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!