Tenth and Last.

Hey everyone,

It's been a great semester. The course started on a rough path, but it became a lot smoother as it progressed. This will be my last SLOG, for it is due today before midnight. Overall, I had fun and learned a lot. I actually have gained an interest in computer code and I'm considering learning more in the future. Code is become more and more important in our society, especially in the business world. As a Rotman Commerce student, this will be a very beneficial skill to acquire. At this moment, I still find it a bit weird that I will be finishing off my first year of university in a few weeks. I've made tons of great friends already and joined some awesome teams. It's been pretty interesting, but I hope it gets even better!

Good luck with your exams everyone. Hope you're all as excited as I am for Summer '13!!! YEEE PARTY TIME ;)

- JHL

Ninth

Hey everyone,

This week I have managed to finish Project 2. At first, I was struggling with the contrast code, because I couldn't seem to get the "z" button to properly produce what was expected. After several trial and error I finally solved the issue. I put the draw-imgpair code in the definition for keypress for "z" which should've been imgpair before ip. Now for fractals, everything seemed to be running smoothly, until I noticed the base of the triangles would not change when I pressed the "left" and "right" keys. I couldn't seem to find the problem myself. So I decided to go on Piazza for peer/instructor help. Thankfully, a student answered my question and asked if in my sierp definition, was the size of the triangle in the [else part, "5". And it was. However, it should've been (param-base rp) for it to properly work. So I corrected the code, and voila! It was successful.

This week is the final week of school!!! Although, I'm not even excited, because of exams. I feel very unprepared. Hope everything turns out well. Goodluck to everyone!

- JHL

Eight

Hey all,

Looks like there's just one more thing left to do for class before exams! Project 2. I haven't started yet, so I am not sure what to expect. Hopefully it will be on the same level of difficulty as last time. Wikipedia Part III wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Thought it would be difficult and a long process, but I found it to be fair. My task was to add and fix Wikilinks. A pretty simple task actually. Engaging the Wikipedian community was convenient, because there were many active people online willing to help. In my previous blog, I mentioned that I found the codes for Palindrome confusing and hard to comprehend. However, after last Friday's tutorial material on recursion, I managed to get a better understanding of how codes with [cond] and [else] work together.

Anyways, this week is a four-day week with Friday off due to Good Friday, so there's no tutorial this Friday. I am so relieved.. A long weekend is just what I need. Although, I'll probably end up spending it catching up on other classes that I am behind in. Sigh. Have a nice long weekend everyone.

- JHL

Seventh

Hey all,

I was extremely busy last weekend and I completely forgot about my weekly SLOG. So I'll make up for it right now. Last week was a busy week for us CSC104 students, because of the test we had on Thursday, March 14, 2013. Unfortunately, I came down with a sickness and due to other factors related to my illness, I was unable to take the test. It got me really worried about my mark for the class and I couldn't just do nothing about it. So I found out I could fill out a Special Consideration form for missed assignments/tests, which I ended up doing. Dr. Heap was generous enough to accept the reason why I missed the test. Currently, I'm still trying to fully understand the coding for rot13 and Palindrome.. When I look at the codes, I always think of how it seems at such a more difficult level compared to what we have been learning. Coding sure isn't easy, but I'm going to try my best and grasp all that I need to know for the exam.

There's only about two more weeks of school! I'm excited for summer, but worried for exams. Hope you all are studying hard and good luck to everyone.

- JHL

Sixth

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since my last SLOG, because of reading week. Anyways, I finished working on the very first project of the semester for computer science today. At first, I thought it was extremely complicated, especially the ball one. But after reading over the whole outline a couple of times, I realized that it was pretty simple. Most of the coding required for the ecosystems part were codes used previously in the course, such as the check-expect. I thought I completed it, but once I ran it, all it produced was a picture of a fox beside a picture of a mouse. The pictures just stayed on the screen without any other actions occurring as time passed by. All tests passed, so I'm really confused about the outcome. Oddly, the end result of the ball part was the opposite. It produced a working simulation of the stop sign bouncing off all 4 sides whenever it came in contact. However, a message pops up saying 1 out of 12 tests failed. The error was located in line 77, which was already provided in the file. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was regarding the direction "up" and how the expected value didn't match the actual value. My goal is to find a solution to both problems before the due date.

-JHL

Fifth

Hey all!

I know this blog is later than usual, I was just really busy this week. Not much happened during the week regarding CSC. Just new lectures and materials. Unfortunately, I missed the tutorial on Friday, because I had an economics midterm that morning and needed the time beforehand to do some last minute study. I tend to prioritize and outweigh benefits in certain situations. Anyways, I'm so glad that reading week has arrived. Hope you all enjoy your break.

- JHL

Fourth

Hey all,

Hope everyone's enjoying this special weather! I haven't seen this much snow since I was in elementary school. At the moment, I'm not sure how much snow there is in Toronto, but there's plenty here in sauga. But like all good things there's always a downside.

I woke up this morning and checked my social feeds. All my friends from other universities were tweeting, posting on facebook and texting me about how glad they were that their school was closed. Many of them go to universities in Toronto such as Ryerson. So with that in mind, my hopes were high and expected my school to close as well. I went online to check. Tell me how my campus was open whereas Mississauga and Scarborough campuses were closed... No love for commuters.

The sidewalks and streets weren't even plowed in my neighborhood. Snow almost as high as my knees.. Now I wouldn't mind sharing the adventure I had today just to get to school, but it would take too long. Long story short, it took me more than 2 hours to get to school. Well, that doesn't sound that horrible, but it was. Although.. I did enjoy watching kids get stuck in 3ft snow piles and old ladies slipping & sliding, some toppling over. Don't worry, none of them got injured. The snow acted like a pillow.

Do you know a show called The Walking Dead? If I can describe what it was like outside today, I'd say it was just like that show but a Winter edition.

Oh, and we had a test this Thursday in class. That's about it for this week. I think I did well, didn't really need to use my cheat sheet.

-JHL

Third

Mission "Wake Up On Time" has been half accomplished. By that, I mean I arrived on time to Tuesday's class, but failed to on Thursday. However, my body was exhausted from practice and working out throughout Monday to Wednesday, so being unable to wake up on time on Thursday was almost inevitable. Regardless, the two alarms in the mornings proved to be a success. I just have to sleep earlier whenever I have practice so that my body can recover better. This would make getting up the next day a lot easier.

All of the quizzes I've written so far, I've gotten full marks. They really aren't difficult as long as you follow instructions and complete the assigned tutorial videos. The only thing I am worried about at the moment is the first test that is coming up next week. I have no clue what it will consist of. Hopefully, the teacher will post up a list of subjects that will be tested on the class site.

Oh, I just remembered something. MarkUs annoyed the crap out of me yesterday. When I submitted my wikipedia part I assignment on the website, but I encountered a very irritating error. It acknowledged the submission of my WikiI.pdf file, but it still said that the assignment was missing. After a bit of messing around with the file, I figured out the problem. My document was saved as WikiI.pdf, but the "W" had to be in lower caps. . . . . . . At first, I noticed the site asked for "wikiI.pdf" with "w" in lower caps, but I thought it would be no big deal, because it was still the same file name. Thus, after saving the file with a lower caps "w," I was finally able to resolve the issue.

That's all I really have to blog about this week. Until next week, see ya.

- JHL

Second

Hey viewer! Hope you like my newly customized blogpage.

First off, I want to thank all the people who took time out of their day to read my previous blog. I've never really blogged before so this is very new to me. Please bear with me! Moving on to the important stuff..

This week has brought forth a new goal for myself. One that I must achieve by next week. That is, to be punctual. I seem to have a lot of difficulty getting up early on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays in order to attend class. Class starts at 9:00AM on those days, but I have to wake up at 6:30AM, because I commute to school from Mississauga. Now I know what you are thinking.. "6:30AM isn't even that early." However, in my world, anything before 9:00AM is early.

I missed this Tuesday's class due to my inability to get out of bed on time. Usually, I set an alarm for the morning of, but I have developed a bad habit of turning off the alarm and going back to sleep (I'm sure many people can relate). Missing one class may not seem like a big problem. However, you can miss vital information that was provided in that one class and/or push  homework behind. In my case, I missed a lecture which I have no clue about. Luckily, Prof. Heap posts his lectures online. You got to be really careful, because sometimes you won't get lucky.

In order to improve my punctuality, I have decided to set the alarm twice on my phone. This will ensure that I get up off my bed on the second alarm if I fall asleep after the first one. Although... there is one major fault to this plan, which is if I manage to fall asleep again after the second alarm. Y.O.L.O. right? Just kidding. I'll try my best to wake up the second time. And if not.. well, I guess I'll have to improve on this step towards my goal next week. I'll let you know how it goes next week!

- JHL

First

Two weeks have already gone by since I began this course, CSC104. However, it feels like only two days has gone by since school started. I am still in winter-break mode which means I'm still very lazy. It's "mission impossible" getting up early enough to make it to class on time. Now that I think of it, I haven't made it to class on time at all yet..

My first impression of this class was that it was just simply boring. Don't get me wrong, computers are entertaining (mainly if it is connected to the internet), and I use mine daily. But programming and computer language.. not my forte. You might be wondering why I even bothered taking this course. Well that is a good question. I asked myself the same question the first few days. With a rough start to the course I was on the verge of dropping out of the class. However, as the class progressed into the second week, things began to look better.

I wrote my first tutorial quiz today. Before I wrote the quiz, I was a bit worried, because I didn't know what to expect and the difficulty of it. As soon as I got the quiz I was relieved to find it quite simple. I thought the videos that Prof. Heap made on values were really easy to understand and very helpful. Which is the main reason I did well on that quiz. I also found DrRacket an interesting application.

Other than the quiz, there hasn't been much except class lectures. I don't regret choosing this course by the looks of how things are going so far. Overall, this class does not seem as boring as I first thought and I'm looking forward to learning in CSC104.

- JHL