LEDs, Cars, Python, Euclid, Dogs, Cats, Karnaugh Maps, and Floating Points

 

Required reflections for week 1 CST-499 Software Engineering Capstone:

1) What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

This is an iframe into the page I'm working on right now: Well, I've been itching to get some programming done, my favorite activity, since before this program began - but I've been so busy the whole time, I feel like I've gotten even less time for programming now that I'm in a programming curriculum.

This week in particular, I've been cramming at hard as I possibly can to get ahead in all of my tasks, which include both classes I'm taking, CST-499 Software Engineering Capstone, as well as CS-24, Elementary Computer Organization/Computer Architecture, at the junior college. In order to be able to get the time to begin the programming needed to complete my capstone project, I needed to do all kinds of stuff I wasn't necessarily hoping to do this week, including marketing for the project, which included calling people, emailing people, writing people, finishing the proposal, talking to people, while over-progressing extra-fast in the architecture class to get ahead which included writing Euclids GCD algorithm in assembly language, taking a midterm test, a required notes-page for the midterm, completing a weekly lab, completing a written homework based on computer floating point representation and Karnaugh Map circuit/logic simplification, completing another weekly lab, completing an Arduino lab project, and of course family responsibilities like keeping daytime callers away, cats fed, dogs happy, laundry not in a pile, then there were the ETS practice tests I finally just now got to, and it looks like, at long last, I get to get some programming done this afternoon before my meeting with my instructor, to go over my progress.

So, my progress this week has been a huge success, clearing out my schedule to get some programming done in the weeks to come. This afternoon I think I'll be able to get my week 1 final project tasks completed, although I am writing this journal first, because that way I can take the rest of the afternoon to spend in entirety on the long awaited programming tasks before me. If I remember and have time and energy this evening, perhaps I'll update this commentary by marking the programming tasks that got done. What I would like to do this evening, what is on the list is:

DONE: A) Cars HW from Data Science class - make sure it still works as expected. 

DONE: A 1/2) Cars HW from Data Science class - make sure it still works as expected - on the server. 

B) Build a small framework surrounding it to extrapolate its features in a parametric way. 

and 

DONE: C) Check to make sure a post object request works, in the paradigm I decided to work with.

DONE: C 1/2 ) Completely second-guess the methodology I picked, using two repl.its to serve two separate technology stacks and after several hours of hitting it from all angles for the second time, arrive at the same conclusion I arrived at originally: it needs to be on two servers, near as I know how to configure it. And rather than complicate it that actually simplifies everything and it works.

Expectation & hope: further success. Later: success on everything so far and about to start making the parameters change.

2) What is your plan for next week? 

My plan for next week is to complete what my project proposal says, which is

Week 2:

1. Front-End Controls Interface Working
2. Build a front page in Express that introduces the site and leads into the controls area.
3. Build a transition to a controls area.
4. Build some controls on a control page aimed toward used car data.
5. Create and include custom graphics and use fancy interface features such as rollovers, transition effects and an exciting appearance while utilizing intuitive design methodology.
6. All while keeping up in architecture class (with much fewer assignments on the table now, thanks to my hard work in recent weeks,) and while keeping my good family happy, as always.

Also, Saturday we have the official ETS test. And BTW, I think some of the answers are wrong. One of the algorithm ones I did like a million times and I think the answer is - one thing, while the official answer said something other than what I'm 99.9% sure about. Same with several of the others, like maybe 5% or something I didn't agree with. I got a few wrong, for my own stupidity, and then saw where I went wrong, but some answers I disagree with. Okay, here's one: how many ways can you rearrange ..wait I'll change the numbers, lets say its two kinds of toys, dog toys and cat toys. There's five cat toys and four dog toys. Keeping the cat toys together and the dog toys together, as a group, but being able to re-arrange within the groups, how many ways can you re-arrange the toys? I put forth that the answer is 2! x 4 ! x 5 ! for the two groups of toys, the four dog toys and the five cat toys. This methodology didn't fit the official answer, which was a factor off from that. The struct one, with bytes, longs, ints and shorts, I also didn't agree with the official answer for, after much contemplation, I think the official answer is wrong. Now, I know for a fact there were mistakes in it, unless there's such a thing as a breath first search. Notice that I said breath. Of course we all know about the breadth first search, but breath? I get that one, and I get the answer, and I got it right, I'm just saying, the practice questions aren't 100% themselves, for a fact. The word/cache one didn't look right. The binary tree average search time official answer I didn't agree with. The expected win/loss roll a dice game - I will argue against that answer all day long, it's an expected loss, hands down. I think that was all of them, the rest I agreed with, even if I got it wrong at first. And that's fine, just saying, they might not all be actually right themselves.

The Arduino project pictured at the top spells out a sentence in binary, letter to letter as you press the button. So the lights you see represent a letter in binary, probably on of the letters in my name since that was what the assignment was - then you press the button, the lights change and that's the next letter in your name or whatever you put in as the sentence.