A Computer-ized Journey's End... Well, Almost. :/

It's that time of the semester again... time to say goodbye to Mr. Arkin, goodbye to my fellow classmates, and goodbye to Computer Studies - at least for the time being.

I have to say that I will miss a lot about this class: it's become part of my daily routine, like a built-in procedure (see what I did there?)! I still remember designing my website for the very first assignment, the super-powers autobiography. From that came not only my fictional story, but also Mind Games Incorporated, and H-Z, my alias. I really enjoyed creating the webpages. Then came the programming assignments: they were really fun to work on as we explored the Turing world. As for the Printer Project... let's just say I learned more about inkjet and laser printers than I would ever have liked. ;)

The final culminating project was a fun and exciting challenge. First off was the Mosaic Project, also known as Sugar: A Revolution for me. I learned a lot about the whole OLPC initiative, and, inevitably, the Sugar interface itself, which was something I'd never seen before, and definitely incredible.

Then, as Randi, Grace and I got to work on our major culminating project, Referencite!©, we got exposed to and worked with many parts of the graphics portion of Turing. Through the (plethora of) problems, headaches, and, of course, the famous work-over half-all-nighter, and the really bad customer service at Staples, I will still say it was a great experience. Not to mention the relief that came with finally getting the project finished!

And in addition to all that, there's this blog. I will say that there have been days where I've gotten up just as I was about to fall asleep, hastily remembering that no, I had in fact not posted yet. But other than those few days, writing for this blog has also become a daily routine. Writing all these posts feel a lot like talking to someone - rather than pointlessly blogging - however cheesy or untrue that may be.

So now I suppose it's time to move on - but not too quickly, as it's time to study for exams! After exams, there is still Exam Review Day, where I will again get to meet up with my classmates and Mr. Arkin again - this time for the very last as a class. And after all that? Life moves on, we all get to move on. I still haven't decided whether or not I want to take Computer Studies next year; hopefully I won't have to make that decision any time soon!

Alright then, I guess that's a wrap. Feel free to reminisce about my website, or use Referencite!© absolutely free of charge! Also, stay tuned to Giftees United! Oh, and who know? ... maybe I'll feel like writing a random post or two once in a while here. For now though... au revoir.

The Second Last Official ICS Class

Wow. Before we knew it, here we all are, in the middle of our second last ICS class of 2010-2011! Time has flown by, through web design into programming, only to land at our feet on this second last day. What now? Where to go next? I suppose it is time to move on... well, after exam week, that is!

So, to whoever actually took the time to read this blog or even parts of it, thanks! I hope you will continue to keep up with me on my other contributing blog, Giftees United. I will continue to post as many times as I possibly can in the future, what with work and other extracurriculars all begging for my precious time.

I guess that's all I'll say for now. I'll leave the rest to the last official post tomorrow. We're having a celebration of all our work tomorrow. :) Talk to ya later!

A Short and Sweet End

Alright, this post is going to be very short and sweet, because I want to get to sleep! So... are you ready for this?

WE'RE FINISHED. DONE. OVER WITH.

With what, you ask? Well, quite obviously, culminating! Today marked the end of both my gym and ICS culminating projects. Speaking of which, kudos to Randi, Fatema, and Manogya, my gym culminating group! I think we did a pretty decent job today. Hopefully. ;)

Today in class Randi and I sent our ad poster for Referencite over to Staples to print. We will be picking up our laminated colour poster tomorrow along with Grace! I am interested to see whether or not the poster turned out the way I wanted. I really hope so! When I got home, I re-wrote our Testing Report - we needed to change the format of things a little.

OK, to keep it short and simple, I shall go now. Good night!

Yes. Yes. YES.

Yesh. Yay! Announcing... three fantastic events today! :)

1. Music: I did my music culminating playing test today. Basically we had to write a piece, and then perform it in front of Dr. Dawson (my music teacher). I think you can pretty much tell what I got. I was really happy - I didn't expect to get that high at all. So, I was (more-than-) pleasantly surprised!

2. Gym: We did our final beep test today in gym. It accounts for 10% of our final gym mark. I'm OK with how I did... I'm more happy with the fact that it. Is. Over! Finally. [insert sigh of relief].

3. Computer Studies: Well, well, well. Won't you look: for once, CS is actually on my list of nice things! ;) Just kidding. But I am extremely happy today because I figured out and solved our problem! You know, the button issue I told you about yesterday? Well, I managed to figure it out today... And that means we are pretty much done our CS culminating! Now we have three days to make minor edits, finalize the non-programming aspects of our project, and not gloat at all the other teams. Haha, just kidding. ;)

Today we were told what was going to be on our final ICS exam. The exam accounts for 20% of our final mark! :O Mr. Arkin was so kind as to split up the questions for us though. There are 4 parts: multiple choice, short answer, programming, and web design. The whole exam is out of 111 marks! Except, we only get 90 minutes. That's around 1 mark per minute. D:

So now that our culminatings are pretty much over with, it is time to study hard for exams! I really hope I can do well, to keep my average up. My exams start exactly one week tomorrow! It doesn't help how I'm not in the mood to study. Hmm. That's gotta change. =.=

Still, nothing will ruin the mood today, as our CS culminating is (un)officially complete!

One Week 'Till Exams!

Oh noes... that's right. There's only one week left until exam week! And I still haven't begun studying yet... Thankfully, I only have two exams to study for this semester: ICS and Math.

Now, for the culminating update: we are 95% of the way there! We would be a full 100%, except there is an issue with one of our buttons - it is malfunctioning, and thus slowing us down. The real problem is that there is no logical reason - as far as we can tell - as to why the button does not work. I really hope we can get the problem solved soon, as these projects are due in four days!

Today, we spent the entire period trying to work the problem out, still to no avail. However, we were able to figure out and solve some other minor issues, mainly to do with our bibliography formatting. Also, I finished our application's advertising poster today! The outline of our project states that we must print it out on a colour, laminated sheet. I still don't know how we're going to print them yet - I'll have to stay tuned for more instructions from Mr. Arkin.

So... yeah, that's about it for now. Our final gym fitness test is tomorrow. (Dang.) However, it is a late start tomorrow as well! (Yay!) My group's gym culminating presentation will be on Wednesday. (Hmm.) And, music playing tests are happening starting tomorrow. (Uh oh.) Oh, and of course, finally, our ICS major culminating projects are due Friday! (Hmm.)

Wish me luck on all five culminatings... especially our ICS, of course! ;)

OK, I'd better go to sleep now. It's almost 12am. D: To anyone who's reading this at such a late hour... good night!

Dundundun... It's Workover Friday!

12:43 pm
Hello. How are you? I hope you did not skip class just to read this, because you somehow sensed I was going to post in class today. If you did indeed skip class, please go back now. I am not responsible for any detentions, suspensions, or expulsions. But, if you have some time to spare, please do read on!

***

So. Right about now, after finishing up this post, Randi and I will be continuing to work on our Culminating projects. We are around 75% of the way there already! We will continue to labour hard, until our application is 100% perfect. *has OCD*

Oh. Did I mention we will be working on this project from 7pm - 7am today/tomorrow! That's right: we're going to have a "work-over"! A 100% CS work-over, of course. Maybe with a few breaks in between though. xD

Well, I really have to go work now. Wish us luck! Bye!

On The Path To Success (for now, at least)

Good news! Great news! Awesome news! Fantabulous news! Oh wait... fantabulous isn't a word. Ah well.

I have the bestest news ever. Oh, wait... bestest isn't a word either. I think the happiness is getting to my head. The awesome news? We've worked it all out! Today in Computers class, Randi and I incorporated what Grace had found out yesterday about forward procedure and body procedure into our own application. The result? Success! Randi and I were both so excited!

As if the problem hadn't been enough though, we found another alarming fact about our program: for some weird reason even after we clear the screen, if you click on the area where the button used to be, it shows up! But it didn't faze us for long; I found GUI.Dispose, a procedure which scraps away the previous buttons. Since our program is one big loop, the buttons will just get drawn again when we come back to it! By the end of the period, we'd solved two problems! My, are these exclamation marks being overused today.

Apart from ICS, my day also went well. We had part 2 of our EQAO today, and it was pretty much a breeze! I finished around 15 minutes early, so I got lots of time to check over my work. Still nonetheless, I was relieved when it was all over.

So, that's my good news of the day. Since I'm in such a good mood, I will recommend an awesome music video on Youtube: What Does It Take, sung by Dave Days, produced by my all-time fave Youtuber people, WongFu Productions! I really love both the song and the video. You should definitely check it out! And while you're at it, you can go look at WongFu Pro's channel - they've produced so many awesome videos. If you're a Nigahiga fan, check out ASS! No, I'm not swearing at you. ASS stands for Agents of Secret Stuff! ASS is a short movie, also produced by WongFu Pro, and features many famous Youtube celebrities. The movie is pure awesome-ness!

+2 -3 Redux

I can't believe it... it happened again! Redux. Once again... 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. :(

Step forward: EQAO - today's EQAO was surprisingly a lot easier than I expected! There was maybe one question that I got stuck a little on, but I managed to work it out in the end. I just hope my confidence pays off, and I actually do do well!

Step forward: Finished Culminating Part 2 - today I managed to finish programming part 2 of our program! That means we are actually ahead of schedule by a day. Plus, Grace finished programming a splash screen for our app - it looks awesome! And, Randi has already started on programming part 3 of the program. Go us!

Step forward: Wrist Getting Better - self-explanatory, I guess? My wrist is already feeling a lot better. I even managed to play Handball in gym class today without it hurting too much! Hopefully it will heal entirely before it's my group's turn to do the culminating.

Whoops, looks like I miscounted; that makes 3 steps forward. But now for the bad news...

Step(s) back: Linking Problems - I assure you, this should count for 5 steps back. Like I said in the previous post, originally we'd planned on using include to link separate program files together. In the end, the files were supposed to create a gigantic loop. Unfortunately though, it seems that it will be impossible. The loop actually becomes a paradox in the end, making it impossible to program.

So now what do we do, you ask? Truth is, we don't know yet. But we did find out another procedure in Turing: forward procedure and body procedure. Grace tested it out, and it worked on a separate example! We are still optimistic that it will work in our case as well. We will begin to test the two tomorrow, starting in class.

Again - I seem to say this so much nowadays - wish us luck! :/

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

:( Exactly how did I manage that today, you ask? Weeeeell, allow me to explain.

Yesterday, we'd finished programming part 1 of our application ahead of schedule! We were really glad to be able to get a head start on parts 2 and 3 today, both in class and at home. Just now, I managed to finish programming part 2 APA - well actually, pretty much both MLA and CMS too, as I just have to change a few words around. So, that's how I managed to take another two steps forward.

But, what goes up always comes down, right? Life is excruciatingly fair. And so, I found out some bad news today: procedures cannot be written inside procedures! And so, all of a sudden, our entire group has just been whisked three steps back. We'd planned on using the include keyword, which basically copy's code from another file and reads it. However, include was being used inside a procedure. That means we can no longer do that! At the moment, I have no idea what the/a possible alternative is. Guess we'll have to brainstorm another idea. Dang... we were so close!

OK, I'll stop moping for now. Besides, I've got EQAO to study for! Remember those? We have a Math EQAO tomorrow. So I'm going to go cram now, and hope for the best.

Wish me luck tomorrow, both in Math and Computers! :)

Culminating Breakthrough

Did you hear that? A breakthrough! That's right. Today's special breakthrough is:

*drum rolls in the distance*

We figured out how to make buttons! Using pictures! And they look cool! I should stop using exclamation marks! This isn't the first time though!

Phew. Was it tiring reading that in your mind? Having your mind sound excited, when you probably weren't? Too bad for you. :)

Now, to elaborate. Our application, Referencite, requires the use of mouse-clickable buttons. Originally in our culminating project proposal, I'd Photoshopped a page that looked like the format we wanted - three buttons for the three types of referencing formats. The tricky part was figuring out how to create them in Turing.

During Grace's class today (she had class before Randi and I), she found a whole set of built-in Turing procedures and functions: the GUI module. These basically help in creating a Graphical User Interface (or GUI - hence the name), which is what we would like to create. Within this set of procedures and functions is a function which can be used to make buttons out of pictures: GUI.CreatePictureButton. We just specify the parameters, and voila! A button is created.

OK fine, the description above, that last line, was watered way down. I didn't bother mentioning how during the entire class today, Randi and I worked on trying to figure out GUI.CreatePictureButton - it wasn't a pretty sight. It was only when I got home that I actually managed to finally work it out. But it's all done, and we have our first user page! Because I'm so nice, I will now proceed to produce a screenshot of what the window looks like:

*five minutes later*

So, what do you think? The buttons are a bit plain right
now, but if we have time we will definitely fix!

That's my update of the day. Now, speaking of that picture above... notice the desktop wallpaper? Hunger Games! <3 A must-read. In fact, GO READ IT NOW. <--- Look, I even used all caps - against Mr. Arkin's rules - for emphasis! SO GO.

Ice is Dangerous

Yes, it's the weekend! Or what's left of it anyways. I got too excited when it started Friday night that I didn't even post then! But it's all good, because I'm posting now.

So, on Friday in class, we learned how to read and write to text (.txt) files! It was a really quick tutorial, but very interesting. Then, Randi and I worked on the proposal for our main culminating activity. It turned out there were a lot of things we needed to fix/add to our proposal. After doing as much as we could, we split up the work for the weekend: mainly research, and a bit of programming if we could.

Yesterday (Saturday), I went skating with my friends at Nathan Phillips Square. Needless to say - or, as you can probably guess from the title of this post - I fell. Ahem, for the record, I'm actually pretty good at skating. I just hadn't skated in around a year. But even that isn't the reason! Unfortunately, I managed to skate over a small ditch in the ice without noticing yesterday. With no one to grab onto (my friends were sitting on the sidelines for a rest), I lost my balance and slipped. I had the stupid idea of trying to break my fall with my wrist *cringes*. You can probably guess what happened next... I sprained it pretty badly. Yikes. It manages to hurt me even when I don't move it at all. :(

And so, that's my woeful weekend tale. I pretty much cannot use my right hand at all now, because putting any more than a tiny bit of weight on it results in "OWWWW!" But right now, all I'm wondering about is how I'm going to do my gym culminating with this... Wish me luck, that I can get better soon! :/

A (Really Minor) Break From Everything

Believe me when I say it's really minor. Because it's really minor. See what culminating has done to me? Even the tiniest breaks in homework we get now counts as a break. Argh.

Now, about today. Grace, Randi and I have our app proposal! You know, the major culminating project. We will be making a "Bibliography Creator" - enter all the information, and a bibliography - in the correct format and everything - will be created for you! The idea was actually one of those split-second brain blasts... still, it's definitely a useful app. :) After getting our idea approved, Randi and I wrote the official proposal during class.

Today we also learned how to convert our webpages into portable document formats, otherwise known to the real world as PDFs. For homework, we were to download and install CutePDF Writer (a printer subprogram), and use it to convert our webpages into a single PDF page. However when I got home, I found out that there is already a conveniently installed program on my computer which does that! It definitely saved me a lot of work, and soon I was done.

So that was my day. Tomorrow I have two Gym tests: a Health test and a Volleyball quiz. Now I gotta go study for both of them... wish me luck!

"I'm Sick of the Word ‘Culminating’!"

Yup, that's right. I've been hearing a lot of that lately, along with "I HATE CULMINATING!" and "Culminating is killing me!". It's only been three days, and it's like this. I wonder what it'll be like at three weeks...

But, on the bright side, I finished my article! I was able to get Mr. Arkin to edit it in class today, worked on it some more, and then came home and finished it up. You can check it out here. Feedback/comments are welcome! The only problem is, it's supposed to be a 450 word limit, but mine is 500-some words. I'm not sure if it will fit all on one page yet... I'll have to see when the time for printing comes. Still, I'm extremely relieved that part 1 is pretty much done and over with.

Plus, I managed to finish my part in our Gym culminating project today. I'm so happy! We (my group) just have to put it all together, and we'll be done part 1 of that as well!

So all in all, I'm making good progress on all my culminating projects. But now, I present...

Something other than culminating!

White Pine 2011. I've always loved the Forest of reading books, but this year they are so disappointing. :( After reading many of the books, I wondered how they even got into the award program. It's really sad - I was hoping for some awesome, epic reads, but instead I was putting up with the books in order to finish them! I still want to read all 10, vote, and go to the Harbourfront ceremony though. But hopefully next year's selections will be a lot nicer.

Culminating Madness

Goodness, it's so late already. Well fine, not very late for me. But all evening I've been working on the Mosaic Project, part 1 of our CS culminating. It's making my eyes all dry; I've been staring at the computer screen for too long. :( But yes, I've been working hard, and it's up there! Though I still need to fix a very cryptic HTML error, which I don't quite understand. I'll ask for help on it tomorrow. You can read my article here.

Speaking of culminating, we got part 2 of our project today! It is the major part, and a group project. Thankfully, we can work with students from the other two ICS classes (class A and B). You can read about the projects on our ICS2O7 Culminating Activities page. Basically we need to pick one of the major projects and work on it as a group. Whichever one we pick, it will be due at the end of the culminating, which gives us a bit more than two weeks to work. My group, which consists of Grace, Randi and myself, are probably going to do the application one - it seems the most fun. :)

And... yeah. I'm so tired right now I don't feel like talking about my other culminating assignments. Believe me, it's getting quite ugly right now. So I'll spare you the gory details. :/

Now I should really be going to bed. Good(bad) night!

We're BACK! (And Still a Bit Woozy in the Head)

Woozy. That word popped into my head today for some reason, while I was thinking about this post. So, of course, I had to use it.

Yeah, yeah. As you can tell, it's back to school. And like all back-to-school's, it's a mildly depressing day, with everyone still lost in Christmas fantasies. But...

It's the new year. 2011!
Can't say I'm too happy about that. xD

For the first time, January has taken on a new meaning: Culminating. Aka summatives. Aka those big projects you have to do, which if you fail means you're dead. Uh huh. Speaking of culminating, I got 3 projects today: Gym, Music, and of course, Computer Studies (there's no summative for Math). In Gym we need to work in groups to create a lesson plan and then teach a gym class. In Music, we need to write a solo composition.

Our Computers final project consists of many aspects. We got part 1 today: The Mosaic Project. Not really a mosaic, but that's alright. We need to pick a topic - related to technology of course - write an article on it, and design a webpage containing the article.

So I was thinking about what I was going to do when Mr. Arkin mentioned OLPC - the One Laptop Per Child project. Looking at its website, I found out more about it: a non-profit organization aiming to give each child in a third-world country a low-cost laptop. Now the operating systems (OS) on these laptops aren't your usual Windows or Mac OS. Instead, OLPC created Sugar, a completely different operating system designed for children. Now I don't want to get into details here, but if you want you can go check out the website yourself. From what I've seem, Sugar is really amazing, which was why I decided to pick it as my topic.

Speaking of which, it is time for me to get to work. So, I will update you again when the webpage is complete - you'll be sure to read it then, right? :)