Journal Entries!

These first few weeks of Computer Science 1 (CS1) have been very busy and have involved active participation. This past couple of weeks we have worked on our first code sketches, inside and outside of the classroom. I am working on a code sketch that displays an image of a colorful wheel spinning and when clicked, it will give you a fortune. So far I have programmed the wheel gif to spin, but am still currently working on it being able to stop and read a fortune. We have also recently created our person cards that display images that describe pieces of our identities. My person card has a picture of an athletic sneaker and a picture of a dog. We have learned about the different types of divs and classes and we have also learned how to change background color and images. We recently began learning how to create functions and we were also introduced to Javascript. Computer science can be very frustrating at times. It’s definitely hard to stay calm when there is a small error in your code and you don’t notice. It’s certainly frustrating when a small error is made and you have to go back and find the root of the issue. Computer science is definitely a lot of memorization and practice. It’s sometimes frustrating when I don’t remember something from a previous lesson and I just get stuck. For example, sometimes when working on my code sketch I won’t know what to do next so I just stay stuck until I meet with my teacher. I am feeling good about computer science so far. I am really enjoying class, and I really enjoy the projects we are working on. I have had several labs so far and I will continue to make many labs in the future. Labs are definitely a productive environment that allows me to ask specific questions about my projects and assignments. I want to work on trying to focus even more in class. Trying to concentrate for the entire eighty-minute period is sometimes hard for me, especially when I get distracted. I want to focus on trying to concentrate during our class periods. I also want to work on asking more questions during the class period. I tend to save my questions for labs, but I think I would benefit from asking questions during class periods.

Creating a website was much harder than I originally thought. It was definitely fun and exciting to be able to customize and create my own website, but the actual coding was a bit difficult. So far, I linked the pages to the home page and also played around with different colors and fonts. It was definitely hard to keep track of all the pages and make sure the code was correct. Overall, super fun!

Today I finished my website! I am so happy and excited to have a finished website! I added a picture to the home tab and I also finished all of my pages. There were a lot of small problems, but I found all of the issues and fixed them. I am very proud of what I have created and I can't wait to add all of my projects.

Today I made a code sketch about the people I am thankful for. I added six different pictures, all of different people I love and am thankful to have in my life. When you scroll down the pictures change. Something that was difficult was when I first added the pictures, they didn't really fit the screen so I had to go back and crop them. I was inspired by my friend Alex's code sketches. He actually helped me code mine! Super helpful!!

This week, I worked on a thanksgiving code sketch for my best friend Aggie. I was inspired by one of my friends, and he helped me code it. I added several pictures of me and Aggie and I really like how it turned out. A challenge was that some of the pictures didn't properly fit in the screen, but I eventually figured out how to fix that.

Today I decided what I wanted my new codesketch to be about. I want to make it show my most played songs and then people will have the ability to click on certain bubbles and listen to the songs. I want to make it very colorful. First I have to find out how I can see my most played songs on spotify and then I can start coding!

I started working on a new codesketch. I want to make a codesketch that shows my most played songs in the last few months and then you can click to listen to the song. So far, I made an account for something called statsforspotify and there I can see my most played songs in the last few months. I did also start coding, but I wasn't able to do as much as I would've wanted to.

This week I made a pick up line generator. When you click on the button, a pick up line comes up. I thought it was a funny idea and I had a lot of fun making it.

This is my last week of computer science 1! Honestly kind of sad :( For the last project of the year, I decided to make a codesketch about something that is very important to me. Running has always been a part of my life and so I wanted to make a codesketch that was somehow connected to running. Everytime I go on a run I use an app to record the distance and route of my run. So I decided to make a codesketch that showed all my routes. While doing my codesketch I had some trouble with the positioning of the circles. In order to fix this, I set the position to relative and the display to inline-block. That fixed the positioning of the circles. The next issue that I came across was that I was having some trouble creating functions in my codesketch. I think that a function is basically a line of code that is used to reference another large portion of code easily. To run the function, you need to say its name on another line. Normally when you run a function, you say its name with () after, but in this code, you are putting it inside of an event listener. All the event listener needs to run this function is to say its name. An event listener is a function that already exists.