30 November 2009

I had some extra time in the morning, and as I am falling rather behind with all of this, I decided it was time to be a bit more proactive. I spent the 45 minutes before school started compiling information for Event 5. I was able to type up guides for events 2 and 3, using that images from that newer site I found, www.mathwords.com

During class, as we had a blended class, and time to work on our projects, I was able to input this information into the site. I also added on the guide for event 5, which was simply a photocopy of a formula sheet generally passed out with the tests.

Our teacher also told us today that we would be uploading our sites on Wednesday. This scared me a little, as I'm not nearly as close to being done as I would like to be. There are lots of things I still need to do to touch up what I have. However, we were told that this was okay; This posting would be of a draft site, which would be, by no means complete.

28 Novemebr 2009

I continued to work on the site today, finishing all of the Meet 4 pages and beginning to type information into word documents for event 5.

I've discovered a new site which I might want to use, as it is extremely helpful with geometry (esp. images for the formula). The images on this website are neater-looking than mine, and take less time for me. At this point in the project, this is crucial. In addition, there is no copyright, and no requests not to take the images. Therefore, I will use them. The name of the site is www.mathwords.com

I plan to use this more extensively as I continue with the remained of the geometry section.

I have also hit a bit of a roadblock in research, in that I have gotten to the topics on Analytic geometry. While this information is in my math book, I have not personally studied this in class. For these section, I plan to ask for the help of the math teachers.

Lastly, today I added a new system of links. I noticed it was difficult to get from event page to event page, so at the bottom of event, I have added a small cloud of links. This link cloud allows the site user to jump to any other event in that particular meet by clicking on its picture at the bottom.

I have also included a set of links, on each page, to the pages containing practice tests for that event. These changes are shown here:

27 Novemeber 2009

Today, I worked extremely hard on making the site "cleaner" and updating pages.

First, I realized that all of my images needed to be inside my website folder for them to appear when uploaded. So, I transfered gobs of tests, pictures, etc. Then, knowing that capital letters mess up web addresses, I changed the titles of many of my pages so that they incorporated lover case letters and no uppercase ones.

Then, after changing these housekeeping items, I created near-blank pages for every every meet, event, and test. I simply did this by saving one template over and over again.

For the test template, I did have to do a little working arou

nd issues. Because the test pictures are such big files, I actually used a javascript, spry component which made use of collapsible panels. After reading the internet help section, and using the tool in DW (which was rather easy), I came up with the following:

1. A code for the widget, with new css and js sheets attached.

The collapsible panels themselves:
In the section labeled content goes the test, in the gray section I put in the year that test was given.

I also finished all of the pages for Meet 3, and half of the Meet 4 Pages.

26 November 2009

As it is Thanksgiving weekend, I plan on getting a bulk of the work done.

Today, I scanned in all of the tests for events 6 and 7.

While I was doing this, I was thinking: these tests are extremely helpful in studying. Our teachers currently pass them out to us at every Meet, and it is by doing these practice problems that we are able to "conquer" an event.

Since I already have all of the tests scanned into my computer, I wondered: how hard would it be for me to simply post these tests as pictures on the event page, or have an extra page for tests.

I figured that this would be very good to have on my site, to improve its overall helpfulness, and that it wouldn't be too much extra work.

I also realized, while I was doing this, that I forgot to mention my scanner and my flash drive in the hardware section of Criterion I. I plan to get this information, and it the appropriate section accordingly.

23 Novemeber 2009

Today, my teacher gave me an email response to my earlier question about a search box. Here it is:
Three ways of doing this:

1. The data of the pages is indexed in some sort of database. The database is searched and returns the link for that page.
2. A database generates all pages for the site. This means the info is already in a database and makes it searchable.
3. If the site has a REAL URL meaning www.somedomain.com you can use google custom search to create a site search that will confine the search to that particular domain. This will NOT work on a domain with just an IP address or something that cannot be connected to outside of the firewall.
http://www.google.com/cse/

I think I'm going to use the third option. However, I have to wait until I know mt URL to do so.

20 November 2009

Today I got the packets of old tests for the final two Meets, Meet 6 and 7, from the math room. I plan to scan the tests into my computer over Thanksgiving break.

18 Novemeber 2009

In a lovely turn of events, I've had time to scan in all of the event five tests, which I will return tomorrow afternoon.

I also continued to work on the site. I've been having some difficulties working around copyright law- one of the books I copied from, which actually has some helpful information of Logic, is still under copyright, although it is out of print. I found this out after taking a look at U.S. copyright law.. which was no walk in the park.

As disappointing as that is, I can't exactly post pages scanned from that book. So, I'll just have to use the information and create my own images and such.

17 Novemebr 2009

Today I got the tests for Meet 5, to scan into the computer. I think I'll do the scanning sometime over the weekend.

14 Novemeber 2009

I continued to work on the Meet 2 pages. This took quite some time because I must crop the images, rewrite the text, and then put it into a nice-looking webpage.
I finished the pages, information included, of events 1, 3, and 4.

According to my Criterion I schedule, I'm a bit behind. I plan to do a lot of work over the Thanksgiving break.

13 November 2009

Today we worked on our projects during class.

I did some editing involving cropping hand-written picture guides from Meet 2 so that they looked nice, as well as writing out parts that, in my handwriting, were difficult to read.

I also asked my teacher about how I could put a search engine on my site. He said he's look into it.

12 Novemember 2009

Today, I stopped by the math room to pick up the tests for Meet 5. I plan to scan them sometime this weekend.

11 November 2009

Today we have a holiday, albeit one in the middle of the week. Therefore, it was my mission today to work on my Criterion I and my site.

I first had to complete all of the components of Criterion I:

1. Detailed Schedule.

For this, I pasted the schedule I had previously turned, with some slight revision.

2. Visual Evidence of Design.

I also included within my full Critereon I the storyboard and link tree I finished working on last Friday.

3. Software

Using the information I found under applications-> about, I was able to find the details I needed about all the software on my computer. I combined this with the information I got last Wednesday, about the programs on the Mac. As I'm working with two computers with two different operating systems, this part seemed a little long to me. Here is the table I created:

Description	Name	Version	Company
Operating Systems	Vista	Version 2007	Windows
	Mac OS
Word Processer	Word	Version 2007	Microsoft
Image Editor	The Gimp	Version 2.4.5	GPL
	Photoshop	Version CS4	Adobe
Web Design Program	Dreamweaver	Version CS4	Adobe
Equation Plotter	WinPlot	Versiom1.25.0.1	GPL

I also learned that several of my programs were under general public license (GPL), basically meaning it was possible to download the programs without having to pay the creator.

4. Hardware

This I also found, on both my laptop and the macbook, on the "about this mac" section. Here is that table:

Hardware Required

PC
Central Processing Unit	Intel Core 2, 1.73 GHz
RAM	1.00 GB
Hard Drive	Fujitsu ATA Device
Macbook
Central Processing Unity	Intel Core 2, 2.26GHz
RAM	2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Hard Drive	250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive

5. The information I have been collecting (and will continue to collect) has come from these sources:

Internet Sources:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

www.purplemath.com

Book Sources:

"Logic- Study and Reference Guide." By Miriam Gabin, in the series of "Topics in Secondary Mathematics." published by Math Study Series in 1989

"Pre-Calculus with Limits: A Graphing Approach, 4th Edition" by Larson, Hostetler, and Edwards, copyright 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company

Teacher Assistance:

Mr. J. McEnerney

Ms. K. Kashiwabara

Mr. C. Kanja

11 November 2009

I also worked extensively on my web page today.

Because I had the time, I finished imputing information into the pages I created Saturday, and began to link everything up. I decided that in the making on my pages, I liked having a separated,

tag header for each page, and the idea of information stored in tables. It looks less cluttered, and is easier to use when only looking for certain bits of information.

Here is an example of one of the pages I created.

10 November 2009

Today I began imputing researched data into the pages I made on Saturday. I didn't have too much time today, but I went ahead an completed the page for Meet 1, Event 5. This transfer was not too bad, as all my information was already in a table (the building blocks on which websites are made).

I did, however, have some difficulty transferring over the symbols. I've been using the "equations" tool in Microsoft word, and when I tried to copy and paste the files over, they looked rather weird within the program. (see below) They were added in as images, which was nice; however, they were awkward images

I was able to remedy this by changing the size of these images, and changing the alignment to "absolute middle."

8 November 2009

My general idea is that, because the home page is so similar to the meet pages, save the information given, I will just copy-paste the code for the home page into my other pages. This will make it so I don't have to worry about making a new design for every page. I made all of the meet pages today, and will add links as I add event pages.

The event pages are a little more tricky. I need to have information on the top about the event, and researched info below. This involves pasting information from a word document to the event site.

Slowly but surely, I will create and link up all of the event pages.

7 November 2009

Today, I began the perilous journey of web design by actually opening Dreamweaver and trying to design my page. While I considered using one of the website templates, I did not find one that I really liked. It seems as if those templates, while well deigned, don't have quite what I'm looking for. I'm afraid that if I used one, the regression of links would begin to get too complicated; or I'm terrified that if I accidentally edit one part of that unfamiliar code incorrectly (which is likely), it will come cascading down on my head in a horrible pile of broken links and dead images. So, I'm using my own design. Today, I actually made the home page. Here is my development, as shown in pictures.

I also changed the background color, by going to Modify->page properties

I used the eyedropper so that my background color would be the same as my graphic's color.

So far, things have been going pretty well. However, issues have started to arise. My columns are mismatched, and my information is hard to see. In addition, I don't have nearly as many columns as I need.
I tried to start to fix some of these problems

While admittedly better than before, this site still has some issues. all green will be distracting. I want the cells of my table to be white.
Upon all this messing around with colors and styles, I utilized css- cascading style sheets.
That is the sidebar in the GUI interface; below is the code version of the css sheet I created.
It was more work than I expected, but when I looked at my website with eyes tired from staring at a computer too long, I knew it was good.

6 November 2009

Today in class I was able to finish the planning/storyboarding for my site.

I have decided that I will try to arrange the links in the same way the math team events are structured. Every year, there are seven meets. In each meet, there are six e

vents. So, the pages connect in a similar way. The home page connects to each meet page (and one news page). On each meet page, one can connect to six event pages. In addition, every page, will, at the top, have links which lead to the home page and to other meet pages.

Therefore, the basic navigation will look like this, with the arrows representing links:

There will, then, be three basic layouts: a "Meet" layout, an "Event" Layout, and a "Home" layout. While they all will have the same background color and the same, main table, the inner structure will vary. They are shown here:

Planned Home Page:

Planned Meet Page:

Planned Event Page:

For the spaces labeled "graphic", I will use the graphic I designed earlier (see the entry on Oct. 29)

5 November 2009

We had a blended class today, and our teacher talked to us about Criterion I a bit. We were instructed on how to find information on our software, and about our computer. I also had a little bit of time to work with the program I plan to use, Dreamweaver, during class. I tried to find out some of the program's capabilities.

After much contemplation, I decided to download the free trial version of Dreamweaver (I can now use the software for free for the next 30 days). Still unsure of how exactly I wanted to format my site, I decided I would attempt to fiddle around with the formatting and tools available to me. After about an hour of such fiddling, I was able to figure out the basic workings of the program. In the formal lesson, we talked about making tables and links and such. Today, I went a little deeper. I discovered it was possible to make a table within a table, and how to do things like change the cellpadding and the size of the cell border. It was good for me to mess around with these HTML elements, because it reminded me of the coding that I had learned a couple years ago. I edited the page in "split" mode: I could either look at the GUI, or the coding. When I didn't know how to edit a certain thing in one mode, I could use the other.

I also figured out how to implement CSS (cascading style sheet) elements which would apply to the entire page, and, if I attached a CSS sheet to my sites, would apply to all of the pages on my site. As seen below, there are certain tools for adding CSS.

I found out that certain things, such as font size, color, and background color, could be written into a CSS rule, which would then be applied to whatever I labeled as such.

In my practice, I created a rule called "hopethisworks" in which I tried to change the color of certain cells of my table, and the font color.

I also tried to use the program to work out a general idea of the color scheme I wanted. After experimenting with colors, I decided on a simple white and dark green scheme, using our school colors.

I don't want this website to be too complicated and confusing- too many buttons and flashing lights are distracting, and it would take too much time for me to learn how to implement all of those tools. I do, however, want a certain level of complexity. I want this to be an extensive resource, which will require a lot of pages.

4 Novemeber 2009

We continued to discuss criterion I in class today. We will turn in will be our "visual evidence of design" section next, so our teacher gave us a debrief on what we would do. As we have entered what could be described as "the planning stage" of our projects, he reminded us of the importance of actually using a storyboard to describe what we would do. He suggested that we have, first, a web diagram illustrating the navigation for our sites. It would include all of the titles of pages, and how they would be connected using links. He also suggested showing a word-document type example in which we would illustrate the graphic design of our webpage. We then started working on this in class. Hopefully, I'll be finished by Friday, when I will be able to upload it to this site.