+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!