I decided to join a group for the 2nd assignment.  I was tasked with completing the fractal  code.  I spent the first day trying out different things to solve the check expects and easily passed the check expects but I realized later that the just passing the check expects was not enough to finish the assignment.

The next day I decided to use the problem solving method taught in the second week of lecture.

Understand the problem

I studied the code and read the instructions within the fractal code in order to figure out what exactly I was supposed to accomplish.  I realized that for the the Sierpinski check expects I wasn't supposed to just pass the check expects but I needed to write a recursion.  The other part of the assignment was to add [question answer] pairs that altered the depth and base of the Sierpinski using arrow key presses.

Devise (one or more plans)

I created a plan that involved writing a recursion for for sierpinski in terms of (param-depth) and (param-base).  I also created a plan to model my key presses after the ball assignment key presses.

Try the plan

I attempted to implement the plans. I had to brain storm for a couple hours how to arrange the syntax so that Sierpinski was written in terms of param-depth and param base.  It took a while but I hit a break through .

The key press I modeled after the ball assignment didn't work at first, because I had four arguments instead of two.  Once I figured out my mistake it was easy to fix.

Look back

Looking back I should have studied the structure of param and realized it only had two variables: depth and base.  If I realized that earlier I would have been able to solve the key press problem faster instead of having four arguments.



Thoughts on the course

I really enjoyed all the topics covered in csc104.  It had a bit of programming and some history/social issues about technology which have useful real life applications.  Professor Heap was a very enthusiastic lecturer and the TAs were nice and helpful when ever I had problems concerning Dr. Racket. 

I had a nice relaxing reading week.  I ended up going home to Newmarket to visit my parents during the long weekend.  Aside from my weekend, in CSC, these past couple lectures on networking and privacy have been pretty interesting.  I really liked Tuesday's lecture covering privacy.  The fact that you can identity a person using just their date of birth, gender and postal code is really cool but also kind of scary at the same time!

On Tuesday in CSC we did practice problems on recursion and I really think recursion is the coolest thing!  We did one recursion that created a really cool pattern the longer the recursion occurred.

I wasn't at class or quiz on Thursday or Friday though because I went to Montreal for the Canadian University Badminton Nationals. We finished 4th in the team event just missing the medal placement but I still had a lot of fun in Montreal and really bonded with my team during the 4 days.  

After this mini vacation I'm ready for this week in CSC and can't wait to continue my knowledge of Dr. Racket and computers as a whole!

This week in CSC we had a our second term test.  I think it went pretty well but the last question was quite tricky.  After the exam me and my friend were debating if the last question had recursion in it and I think we concluded that it probably did have recursion.  So I probably did that question incorrectly.  

At least the rest of the test I think was pretty straight forward.  Now that the term test is over I wonder what we'll be learning in CSC next week!

OUA Champions!!

I know this has nothing to do with computer science but I'm just really excited that my team just won the OUA team gold medal for badminton!!!  I spent from Friday morning till Sunday night at the tournament (hosted by Ryerson)  and somehow our team tied with Western, 59 points each.....but  the tie break was decided based on how many head-to-head matches our team won against Western and counting up the totals we ended with 12 wins against them to their 7 wins against us :)

I'm just so elated that my team won it!!

Project 1

This week I partnered up with two other people and worked on the CSC ecosystem and ball project.  I spent a long time trying to figure out how to finish the projects and unfortunately was only able to fully the ball project + it's bonus mark, but boy did it feel great when I figured it out.   The ecosystem project stumped our group and we couldn't figure out how to complete the last two problems even after spending a large chunk of time trying to figure it out.

What a confusing and frustrating week in CSC!  Professor Heap was teaching us about binary and how to convert numbers into binary.  At first I was completely overwhelmed by it but its starting to make a bit of sense to me now!  Next Profressor Heap taught us how to alter the color of images in Dr. Racket by changing the red, green, blue levels of the picture.  I thought it was pretty easy to follow but when I went to work on the tutorial worksheet I ended up spending a few hours playing around with color changes and color swaps and even altered the opacity.  I think all that time spend working on the tutorial made the quiz relatively straight foward for me though!  

The most frustrating part of this week was when I was trying to hand in my wikipedia assignment 2 and was unable to login to markus for the longest time.  Luckly I was able to login this morning and hand it in, even though it's late :(

This week in CSC we began with the basic idea of how computers are based on.  If my memory serves right I believe Prof. Heap said computers were based on two principles: digital and binary.  He then began discussing part of the logic of how computers work at their most basic form.  Essentially it boiled down to things being "on" or "off" (true or false).

I started to get confused when he discussed Boolean arithmetic.  Luckily one of the TA's was able to explain it to me and it made much more sense.  

After that Heap showed us some cool things in Dr. Racket.  He showed us how we can manipulate a list of numbers using certain commands like "map".  Then he showed us how to file data into "structures" with an example of a museum of animal name, picture and number of feet they possessed. I thought it was pretty neat that  using the structure he produced he was able to extract the information using other commands in Dr. Racket.

The quiz this week tested us on some of the things Professor Heap showed us in lecture.  Pretty sure I did well of this quiz.  Overall a pretty interesting week in CSC!

This week was super hectic for me!  This Tuesday's CSC class was difficult to follow.  Proffessor Heap was showing us some coding on Dr. Racket about making an exhibit with 4 different pictures.  At first I was following but then later on half way through the lecture I got lost trying to follow all the steps he was doing.

Thursday was just hectic for me,  3 mid terms in one day starting with CSC.  I was up till 4 am the night before studying CSC before going to the test! During the test I made a lot of silly reading errors, though I still think the test went decently well.

What's going on??

Jan 22nd's Tuesday lecture was almost completely lost on me.  I honestly didn't have the slightest clue what was going on when Professor Heap handed out a sheet titled "Making your own definitions"

The sheet basically was showing us the under workings of a function called "lolcatz" and how we were supposed to help finish an incomplete version of the "lolcatz" function.  

I was sitting beside a friend and we were constantly looking at each other with looks of despair, followed by my friend asking the TA multiple questions about the sheet till the end of class. When class ended my friend and I walked out of class with looks of despair about what just happened in the lecture.

Lets jump to Thursday night where  I was cramming for the quiz on Friday when I realized the video tutorials I was watching generally explained what happened in Tuesday lecture.  As of now looking back at the Tuesday lecture sheet, I finally understand a bit of what is happening on that sheet!

CDF Account Woes

What a pain!  I was trying to set up my CDF user ID.  At first I didn't get an email for my CDF account so  I got a TA to find my ID for me.  But when I tried to login my password was apparently incorrect.  I had to email the CDF admins and they said I need to get my password reset in BA building.  Which I'll have to do another day because it is to late now (I'm sure they're closed).  Hopefully the email I sent to Professor Heap will excuse me from losing marks for not submitting the URL to this blog on time!

On a side note, at least not everything about my day in CSC was negative.  I'm pretty sure the first tutorial quiz went smoothly!