BRYAN BOYNTON's spring2015 Opus
EXTRA STUFF
My name is Bryan Boynton. I started college in 2014. I was born on May 12th,1995. I am unsure what I want to do with my life so I am still looking. I like computers so that's why I am here.
Class: Learned how make frogs in top hats. This looked at reading files in C which is the first steps for things like joe's hex editor and any other project that needs to read information for it to function like looking at html in C. Also the debugger tool that comes with gcc. This is helpful for finding what part of the program is not working right. I feel like it kinda turns into to a interpreted language instead of a complied one. It goes line by line till it hits the problem with the option to see what is happening at each step. This is going to be useful for all programs since they are getting bigger and bigger.
Lab: Lab all from nine lab was very hard for me. The functions were very confusing at first but I had moment of brilliance and finally understand them for the most part. I understand that chars are useful for single value characters and get rid of the excess storage that a int or long int would give you. Also that unsigned gives you a higher upper bound. Also that you can change data types by casting it to a different one.
class: Started learning how to make our own functions. When we are able to create the functions it well help cut down on typing the same code over and over again in our programs. I am still confused on how exactly how to make these functions. The lab is making progress but I am running into some slight problems. I sure am just overlooking something simple and am going to have to get the rubber ducky out to help me.
Lab: Learned how to put loops and arrays into code. This was not a fun task. The displaying of the array data via a the loops was very up hard. I had no idea what I was doing. The displaying part was the only part that was hard. The numbers did not do what I wanted them to do.
This would work for 4 or 5 digit numbers if the program was set to look for them. I do not see a pattern to this trick. I did find that I was typing the same thing over and over again which got really annoying.
I learned how to do if statements. This can be used so the computers make decisions. This lets the program go down different paths without the user telling it.This also lets you get different outcomes based out on the input from the beginnings. This can be used in many things and leads into looping
After some trouble figuring out how to do it I figured it all out. The program I wrote seems to work with 3 and 4 digit numbers ending in 5. This happened because the code only looks at whole numbers. It would depend how the way the person wrote their program if theirs worked for 3 and 4 digits.
Learned how to get input from the user using fscanf and setting that input to a variable. This can be used to get feed back among other things from the user. The storing of values and strings variables for later use can be used to make larger scale projects and for looping until a certain answer is given. Getting better with the lab46 commands and pushing to bitbucket from lab46. Still having trouble with remembering the“;” at the end of lines. Looking forward to learning more about C and doing fun projects.
In the first week of C/C++ programming lab I learned how to write a hello world program. I also learned how to install PuTTy on a window machine along with how to use lab46. Some of the commands on lab46 still confuse me a little but I think that will be solved with playing with them.
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PHP has been going well. Its been fun to play around with all the graphical stuff we can. All the different colors and shapes really catching my interest. The best part is that we can make our pictures we make dynamic with the html get variables. I have some ideas for something I want to work on. Once I finish making a star that does not look like something made by a one year old I want to write code that will make a original 13 colony USA flag. The hardest part I feel will be the circle of stars in the top left corner. I do not want to code each star individually but make loop that will make each one. I am thinking one each point in the stars will be its own circle. So the top points will all be in a circle and so on and so on. I am not too sure how to make this. Another idea for the ring of stars would be writing a function that takes on point and makes and calculates all other points for the star. This seems like the easier approach since I would only need to code one circle to find the 13 points, one for each star. Once that is finished I would like to upgrade it to make use of the html get.
Still have no idea which week this is of class but it is feb 29 right now so there is that. PHP is going well for me. Some of the stuff we type in our programs in class confuse me but I understand the logic and most of the syntax of most of them. The form we made was pretty fun and it kinda gives me an idea for a web based chess game using a image that gets updated based on a piece movement form a user input. I think I would have some problems with making a turn system so white or black does not move twice in a row. The flag is going well. I have all the stripes and the spot for the stars made. I ended up so far with two loops. One for the red stripes and one for the white stripes. I could have of made a color array then do one loop and make the color switch each time but I had already made the two loops and they worked. It would not have save me very many lines so I did not worry about it. I have all the spacing out for the stars. I just have to scale my star down and then write a function that will make a star from one point and call it each time through the loop but I am going to need to set a condition because the stars are off set on each line so they do not touch. So I might use two loops again. Once I get the star scaled to the right size and write the function to make them I will be able to decide.
still no idea about the week. The math for scaling the stars for my flag is still throwing me off. The bottom parts look really funking even though they have the same points in relation to the center. Maybe its just me. I dont know. My doctor draw thing is works for all but filled circle which I do not know why. It worked last week but not now. We had a nice talk about computers friday. It was nice to get some insight on this stuff. We talked about some exploits that are known in hardware like the row hammer in ddr 3 RAM. I heard about it but never saw to much about it. It was a good day over all.
I think it's the eight of classes? Still lost on that end. I have not really worked on my flag anymore. I have not really had the time to sit down and work through it. The data base stuff we did was really cool. I have not really worked with data bases in that sense. The most I have done is just searched a library database for a book. They seem really cool but I have no idea they are made and they seem really hard to do. The modifying part was my favorite. It was fun to mess around with the mysql stuff. On friday we looked at the other image stuff for php. I Think it was called image magick not really sure. It seems to be really fun and I would love to play with it more. Maybe when I get my flag done I can run the image through some of those functions it. The mudkip turned out great so what could go wrong with it.
Pi day was Monday so we look at coding some php that would approximate pi for us. We tried two different ways. One was just alternating adding and subtracting numbers for a set number of times. The longer we did it the closer we got to pi. The second method we tried was called the monte carlo algorithm which uses the number of random points that fall into a circle with a radius of 1. This gives us a number close to pi but each time it is ran the pi approximate we get is random. After we successfully coded the monte carlo algorithm “Johnny no fingers” asked if it was possible to represent it graphically. That was then assigned as the first project. The project is coming along well. I have the points show up on screen along with a wedge of the circle and the square. The points are two different colors. My main problem now is finding a good color scheme for it. I want something that looks nice but also screams pie.
Spring break was nice. I really liked the part when it snowed at the end. The week before spring break we were working on our graphic monte carlo pi program. I made some great head way it during the week. Once I finished I added some on screen text to the image for stats like the pi we have with the repetition number and the total of dots in the circle. I also added in a get stuff into my function. The get for the number of times it looped through the program. This lets the user set the total number of times they wanted it to run with a default value in case they did not want to enter a value. I also changed the color scheme for the image to make it easier to look at. I also chose to do the wedge instead of a whole circle. After I finished I decided to try out some transparent circles instead of dots for my points. They did not really turn out the way I wanted them to. They really do not look that transparent but it still looks nice. Switching from dots to circles greatly decreased the number of times I could run the program before getting a time out from the web server so pi is not as close as it once was but it is still pretty close to the real number. Over all I am happy how it turned out. On Wednesday before break we looked at on screen text and how to load our own fonts into the function which was the only part I was lost on for the on screen text function. Can not wait to get some comic sans in there.
The pi project turned out pretty well. Our next assignment is to make anything we want and present it. At first I struggled with this since I had no idea what to make. I was thinking about finishing my flag project that I've been working on but I have been doing a lot of graphic stuff and wanted to look at something else. While looking at the php man pages I saw some stuff about encryption and that sounded interesting so I gave a shot at it. Turns out that php has a few functions for encryption. I designed a page to ask for a user name and password and pass that info to a new page that will send the user back to the first page if either is wrong. At first I had some trouble with it. I tried to hash the right password and the user given password and then compare them but this resulted in a mismatched hash each time. It turns out that php has a verify password function that will compare a string to a hash to see if it matches. That made it easier. I also added in a hyperlink to a cool fun place. I was given the idea of making it to play sound when the user enters the right password/username. I looked into it and html supports it I have not been able to add it yet. I have to find the mp3 file of the sound I want then add the code in an echo statement and should be boom pow blam.
This week was a good week. I feel like I improved my little project by 10000000000000000%. I was able to make my webpage play some secret music. I was also able to get it to loop till the user leaves the page. The audio controls have been removed from the screen so there is no way to pause it. I also added more than one user to login into the page. The passwords are now just stored as the hash and not the plain text that is hashed each time. Each hash is assigned to a user and is received by a function call that searches for the user and passes back the hash. The entered password is then verify against the hash if the hash is not equal to “no user”. The page the user login into changes based on the username.Tyler's raptor that he is using on his project gave me an idea. That was to switch the image out for something else. I am glad he went for the idea and now we have the rare trump. I also tried to get him to change the sound but I am glad now that he did not. I am not sure what to add to my page now but I am sure I will think of something. Bad news is that I forgot the password for the John Cena account.