the very end, so the output would have only said the last number said. Darn it. Darn it. Argh, I hate you so much right now scratch. I am stuck on the character not moving outside of a 100x100x100x100 box. The only thing that I think can happen is that the sprite is going to hate to move back and forth repeatedly. The only problem is that that is probably not going to go well since I can't even do that. Curse you my ineptitude. I guess that is as much as I got to this week and that is it.

Scratch

This week, we used "Scratch" which was very fun. I actually knew how to use it, because it was not that hard to learn but it was probably to understand the functions of each command. In all truth, I missed out on how to make a keyboard because I was not here on Friday, I was at the Austin Film Festival. It was fun, sort of because I received some bad news while I was there but I cheered up, a little. But on Thursday, I was able to make my sprites "sing" and by sing I mean utter noises and sounds in a rhythmic fashion. Technically I just combined two  or three different tunes and then just said that was a song. Well, it was a song, it had music...and a wolf howling. Whatever. I also made a scene with broadcast. It was sort of making of play and that you write the dialogue. Basically you use the "looks" section and then choose "say _________ for __ seconds" and then your sprite will say something for said amount of minutes. Somehow it ended up being a story about a loan shark and a victim who did not have the money. The loan shark was going to break the kneecaps of the victim, but the story sort of ended there which may be good. In any case, I had fun with Scratch and that's it for this week.

Website Completed!

All right, I managed to finish my first website. It looks mediocre, but I put a lot of time and effort in this undertaking, especially when you consider that the computer hates me. There were so many problems with the lightbox, a javascript tool, that was so annoying. I swear it worked at first and then something happened that completely screwed up the lightbox. But after I made separate folders and then copied exactly from the website, it became so much easier. HTML is not so bad after I learned about the basics, and CSS isn't either but I still think that I will have trouble in the future. On another note, we had a quiz this week in HTML and CSS. I think I got at least a solid 80 or so. I forgot that the smallest heading would be <h7> since it is larger than <h6>, but I didn't know that could happen because we were only shown <h6> so I assumed that was only as large that it could be. Some of the questions were about things I had not known about. I didn't know that you could change the bullet into a square or any other shape for the matter. I feel stupid now. Argh, I'm just glad the week is over and all I need to do now is finish the rest of my homework. That's it for today.

HTML and CSS

We have started to work on our websites. HTML was sort of easy and fun to do, probably it was just content and not style. But there were some tricks to make my webpage "presentable," I had a background and colored text. Well, almost all of my text was readable. The only text that wasn't readable was the table, but that was due to the background. Dark on dark does not make text readable, not unless you can tell the distinct lines. But I digress. We sort of started on CSS, but Mr. Stephens was not there when we started so I had trouble. I spent 30 min trying to make my new background using CSS. I finally made my colored background when I got rid of my HTML background. Then CSS worked for me, it felt great, but I still believe that technology hates me at times. And when I say "at times" I actually mean all of the time. That's just bad luck, but that's okay because I am around people that are willing to help me...sometimes. Let's see, CSS made my webpage look more readable although it was only a brown color rather than a movie theater background. It does make it easier to see the stuff I put into the file, and CSS doesn't require as much letters and symbols. All I need to do connect my other 2 webpages to my base html file and then I will be done. I'm just glad I have a three day weekend now! That's it for today, and now I nervously wait for next week.

End of the Six Weeks: Hooray!

The First Sixth Weeks has finally ended but that does not make me any more glad. I am sure there is more work in the future, but I digress. Now this week in Computer Programming, we are going over HTML and using it to make a simple webpage. However, HTML is not for programming, it is a markup language which I believe is just annotated text that connects by tags. The tags start and end with <> with characters in the middle. Frankly, this is very interesting, I mean creating simple webpages that are not wikis are sort of cool. I managed to make a webpage of animated films that I like, albeit it could be improved. But I like it, or maybe that is because I made it. I wonder what can I do further with HTML. And I have just noticed that you can also "Edit HTML" in Blogger as well, is that not a big coincidence? In any case, hopefully I will be able to use this information one day.
Well, aside from HTML, we also went over networks and choosing the most efficient way to choose paths. I am still bad at finding algorithms for things, but at least this activity was easier.
That's it for this week.

Algorithms and Problem Solving

Well, after this week, I have learned that every time I do something on the internet, I basically make data that can be used by anyone if accessed. All this has done is scare me into near paranoia because at any moment, someone can try to use my information against me. That is seriously sick and rude. But then again, this is the internet, and no one gives a rats butt on the internet. It is also sort of getting hard to remember to do my data journal, I am trying to fill in the days but it is getting harder because of the more work that keeps piling on. Besides, I have a daily routine and I go to the same websites everyday anyway. Anyways, the only thing that matters is that be careful on the internet and do not trust search sites because they can use your information against you. That is a pessimistic lesson, isn't' it?

My privacy aside, we also did a problem solving activity. In all truth, the only one that I really understood how to do was the first activity. There was 20 people including you, so that means you can only shake 19 people's hands. The second one was a little more difficult but I could do it. There are two fence posts for every one yard. So if there are 12 yards of fencing, there is going to be 13 fence posts. I am just basing that on logic, but when you involve math into it and turn it into algorithms, my head starts to hurt. Probably because I just got out of Statistics and that class always seems to make my head hurt. Then the third problem was another toughie, and I also did not make an algorithm for this one. Instead I used logic and concluded that since there are 10 people including myself, and if everyone can only shake one time with one person but we need to shake hands with everyone in the room. At first my mind pointed to 9 handshakes, but then what about everyone else? So after I shake hands with that one person, I will shake hands with someone else, then another one, and so on until everyone has shaken hands. So I thought that I will shake hands with 9 people, that person will shake hands with 8 people after he has shaken hands with me. So the equation I thought of was 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1+0=45 handshakes. Then the part with 20 people was the same thing. 19+18+17+16+15+14+13+12+11+10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+2+1+0=190 handshakes. However, I did not get the problem on the board at all, mainly because I could not see it. So I relied on my group who did get the answer, or what we thought they answer was. After Mr. Stephens told us the algorithm was 2^n, I felt stupid. But that is life, and I guess I might as well learn about this. May be useful in the future, and since I lack common sense sometimes, I especially need this.

Technology changes Privacy

So in this week in class, we were talking about how privacy is affected by the growth of technology and this includes social media sites and other sites that record our data. We also did an activity which made us evaluate a scenario, my group was to present a scenario in which a guy whose wall gets posted by comments of legalizing marijuana. Thus this guy does not get hired by the government.  I guess it was not the guy's fault since he couldn't control his friend, but there was always the option of making his profile private so others can not see. It is strange when we can not see the answer. But other than that, we also talked about how privacy is dropped due to recorded information that we usually are not aware of. Netflix, GPS, and cookies record our information and we do not even know about it. I am now nervous about signing up for any kind of website now. Listen up everyone, the world is changing, and it is not going to be good for people who leave their information all over the place! Get better passwords, and get antivirus security software.

On another note, since I was not in class to watch the videos, I had to watch them at home. The one I liked the best was the RSA Animate video because it was the last video I watched last and the one I can remember better. The video talks about the common ideology that people are usually motivated by a reward, usually monetary compensation. This is pretty much accurate for tasks that even just physical labor. The situation that they often presented in the video was the carrot for the mule. The mule will work for the carrot. However, this ideology did not work when rudimentary cognitive skills were needed. The test subjects performed below par or at least worse, and the test subjects were from MIT, and Carnegie-Mellon. These guys were the top of the bracket yet they did terrible when it came to cognitive ability. The world is strange, isn't' it? The lecturer later said that what really motivated us when it came to work was not money, it was mastery, autonomy, and a sense of purpose. Mastery is getting better at something for the sake of being better. He relates this to musicians, somehow I can see that. They are not getting paid much for singing, so all they have is get better at music. It is their drive, their motivation. I also guess that autonomy is a benefit since you are basically making your own rules to work. I liked how he used the business model with free software in it. I do not use Linux but I may want to in the future. Maybe when I become a servant to the money game, I will ask my employer to give me personal autonomy and purpose. Probably will not happen, but I can always dream. What still shocks me is that money is not the panacea for a workers desire.

Well that's all for today folks.