Workshop 29.10.14

There were a few minor flaws in the file that we uploaded to our zones. One image, the lead beater possum, did not show up for example. This was fixed by China today (there was a problem with this because its name in the code was had a capital letter difference to its name as the jpg image). China also made the 'incorrect' and 'correct' display more appropriate by changing its colours to match its meaning (i.e. red and green). Our tradeshow is tomorrow.

Talking with others in the workshop who had already done their tradeshow, it makes me feel better knowing that no one dressed up (in this particular person's contact anyway). Posters, brochures etc are still recommended.

At the moment, the only thing we still need to do is the scoring system and the ranking system. Everything else seems to be going as planned. At this rate, we strongly predict a ranking system will not be implemented by tomorrow or by monday.

Because im having my workshop now, it is my responsibility to ask about implementing a scoring system. 63 minutes into the workshop and the tutor is still busy.

Another problem that was just encountered is that the pop up windows for the maps dont appear as pop up windows on some PCs, but as new tabs instead. This is even more annoying than having a pop up window because its full screen so you need to close it and/or switch back and forth from different tabs to see the map and the article/answer options again.

***

I saved the written part above as a draft then completely forgot about it until today which is like sunday but time to update and write more ohh fun.

So 10 minutes until the end of that workshop Khoa was finaallllyyyyyy free and came over to help. I told him that we wanted to implement a scoring system and he was like ok and started looking over our current code. He made a few variables in the code to define the totalScore and made some other adjustments for about five minutes. Then suddenly he couldnt handle our structure anymore and told me to indent all the code properly because it was making it harder for him. Ok. We have 5 minutes left of class. But ok. So yea it took me more than 5 minutes to clean everything up and by this time Khoa had already left. ?? Okay. So i had no option but to skip my upcoming lecture and stay into the next workshop for help. 

The next workshop's tutor (i didnt catch her name!) seemed a lot more calm than Khoa. Calm as in there werent 5 students asking for help at a time so i took this opportunity to awkwardly ask for help. I told her that we wanted a scoring system and asked if she could help me implement one. She admitted that she was not good with scoring systems but would try her best. 10 minutes later we were working our way into the code, adding new variables, ridding Khoa's unfinished work, and testing the application over and over.

About 30 minutes into the workshop she started to get stuck. The problem we were facing was due to the refreshing of the page. Basically what we had done was added a variable to start at 0, this we called totalpoints. I had explained that i wanted the scoring system to work so that each time the user answers a question correctly, the number of seconds left on the progress bar would be the number of points they get for that question. So if a user answered a question when there were 10 seconds left on the progress bar for example, they would get 10 points. Anyway, we tried to work it so that every time the game proceeded to the next question, the user's previous score to the question before would add onto their existing score. This was a problem however, because whenever the game proceeded to the next question, the game would refresh and the totalpoints would return to 0. At this time, it was getting quite frustrating. 

About 45 minutes into the workshop, we then started to research ways to keep the totalpoints in javascript. There were some methods shown online and the tutor admitted that it would take a while to implement since she was not confident with this stuff. After playing the game again, which was something we did basically every minute, we realised that the lives system did not reset back to 0 every time the next question was shown. We then went to look over at the live system's code. It was a lot more simpler than the one online however may not fully work with the scoring. Thus, the idea of combining both the online method and the live systems method was done. By this time by the way, it was almost an hour into the workshop and i felt so bad for taking up that much time from a tutor whose workshop i didnt even belong in so yea sorry to anyone else who had been waiting for her help. 

At last, after just over an hour, we had a working scoring system! I appreciated that tutor so much at that moment for putting up with me seriously. There were a few things that were the reason to the slowness of the progress.

Since the page refreshed every time the user proceeded to the next question, the score had to be stored in the local folder every time another question showed. The stored score would then add on to the new score for new questions. This meant that if the game wasnt finished and played again in the same window, the old score may show up as the starting score for the game. So you need to finish the game first by losing. Because the score is stored in the local folder, it may be difficult to implement the results page as the score would need to be retrieved from the local folder.

Anyway, i thanked the tutor for all the help and posted the newest version of the game onto our team facebook group page. About 20 past 4 (so an hour and 20 mins into the workshop), i packed up and thanked the tutor again, before leaving off to my lecture. It was only after i left the room that i realised that that was my last ever workshop (or really, workshops) for DECO1800, and i didnt even say goodbye to Khoa or the tutor. I may never see them ever again. And im still not sure what that tutors name is. Haha. wow. Moving on, when i reached the my lecture room no one was even there, the lecture had finished early. So sad. So I couldve stayed in the workshop to start working on the results page. Pushing that note aside, i left for home. 

And that was my workshop for today. The end.    

Product before uploading

Our application has to be uploaded to our zones today. This means that our tradeshow will be using the version that we uploaded, whether we decide to change it before the 4th of November or not.

We still have a lot to do however things that we have managed to do over nigh or during the last few days:

1. Added a score
2. Hearts subtracted when time runs out (as well as getting a question wrong)
3. New design in the stylesheet 
4. Maps now added into the game however combined with questions
5. more things that i cant remember 

Things were still working on as i type this:

1. Getting images from Trove (and blurring them)
2. Having more than just the croc, kangaroo and koala image answer options
3. maybe ill remember more

Things we havent even touched and will most likely be eliminated from the game: 

1. Ranking page
2. Results page (?)
3. Highscores
4. Sound
5. idk

Im not sure whether we can change our application after we upload it to our zones (like im not sure if we just need to have something uploaded by today). But we did try nonetheless to finish as much as possible. 

Basically, Bill worked on the scoring for the game, Soobin worked on getting everything to function (this meant anything php, javascript or html related), China worked on the css of retrieval of images for the application (which includes being able to blur the images attained fro Trove) while i finished off all the maps, touched up the instructions and occasionally tried to help China. Altogether, we worked on trying to incorporated more than just the three images of the croc, koala and kangaroo for each question. 

There were a few things from our original idea that we had to change. We had all agreed that functionality was more important that fanciness or appearance, so some of the more difficult things were eliminated and sacrificed from our game. This included sounding for the whole application.

Another thing we altered was what one question's hints were. Originally, there would be one hint for each question (either image, article or map (or sound which no longer is)), however because all of the maps were in separate html files, this proved to be too difficult to manage through the use of php etc. Thus, probably the lowest of all options was forced to lead the way into a new and possible future. This meant having not just one hint for each question, but two; one map hint and one of either the article or image hint. Once the question would show up on the screen, a pop up window would appear, and in this would be the map. There was no other option with the limited time and skills we had. The map can be used as an extra hint to users if they feel that the image/article is not enough.

Trying to get images from Trove as  hints was a difficult task for all of us. Our first problem was actually trying to obtain a random selection of different images from Trove. Our second problem was only wanting one image per question, and not as much as the command could complete. Trying to blur or even crop the image was another problem.

We experienced and still are experiencing many difficulties in doing the tasks today. Any form of tutor's help would have been muchly appreciated, as mentioned a few times during the night-morning.

Update

SO ive spent all morning in this library doing the maps for the emu, flying fox, wallaby, etc. and i have finally finished all the possible ones.

Basically, all the tags in green above are what i have done all morning (except the three i did yesterday and the kangaroo done by China). The ones with no tags have been sent to China to do and i think she should be done by now but not sure. The ones in red are those that i cant do because they either have more than one location or their location is not full, and i do not know how to do this. If you can see closely on the image, their maps have more than one location/arent full. 

For the last 30 minutes after finishing all that i could do, i started trying to add more one than polygon to a map. I tried looking this up on google developers but they only showed how to add more than one circle and how to add overlays (like bike, train, satellite overlays etc.). 

THEN i started to play around with the code for some of the animals and i have finally figured how to do it!! This is the most satisfying feeling ive had all day. Maybe even all week because this week has honestly been completely boring. Note that there are no maps for pelicans, wallaroos and goannas, because i couldnt find a suitable one for each, and thylacines due to their extinction. 

All the maps achieved over the night-morning.

Top left: Bridled nail tail wallaby 

Top middle: Eastern snake necked turtle

Top right: Emu  

Middle left: Pygmy possum

Centre: Kangaroo (done by China)

Middle right: Flying fox

Bottom left: Tasmanian devil

Bottom middle: Numbat

Bottom right: Crocodile 

This was when i was trying to add more than one polygon and managed to add the pygmy possum and tasmanian devil's location together.

Although i have been in the engineering library all day, i am aware that the others are lurking somewhere around uni too. I know that Bill was in a workshop and maybe Soobin was with him, and because i sent the dugong and lead beater possum for China to do some hours ago, maybe shes at uni too. Regardless of our locations, we have been talking online so so far, Bill has managed to ask the tutor about the scoring system. 

Apparently the tutor didnt know how to do the scoring system so told Bill to go onto W3School to teach himself. About an hour later Bill updated that now there were scores however whenever the page was redirected to the next question, the score was reset. At the moment, he is still working on this. Apparently, quoted from Bill, "its about sending variables from html to php or something like that". Not soon after, the 10 completed maps so far have also been sent to Soobin to add to the database. 

Now i shall start working on more maps. Oh the joy..

After Contact Work

After the contact today we agreed to all work on the application together, so off we went in search for a place to work. The chosen venue, room 122 in GPS, although already accompanying two classes, was our home for the next few hours.

This was when i started to make the polygon maps for the animals. I admit, it was a lot lot lot easier than working with circles. Circles required more information, such as the size (population) of the circle as well as its long&latitude. When i wanted to change one, it also took forever to see which set of coordinates it was because the list needed no order, so it was a procedure of tedious trial and error steps.

Basically, the coordinates for making the circled areas for the crocodile's location:

var citymap = {};
citymap['area1'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-19.5, 140.5),
  population: 4504856
};
citymap['area2'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-17, 130),
  population: 3000000
};
citymap['area3'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-17, 135),
  population: 4000000
};
citymap['area4'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-14, 133),
  population: 4400000
};
citymap['area5'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-14, 143),
  population: 2500000
};
citymap['area5'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-15, 143),
  population: 2200000
};
citymap['area6'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-17, 143),
  population: 2500000
};
citymap['area7'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-20, 144),
  population: 4000000
};
citymap['area8'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-20, 147),
  population: 1800000
};
citymap['area9'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-18, 137),
  population: 4500000
};
citymap['area10'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-16.5, 126.5),
  population: 4500000
};
citymap['area11'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-18.5, 123.5),
  population: 3000000
};
citymap['area12'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-17, 133),
  population: 2500000
};
citymap['area13'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-13, 142.5),
  population: 1000000
};
citymap['area14'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-18, 145),
  population: 1000000
};
citymap['area15'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-16, 145),
  population: 800000
};
citymap['area16'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-21.5, 148.5),
  population: 900000
};
citymap['area17'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-23, 149.5),
  population: 800000
};
citymap['area18'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-24, 150.5),
  population: 800000
};
citymap['area19'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-25, 151.7),
  population: 500000
};
citymap['area20'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-26, 152.5),
  population: 300000
};
citymap['area21'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-26.8, 152.6),
  population: 200000
};
citymap['area22'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-22, 146.5),
  population: 1500000
};
citymap['area23'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-15, 130.5),
  population: 700000
};
citymap['area24'] = {
  center: new google.maps.LatLng(-13, 135.5),
  population: 700000
};

Looking at this, i will tell you that it is almost imposssibleee to locate which circle is which. Ive almost memorised what numbers the latitudes and longitudes are for each area on the map but this doesnt even help. This is the code for the polygons, also for crocodiles:

 var CrocCoords = [
  new google.maps.LatLng(-19, 122),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-17, 123),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-14, 126),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-14, 127),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-15, 129),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-13, 130),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-12, 133),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-12, 137),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-15, 135),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-18, 140),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-18, 141),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-14, 142),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-11, 142.5),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-15, 144),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-14.5, 144.7),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-15, 145.2),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-19, 146),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-21, 149),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-23, 150.6),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-26, 152.7),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-27, 152.8),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-24, 147),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-23, 142),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-19, 135),
    new google.maps.LatLng(-18, 130),
  ];

SO much shorter, neater and orderly structured! Here, everything is in order, because all the points need to connect, and its so much easier to change the placement of one or add another point into the polygon.

In the time of the group meetup, i had only managed to make three maps with polygons; the crocodiles, koalas and numbats. If youve read yesterday's post, the numbat's location is literally a circle on the bottom left of western australia, so really theres no point showing this achievement even though it took almost as much time to do as the rest.

Comparison of the circles & polygon for crocodiles location. Top right shows where they live from a normal map.

Comparison between circles & polygon use for koalas. 

You have to agree the polygons look a lot neater right? At 4pm, as China was about to leave, she suggested that i gave her some to do tonight as this would be a lot faster. I sent her the link to the website which i got the examples from, the file for the koala's polygon (to use as template to change) and a map of where kangaroos live to match off. Kind of confusing right, dont worry you dont need to do this.

Though polygons provide more benefits as oppose to circles, i realised some disadvantages from this technique. Polygons are basically just splotches of red that can be coded into different shapes to cover different areas on the map. Circles, though pretty much only being able to add circles, gives the option to add more than one area onto the map. So i can have ten circles in one area, and 1 circle on the other side of australia. I cant do this for polygons, because its only 1 shape. I have looked up adding more polygons to an image and am still looking to see whether it will work. If i cannot do it, i will consider using both circles and polygons.

Another problem that nether circles nor polygons can offer is having an area with nothing in it (woah so bad at explaining i wouldnt get this myself). So for example, if an animal lives on the outline of australia, the shape for this would be a hollow/empty australia. Polygons and circles cant achieve this shape.

This area in red shows where white bellied sea eagles are found in australia and sets a perfect example of what i mean. As far as my skills take me, polygons and circles cannot cover that red area.

If i cannot find another alternative for achieving this, we will have to replace animals such as the white bellied sea eagle to more simpler animals what live in one distinct location.

Continuing, during the time, Soobin had asked for some of the coordinates of the long & lats so that he could add them into the database. As i watched him add them into the database, i realised that his job was just as boring, tiring and tedious as mine as he needed to add each point into the database one by one. At least he didnt have to do 1951351 trial and error sequences to see where each point went.

In this time, I believe Bill was working on the ranking system. Occasionally, i would ask him what he did for the markers on the map and compared it to what i was doing (even though i did the markers too), in case i was doing anything wrong. At one point, i was hit with sudden realisation that i might have needed to incorporate google map's API keys etc into the maps aswell (because i realised there was a separate section in the website (google developers) for polygons, markers, circles etc with API keys. Also Soobin mentioned something about APIs before being interrupted by someone and never finished what he was going to say). This was cleared up when I asked Bill if he used it for his markers and again asking Soobin what he meant. What a relief it was.. duhh google maps isnt something from Trove..

At 5pm, we decided to head home. Soobin and Bill had also suggested that i give them the files for the maps so that they could try doing some for the animals since it was a long task. I agreed to teach them tonight or tomorrow. We briefly decided on meeting up tomorrow for the workshops and staying back at uni to complete as much as possible.

Things that still need to be done include the remainder of the application by monday (though i heard that we can still change some things about it after the upload to the zones), organising the tradeshow, the report and portfolio.

The tradeshow seems like a huge effort since visual aids are required, as well as simple pitches and preferred dress codes. And most importantly, a functional application!.!!. So much work to dooo..

Contact 23.10.14

Since this was the last studio we would have before the tradeshow and application due date (to zones), today's class was obviously dedicated to working on the game. Tasks were allocated today to make sure that each remaining segment in the application would have responsibility from someone:

• Bill will take responsibility of the scoring/ranking system. This includes managing the necessary items required for the ranking to work, such as user information/performance.
• China will be the designer who would be in charge of the game's CSS. This meant that everything from the gaming interface, colour combinations, font etc were managed by her. 
• Soobin's job was to manage the database which any external (nonTrove) sources would be attained from, including each maps' coordinates of each animal's location (longitude and latitude) and the users' details (names for the highscore & ranking etc)
• I took responsibility for the maps. This meant that i had to find each animal's location and match it with longitude and latitude values on the map via circles or other means. 

Other components of the application such as the retrieval of sounds and images were kept last as we needed core aspects in the game first and we already had the articles as a hint (and upcoming maps). 

At the start of the contact session, we shared what we had all completed over the course of the week. China's success over the progress bar was shared, Bill's attempts of map markers, my maps and circles from yesterday, and Soobin's encounter on a website which provided a tutorial on how to make a quiz using HTML5, CSS3, PHP, MySQL, jQuery and Ajax. 

The site which he shared, (http://www.smarttutorials.net/quiz-application-using-php-jquery-ajax-mysql-and-html5/), was insightful enough as to inform us about the different possible usages for the different programming languages and even provided the author's folder available to download (containing the files in which they used to construct the quiz). 

During the contact, China asked a tutor about the lives system and in no time the lives system was fully functional. This was uploaded online to the group's space. While the tutor was with us, we also took the opportunity to ask about the different map files and how it was possible to make it all into one file. This was when the database idea was introduced.

For the remainder of the contact class we worked our own way into our assigned tasks. Occasionally we discussed matters as a group to hear different opinions and perspectives on decisions, such as whether the 'proceed to next question' button was really necessary in the game instead of having users redirected to the next question regardless of the in/correctness of their answer.

During this time i realised what polygons actually where!.!?! Even though i found out yesterday about the endless alternatives for markers, i thought that polylines (which were basically just lines) and polygons were the same thing (even though i knew polygons were 5 sided shapes, which still doesnt have anything to do with what it is). After two hours of indecisive decision making (yes, the whole of the contact session), i finally decided to abandon my hours worth of circles to move onto polygons (in the economics course im also doing, it states that when considering alternative opportunities, sunk costs (stuff that was already wasted/used up, e.g. the 5 maps with circles that i had spent hours on), should not be considered when deciding, only results from each decision etc. and that benefits should outweigh costs etc etc blah etc i dont want to retell a random economics lecture on here). SO after this, yes i decided to discard my circles for polygons.

This was my first practice on polygons. 

I dont think ive mentioned this yesterday but i used google developers to help me do all this (https://developers.google.com/maps/). Looking back on a previous post about over a month ago, a workshop i attended suggested google developers for this kind of stuff, and Bill used it too to help with the placement of his markers. 

Then for some strange reason it was already 1.50 and the contact class had ended. Time actually goes by so fast sometimes. After the contact we all agreed to work on the application together as a team. I can see that this post is getting a little lengthy so ill make the team-working-together-in-a-lab-after-the-contact another post.

Workshop 22.10.14

Due to our obvious desperate needs to catch up, today we decided to attend as many workshops as possible. I attended China's, she stayed back for mine, and i also stayed for the one after mine. Bill came to the last workshop however was working on another group project with his group (i think he said that?) so i had only discussed with him very briefly what my progress was compared to his. Soobin had other classes and didnt attend any workshops that i was in.

The first workshop for today was spent attempting new things in our to-do list, including the lives system and the maps. Before this, China had spent roughly an hour trying to merge the process bar in with the questions. Long consultations with the tutor proved useless until the workshop was over and the next tutor, aka Khoa,  came to rescue. He fixed the problem and stated that the reason it was wrong was because the jquery src had apparently kept overriding the jquery UI. Nonetheless, China and i had a little celebratory cry after it was finally fixed.

*this is where the image for the working progress bar + questions would normally go, but i dont have a picture or anything*

During the time that China had spent doing this, I tried to find our latest version of the game on our google drive so that i could also try to add the progress bar in with China. I realised after 30minutes into the first workshop that we had two google drive spaces which was the reason i was so lost in finding our latest version. It also turned out that our latest-latest version hadnt even been uploaded online yet. It was a little different, as in about three lines different, from the version that i had. Those three lines do make a big difference though. Altogether, ashamed to say, this took up soo much time. I gave up trying to sort out all my versions and folders after about an hour into the first workshop. I literally had 5 of each file on my laptop and my attempt to swap some of them around - all with the same names (e.g. index.html, play.html etc) - had only confused me even more.

That was when i gave up and focused my attention back on the maps that i had started a few weeks back. I remember being able to show the map with the use of my API key. I wanted to add markers in the maps to represent the location in which each animal lived so searched this up. After some time i had successfully gotten up one marker on the map. The API keys were no use in this file.

I took so long teaching myself how to add the markers to the exact perfect place. Here, i used Brisbane as an example. Note that i deliberately made the map to only take up that much space on the page as usually the questions, buttons etc would surround it. 

When i started searching up how to add more than one marker, i came across a few tutorials that gave out codes that added markers to several places. In the same tutorials they had also changed the marker image to flags to represent beaches in the example. When i tried this coding however, the flags didnt come up, but this is what i taught myself in that time anyway.

After this i then realised all the possibilities that i had as alternatives to markers. Some include polylines, polygons, rectangles, arrows, user edited shapes/symbols and dashed lines. One of these includes circles! I felt that this was the more appropriate tool to use considering the many places that some animals live in Australia. So i then started to teach myself how to add circles to maps. This was my first attempt (yes i used the United States to practise). 

The circles can be edited in terms of size (which they refer to as population), colour, opacity and stroke weight. The location in which they were pinned were based on longitude and latitude. After this i then looked up the locations for some of our animals and tried attempting to replicate the maps using the circles. In the time that i did doing this, i did five before i got really tired and bored. Let me tell you that doing one takes a lot of time and gets so boring and tedious.

The map i did of crocodiles location compared with the image of their location i found online (in the smaller map).  

Emu locations. Even though this one used up like five circles, i found it to be the hardest to replicate of the map i was using to copy off (the smaller one top right). Its so off.

This is the Koala's map. hmmm.. 

Kangaroo's location. It was also really hard trying to duplicate the brown almost-rectangle shape into circles. This one looks so failed. :(

Numbats. By far the easiest, fastest and my favourite to do. Note that compared to the map i was using to match shows both their past distribution (orange area) and the current distribution (blue). 

By the time i was about into my second map and second workshop, China left after attempting the lives system. I believe she did some research (which didnt really prove useful), and then moved on to looking for game like heart images to use. She placed one on the same page as the working progress bar while we both waited for a tutor to come around and teach us how to implement the lives system. The workshop was pretty full though and after soo long, she gave up and left without having asked any tutors. We agreed that we would ask this among with many other questions tomorrow.

Into the third workshop was when i finished five maps of animals and felt extremely bored. I then started looking up maps of where the other 15 animals lived in Australia. I was not able to find some such as a map for wallaroos and goannas. Of course, no map will be made for the thylacine due to its long extinction. For the wallaroo and goanna, ill just search up worded descriptions of where they live and base the circles around that. 

After this searching and some portfolio work (aka procrastinating from continuing the maps), the third workshop was over and i headed home. About halfway through the workshop, Bill approached me and asked what the maps i had done looked like since he was also working on the maps. He said that my method was apparently better than his because it showed more than one location as oppose to this attempt to add single markers. Then i left home. Six hours workshopping gets you pretty tired. Unnecessary to this blog, but i coincidentally met China walking out of the building. She was also leaving home (well after heading to the city). 

On the bus home, i was notified on facebook in our group chat from Bill that i should combine all the maps into one html file, since at the moment i had each animal with one html file each. Since all the articles were also in one file, he suggested that it would be easier that when we would randomly select a question, it would randomly select one of the files (articles, maps, photos, sound etc). I agreed to try this later at night. China suggested adding them all in an array in one file so that it would be easier to randomly select.   

Though i feel that so much work was done today, we still have soo much left to do. And its due in less than a week. Anyway ive written too much today. Bye. 

Last Lecture & Portfolio

Today i sat the last lecture for DECO1800 and for the first time this semester, i took actual, serious notes. The lecture today was a wrap up of the course as a whole, detailing the different projects that would be due over the remainder of the semester. This was also the first lecture i attended without any of my friends/group members attending. I felt that it was therefore my responsibility to share the discussed topics in the lecture with the rest of my team.

The lecture overall explored the three major upcoming assessed items; the Tradeshow (next contact studio), the Final Report (deadline extended to 4th Nov, 4pm) and the Portfolio (due 14 Nov, 4pm).

Notes I took from the lecture. Not sure if all is readable. 

One of the many things i got from today's lecture was the tradeshow. Technically, i did know it existed before today but i didnt know much about it since the lecture that it was introduced in happened to be the only lecture ive missed. What i find unfortunate about it though is the huge amount of effort Lorna makes it sound like. Really though.. past tradeshows have had students dressing up and making large fancy posters for it. At current, my group havent even spoken about the tradeshow together once, let alone the presentation we intend to display. Apart from this, i was also introduced to the fact that we were going to need a basic pitch to go with the tradeshow. Not one where there would be a script, but one where everyone would basically improvise with ease because wed know every single detail about our project enough to talk about. 

***

After the lecture i set off to a library and began to construct my portfolio. Since (if you remembered), i spent literally three hours (unintentionally) designing my blog (mostly due to procrastination to actually start the posts that day), i felt that it would be nice if i based by portfolio on the design of my blog. Ive been posting regular enough this semester to have gotten so used to the design that i feel like the combination of colours, fonts etc are my trademark. 

The Homepage/About Me page that ill add more to eventually.

Projects page. Three projects A, B and C as links, #A2D4B0 as hovered colour. Note that I will obviously need to change the content that i have temporarily added.

Reflections Page. Hover colour for the navigation menu is black over #A2D4B0 font by the way. 

Other optional work. Have a 70% feeling i wont end up using this page since i automatically skip optional choices and im kind of very lazy. Or i could sacrifice sleep on the night before the due date doing it. This is actually quite predictable too. 

I have looked over at some past portfolios and the first one (thats pink and all) is SO good?? How even. I cant even comprehend it. I will never match its level. Anyway i noticed that most portfolios had a picture of the student on the About Me page and realised that a picture would also add nicely to mine. But its soo uncomfortable seeing a picture of myself every time i open the page. Its already so awkward seeing my picture every time i log on to post a new update on this blog. Its like me starring at me. So uncomfortable. You're lying if you dont feel this when you see photos of yourself too. 

Moving on, the colours i have used in my design are white, #A2D4B0 (the green colour) and black. I am a person that really prefers and finds simplicity to be better and more appealing than complicated things (depending on how its done), so i have avoided adding any other colours. Note that my profile picture has a green background too?? And im wearing a white shirt?? This wasnt even planned. I love it when life is so spontaneously nice to me. 

The background image that i have used for both my blog and portfolio is 'nice_snow' from subtlepatterns.com. If you're a person that also really likes simplicity, i recommend this website. Its so simple. I love it ahah. It was a suggested website to use for designing and inspiring our websites for DECO1400 last semester. 

Basic structure of my portfolio includes the navigation bar at the top of every page (consisting of ABOUT ME, PROJECTS, REFLECTION and OTHER WORK). At the footer of every page, I have included my name, student number, course + semester & year and a button that is clicked to navigate back to the top of the page if my pages get too lengthy (which considering my blog is really likely). 

Finally something else that i have noticed is the slow updates when i access my portfolio from http://deco1800.uqcloud.net/portfolios/, where i can also see everyone else's. This is used to test whether the markers will be able to see my portfolio when they mark it. Yes, mine is connected but when i access it, some pages are not updated and still contain my old versions. Im assuming this is normal? Because after some time it changes. But my reflections page was not like what is now (there was no navigation bar) this afternoon, and now that im accessing it again at 11.26pm, its still not updated? I dont see anything odd in my coding so im assuming it is slow at updating? (yes im at home connected to UQ's VPN). But yea, this shouldnt be a problem. Hopefully. 

Finally, our application as a team project so far: no update really needed for this.. were still quite behind. As suggested last week, it was said that in order to catch up we should attend every workshop this week (well weve skipped todays one so far so..). At the moment on our Facebook group, it was asked if we should have a meeting tomorrow. No one has responded and for some reason i dont want to. This really indicates the closeness and level of interactivity in our group..

Contact 16.10.14

In today's contact, straight  after the meeting, we were faced with the moment of truth aka the digital prototyping. Apparently, its exactly like the paper prototyping where users will come and give feedback while some of us left to give feedback, and some of us stayed and attained feedback from users. We knew we were pretty doomed.

Lorna gave us 15 minutes at the start of the lesson to get ready. In this time, a few tutors were walking around and we were lucky enough to ask a nice one about the codes for showing users if their answers to clicking an image was correct or incorrect. This surprisingly took less time to accomplish than expected. So we actually DID have something for users to give feedback on. Oh the feeling of possible passings. China and I stayed to explain to other users about our game while Soobin and Bill left to test other applications.

China and I wrote down things while we observed our users work through our game and asked a set list of questions to each user. Everything was written down.

We asked everyone:
1) Should we include the incorrect/correct display to let users know if theyre wrong (as well as using the lives system) or display the lives system only?
2) Were the instructions useful?
3) Were the hints (articles) useful?
4) What did you dislike about the game and why?

Our pages of feedback. Not really readable but i wrote everything under this anyway.

Our responses:

Person 1:
1) Have both, both are useful, should also include progress bar (well obviously, person 1)
2) Disliked the instructions. Was impatient and wanted to get on with the game. Said may be useful if people had time. Said most people like him only came to play
3) At times, yes. Needs to be rendered because sometimes it would not pick up the words and display weird symbols. Said main problem was the spelling mistake
4) Likes its simplicity, it was interactive and easy. Disliked that were was too much reading (as in the instructions page and articles), and disliked that some articles didnt make sense

Person 2:
1) Liked the correct/incorrect display
2) Instructions were useful but were too much (too many words)
3) Some useful, some hard because didnt make sense
4) Wanted more interactive instructions - the user will be taught how to play on their first try so its more interactive and theyll have fun

Person 3 & 4 (together):
1) doesnt matter, both good together, both on their own is good too
2) instructions were long but overal useful
3) some articles were not useful, not relavant
4) didnt like that the hints were irrelevant. Suggested that explain to users maybe in instructions that the blanks (___) in the articles denoted the animals name (well no one reads the instructions anyway though? ?)

Person 5 (Lorna) (this was so nerve wracking for us):
We didnt ask her the questions, instead she gave us feedback:
1) keep track of the random articles generated, or get rid of each one as they were used in the array so that the list will shorten each time
2) read over the articles, and rid all the weirdly written ones
3) we can add a date range to our sources to filter out any strangely dated things (e.g. weird images or strangely written articles)

Person 6 & 7 (together):
1) Likes both however suggested that pop ups would work too in informing the user if they got a question right or wrong
2) liked the instructions, when asked about tutorial instructions, said that that could work too. Said both are definitely useful, doesnt mind which one
3) most of the time, articles were useful but sometimes they were strange
4)  Should change the display of the incorrect/correct to match the style of the rest of the game (of courseee we will, we only just added in that function like 10 mins ago)

Observations from everyone:
1) No one (seriously, no one), read all of the instructions properly. I admit i wouldnt have too, to any game
2) Most understood the game straight away and didnt need to be told what to click
3) A majority surprisingly got most answers right when guessing animals from the articles
4) No one mentioned anything about the design so i assume its good. I asked users anyway what they thought about all the buttons, interface etc - all liked it but suggested changing the non-styled incorrect/correct display to match the appearance of the game (again of course we shall, thank you for such advice)

After this, I think time was over for user testing/everyone got bored because China and I didnt get a chance to test any. We exchanged information to Soobin & Bill and took photos of our game to post future references. We also took photos of ourselves for our portfolios/blogs.

China and I smiling happily away

Bill and Soobin, also smiling happily away

In the last few 20-30 minutes of the class, a tutor came to us and showed us an example in deco1800 uqcloud's list of examples. Underneath shows the example he showed us and how it was relevant to our game.

This is our game that other users were testing, with the incorrect/correct text display shown in the blue rectangle. Yes, i am aware of the incredibly poor photo quality. 

Small Group Meeting

Before today's contact our group decided to meet up to do some last minute digital prototyping things since last night seemed to have nothing done. We all met in the computer lab in General Purpose South at different time intervals. Unfortunately i was the last to come because my BUS was so LATE today. Seriously. Anyway, we made (or rather brought back the previously-made-but-never-touched) google sharing drive thing and uploaded all of our latest works on there and shared it to everyone in the group.

At this stage, we have the images of the animal options clickable but no progress bar or lives system or maps etc were completed. We dreaded the contact session that was coming up. Some time into the meeting Soobin and Bill got bored and left to find breakfast because we werent being that productive anyway. It was suggested by one of us that we should attend all the workshop classes next week to get back on track. I admit we were pretty behind. I shall explain further with dot points;

Things we have done:

• Attain articles from Trove into the questions
• Interface design (e.g. colours, buttons etc)
• Have 3 of the same working animal options for all questions 
• Half of the instructions page
• ??? 

Things we still need to do:

• Have sound questions
• Have image questions
• Have map questions 
• Not to mention where were going to get them all from and how
• Lives system
• Scoring system
• Fix and add the progress bar into the game
• Add images to the instructions page 
• Make articles appear properly (and not have them appear weirdly) 
• Ranking system
• Other half of the instructions page

Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa were so behind. 

We didnt achieve much in this group meeting before it was time to leave to the contact. 

Workshop 15.10.14

Before anything:
To view our game: http://deco1800-45.uqcloud.net/quiz/play.html
To view my portfolio: http://folio.uqcloud.net/[studentnumber/] (not suggested, this is only here for personal reference aha)

Today we:

• were taught how to link our portfolios to the zone thing so that it could work
• worked on our portfolios, or rather started our portfolios for 99% of us
• discussed very briefly the prototyping that would take place tomorrow 
• worked on our own projects 

This is the address that we have to connect to, to access our html/css/php files that would make up our portfolios. 

Again, like most classes i met China before she left her class as i came to my workshop. She stayed for about 30mins before leaving, and in this time we briefly discussed our project and what we would be doing tomorrow for the digital prototyping. Because China had her Software Engineering Project due tomorrow, this was more prioritised during the class. Nonetheless, DECO1800 was still our main focus.

As i am continuing this post the next day, i feel like i should mention that last night i successfully connected my laptop to UQ's VPN and i dont know why i feel so happy but yea. I remember in the workshop someone asked Khoa if they could work on their portfolios at home and he said no unless we were connected to UQ's virtual private network. Most likely due to complication or just not bothered-ness, Khoa didnt tell us how to do this and told us to just work on it at UQ and not at home. If you've read all of my essay lengthed previous posts, you should know by now that i work far more at night/do things on the last night/early mornings before a task is due. Soo for my own good i knew i needed to work on this at home and needed to connect to UQ's VPN.

After connecting to it, i was about to continue on my portfolio but then realised that the digital prototyping was tomorrow, and that China and Soobin were busy doing their CSSE. So i decided to work on the maps for the game, and tried to merge China's progress bar work into our current game (in one question).

I managed to add the progress bar into the game however the actual bar does not show, only the timer does, and the next question's article doesnt show properly. I dont know i felt pretty successful for some reason.

The map work required me to track down my workshop post from some many many weeks ago because i had forgot the steps. Even though my post proved to be pretty useless, i saw faintly in the photo that i uploaded for that post what i should be doing. At the time, i had the maps up however it wouldnt stay because i didnt have my API key in the code. I found my code and added it in before it started to work. For some strange reason (aka procrastination), i took forever perfectionising the central point in the map to be of Brisbane by changing the longitude and latitude numbers. This proves completely unnecessary because its supposed to show where the particular animal lives, not where we live.

In the previous blog post that i was referring to, i read that Khoa tried to teach us how to add markers to the maps but didnt finish. I then tried to search up how to do this on the web but unfortunately got very distracted and started downloading a script thing that could remove some adware virus thing on my mac that i had accidentally received month ago. The good thing is that the ads are finally removed from my mac and now i can use the internet in peace without 280813 ads in my face every second. The bad news is that after this i couldnt be bothered doing any more DECO1800 things and closed the 'how to add markers onto google maps api' tab that was opened but still untouched. I guess tasks that you dont like doing are suddenly so much more enjoyable to do when you have another even more boring task to do. Such as ridding ads from my mac vs doing uni work.

Looking back to the start of this post that i started yesterday, i think i was pretty lazy to have stated things in dot points in comparison to now where im writing every useless thing out in sentences, such as this. Oh procrastination. 

Contact 9.10.14

The contact today involved us all working on our own projects while Lorna and the tutors went around to each group to provide help and/or any suggestions.

During this contact session, our group was able to master a few new concepts and i feel proud that our team is getting somewhere! China managed to get a progress bar running with our desired time with some advice from Lorna. We worked out how the timing worked (basically 100 in the code meant 1 second) and timed it with real time stop watches to test for any inconsistencies. This activity, though as boring as it sounds, was actually quite fun. I dont know why.

What our team had also got running by this contact session was attaining actual Trove articles and randomly filtering it into the game. This was done by Soobin, and meant that our photos of the articles from a few weeks back are no longer an issue. Also unintentionally done was showing the animal's name answers from the articles in the coding of the application when 'inspect element' -> 'console' was clicked. I dont think users will use this to cheat hopefully. I only realise this now as i write this at night.

I didnt realise how poor this image's quality was until i opened it on my laptop so i was forced to add in ugly text to show what im talking about. At the bottom left, under the inspect element tool, the article's animal is shown, and in this case its 'kangaroo'. At the top of the application, we have a functioning command that pulls a selected range of articles from Trove.

Given the angle of this photo, it also confirms my failed photography skills today. But as you can see, there is a time bar and beneath it, a little prompt to users that display in numeric form how much time they have left for that question (in seconds).

I cant say we did much more in this session but i did leave the room feeling prouder than some other classes that weve had. :')