A Shocker

Well guys, this is the shocking news. . . this is the last blog I will have to write for TIK 2O1. Any other blog posting that I do write will not be marked. There are many benefits and also many (actually not that many) disadvantages of not having to write a blog this semester.

First of all the pros: No more getting out of the bed at 12:00 on a Thursday night because you just realized that blogs are due tomorrow and on two occasions you realize that you still have to write all four of them. No more getting mad at the computer because it won't let you sign into your account and then it deletes it.

But I'm going to miss those days and maybe I will come back once in a while and post a random blog.

Well sorry to all my avid readers. . . good-bye.

The Summmmm Program

Well the second part of the assignment was much easier than the first. We honestly completed the whole program in under 10 minutes. As we had been searching for some clues on how scroll bars worked we opened up a folder which had an interesting code that we applied to our program. It will probably not get us any extra marks but it sure looks creative.

This little secret of ours is that we found the coding for changing the colour of the form as the scroll bar moves up and down. This does not make the simple sum program and more complicated but it sure makes it look more professional and creative.

Today we were also told that we had to add comments in the programming sections of both of the programs we had created. Emily had no problem adding comments to the height program but I wasn't sure of how to explain what we had done through the coding. After some careful thoughts I soon managed to put comments on the page and we submitted both parts of the assignment to Mr. Chiarelli and had time to do whatever we choosed.

Sometime next week we will be introduced to another group assignment but this one will have not just two people in the group but three. I believe that I will be in a group with Emily and Alex as we had established this as soon as we had heard that there would be a group assignment.

Well tomorrow I am going to tell you some very shocking news. . .so make sure that you stay tuned to find out!

Average Height of a ABC year old?

Okay, we were still encountering problems with our first program as none of the formulas we have been putting in have worked. Both of us had searched through our notebooks trying to find an clue or even the answer. But nothing showed up until we realized that our formula was place in the wrong place of the code. Another thing was that we had to copy and paste the code for calculating the average height into each of the age categories. Now we were on to something and it was working. We compared our work with another groups and together we solved another one of the problems.

A different problem that we had been having is that the "critical error" message box was popping up after both the age and the height were inputted. For example if you plugged in an invalid entry for the age it would not tell you it was an invalid entry until after you entered the height. It had worked before but then when we altered some of the programming it messed up. Now just as we had thought that we were done another problem just had to come up. Thank-fully we resolved our problem near the end of the period which gave us a couple minutes to start on the bonus question.

The bonus question in this assignment is titled 'The Sum Program" Basically what it does is that whatever number you select using a scroll bar is inputted into a label box. Then, for example if you selected the number 4 then when you clicked on the sum button it would add all the consecutive numbers starting from one and ending at 4. (1+2+3+4=10) The sum of these numbers would be inserted into a text box and Voila! Your done.

More info on the sum program tomorrow. . . and some very sad news.

Intro to Group Assignment

Well finally the moment you have all been waiting for. . . the group assignment! The day that we had to write down the name of our partners Emily was not there but I wrote her name down as my partner. Gladly she did not revoked this offer (why would she :) ?) . The next day she was back and we were given the sheets outlining what we have to do.

There are two parts to the assignment: the first part is a program that determines the average height for the age categories between 13-18. Today the only thing that we did with this part was figuring out what we have to assign as a variable. Then with a similar program in hand we began to piece together the different formulas that we had to insert. At first this program did not seem hard but now we are realizing that we are missing one thing and we are searching are brains trying to find the answer. This is missing puzzle piece is the formula to how to add up all the various heights. At the moment the only thing it is doing it just displaying zero as the average height for all of the age categories.

That's all for now folks. . . more info will be posted tomorrow. . . I promise!

Selective Problems

"Selective Problems" is the ingenious name that Emily and I decided to call the new concept we had been learning these past days. Through these problems we had to use 'loops', 'do loops' and 'for next' concepts. Many of the questions are not hard but you have to make sure that you understand them completely or else you will create the wrong program.

We have been taught how sometimes you can crash the computer because it continuously loops a formula such as printing consecutive numbers or sentences and you never tell it to stop. Mr. Chiarelli showed us how to stop these crashed programs. I have learned how to make sure that my program does not crash by setting a limit and telling the computer when to stop.

For the next couple of days we are supposed to be just doing various problems and learning a couple of new concepts. From looking at my day planner I believe that we are going to be introduced to our first group project on Visual Basics. I also believe that this is the first group project period we have done in this class. Emily and I will obviously be together because as two of the three girls in this class we have to stay together.

Well it is getting late and I should be going now. Stay tuned for more news about my adventures with Visual Basics and about the upcoming group project!

Problems. . . What Problems?

Yesterday we worked on the back of a previous worksheet about mathematical formulas in computer programming. We had a short review of how to enter a mathematical formula such as 4-3 into a computer program properly. We were also taught how to use message boxes and input boxes. After a few examples we were put out on our own to try the next five problems that would be checked for homework the following day.

I realized that when we were doing Flash and being taught a new concept we didn't have to be paying attention to the teacher as sooner or later we would understand it. In VB it is much different because if you missed just one thing because you were talking you miss a lot more than you thought you would. Thankfully I have mastered the skill of being able to look at my own screen whild watching the teacher demonstrate the same thing I am trying out on my computer.

Because I have been paying attention in class I was able to finish the five problems within a matter of minutes with Emily. These problems were not very difficult but they just required a lot of concentration and applying of the things we had been taught. Most of these examples were also repetative in what way you would program them but the only difference what the information it displayed. Such as one was calcuated the commision percentage of a store employee whild the other calcualted the taxes, gross pay and total pay of an employee. In a nutshell both Emily and I believed that these problems were no problems at all.

But I still hope to get more like these as we learn new things because through these problems we can apply the things we had been taught to real life situations. This is probably what I like most about VB that you are able to apply many of the things taught to real life problems.

Read more soon. . .!

Braves Pizza

On Friday after the lesson and some review our teacher gave us a hint about the upcoming quiz/test. He had showed us one of the assignments that we must be able to recreate using the new concepts learned that day. While other classmates rushed to game sites Emily and I decided to tackle this clue in hopes that it would help us on the test.

In this assignment a person would be able to enter their name, choose size, type and quantity of pizza and then the computer would calculate the taxes and the total price.

One of the longest things about this pizza project was drawing and naming all of the labels, commands and text boxes. After that we only ran into a few problems such as we couldn't find out how to make the prices of certain things come up in the labels. But gladly after hammering at it for most of the period we both got it.

Walking into class the following Mondy we both were glad that we had attempted that assignment as it was the same question on the test. Before when it had taken me most of the period it only took me half. I was very happy that I had decided to take my teacher's advice and attempt that problem because today we received our marks for that test. I had only lost one mark on multiple choice but I had gotten 100% on the Braves Pizza part.

Remember. . . when your teacher says something might be on the test, chances are it probably would be or there will be a very similar question.

One More Thing and I'm . . .Done!

Thursday was the final period that we were given to work on our family assignments and I had finally remembered to bring in the pictures. Everything when smoothly. . .nothing froze up nor did the picture corrupt. I was so surprised at this that just to be sure that the computer wasn't playing tricks on me I kept saving every couple of minutes.

I had decided to add a text box underneath the photobox in which text was displayed to describe the picture. I had planned to use tool tip text ( when the cursor is placed over an image/object a small box appears describing the object) but the problem was that all of the pictures had been placed on top of each other and so only the first photo displayed its text.

At the end of class we had to show our assignment to our teacher so that he could see if it worked and he gave us a mark for the first part. Then second part of the assignment was the content and this he marked today. I was very proud of my mark as I had put in alot of work and effort but as well as fun. My mark on this assignment was: 100% I am very happy and pleased about this mark.

Stay tuned. . .

Finishing Family Assignment

Today we were given time to work on our family assignments. Our teacher had managed to call the board and fix the slow computer problem. . . and even though Youtube and other websites are blocked I am glad because now I don't have to worry about my program freezing or not saving.

For the third time in a row I had forgotten to bring some pictures for the assignment from home so today I just focussed on making sure that all of the controls were working properly. I also filled in what text I what to come up when a certain command button or in my case image is clicked.

At the moment I like this program (Visual Basic) better than Flash because it is not as repetative, more programming is involved and I can see where this program might be used in my everyday life. In Flash I always had to apply the same command to many items but in VB each may or may not have the same command but most of the time there is no need to rewrite the command I just have to copy and paste it. VB also has more thinking invovled because you need to remember what each item was called and the type of action that you want it to be associated with.

That's all for now folks! Stay tuned for more. . .

More Autobiography. . .

Yesterday we were taught how to make two forms. We were also taught how to create a textbox on both forms and when we typed something into the first forms and then clicked the command button to get to the second form it would still be there. This was called 'magic'. We were told that we are not allowed to use two forms on our autobiography assignment. At first I was bummed because I had really wanted to apply this concept to my assignment but if you read on you will know now why I am happy that we are sticking to a simple assignment.

Today I took the pictures that I had found before and added them onto my form but when I tried to save the computer kept on freezing up. The teacher wasn't there so I didn't have anyone to ask. So what I had to do was after each command button I made or image I inserted I had to save. At one point the program shut down and when I opened it back up all of my command buttons were gone and my images were distorted. This is why I am happy that we are sticking to a simple assignment because if we weren't I would have to redo alot more. I will have to find out what to do about this problem tomorrow.

Hopefully my Visual Basic problem will be solved tomorrow because I would really like to keep creating and adding new controls without having to constantly worry and then wait to see if it will save properly.

Stay tuned!

Autobiography

Yes, I finally was introduce to the autobiography assignment. This assignment will be different from the Flash family assignment because first of all it's on a different program and secondly this one is going to be all about me and not my family.

After some quick reviews of some newer and some forgotten concepts we were given the rest of the class to start an assignment. We had learned how to put a background on the form and so that was the first thing that I went searching for. The one I decided upon was a windows media player background because I love music and so I'm going to base some other objects on the form on that aspect of myself.

The thing with backgrounds is that you have to convert it to a wmf. file and what this does is puts it into a type of picture file that Visual Basics can read. The disadvantages of this is that it distorts the image and it isn't in its highest quality. I though that this was only because the file was so big but then I realized that it happens to all of the pictures.

That day we I went home I found pictures of the new Ipod touch and Iphone and decided that one of these images will display the information about me and the other will display the pictures. I also found some more recent pictures of myself that I could use in this assignment.

I am really excited about seeing how this program will look when it is finished. I know that to some people this must seem like baby work but I am really enjoying it. I really would like to learn more about it so that I could be able to produce more sophisticated looking programs with more controls.

That's all for now folks!

Shrink/Grow? Grow/Shrink?

Yesterday we had to remake Mr. Chirelli's circle program of a growing/shrinking program. It was the same program that he showed us and we were taught how to do when we were learning about scrollbars.

I was also taught another new concept that I didn't know was possibly in Visual Basics: menus. I had never known and never would have guessed that Visual Basics could make actually computer programs such as WordPad. This was a fairly easy concept and I had no trouble with it at all.

The circle assignment: at first I thought that okay, I knew how to do this but then I realized that I had forgotten the codes for practically everything. It seemed that no one around me remembered either. So I decided just to start putting everthing that I needed on the form and slowly but surely everything started to come back to me. I applied what I had just learned yesterday about menus and before I knew it I was done.

The only thing that I had problems doing with this assignment is making the starting background white and making sure that 'white' in the background menu was locked. Emily and I put our heads together and we both figured it out. Another error that kept coming up was that when you played the program one of the radio buttons was already selected. After a few minutes I also solved this problem.

I believe that we are going to be introduced to our Autobiography assignment in this unit soon because we have been shown past examples of the assignment. I did not keep any of the photos from the last assignment I did about my family because they were taking up too much same. So I will have to search around the house for some baby pictures of me and scan them at school.

The Shrinking/Growing Circle

Yesterday was the OSSLT and so not many people came to computer's class though I know that they were at school. Nevertheless we were taught a concept I had wanted to know how to do in a long time, how to use the scrollbars.

In the middle of the lesson my computer restarted and so I had to look off the one beside me so I didn't miss too much. Even so after I tried to make the circle grow on my computer grow an error report kept coming up informing me that I had programmed something wrong. I later realized that I had typed in the wrong name for my scrollbar.

This was not a long lesson as then we were given time to finish up our weather assignments. I had already finished the assignment the day before so I had a lot of free time on my hands. I did not think that the weather assignment was difficult just that it requires some practice and good memory. You need good memory because you have to remember the exact name that you named each and every object on your form. Overall I am excited for another eventful day of Visual Basics. Stay tuned for more.

What's the weather?

Today we learned a couple more concepts and then we were given a small weather assignment. We were taught how to group objects on one form so that whatever action we establish on one group of objects will not affect the other group. The object from the toolbox used to do this is called 'frame'.

The assignment that we were given today consisted of using the concepts learned today: frames and radio buttons. Radio buttons are also called option buttons. In our weather assignment we had to make two frames: one consisting of three types of weather and another with three different countries. The purpose of this assignment was that when the radio button beside the name of the country or type of weather was selected an image would appear.

I believe that this assignment was not as hard as I thought it would be when I first saw it. The only thing that I had to pay attention to was making sure that the correct image was visible while the others were not. The method of copying and pasting the code from the one radio button to the next and then modifying it was much easier than just rewriting it.

Keep on checking for more news!

Back From March Break

On our first day back from March Break we were given the class period to finish up our ISU's. I had already finished this over the break and the only thing that I need to do was to print it. Through this culminating activity I learned many new things about the computer field. I had never know that there were so many different occupations that had something involved with computers. The three occupations that I chose were all interesting in their own ways. This has surely broaded my career choices for the future.

On our second day we were introduced to the highly anticipated program that we will be spending the bulk of the year on: Visual Basics. At first glance I thought that it looked much older and boring than Adobe Flash but then our teacher showed us some of the things that we will have to complete on it and it is more complicated than Flash. This program is more into the programming field.

I believe that I will learn to like this program as I learn more new things about it. Keep on checking for more info.

Last Minute Details

Today was the day the the Flash family assignment was due but I didn't know that we would be given the whole period to add more details. I am thankful for this oppertunity because I was able to add many last minute details such as sound clips and more animations.

At first my file would not upload from my USB drive but then after five minutes of trying to open the file it finally opened. I also ran into more problems: a couple of my pictures were corrupted and had to be replaced. Another thing was that my animated turtle lost head and feet. . .I just do not know where they went.

Today was also our last day of Adobe Flash because after the March Break we will be starting a new program that has a lot of actually programming involve: Visual Basics. I have not heard of this program but just the same I had never heard of Flash either and now I love it. I hope that this new program will be interesting and I will enjoy it too.

Stay tuned for more!

Family Problems

Over the past couple of days I have been encoutering problems with my Flash family assignment. This problem has only occured at school and not at home. I believe that this problem is caused by the fact that they school computer's do not have enough memory to handle a large program like flash.

This problem has been coming up ever since I started the big family assignment. What happens is that when I tried to do a test run it would freeze up and the program would shut down. I thought that this was only happening to me but Emily was also encountering these problems. Since I realized that I was losing my work I started to save after every addition. Today I will also have to find more pictures of myself and my family because many of my previous ones have become corrupted and started to mess up the program.

Ingnoring all of these problems I think that my assignment is coming along pretty well. Many times I have had to stop myself from adding something else because it just popped into my head such as a cool effect on the subtitles. I am stopping myself because I want to be able to finish all of the nessessary aspects of the project before adding anymore.

Well that's all for now. . . stay tuned for the next blog!

My Family

Yesterday and today we were given work periods for our Flash family assignment. The main goal of this assignment is to create a Flash program that has a short introduction which then continues onto the main screen. On the main screen there are going to be buttons which directs the page onto the certain topic such as: my parents, my brothers and me! Each scene must have a picture of the family member and some information.

For me the most exciting part of the assignment was yesterday as I designed the main page and the introduction. The next thing that I will be looking forward to is adding in all the pictures. I managed to find some pictures at home but tonight I'm going to try and look for some more. I also have to figure out what kind of information I want to put on the slide for each family member. I believe that I am the only person in this class that has a family of six not including five fish and a turtle.

My Gumball Creation!

I forgot to save my updated gumball machine on my USB drive and so I was unable to post it on this blog. But you will be as happy as I am right now that I received a 50/50 on the assignment! Looking at first class I saw that only three people received a perfect mark and two of them were girls. I am surprised to see that the girls are excelling in this course because I was expecting the boys have a quicker and better grasp on the technology field, but I guess not.

Today we were introduced to our large and final assignment I believe for this unit. Our task is to create something that resembles a web page about our family. Our class time was spent looking at some student examples and we got another small review on some new concepts and also learned some brand new ones. One of these new concepts was how to copy a scene without having to copy and paste each and every object on that page.

Before we even started as the teacher was explaining the task my brain was working overtime. It was already planning out the layouts of the scenes, the buttons and other artistic aspects of the page. This is only thing that I really enjoy about this course and program is that I am able to combine my knowledge of the program with my passion and talent in the visual art field.

After the short lesson and some quick example we were given the rest of the period to start our family web pages. I kept making the same mistake over and over again: copying the scenes without programming the buttons and objects that I wanted to appear on other scenes. I quickly fixed the problem and started an introduction. The introduction on this assignment as well as the overall assignment must be better than my previous task because it is worth more and it is out of 100 possible marks.

Keep posted because on my next post I will try and include and example of my gumball machine and as usually more information about my exciting experiences and new discoveries in computer science class.

Gumballs!

Over the weekend I spent most of my time indoors away from the cold perfecting my gumball creation. It was supposed to be due today at the end of class but we were given until tomorrow at the end of class. Since I am very close to being done tomorrow I will just add some little extra details and some sound clips.

I had some trouble again over the weekend with the buttons and scene changes but I managed to resolve the problems at school. I have really enjoyed making this machine, even though it was tedious and long work, it all paid off in the end.

Some things that I added to my machine over the weekend were: I drew the candy store background completely by hand (or may I say paintbrush), I added an ending scene and a final ending scene, and I discovered with much surprise how to make the gumballs and the machine look shiny or like they are reflecting light.

I was very happy and excited about my final results and tomorrow with more time I will be able to add some sound clips. The sounds are already playing in my head and I can't wait to put them in. Tomorrow I will try and post my final copy of the gumball machine. I hope that all of my hard work is reflected in my mark. That's all folks!

Gumball Machine

Yesterday night I successfully downloaded a free thirty day trial of Flash at home. I was eager to show off to my parents and my jealous brothers what I had learned so far in Flash. They were amazed at the things that I used to think were amazing until I learned more about the program. My parents are encouraging me to explore this area more since they see that it interests me.

Today after a mini lesson/review we recieved the whole entire period to work on our gumball machines. I had a bit of trouble with my introduction and the buttons I had placed on it but I decided not to spend to much time on it and so I moved on. They next thing that I did was start on my gumball machine. I used all the techniques that I had been taught up to this point and started to plan my machine.

The hardest thing about this assignment is the fact that all of the gumballs, buttons and other parts have to be on their own seperated layer. This makes thing complicated for a while but labelling the layers made it much easier.

One new thing that we learned partly today and yesterday is how to make different scenes and then how to program a button to when clicked it goes directly to that scene. I am planning to have about three or four different scenes in this assignement. Well that's all for now, keep a look out for my next post.

Gummy Bicycle

This morning I viewed the mark I had recieved for my three bicycle race, it was a 12/15. Later on, in class I saw that the peope who had added some extra effects (such as the flames,wheelies, Nos etc.) had gotten higher marks. I had been spending too much time on making sure my bikes were doing the right thing and it didn't clue in to me that I could have added some other effects. I will keep this in mind for next time.

Today we were also introduced to our second Flash assignment. This one will be worth more and out of more than the bicycle race. This time we have been asked to create a gumball machine with a minimum of three gumballs coming out. We didn't have a lot of time to start the assignment since we were taught some more new aspects on Flash. Such as motion paths and putting objects on different layer. We were also shown some programming commands. This assignment will be the first one in which programming will be involved.

After this quick glance at programming I'm sure that I will grasp it but it may take me a while. Since this will be a major assignment I am going to try and see if I can download the Flash program for free onto my computer. Keep posted, there's more a'coming.

Bicycle, Bicycle

We had our first Flash assignment today. We had to make a simple bicycle race with three bikes. This involved a new Flash aspect that we had just learned: movie inside of a movie. To create it first I had to make the bike wheels a movie clip and then I had to make them a movie clip again. Through motion tween I made them turn clockwise and then ta-da the wheels turned. Next I drew a simple bike that fit the wheels and made the bike move across the screen. After creating two more bikes in the background I had completed the assignment.

What I found interesting about this is that it's not as hard as it looks and it's fun to see your creation after you're done. The bicycles really do look as if they are riding across the screen racing each other. Some other people in class had managed to add some other effects such as flames on one bike or another had their bike acclerate in the middle of the race. I went and asked them how they did it so that I could try it out the next assignment.

Overall what interested me the most about this lesson is how to put together all of the small effects in Flash that we have done so far to create a simple animation movie. Keep in touch for the next blogger blog!

More Fun with Flash

Today I got some more basic information about Flash. I learned how to make a object move across the screen in one smooth transaction and what tweening is. At first I was having trouble with a stick figure that we were supposed to make it move it's arms and legs. But then later on I got the hang of it and found out what I was doing wrong.

The coolest thing that I learned today what how to take and object such as a snowboard and then make it turn into the letter X. This whole process seemed difficult at first but then when I saw it done step by step I realized that it wasn't as hard as I thought that it would be. With a lot of patience and careful listening I was able to complete all of the steps and make my snowboard turn into a letter!

Our networking test results were posted on First Class today and I did so much better than I thought I did: 35/40. So far my mark in this course is a 91% and I want to raise my mark with the next two topics we are going to study.

I can't wait for another day of Flash, i'm really enjoying this unit so far.

Network Test

Today was a very exciting and eventful day. The first thing I had was a network test. I had thought that I was well prepared for it but there was one question worth 16 marks that I had forgotton to review. Since the hardware component of the computer is not my strong point I did not have a clue to what I should put down. So I went to the other questions and then came back to that same one and wrote down what I had remembered. If I had had a couple minutes more I believe that I would have been able to remember the answer. Therefore I do not think that I did as well as I could have but I will make sure to bring up my mark on the next test or assignment.

Also today we were introduced to a new topic that we would be spending most of the rest of the year on. This topic is a program called Flash and from today I understand that it can be used to create games. The first thing we did today was get a small taste of what this program can do. We were shown step by step how to create a shape and then manipulate it to whatever you want. We have not learned how to make a short movie since we are still playing around with the shapes and the different options.

Yesterday we were allowed to view a site that had many examples of Flash games. During this period I had had the pleasure of disecting a frog, squid and putting together the remains of a vole all on a Flash website. I had also played many simple but fun Flash games. My teacher also showed us some of his own Flash examples. By the end of this course I want to be able to create a simple game using Flash. I will surely amaze my friends and family because like me they had never thought that a program like this would be available at a high school level.

I believe that flash will be a new and exciting thing to do since we will be able to do more hands on stuff. I am very artistic and I especially like playing around with photos and drawing programs on the computer. Yesterday when I had looked at some of the examples of Flash I had thought that I would never be able to do that in a thousand years but after today I now belive that with a lot of hard work and patience I too can create a game like that ones I saw. I am very excited about the next couple of days since we will be discovering more things that Flash can do.

Another Day. . .

Today I learned about many different networks such as the LAN and WAN. LAN stands for local area network and it is the type of network I have at school. But our school can also be said to be a WAN because of its ability to connect to any computer system in the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board. I also learned about the different ways of connecting computers to the main server. Some ways are more effective than others but may not be as inexpensive.

So far I am enjoying this class and I am anxious to see some more examples of what we will be doing in the future. My interest in computers has grown tremendously over the past week and I am know looking for any career oppurtunities that may interest me. Hopefully I will discover one that will spark my interest and help me make my decision to what courses to choose for grade eleven.

First Blog EVER!

This is the first blog I every had and it's pretty exciting. This computer class is much different than I thought it would be but I believe that it will challenge me to do something that I have never tried before. Something different that I didn't expect from this class is the fact that there are only three girls in about a class of over 25. I guess that many girls do not find this program interesting. I believe that many more should try something different and try to stand out because they might uncover something about themselves they never knew before like a talent for computer programming. So far I am enjoying this class excluding the fact that there are not many girls.

I believe that this class will teach me many things that I had never known I would be able to do. Today we review all of the main parts of the computer. I am amazed that they manage to put so many things into a little tiny box that makes it do so many things. It makes you realize how much you truly do not know about the inside of a computer. I am going to try my hardest to do well in this course and see if a career in computers will appeal to me.

Well that's all for now, stay tuned for the next one.