insert clever title here

Group: Roseanne Feng, Julian Hammett, Aardra Rajendran, Bandhan Zishanuzzaman

So our group decided to make an app that would allow people to put up and access information concerning events, opportunities, and other points of interest in their community. They would be arranged by categories such as academic, games/entertainment, and volunteering. In theory, the app would be a part of a website, which would contain the majority of event information and would be able to send it to phones, as well as receive information from users who were creating new posts/events using the app. Although technically we were supposed to be designing apps for teenagers, ours ended up being more universal in nature, to help people in general connect with their community.

Other features we're considering include accessing google maps for a function that would allow searching for events within certain zip codes, or using some kind of calendar or profile information to help keep track of certain events. These may or may not be implemented depending on how far we actually get.

Ninja Time!

Today, our group (Carly, Kenny, Terrell, & Jackie) decided to create an app for teenagers that would enable them to have fun while being able to finish their schoolwork. The name of this app is called Ninja Time. Through our interviews, we found out that teenagers often can miss out on fun if they are working too hard or they can procrastinate their work in order to have fun. Our app allows teenagers to do both. The actual game of ninjas catching penguins while avoiding pandas is what gives teenagers a break from too much work. However, after a certain amount of time, the app won't allow the user to play the game anymore so they can finish their work. The screen will say, "Time to Go Back to Work!" and underneath will have an inspirational quote that will motivate the user to resume working. It will also play loud beeps and the phone will vibrate. The user will then have the choice to either quit the app or keep playing. If the user decides to keep playing, then the timer will again start and soon the "Time to Go Back to Work!" screen will appear.

Up For Seconds?

Today I focused on quiz programs. One was the Presidential Quiz app, which worked by presenting a predetermined series of questions to the Quiz taker. Once an answer was typed into the appropriate space, the progam matches the answer with it's selection of correct answers, and, using if/then statements, the program alerts the quiz taker of whether s/he is right or wrong. All the while, quiz takers have the option of skipping each question by pressing the next button, which not only brings up the next question, but also brings up a matching picture. The MakeQuiz and TakeQuiz apps work in a similar fashion, with the operative difference being the TinyWeb storage mechanism, which can store and retrieve inputed questions and answers using the Internet to construct unique quizzes, a feature that I found very interesting. As the programs are becoming more complex, I find myself forced to organize my codings in a more linear fashion, as displayed by the pictures above. One of my biggest failures was when I neglected to input the picture codes into the media section for the Presidential Quiz.

I've resolved a lot of my issues

Tonight was wayyyyyy better than last night. I still couldn't find a computer in the cluster at the dorm but it's okay because there were plenty of computers at the student center. I also finished 4 hours earlier than I did yesterday. I did the Presidents Quiz and the Ladybug Chase because I like ladybugs. I really liked the explanations in the book of how the program was working because it made a lot of sense. I think I realized today that it's important to read the small details because my carelessness almost made the ladybug program not work right. I also realized that it's good to layout things well because it makes it a lot easier to follow and figure out how things work instead of having them scattered all over the place. The epic fail was definitely having my frog spin around but not move towards the ladybug because I forgot to change the speed and interval. My discovery was most definitely connected to my epic fail because I realized my discovery because of my epic fail. The thing that has me intrigued is how much you can change the basic designs they give you to come up with a whole new program. The only thing I wish is that they turned down the A/C in the computer room because my hands are frozen :(

Night Two:

Tonight we expanded on our basics by doing the Ladybug and Presidents tutorial. They were a lot more complex such as three moving objects for the Ladybug with an energy line. I'm starting to understand the "language" of the blocks I think which makes things a lot easier and more enjoyable. I had a few minor problems I fixed them without wasting too much time. I also liked that we learned how to make things more general like in the Presidents tutorial so that you can change specifics and it will still work. My epic fail was that my frog wouldn't eat the ladybug. The screen shot shows the blocks that my problem existed in. I believe I defined other wrong. I finished a lot earlier tonight! It went a lot smoother too!

Day 2- Computer Science

Today in Computer Science was really intersting and fun! During class we were able to create our own app, and my partner, Brandhan, and I were able to create a "Stupid Test" app. It was a lot of fun to discover ways to change the screen in the phone. We also created three additional apps. During class we created ItalyMapTour and we were able to take snap shots of various cities in Italy from GoogleMaps and have it show up whenever one clicked on the label. For homework I created PresidentsQuiz and LadybugChase. PresidentsQuiz was really fast and straightforward, and it was really fun to make. It would have come in handy when me and Brandhan were making the StupidQuiz, but it was nice to see different ways to make quizzes. LadybugChase too a longer time to make but it was worth it. The game is really fun, and I see it can get addicting. Unfortunately, the program crashed when I was about to finish so I had to re-do the whole app. However, Erek Speed was here, and he helped me A LOT. He was nice enough to get me back to where I was in about 10 minutes, when it took me hours to get there. Nonetheless, it was really fun, I can't wait for tomorrow (technically today).

-C0rtez, P

Games + Quizzes= Great Night

This was a lot of fun. Now knowing this much more about this block program and how everything comes together helped a bunch toward understanding what I would have never figured out yesterday. By creating a function, for example "Eat Aphid", it can be reused through definitions. My epic fail today was not reading everything and discovering why my frog would not move. I had the speed on Zero.....