Summer Block 2

Jul. 21st, 2017

Today, I started off by going through and HTML validating all of my PHP programs for Krista's Projects. I also validated a few of the other programs we made, that weren't a part of Krista's Projects, but still needed to be validated. I also worked some on my website, although I haven't finished up everything I want to with my website yet. I also found out that my Background Selector, while it works fine in Google Chrome, doesn't work in Safari. Ameya had the same problem. We talked to Ernie about it and he said that it was something Safari specific and that our code wasn't necessarily wrong. After lunch, I kept working on HTML validating. After break, I sat in the jury for the forensics workshop to determine who was guilty.

Jul. 20th, 2017

Today, in the morning I worked on form validation. I went through all of the PHP programs I had made where there was a $_GET or $_POST box and edited through them, adding the form validation code that Ernie showed us how to do. After I finished with form validation, I worked on the design of my website a little bit. I made my navigation bar horizontal instead of vertical. To change it, I used what I already knew about CSS and web design and I used some of the CSS tutorials on W3 Schools. After lunch, I did documentation for the afternoon forensics workshop. The workshop kids are a day away from their final trial, where they figure out who's been kidnapping people and leaving notes. It was interesting to document for them, because last year I was in the forensics workshop. I took pictures and emailed my documentation. I didn't realize that I had to HTML validate all of my programs, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Jul. 19th, 2017

Today, I finished up the calendar, so I've finished all of Krista's Projects. The user can choose a month out of the 2017 calendar and my program will output the month and the days, factoring in the day that the month starts on. I still have to form validate my Dice Statistics and my Dane Joe programs. After I finish up that, I will have finished all of the requirements for the block. If I have free time, I hope to work on designing my website. I have documentation for the forensics workshop tomorrow, so hopefully I can finish everything by tomorrow morning, so that Friday will be a free day to design my website.

Jul. 18th, 2017

Today, I finished up the XML blog with the added loops. I also started working on the calendar. In the afternoon, I did documentation for the Explorations in Engineering workshop for the high schoolers. While I was doing documentation, Jennifer gave a presentation on interviews. We had to sign up for mock interviews and mine is tomorrow afternoon. I went through the slides she posted at home and practiced for the interview.

Jul. 17th, 2017

Today, we started by independently working on Krista's Projects. Ameya, Leanne, and I started working on the XML Blog together. We got both documents working, but Leanne and I still have to add the loop aspect in. After we worked independently for a little while, Ernie gave us a demonstration on forms. We learned about $_POST and $_GET and how that could be used to store different inputs. We also learned about forms and how they worked. We also used isset to set and determine different $_POSTs. In the afternoon, I did documentation for the Forensics workshop. When I was doing documentation, Ernie gave another demonstration on documentation, which I have to catch up on later.

Jul 14th, 2017

Today, we started with working on Krista's Projects. I've finished all of Part 1, except for the calendar. The calendar seems to be the most challenging, so I'm saving that to work on last. This morning, I started working on and finished the Background Selector project. Basically, there is a drop down menu of colors that the user can pick from. When the user picks a color, the background of the website changes to be that color. We also had to implement cookies that store the color the user chose. If the user closed out of the website or went to a different site and came back, the goal was that the color they had picked would still appear. The initial setting of the drop down menu and the changing of the background color was the easier part. The more difficult part was using the cookies and getting them to work the way they were supposed to.

Leanne and I worked on the Background Selector together and finished it right before lunch. Today I had afternoon reception. Since I had missed the coin flip demonstration Ernie did on Tuesday because of documentation, I watched the video and followed along with the tutorial in my spare time while doing reception. I also completed and submitted my weekly reflection. Next week, I hope to finish up all of Krista's projects by Tuesday or so and then redesign my website to make it look more presentable.

Jul. 13th, 2017

Today, we started with a demonstration from Miguel on Dynamic Pages, which was one of the projects we had to make as a part of Krista's Projects Part 2. After we finished that, we worked on projects independently for most of the rest of the day. I worked with Leanne on the Dice Statistics program today. Before that, I fixed my Dane Joe program so that it worked for every name and switched both the first letters of their first and last names and the last letters for their first and last names. For the Dice Statistics program, Leanne and I made three different arrays, one for the first dice, one for the second dice, and one for the sum of the dice. We got the dice program working, but my formatting was all messed up. It took some time but eventually the site looked moderately alright and fully worked. After I finished that, I worked on adding the past projects to my portfolio. I still have to work on the Coin Flip project at home and fix the rendering and the embedding of the coin flip document.

Jul. 12th, 2017

Today, we worked on Krista's Projects independently, until Ernie was ready for a demonstration. Ernie showed us how to embed HTML in PHP code with our previous coin flipping document. Also, for part of the morning I worked on my Syntax Guide. I've finished the first and second parts and still have to finish the third part. During the morning, I was working on and finished up my random hex code generator program. The goal of the program was to randomly generate a hex code and change the background color of the page to the color generated. After lunch, Leanne and I started working on the Dane Joe project. The goal of the Dane Joe project was to take a first name and a last name that were inputted into text boxes and switch the first letter of the first name and the first letter of the last name. It took us awhile and some help but eventually we each got it fully working. After I finished both programs, I started working on the style of both projects, since neither were very aesthetically pleasing and the font was too small to read. While changing the style, I used different features in the style tags in HTML.

Jul. 11th, 2017

Today, I was assigned documentation for the morning workshop. The workshop was Advanced Programming Concepts and it was taught by Joel. I wrote up around 2 pages, but shortened it before sending the email. In the workshop, Joel was teaching about drawing with JavaScript and HTML and making different shapes. After the morning break, he taught about animation. For animation, they made a shape and had it bounce from one end of the screen to the other. After lunch, I started on the Random Hex Code project. I had missed the earlier coin flipping description that the rest of the students did in the morning, so it was more difficult to get started. At this point, I have a hexcode being printed out onto the screen, but I haven't found out yet how to make it into a string and then turn the screen a certain color depending on the hexcode. Tomorrow, I hope to finish up the hexcode project and start on another one.

Jul. 10th, 2017

Today was the first day of my summer blocks and the first day of the second block. To start off, we talked about respect in the office and ODAA with Ernie. We went over etiquette when working with the workshop kids and with our peers in general. After that, Ernie introduced us to the Programming Concepts Syntax Guide, which we worked on until lunch. The Syntax Guide had three different columns for researching three different languages. We were assigned JavaScript (which we already knew) and PHP (which we were learning as a group). We also were allowed to choose our own language to research. Since I didn't know C++ and thought it would be interesting to learn, C++ is what I chose for my first language. The research was difficult at times, because with Google, sometimes you could only find forums talking about a specific example instead of a general tutorial. It was difficult to work through what they had done and apply it to and create your own example. We worked on that for nearly the entire morning. For the rest of the morning, we made a NewDev folder in Cyberduck and created the files and folders for our coin program. We went to our website and viewed the empty coin flip document.

After lunch, we started actually programming a coin flipping program in PHP. We had previously programmed a coin flipping program in JavaScript as a group so we knew what needed to be put in and done, we just had to apply it to PHP instead of JavaScript. Ernie was screen sharing and walked us through the steps for creating the program. While we did encounter a lot of bugs along the way, we eventually all got our programs working(ish). When you refresh the page, "HEADS" and "TAILS" randomly appear on the screen back to back in a line of text. The number of times the coin flips depends on how many times you set the loop to repeat. After we reached a point where we couldn't keep working on the coin flipping program, we went back to working on our syntax guides. I finished the first part of the Syntax Guide before lunch was over and got permission to start working on the second and third parts afterwards.