Block 1, 2017

June 19

Today we started with an overview of what was expected of us during the first Summer Block. Then we hopped right into modeling. I initially wanted to model how runoff changes due to the distribution of vegetation. In order to do that, I wanted the soil, rainfall, and hill steepness(grade) to be constant and change the amount vegetation. The runoff would have been measured by grams of displaced soil. I quickly realized that would be too complicated to make. I settled on how the absorption rate of water is affected by the soil infiltration rate and hardwood tree consumption. I am excited to work on my model and for this summer block!

June 20

Today, Ernie told us about the other projects that we will complete this summer. I do not have headphones so I have decided to watch the website redesign videos at home. I got my HLD proofread and moved on to finish my Vensim Model. I need to start and complete my Agents Cube tomorrow in order to have time to listen to the Gimp and Inkscape and work the reception in the Afternoon. Miguel helped my the most with Vensim and encouraged me to add evaporation to my model.

June 21

From 9am-12pm I volunteered to document the Explorations in Engineering camp. I recalled that Mihir had trouble with the summary at the end documenting because he did not take notes during the workshop so I put extra effort into the job. After lunch, I came back and I put the finishing touches on my Vensim model. I spent the rest of my time doing my Agent Cubes model. Gustavo and Miguel both helped me with my AgentCubes model. I helped Gustavo with his Vensim model. After I finished that I started the Gimp tutorial.

June 22

I started to do the website format. Making my website mobile friendly is very interesting. I did not finish because some of the images and divs are not showing up on the website. I looked through my code and the problem was that my syntax and spelling was wrong on occasion. I ran out of time so I will have to finish at home. From 12:30pm-4pm, I worked the calling desk for my ODAA.

June 23

We did the Inkscape tutorial in the morning led by Ernie. In the afternoon we experimented with making our own favicon and logos for our websites. It was fun to create cool pictures. I still need to learn to format my pictures to make them viable for my site.

June 26

Today we played with GIMP. I was able to mess with Aaron by putting him on an album cover. I also mixed Ernie's face with Theodore Roosevelt. You can find these images on my summer portfolio.

June 27

It was a work day for all of us. I remade the images on my website to have a better quality. I embarked on a complete overhaul of my website's design. I really wanted to make the strides to make it mobile friendly. After lunch, from 1-4pm, I went to do documentation for the Web Design Workshop. I found it challenging to write a summary because I had not been there for the beginning of the workshop. After I emailed my documentation to the intern Caroline, she replied back with some advice for how to make a good documentation and included an example of what a good summary looks like so I have a basic idea of what to do in the future.

June 28

For this work day, I finally made the website for the projects I did last week. I also updated the website for the project I did in the fall, the descriptions are more comprehensive. I helped Gustavo with His CSS and I helped Chris with his AgentCubes. I had ODAA during lunch. I worked on the final touches for my logo and favicon. The only thing left is remodeling my website. I will have to revisit the Shodor tutorial on CSS. I am thinking about changing the color to red and adding animation and hover effects.

June 29

I came late today because I was taking a driving test at the DMV. I arrived at 11:50 and went to finish the website design tutorial properly. I was having some trouble with errors last Thursday when I first attempted it, so I decided to start from scratch. I also changed text editors from TextWrangler to Atom, which helped the work go faster. At the end of class, I finished the website design tutorial and heard critique on my website from Ernie. I will go back and work on my daily vlogs so they do not look as meager and I with work on my website's CSS to give it a consistent look. Tomorrow I will be working the reception desk from 8:30-12:30 so if I bring my flash drive I can continue my work on the laptop there.

June 30

Today was the last day of the Block! In the morning I had to do the reception desk from 8:30-12:30. In between calls I worked on my CSS for my website from my flash drive. I had some trouble with the TextWrangler app quitting rather than opening on the laptop so I had to download a different text editor called Brackets. Now all of my web pages have the same format. I did not get to stylizing my the CSS as much as I wanted but I am happy I finished. I had a meeting with my mentor Mrs.Jennifer after lunch and then I went to the main lab to finish my website banners and other assignments on my image portfolio.

Block 2, 2017

July 25

Today is my first day back from my trip. I missed Monday because I was still feeling sick and had jet lag. I started the morning with doing Documentation of the iPhone App Design workshop from 9 am to 12 pm. It was interesting to see the students do a Forest fire model using Apple's own coding language Cocoa. I really paid attention this time because I wanted to make an improvement on the last time I had done documentation. I read over the advice the apprentice Caroline gave me last time and made sure it was quality. In the afternoon I started the Block 2 projects. I look over the coding Programming Concepts Syntax Guide and the coin toss project. I am excited to complete them both. I did the language project first in which I had to research the coding languages of JavaScript, PHP, and a third language of my choice. I worked on the JavaScript column and plan on completing it and the PHP tomorrow and choose my third language.

July 26

Today I focused on the Programming Concepts Syntax Guide. I finish the JavaScript and PHP columns. It was a little hard to understand some of the questions as I was new to the two languages. I have also chosen to code Perl for my third language. It was the one that I found the most resources to learn it. I did start filling out the last column but I have more to do. I also did the new dev folder in Atom which will secure new programs that I upload onto the Shodor server and have changed my default text editor to Atom. I plan on Finishing the last column by lunch and then starting the Flip of a Coin Demo.

July 28

I was experiencing a horrible headache yesterday so I did not come to the office and was not able to do my assignments that day. Ernie told me to move on to the PHP coding. First, I read the programming concepts and researched the ones I did not know. Then I started and completed the PHP demo. The demo was easy because I had previously researched all I need to know about PHP on Wednesday. The demo gave me a basic code that flipped a coin with a 50/50 chance of heads or tails, it showed in percentage the frequency of the coin landing on heads and tails, and the total number of flips. Afterwards, I started and finished the lesson on how to embed PHP into HTML and how to use PHP to render HTML. By putting PHP in an HTML, I can put in the coin flip PHP into a web page without having to code the whole PHP again. Much like a CSS, calling a PHP file in a small section of code saves time and ensures consistency. Also, a trick we learned is to store HTML as a string. Because PHP cannot read HTML it will throw errors, so if you want to import some code you can make a string variable and put the HTML in quotes and then echo out the variable to the web browser.

July 30

This morning I did the morning reception from 9am-12pm. Levi was covering the job until I had come to the office. I need to start to look at the ODAA schedule the Sunday night before. During the reception, I had started on my goal of getting all caught up with what I had missed by Friday. Today is Dr.Panoff�s birthday, so the apprentices and I stood around the cake Mrs.Jennifer bought and sang to him. Next, I went back to work in the apprentice lab. I have stated the coin flip interface and plan on finishing by lunch tomorrow so I can go back and complete the coding language spread sheet.

August 1

I have finished the Dynamic Webpages PHP tutorial video and constructed a practice web page. I am glad that I was able to accomplish that goal I set yesterday. I am happy to finally see a use for embedded PHP that is advantageous to only using HTML. I had some time before lunch and implemented this method into my summer blog website menu bar. It was a little hard at first, but then I remembered that I have to change the file type to PHP. This is my example site. After that, I decided to do forms validation project instead of the language spread sheet. I finished the videos that walked me through what to do but I still have a few questions looming in my head: Am I doing this right?, is this all that is required?, will I finish?. I will make sure to ask those questions tomorrow.

August 2

In the morning, I started my Perl language project. I was able to finish before the 10:15 break and revisited some of the information I put on the other language columns. I think I was able to work faster this time because I already had the experience of researching the other two languages. I then went on to do 'Krista's PHP Projects 1'. I completed the Random Hex Code and the Calendar Generator during lunch. The calendar was hard because I could not decide what arguments my function should use and I had to keep track of the number of days that would have passed at the start of each month. Around the break time in the afternoon, I had finished the PHP for both the Dice Statistics and Dane Joe exercises, meaning that all the assignments have some function code before I eventually display it. I used the form validation PHP I did a while back as a canvas and changed the code to better display the project PHPs. I did not finish, but I have only a little left to do. I think I can complete it at home but I am unsure if my text editor, WinSCP, will work. Lastly, about those questions. It turned out that I was doing the right things out of order so it felt like I was accomplishing nothing, but I was. Knowing now what I have completed, I think I will finish all that is required of me by Friday. I am really excited.

August 3

This morning I focused on displaying the PHP code I made to complete Krista's exercises. It was hard and I got nothing accomplished in the first hour. I tried to sample some code from the forms.php5 to use as a springboard, but I did not have a strong understanding of the demo. So, I asked for help from the apprentice Huny. He helped me with getting the value submitted in the first web page and entered into the PHP file. I had a lot of trouble with getting the right values with the dice roll especially. I think the website looks too similar to the forms. php5 demo, so I will change the style to make it its own website. I do have to leave early today so changing the website will have to be a home project, but I am glad to have been able to code in PHP into the php website itself. The random hex code generator will be the color of the hex-code it gives which allows the user to visually see what the code does. When I get back I would like to make the text change to white if the hex-code is particularly dark. I ended with updating my summer portfolio, which I had not touched since June.

August 4

This morning I thought I was going to do morning reception but was pleasantly surprised to find out that today we were having a guest speaker and student presentations. Gustavo, Divya, and Chris did very well. They finished their third block and when I saw the dice roll statistics program they had I felt that I too could improve mine. Until noon I worked on the Krista's PHP Exercises part 2. I did complete the dynamic pages project and got a start on the Background Selector but I was not able to start the XML Blog when it was time for our guest speaker to present. Our guest's name was Rene Daughtry and he works at Cisco as a Project Manager. After, I decided to change my style.css. I had not noticed that it was changed before because I have been using google chrome and I guess it is not as able to render recently changed HTML as safari, but apparently, I had put an image that I was saving for later as my background. I messed around and actually made my website look nice with the image. Lastly, I did my weekly reflections on the Shodor website. I do plan on finishing that XML Blog assignment, it will be the last thing I have to do.

Special Blog- 'The Internet of Everything'

Our guest Speaker Renee Daughtry is a network engineer at Cisco. He started his presentation with a picture of him and a colleague. This was to highlight the effects of one's perception, or what people think about you when they first see you. He said that people's perception is their reality and that is okay. Through life, people will look at you and say you are this or that. It is up to us, through our mannerisms and the way we speak and present ourselves to change that perception. Mr.Dautry repeated that this is the reality of the world and it is our mission to change that perception. He worked at Cisco for 22 years, started with networking engineer and is now the project manager testing on iCloud in RTP. He asserted that Cisco is 97.6% of the internet backbone His goal was to inform us about the jobs that are being made. He reintroduced us to networks for use to understand his message. He compared old forms of sending messages to modern ways that information is sent between electronic appliances, the network. The devices we use have more computer power than the computers we used for the moon landing and we use this technology every day. Because everything is connected, He warned us about the importance of cyber security. He gave the example of him hacking on public wifi at Starbuck and seeing login info. Network working will affect all professions including education, health, cyber security, and entertainment. All creating jobs, but there are not enough people to fill the position needed. Mr.Dautry proclaimed that 2-4 million coding jobs available are not filled. Sometimes people are not being hired because of their social media accounts.Protect your online identity, your brand, the perception. He told us that employers today are are looking for well-rounded candidates. A career in a modern workplace takes up 30% hard skills, 10% social media skills, 60% soft skills (critical thinking, cross-collaboration).He left us with the duty of being not the generation of the future but of today. To be PDI (Positive, disruptive, innovators). I found it a very interesting presentation. I am currently deciding to go into aerospace engineering or a profession is the information technology field and Mr.Dautry has given a convincing reason to choose IT, or as he says it ICT ( Information Communication and Technology).

Block 3, 2017

August 7

It is the first day of Block 3 for me and it started with me doing morning reception. I worked to finish the XML Blog assignment from block 2. I want all of block 2 completed before I progress. After I served my time I went to meet with my mentor Jennifer. She told me that I would need to have a mock interview with her and watch the interview skills presentation video. went to the doctor for a sports physical and annual check up. At home, I watched the video of the guest speaker we had Friday. I am required to do a separate blog for his presentation but held off doing it until Ernie uploaded the video so it would be a detailed blog.

August 8

I embarked on the Introduction to Databases project this morning. First I did an SQL syntax guide that was similar to the spreadsheet I did for JavaScript and PHP. SQL for me has been easy to understand. It could be that I am getting used to learning languages and I see similarities in function or it is that SQL code can be read like sentences. After lunch, I took a break from the data base project and I watched the interview skills presentation video. As I watched I took notes on a google document. After I finished the video, I decided to make a LinkedIn profile so I can start being professional and have a platform to show of my website. You should check out.

August 9

I had Afternoon documentation with the Shodor Scholars Program!

August 10

I started to work today, I got some progress on the database project. Around 10:00 the power at the Shodor office went out, so everyone in the office had to halt their work. The power came back 11:30 and soon after, so did the server so we all started again. Not all of my work was saved, so from then till lunch, I worked to get back to where I was. After lunch, we watched a documentary called 'CODE - debugging the gender gap'. This was because a Google employee had written a memo asserting that women were not mentally capable for CS careers. The thing I found the most interesting about the documentary was that the number of women in computer science jobs has been declining since the 1980's. From 40% to today's 17%. Another thing I saw that I found interesting was seeing those women coders both educating other women to code and working at companies. One of the women they interviewed is a software programmer for the app STRAVA, which an app I use for logging my runs every day.

Special Blog 'CODE - debugging the gender gap'

A few days ago, there was some big news story from a Google employee sending a memo about informing that the average women is not being biologically competent to handle the mental rigor of programming and would be better off doing a different job. Today Jennifer showed us a documentary about the stigma women who are interested or practice coding face in the workplace and the dwindling numbers of women that remain in the industry. I learned about the different ways that women that know coding have approached solving the problem of the computer science gender gap. Many of the women interviewed in the documentary were leaders of classes for underrepresented groups or programs for promoting women in coding. I feel very strongly about these issues of disparity in a career field that is new, growing, and very prosperous. If the gap is solved now rather than later, we will not have to worry about equality in this field. Promoting computer science education in all schools can improve diversity in computer science and STEM fields as well.

August 11

I helped Gustavo with his Vensim model. I decided to come back after he completed his third block to improve upon his earlier projects. I finished the SQL syntax guide so I went on to do the Dice Roller PHP work. It will be similar to the one I did for the Krista assignments. This one will not only allow the user to choose a number of rolls, but also the person's favorite color, name, and foot size. Before lunch, I volunteered to vacuum the office. Other apprentices and interns were also cleaning because today the workshops students in the Shodor Scholarship Program were presenting their projects.

August 14

Based on my performance last week, I am unhappy with the work I have done. It started with a simple misunderstanding of assignments and then lead to blatant ignoring the project requirements. I would be doing quality assurance on my website for today and then learning how to use a language library tomorrow but I think it would be inappropriate to review my and fix website with without completing the first week's assignments the correct way. Also, unlike this week's assignments, I cannot do last weeks assignments at home. So my plan is to this week's assignments at home. I went back to MySQL and figured out how to fix the error I had in the code which made me quit before.

August 15

I finished the MySQL Syntax Guide shortly after lunch. I moved to the Dice Roll database. This time I actually did some great progress. I was able to successfully connect to the database, but allowing the user to enter data and return the result will have to wait for later. At home, I plan on validation my website to protect it. Nyleah helped a lot today. Tomorrow I will have to get the database accept the user's input. I will try to get a few interns to test it as well. I will try and do the library research tomorrow afternoon as well.

August 16

Today I went straight into the dice roll database. It was going fine and I would occasionally run into trouble, but for the most part, I figured it out. There was this one, very frustrating with a syntax problem in my PHP. When I tried to put in PHP variables into a SQL constructor it would give me an error. Ishaan helped me solve the problem by adding quotes around my variables that are string types. So instead of just placing $firstName, I had to do '$firstName' because SQL does not assume characters as strings. It was fine when those PHP variables were ints and doubles because SQL does assume digits to be number type values. So the variable $shoeSize did not bring up an error. After lunch, I ran into another problem which was that the contents of my database were not printing out on the project page and that the dice database table was not counting iterations of dice rolls. I later realized that there was one more video that I had to watch that explained how to solve my problem. I am out of time today but I will watch the video tomorrow so I can hit the ground running.

August 17

The second to last day of the summer blocks. I started Today by watching the video where Ernie explains how to use INNER JOIN in SQL, which was the very thing I needed to finish my database. I got stuck trying to insert data into two different tables in one query but later found out that it was impossible. After lunch, Leanne presented her projects and website to the office. Her website looked nice and Ernie commented that even though she used bootstrap, she did not directly copy a template and he urged us not to be lazy and copy one. Next, the intern Rohin helped with one error I missed in my loop where I had use = instead of == for the condition. Ritvik gave his presentation next and afterward, I called for Michael's help with constructing a table. I assumed that I would need to enter the code into the table. Instead, it was all just an HTML table tag, something I had never used and forgot I learned. I immediately remembered the calendar assignment from the Krista's PHP exercise, I was supposed to make a table. I went back and fixed that project.

August 17

I came early this morning, I had to. I looked at the summer stipend and realized that I needed to 2 initial logos, 2 image logos, and 6 web banners from logos just to finish the first block. From the second block I need to do the background selector and the mock interview. I did the some block three assignments at home such as library research, quality assurance document, and final website design at home. I still need to do the vailator and redo the calendar PHP today.