Since the tradeshow one week ago, we had made a list of all the things that the application still needed to do. I can't remember if i posted it last week or took a photo of the list and posted it. Or if i posted anything about it at all, but some of the things that we still needed to do included:
- the embedding of the separate maps (in pop up windows) into the same page
- providing only one hint at a time
- removing all animal names in the articles that appear bolded as 'wild'
- adding a results page which shows the questions that users got wrong
- adding a rankings page
- adding a loader for the articles and maps when they load
Last night i remember China and Soobin started working on achieving these hours on end while I started the final report. It was clear that what each of us worked on was what we were strongest at doing. Bill was unheard of last night.
After hours of researching and unsuccessful coding, I remember Soobin telling me that nothing worked and that they were getting frustrated. Apparently whenever they finally got somewhere, an older feature would lose its function. At this time, China then started to help me write up the report while Soobin did further code work.
The report was worked on in Google Docs to allow the ease of both of us working on it at the same time. The structure that we laid the report out was as followed:
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Final Product
2.1 Product Description Purpose and Audience
2.2 Product Implementation
2.3 Instructions for Use
3.0 Process
3.1 Issues, Challenges and Responses
3.2 Changes Since Initial Idea
4.0 Reflection
4.1 What We Like About the Final Product
4.2 What We Dislike About the Final Product
4.3 Successful and Unsuccessful Aspects
4.4 Improvements
4.5 Eliminated Features
5.0 Conclusion
6.0 References
7.0 Appendices
I wrote out this structure out the day before with what i was going to mention in each heading, and honestly thought it wouldnt take that long to produce such a report which is why i left it to do the night before the report was due, and let me just say how regretful i am currently feeling.
I was reading over some of the past reports last year and was pretty impressed by some of them. I wasn't too impressed by the length or what they added into it, but i was really envious of how they wrote it. Like the writing style would be good enough to suit an award winning book, and thats important because you need readers of the report to not get bored. Thats why i literally read every word out of the really good reports and got a little sad knowing that our report would only ever be written that well if i had only started the report earlier!.!.! See, some people are born with a talent that makes them write formal stuff to be really addictive to read even if it is just a report. I, on the other hand, dont have this natural talent and can only write addictive to read stuff informally - and thats when i really try. So to write our report up to be really really nice to read, i need to try, and to try, i need time. And that was something i didnt arrange. So yea moving on.
The better reports from last year had included some extra information that was not mandatory (i.e. suggested to write from Lorna's list of recommendations). Some of the things included their team's process for construction (e.g. the iterative, incremental, waterfall etc models), really nicely drawn images, imported Trove content and availability/accessibility etc. I put as much effort as they did into their final report as i did into our first report (which actually included all of those initiative headings too) however needed that motivation again for the final report.
The final report basically went through the whole semester's implementation and reflective processes. Although i felt as though a lot of our information was repetitive, it was submitted that way anyway. Why? Because we didnt have enough time to change and make it better. Why? Because i didnt start it early enough..
Anyway, China and i stayed up all night last night doing the report. Basically China did all of the blue things and I did all of the red things:
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Final Product
2.1 Product Description Purpose and Audience
2.2 Product Implementation
2.3 Instructions for Use
3.0 Process
3.1 Issues, Challenges and Responses
3.2 Changes Since Initial Idea
4.0 Reflection
4.1 What We Like About the Final Product
4.2 What We Dislike About the Final Product
4.3 Successful and Unsuccessful Aspects
4.4 Improvements
4.5 Eliminated Features
5.0 Conclusion
6.0 References
7.0 Appendices
I actually admire China for doing so much given that she was also multitasking on the coding. I think Soobin stopped working on the coding somewhere around 2am-3am because he wasn't online anymore but im not too sure.
At 4.30am China uploaded the latest version of the game so far with links to the websites that she was learning off. She wanted to get the maps from the separate HTML files to be embedded in the same page as the questions. I thought the websites she gave were actually pretty useful:
- http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_iframe.asp
- http://www.web-source.net/embedding_web_pages.htm#.VFpkplOKXd5
So i stopped working on the reports and tried to embed the maps into the same questions page given the websites that China suggested. I had managed to display the maps from the HTML pages but i was not sure how to generate the map that had linked to the same article's animal. I think i gave up around 30-45 mins later and went back to completing the report.
At around 7am i remembered that i had to drive my sisters to school at 8am, and because i didnt want to risk crashing the car which although was pretty unlikely (i kinda just wanted a reason), i went to nap until 8am. You know when you're awake you're like 'wow im not even sleepy, i can pull an all nighter blah blah etc' ? And when you're asleep youre feeling the exact opposite, that its soo hard to get up and that sleeping is so good you could sleep forever? Well this was exactly me. At 7am i was sure that sleeping until 8am would only boost up my energy levels but getting up at 8am was one of the hardest challenges ever. 'Things in motion tend to stay in motion', ive heard. So anyway i literally drove my sisters to school half asleep and tired which was exactly what i was planning to avoid (dw no accidents happened). But when i got back home at 8.30am instead of going back to work on the report, i fell asleep again??? So ashamed.
At this stage, we still needed to do the conclusion, references, appendices, 3/4 of the reflections and all of 3.1 (issues, challenges & responses). I knew i was falling asleep but didnt want to work so told myself to wake up at at least 10am to continue working again. This would leave me 6 hours to complete the report.
I woke up at 12.30pm. ??? This only left me three and a half hours to complete the report - almost half the time i was planning. Soo ashamed of myself. So I logged back onto my laptop which was still left on stand by beside me as i slept (to remind and motivate me to work which obviously failed).
In terms of coding, nothing had changed since my nap. About an hour earlier, Soobin had also attempted to embed the maps with China's suggested websites but with no luck. Bill still hadnt shown up. China, according to facebook, was online about an hour ago.
I logged back onto the report on Google docs and resumed my works. I saw that China had added more such as a component in the 'Successful and Unsuccessful Aspects' part while i was gone. I continued my work off there. About 30-45mins later China returned and started helping to finish the report.
At 3.30 the report was almost done. The last part i was doing was the improvements part, while China worked on features changed since initial idea. At 3.45 i think everything was complete. This was when i realised that an appendices would be nice so i added that in and then started to fix all the little errors with the inserted images. The images were all labelled with 'Figure #: Description', but because i was working everywhere at once, the numbers were all muddled up so i had to change all this too. Finally at 3.50 everything was complete and China and I started to proof read the report. It was SO intense trying to read all 26 pages carefully, knowing that I still needed to download it off from Google Docs as Microsoft word to add a proper Contents page, THEN convert it to PDF before finally submitting it.
To work faster, we divided the 26 pages so that China proof read the first 13 pages while i read pages 14-26. At 3.59 we realised that we were going to have a late submission so aborted our proof reading so that i could download it etc. The problem however is that my Macbook is reallllllyy bad when it comes to downloading these things, so when i downloaded it as a microsoft word document and opened it, the whole microsoft document went unresponsive. Im not even lying, i dont know why these things happen to me only ever when assessments are due. I tried everything, from quitting the application to minimizing the page (so that i could actually close it) but it was frozen for about 5 minutes before it finally started to work. I frantically added a proper contents page and checked if all the pages were consistent before saving it as a PDF to upload to blackboard. I was praying that my internet wouldnt be weird like last time so that the file would actually load in time.
I managed to finally upload the file 11 minutes late. My internet was slow this time but ha ha i have learnt from my mistakes and started to close all my other opened tabs and applications. Unfortunately i only remembered this technique about a minute into it loading its submission. When i did close everything, it submitted straight away though. Since this time the late submission really was our fault, i didnt think emailing Lorna to complain about internet problems would make a difference. Last time was a real problem. Anyway 11 mins late was better than nothing. Its currently 4.33am as i write this the next day by the way, so yes i have read over the report since the upload at 4pm (took so much guts to dare myself to read such a report), and there sure were errors that China and I missed. Oh the depression. If only i woke up earlierrrr.
The game application to our zone was uploaded on time, i think 30mins-1 hour before 4pm. It wasnt until recently that i realised that our contact 1 week ago was probably the last time ill be seeing all the other team members. Ahaha.
Now all we need to complete is our individual portfolios and keep updating this online reflective journal (which i am really treating too much like a real personal journal), then were FREED LITTLE BIRDIES and forever over with DECO1800! (unless we fail this course but lets think positively before im about to bed). So yea i should really go to bed now i mean i have to drive my sisters to school again in less than 4 hours and i dont want to have any car accidents because i had little sleep which is still unlikely but anyway goodnight world! or rather, good morning! Have a nice day everyone and dont forget to study for any upcoming examssss.
2.0 Final Product
2.1 Product Description Purpose and Audience
2.2 Product Implementation
2.3 Instructions for Use
3.0 Process
3.1 Issues, Challenges and Responses
3.2 Changes Since Initial Idea
4.0 Reflection
4.1 What We Like About the Final Product
4.2 What We Dislike About the Final Product
4.3 Successful and Unsuccessful Aspects
4.4 Improvements
4.5 Eliminated Features
5.0 Conclusion
6.0 References
7.0 Appendices
I wrote out this structure out the day before with what i was going to mention in each heading, and honestly thought it wouldnt take that long to produce such a report which is why i left it to do the night before the report was due, and let me just say how regretful i am currently feeling.
I was reading over some of the past reports last year and was pretty impressed by some of them. I wasn't too impressed by the length or what they added into it, but i was really envious of how they wrote it. Like the writing style would be good enough to suit an award winning book, and thats important because you need readers of the report to not get bored. Thats why i literally read every word out of the really good reports and got a little sad knowing that our report would only ever be written that well if i had only started the report earlier!.!.! See, some people are born with a talent that makes them write formal stuff to be really addictive to read even if it is just a report. I, on the other hand, dont have this natural talent and can only write addictive to read stuff informally - and thats when i really try. So to write our report up to be really really nice to read, i need to try, and to try, i need time. And that was something i didnt arrange. So yea moving on.
The better reports from last year had included some extra information that was not mandatory (i.e. suggested to write from Lorna's list of recommendations). Some of the things included their team's process for construction (e.g. the iterative, incremental, waterfall etc models), really nicely drawn images, imported Trove content and availability/accessibility etc. I put as much effort as they did into their final report as i did into our first report (which actually included all of those initiative headings too) however needed that motivation again for the final report.
The final report basically went through the whole semester's implementation and reflective processes. Although i felt as though a lot of our information was repetitive, it was submitted that way anyway. Why? Because we didnt have enough time to change and make it better. Why? Because i didnt start it early enough..
Anyway, China and i stayed up all night last night doing the report. Basically China did all of the blue things and I did all of the red things:
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Final Product
2.1 Product Description Purpose and Audience
2.2 Product Implementation
2.3 Instructions for Use
3.0 Process
3.1 Issues, Challenges and Responses
3.2 Changes Since Initial Idea
4.0 Reflection
4.1 What We Like About the Final Product
4.2 What We Dislike About the Final Product
4.3 Successful and Unsuccessful Aspects
4.4 Improvements
4.5 Eliminated Features
5.0 Conclusion
6.0 References
7.0 Appendices
I actually admire China for doing so much given that she was also multitasking on the coding. I think Soobin stopped working on the coding somewhere around 2am-3am because he wasn't online anymore but im not too sure.
At 4.30am China uploaded the latest version of the game so far with links to the websites that she was learning off. She wanted to get the maps from the separate HTML files to be embedded in the same page as the questions. I thought the websites she gave were actually pretty useful:
- http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_iframe.asp
- http://www.web-source.net/embedding_web_pages.htm#.VFpkplOKXd5
So i stopped working on the reports and tried to embed the maps into the same questions page given the websites that China suggested. I had managed to display the maps from the HTML pages but i was not sure how to generate the map that had linked to the same article's animal. I think i gave up around 30-45 mins later and went back to completing the report.
At around 7am i remembered that i had to drive my sisters to school at 8am, and because i didnt want to risk crashing the car which although was pretty unlikely (i kinda just wanted a reason), i went to nap until 8am. You know when you're awake you're like 'wow im not even sleepy, i can pull an all nighter blah blah etc' ? And when you're asleep youre feeling the exact opposite, that its soo hard to get up and that sleeping is so good you could sleep forever? Well this was exactly me. At 7am i was sure that sleeping until 8am would only boost up my energy levels but getting up at 8am was one of the hardest challenges ever. 'Things in motion tend to stay in motion', ive heard. So anyway i literally drove my sisters to school half asleep and tired which was exactly what i was planning to avoid (dw no accidents happened). But when i got back home at 8.30am instead of going back to work on the report, i fell asleep again??? So ashamed.
At this stage, we still needed to do the conclusion, references, appendices, 3/4 of the reflections and all of 3.1 (issues, challenges & responses). I knew i was falling asleep but didnt want to work so told myself to wake up at at least 10am to continue working again. This would leave me 6 hours to complete the report.
I woke up at 12.30pm. ??? This only left me three and a half hours to complete the report - almost half the time i was planning. Soo ashamed of myself. So I logged back onto my laptop which was still left on stand by beside me as i slept (to remind and motivate me to work which obviously failed).
In terms of coding, nothing had changed since my nap. About an hour earlier, Soobin had also attempted to embed the maps with China's suggested websites but with no luck. Bill still hadnt shown up. China, according to facebook, was online about an hour ago.
I logged back onto the report on Google docs and resumed my works. I saw that China had added more such as a component in the 'Successful and Unsuccessful Aspects' part while i was gone. I continued my work off there. About 30-45mins later China returned and started helping to finish the report.
At 3.30 the report was almost done. The last part i was doing was the improvements part, while China worked on features changed since initial idea. At 3.45 i think everything was complete. This was when i realised that an appendices would be nice so i added that in and then started to fix all the little errors with the inserted images. The images were all labelled with 'Figure #: Description', but because i was working everywhere at once, the numbers were all muddled up so i had to change all this too. Finally at 3.50 everything was complete and China and I started to proof read the report. It was SO intense trying to read all 26 pages carefully, knowing that I still needed to download it off from Google Docs as Microsoft word to add a proper Contents page, THEN convert it to PDF before finally submitting it.
To work faster, we divided the 26 pages so that China proof read the first 13 pages while i read pages 14-26. At 3.59 we realised that we were going to have a late submission so aborted our proof reading so that i could download it etc. The problem however is that my Macbook is reallllllyy bad when it comes to downloading these things, so when i downloaded it as a microsoft word document and opened it, the whole microsoft document went unresponsive. Im not even lying, i dont know why these things happen to me only ever when assessments are due. I tried everything, from quitting the application to minimizing the page (so that i could actually close it) but it was frozen for about 5 minutes before it finally started to work. I frantically added a proper contents page and checked if all the pages were consistent before saving it as a PDF to upload to blackboard. I was praying that my internet wouldnt be weird like last time so that the file would actually load in time.
I managed to finally upload the file 11 minutes late. My internet was slow this time but ha ha i have learnt from my mistakes and started to close all my other opened tabs and applications. Unfortunately i only remembered this technique about a minute into it loading its submission. When i did close everything, it submitted straight away though. Since this time the late submission really was our fault, i didnt think emailing Lorna to complain about internet problems would make a difference. Last time was a real problem. Anyway 11 mins late was better than nothing. Its currently 4.33am as i write this the next day by the way, so yes i have read over the report since the upload at 4pm (took so much guts to dare myself to read such a report), and there sure were errors that China and I missed. Oh the depression. If only i woke up earlierrrr.
The game application to our zone was uploaded on time, i think 30mins-1 hour before 4pm. It wasnt until recently that i realised that our contact 1 week ago was probably the last time ill be seeing all the other team members. Ahaha.
Now all we need to complete is our individual portfolios and keep updating this online reflective journal (which i am really treating too much like a real personal journal), then were FREED LITTLE BIRDIES and forever over with DECO1800! (unless we fail this course but lets think positively before im about to bed). So yea i should really go to bed now i mean i have to drive my sisters to school again in less than 4 hours and i dont want to have any car accidents because i had little sleep which is still unlikely but anyway goodnight world! or rather, good morning! Have a nice day everyone and dont forget to study for any upcoming examssss.
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