Entry 1: Coding remains an entirely foreign concept to me. As I'm sure anyone can tell by the aesthetics of my websites, the only thing that I can really do so far is make squares and rectagles with links. I guess it's a start! I hope to continue to learn more skills as I progress.
Entry 2: In terms of coding, this week was a relatively quiet one. However, our class visit to House 14 was both fun and inspiring as it relates to our ocean coding projects. While before I was planning on creating something to do with pollution in the ocean, my buddies' interest in dolphins and sharks makes it likely that I will do something related to those animals. Additionally, with the bit of coding that I did do, I struggled to recreate the ease in which i attached photos to websites but eventually figured out a makeshift way to do this by copying the image address.
Entry 3: This week, I started to work on my ocean project. In order to create the game, I started in scratch because my HTML knowledge is not yet at a high enough level to code something this complex. What I have so far is a trash can, a recycling bin, and an object that you can place in either of them. What I now need to do is figure out the logistics of the game: What objects will be on display and what the correct answers will be. I also need to convert the scracth code into HTML.
Entry 4: I learned a little bit about javascript this week. It is a universal language that you can use by hitting inspect on any browser. I am still unfamiliar with the syntax of javascript but will improve as time goes on. It is fun to experiment with.
Entry 5: I have changed my project entirely! I am stsrting to work on connecting a javascript page to an html page through a button that submits and input. This will hopefully allow me to transfer audio data from a microphone to an html page that I can hear.
Entry 6: For this week's challenge, I had to make a sketch that printed numbers from 1-100 but multiples of 3 were replaced with fizz, multiples of 5 were replaced with buzz, and multiples of 15 were replaced with fizzbuzz. I essentially did this manually by creating a variable that would automatically count up by one. However, I told it to put fizz, buzz, or fizzbuzz in place of the numbers that it should do. This took a long time and there were likely many better ways to do it but I got the job done.
Entry 7: For my function mini-project, I decided to make a function that produced images of my favorite soccer player, Moussa Sissoko. It prints 100 photos of him before it stops. While it was originally difficult to set a cap on how many were made, I eventually figured this out.
Entry 8: Despite trying to follow on during class, I am still struggling to make a function arrays code sketch. I have attached this to my website but although I believe it should work, the browser remains blank. I plan on making a lab to figure this out.
Entry 9: For this week, I worked with Ryan and Kai on a code sketch that placed a certain number of random "simbas" accross the screen. Every second, the position of the simba would randomly change. It was difficult to get them to move, but we eventually figured out that there were some smaller mistakes in the code that were making it not work. We then reduced the total number of simbas so that they could be discerned. Finally, we tried to make the number of simbas contingent on the screen size. Unfortunately, we misunderstood what we were doing and made it based on the size of the computer screen instead of the window.
Entry 10: This week's project was to make a valentine for someone. I decided to make a digital gift for my grandparents. I wanted to make a heart that would reveal a message when you clicked on it. Because I was in a Southern mood, I decided to write the message in a bit of a different vrnacular than what I might normally use. My main problems with the codesketch are getting the message centered on heart and getting rid of the sliver of a heart on the bottom of the screen. I have not been able to figure this out just yet but the valentine is still functional.
Entry 11: This week we are finally back from Spring break. I began my work by doing the adversarial fashion assignment my attaching an image in my repositories folder to a website and explaining my design. I also began to work with a partner on a codeskecth on glitch to describe our time in isolation. However, Glitch has stopped working for so I am unable to work on it for now. Hopefully I will get that fixed soon. Finally, I have been discussing ideas for a podcast and independent project with Miller. We will likely either be doing a podcast about things to do in isolation or one centered around trivia.
Entry 12: Our homework this week was to listen to a podcast about algorithms in the justice system. It was a very good listen and a thouroughly enjoyed it. The main questions it posed were how many people it is justified to arrest to prevent one dangerous person from getting away and if predicting someone's risk potential based on staistics from people like them is accurate and/or morally justified. Although it is proven that a statistical algorithm is better at predicting risk than a human judge, it does not sit well with me to be locking people up based on other people's actions. Even if the algorithm were proven to be less dicriminatory, I'm not sure if I would support it based on the concept by which it was built upon. This also reminded me of a round of debate that I participated this past weekend about abolishing plea bargains. This is because, in both of these situations, there is a clear contradiction between what produces the best outcomes for accused criminals who are actually innocent and what is the more ethically sound system. Overall, this is an issue I struggle with and have not yet made my mind up on.
Entry 13: The two articles we were tasked with described some of the many positive and negative elements of AI. One of them talked about how AI helps us analyze data from the ocean while the other one described how machines are learning from humans. I was particularly interested by the latter article as it presented an interesting dilema between creating jobs short-term and ultimately replacing jobs with robots in the future. Some would say that the progression of technology is inevitable and we need to find ways to shift the job market while others would argue that we should cease machine learning because it is too consequential to future jobs.
Entry 14: Most recently, I have been working on a game in which you click on the constantly moving faces of New York politicians to either gain or lose points depending on my personal opinion of them. I did this by creating an individual function and class for each politician that are created at different rates. The politicians that lose you points appear at faster rates so that they slowly overpopulate the screen. I have actually enjoyed playing this game as it is difficult not to click on the bad characters. The next step will be to create a way for the game to end, probably after a certain time.
Entry 15: This weeks seminar concerns whether or not President Trump should be on twitter. I found the guardian article particularly compelling and timely considering his most recent unhinged outbursts and twitter's response. However, I see no positive that will come out of Trump being removed from twitter, even if he violates their community standards. It won't do anything to silence his hate and will serve as a rallying cry for anti-censorship conservatives.
Entry 16: This is likely my final entry. I have finished my politician game after many labs and attempts at creating a timer to end the game. Although I did eventually learn how to make a timer on html, I ended up choosing to make a function that would display the words "game over" after a certain amount of time. The game is now very playable!