Reflection 13

I have finished my second week of the running program. I feel great! I ran three times this week. I was supposed to run today, Sunday, for the fourth time. I face a little issue because I work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. By the time I get home it is dark and it isn't the best to go running alone. There is always a solution though. For this week I am going to do the Sunday run on Monday which is normally a "rest day". Next week I am going to test my discipline. I am going to get up at 6 in the morning and the my run as planned for Sunday. It will be difficult to get up early especially before work but it could really help my day go smoothly. I would have disciplined myself to get up and go running and I would have a clear mind and a better start to my day, I believe. My plan was to make the tofu stir-fry I have been craving buy unfortunately by the time I decided to cook it, it was spoiled because it was already opened. Instead, I made my self cooked vegetable which were delicious!

Reflection 13

As my 13th week of 20 time comes to a conclusion, I take a look back and look what I have done. I'd hate to say it, but, not much. I mean I did some earlier in the week but with the holidays and all, I just kind of slacked off a little.

Reflection 12

This week was the twelfth in my strength training journey.  To think that it has been nearly three months since I began is crazy, it seems like just yesterday I was writing my first reflection.  Lots has changed since then, and overall my journey has been a success.  This week, I went to the gym four times.  I was unable to go one of my scheduled days because I had a lot of homework.  My shoulder began to act up again this week so I did some exercises to loosen it out.  I hope that will do the trick and the trouble will be gone for good.

Reflection 12

This week, I continued to try and dunk with my right hand, with no avail. It is much harder than it would seem to do something as hard as dunking with your off hand. I will continue to work on it and hopefully by the end of the project I will be able to dunk some kind of ball with my right hand, even if it's not a basketball.

Reflection (12th)

I continued by using the grid method which I'd read about, and tried recreating the illustration below, “Winnie the Pooh.” It was not a simple procedure. I began by drawing in the lines for the individual boxes, and made sure that the sizing was right. I wasn’t sure where to start, but worked off the basic-shape boxes. For instance, I believed the torso and leg areas would be easy points for starting since there is a basic shape - circle; there are also curved lines. I moved to more intricate sections, and finished with his facial composition. There were a lot of lines by his shirt which was because of his outstretched arms and his jumping position. The method helped since something went in every section and all images had a spot on the paper. Hence, the method was useful and would be something to use again.

Reflection 12

My 20% time project is coming along well nothing new to report on just some more code and aesthetic tweaks put in. I have a room with a character that can run and jump. There are test objects around the room such as black and circles to jump on and push around. I think a found a workaround for the fountain instead of actual water coming out i can use particles to create an illusion of water, it won't look as good by from afar it should look ok.

Reflection 12

I have been running every day during my co-curricular period and have also done my pull-ups. I stopped doing my squats for a bit because I over-extended my knee and I don't want an injury to slow down my progress. I have been eating more fruits and vegetables and healthier meals which has helped with my energy on my runs. My body has been feeling very achy and sore, but I've noticed that after my runs, I am more energized and focused. I hope my progress continues over the winter-break and that I can resist over-indulging in holiday snacks.

Reflection 12

I wasn't able to do much this week beside researching how to enhance my creations with different herbs and spices, depending on the dish I am making. I also learned about eating foods in season and how to store them in order to preserve their taste and quality, which is a great way to eat healthier. Other healthy cooking tips I learned were to swap out unhealthy ingredients such as butter and sugar for healthier options such as coconut butter and honey.

Reflection 12

This week, my 20% project hit a small plateau. I have tried to start playing a new song on guitar, and I chose to try to learn "Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars because it seemed like a relatively easy song to learn. Again, I'm having trouble switching chords, possibly because it is a new song, but at the same time it's a problem that I thought that I ultimately solved with that video and trick that I learned awhile back from another video on YouTube. It's probably a problem that could easily be solved with some practice, so I will continue to try learning how to switch the chords faster so the song won't sound so broken up. Otherwise, I continued to watch some more tutorials, and other resources online to help me on my journey.

Reflection 12

The week before winter break, I accomplished very little. I was caught up with school work and soccer and didn't have much free time on my hands to code. In class, I continued to work with the structure and presentation of tables by introducing some new tags such as <colspan></colspan>, and <thead></thead> (this particular one adds a heading to a table.) Although this week was a relatively unproductive one, heading into winter break I hope to complete 30% more of my online coding course in preparation for my final product.

Reflection #12

This week I focused on learning to play "Hello" by Adele. I tried two different methods to get started. First, I printed out the music sheet and wrote the letters of the notes under them. This took a lot of time and effort, and it didn't really work out. Sometimes, I would get confused and write the wrong letter for the same note in various different places and as a result would have to write everything all over again. Once I gave up on this I decided to just use the youtube tutorials. These tutorials are really interesting because they break it down into two parts: the part your right hand plays and the part your left hand plays. It shows you how to play with one hand really slowly at first and then it speeds up to the regular tempo, and then it does the same with the other hand. Then after you get both hands, you put them together to play the song. The youtube tutorials are much better and so far I've gotten half of the first part of the song.

Reflection 12

This week was a struggle. With the holidays coming up, I had little time to work on coding. However, during my small time in class on Friday, I was able to accomplish more in my Rock Paper Scissors project. I am looking forward to the break so I can catch up and hopefully achieve my goal.

Reflection 12

As I have finished my previous sections last week, I have moved on to the "time" section this week. I have been learning how to tell time on a clock, days of the week, months, etc. It waspretty easy, but in the practice problems, I found myself a few times, confusing some Italian and some Spanish terms that are very similar, for example, Saturday in Spanish is sabado while in Italian it is sabato. I feel that I am beginning to get a feel for the language, however, and I am starting to get a better sense of what Italian words look like.

Reflection 12

So I have been sticking to my new training program! I devoloped a system to be organized and get my running done no excuses. I set up a schedule for this week on a white board I have and keep it in my room. I set my running duties and I make sure I am prepared for the day. This week I ran 2 times and walked on friday.  I got my mom to run with me too! It was raining so I did 50 squats on Thursday. I still havent made my tofu stir fried meal and I will set a goal to make it next week. Next week I will run three times and walk once and work on one legged squats.

Reflection 11

This week, I ran into a big problem. My finger injury was worse than expected and it is broken. I cannot do anything with it for 4 weeks, so I decided to change direction a little bit with my project. I am now attempting to dunk a soccer ball, which is smaller, with my right hand. Unfortunately I'm a lefty and that is my disabled hand, so I will work around it. It has been difficult so far, as of now I'm still getting used to jumping up and trying to dunk with a different hand. It requires all my movements to be flipped, and that will take time to learn.

Reflection 11

This week I did a lot of collaboration with my producer friend Kieren.  Hes really good so it was a good relation ship to work on and a lot of good music came out of it.  I a lot of fun.

Reflection 11

I haven't increased my mileage for a while, but I might go up to 4 miles this week. My body has been very sore these past few weeks from my runs, planks, squats, calf raises, and pull ups. I don't want to get off track with the holiday season coming up so I want to find healthy, but tasty recipes so I don't indulge in cookies and other Holiday sweets. I also want to run more frequently because although I've been running at least 3 times a week, I want to make it to about 5-6 times a week. Hopefully, I will see more improvements after I start making these changes.

Reflection (11th)

I wasn’t able to practice drawing for this week yet I could continue researching. I found http://www.artshow.com/resources/drawing.html , and focused on the tab for proportions techniques. Proportions in my drawings is what I am struggling to depict accurately and therefore, it was helpful flipping through these. The tutorial offered explanations for gridding, lines, shapes, mirroring, and freehand. Gridding is making a grid on your paper, and drawing a piece of the drawing for each square and then erasing the grid lines for a completed image. The following method shown was lines, which is studying the distances in between parts of an image, and measuring. For instance, the distance between the eyes is equal comparing with the width of the eyes for an image. The next suggestion is finding shapes within the image and drawing these on the paper, and filling in the image. Mirroring was the following method and it uses mirrors to identify flaws in the drawing’s reflection which can be corrected. Lastly was freehand, and the method includes a strong attention for detail and is the most challenging. It lacks tools for accuracy. The methods included in this tutorial seem very helpful and useful for other projects.

Reflection 11

This week in my 20% time project i made a normal amount of progress just like all the other weeks. I missed class on Friday so I didn't have any class time to work on it. I'm getting my environment set up and play player controllers in. I'm finding the fountain i was so excited about is difficult to make but i'm still pursuing. After I had reinstalled Unreal engine I worked on everything and my projects had be saved to the cloud so I was safe.

Reflection 11

This week, was an interesting week in regards to my 20% project. Besides the usual watching videos and practicing during my free time, my sister came home from college and took interest in my 20% project. She took guitar lessons when she was younger but stopped at strumming patterns when it became too difficult. So this weekend, we sort of practiced for about an hour and traded things that we have learned on our prospective journeys. Even if it has been years since she played, she still knew a couple of things so it was interesting to compare what we have learned. I tried to help her with strumming patterns, since that was where her weakness was, but an hour of practice isn't really enough to develop those skills. Helping her, actually helped me since I was able to transfer the knowledge that I have learned. Hopefully, when she comes back for Christmas break, we can continue working on learning together.

Reflection 11

This week was a bad week for me. I was loaded with exams and homework and had little time to spend on code However I did find out how to pass the little bump in the road I had encountered last week, and hope to code much more this week. I am aiming for 35% through the course this week and 50% by the time winter break rolls around.

Reflection #11

This week I decided to move onto another song. I found sheet music for "Hello" by Adele and I really enjoyed it so I started learning that song. My new goal is to finish that song before winter break and then do "If I Die Young" during winter break. The reason I decided to swap these two was because I was having difficulty with "If I Die Young" and I wanted a slightly shorter song so that I could have two. "If I Die Young" is longer and a little more complicated so I want to have more free time to do it. So far "Hello" is coming along pretty well and it's nice to play since it's one of my favorite songs.

Reflection 11

It's crazy to think about but this week is the eleventh in my strength training journey.  It seems like it was just yesterday that I have began.  Recently, I have hit a plateau of sorts in my bench pressing.  I tried all different methods but could not seem to make it budge.  Finally, after trying a new program, I hit a new personal best this week.  It is not a major gain, but it is a very encouraging sign.  I also made improvements in my other excercises as well, so everything is going well.  Having a partner with me is helping loads, and I would not be having so much success without him.

Reflection 11

I can't believe it's already 11 weeks into my journey of learning Italian. The last week or so, I hit a bit of a "plateau" in the sense that I was stuck in a very long and difficult lesson. However, I finally battled through it and completed it. I got most of it, but I think I am going to go through it again just to make sure. After, I will continue on this path that has took me so far, and finish off my last weeks strong.

Reflection 11

This week was a very successful one for me in my journey of learning how to code. I made up for some time I had lost in the past week by completing 10% more of the Code academy course on HTML&CSS. I am now 50% through with the course (Woo-hoo!). This week I was introduced to linking a CSS file to a HTML page to make styling easier and make the code look cleaner. I took the file I created in the early weeks of my journey (Reflection 3) and moved most of the CSS styling to a different document.

 All in all, I am really satisfied with the progress I had this week, and I hope to continue like this.

Reflection 11

This week I decided to go away from more dinner style recipes to a more dessert style by baking chocolate chip cookies. Fist thing's first, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then take 8 tablespoons of butter and put it in the microwave for 40 seconds. Then use an electric beater to beat 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of white sugar with the melted butter. Add in 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract and 1 egg and beat for 10 to 15 seconds. Then add in about 1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and mix until crumbles form. Use your hands to press the crumbles together to form one large ball of dough. Add in the chocolate chips and fold them into the dough using your hands. Take off pieces and roll them into little balls, about 12 balls, and place them on a tray lined with parchment paper. Place the cookies under the stove and cook for 9 to 11 minutes so that the cookies are just barely golden and puffy. Take them out from under the stove once it's done baking and let them sit for 30 minutes.

The most difficult part when making these cookies was getting the dough just right, where it wasn't all wet and sticky, so I had to keep adding more and more flour to the batter. In doing so, I was preventing the cookies from becoming flat.

Reflection 11

I have not been able to run as much as I would like to this week. I was busy with school work and getting enough rest. On Thursday, I had time right after school to run. I ran 3 gravel laps in 19 minutes + 3 moderate pace laps. I did not wear my knee brace and I noticed I felt the usual pain but I was also not to confident in my strength. I do not want to become too dependent on my brace but it seems necessary to wear, still. I did exercises right after and I hope to go to a yoga class next week.
During my 20% time, I looked up running training plans to have a solid schedule of what I need to do. Since it is clear I am busy, next week I am going to follow the plan and schedule my runs and obligations on a calendar. I will make it an obligation to meet the scheduled plan. This will help me be more organized and make sure I make time to run.

Reflection 10

I didn't really make anything this week because we had a lot of leftovers that my mom wanted gone, so I had to heat some up food in the fridge and eat that.

Reflection 10

To be honest, this week saw little progress in my journey of learning how to code. In class, I only got to work on tables, which are tedious because you have to manually input the number of cells.
For example, the following lines of code create a table with 3 rows and two columns, a lot of lines for something so simple.
   <table border="1px">
            <thead>
                
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                <tr>
                    <td>King Kong</td>
                    <td>1933</td>     
                </tr>
                
                <tr>
                    <td>Dracula</td>
                    <td>1897</td>
                </tr>
                
                <tr>
                    <td>Bride of Frankenstein</td>
                    <td>1935</td>
                </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
I feel as though I could've accomplished more this week but I was away at a tournament this whole weekend and was unable to work at home, which is where a large portion of my learning comes from. I hope to make up for the time I lost this week.

Reflection 10

This week was a decent week on my way to finally dunking a basketball. I did  my leg workout routine at home as usual and my finger strengthening exercises. Unfortunately, I sprained my finger at basketball practice on Friday, which cut my week short. I am unable to move that finger, which is on my dominant hand, so I was not able to practice dunking of work on palming a ball. Hopefully it heals quickly and I can get back to work soon,

Reflection 10

On Monday I ran 9 gravel laps which is about 5.5 miles. It took me about 70 minutes. My goal was to run everyday which is possible but I thought maybe I could exercise everyday. On tuesday I did 30 squats. Wednesday was my rest day. Thursday I ran 10 laps. It took me 65 minutes for the first 9 laps. The 10th lap I ran was a cool down and I ran it without my brace to have less dependance on my knee brace. Friday I took a break and on the weekend I was very busy. Next week I am going to run three times through out the week and work on squats and try to get to a yoga class.
During my 20% time I looked up recipes for a tofu dish. The first time I made a dish with tofu it did not have a lot of taste. I watched videos and I have an idea on how to make a dish of my own. I plan to make a Tofu Stir Fry with various vegetables and over rice or pasta next week. I am going to share it with family and see how they like it. Hopefully, I get a picture of it too!

Reflection 10

This week had little progress. When i planned to work on the demo I accidentally uninstalled Unreal Engine. When I went to go install it again it said that it would have to take at least fourteen hours of constant downloading. It is finishing up as I write this, hopefully I can work a bit tonight. In class I researched a few topics on how to add animations into unreal engine. I don't think I will need them for this project but maybe just small aesthetic things like trees swaying. Next week I plan on putting in double since I lost some time.

Reflection 10

I've been continuing with my runs and strength exercises. Today, I finished with the month-long squat challenge. I think I will continue to do another challenge this month as well because it made a huge difference in my leg muscle. Yesterday, I did unassisted pull-ups and an ab workout. A trainer also showed me stretches to do and my muscles felt looser and less sore after my workout. I haven't stretched as much as I should so I may continue to use those beneficial stretches. I've also continue with 2 minute planks and calf raises. My one weakness is strictness of diet because I don't always wake up early enough to make my lunches and I end up buying unhealthy school lunches. Other than that, I think I've been making a lot of progress.

Reflection (10th)

I continued to study shapes along with shading and reflections. I attempted to sketch the images below that are shown in the section of forms. The easier shapes for me were the sphere and pyramid, while the challenging shapes were the cone and cylinder. The sphere’s shape was simple to replicate, as was the sideways-diamond bottom of the pyramid shape. After completing the base piece, it was easy to draw the lines that linked it. The ellipses forming the bases for the cylinder and cone proved difficult, as I am used to drawing circles instead and not ellipses. Creating the cube was another easy requirement for my abilities. The shading remained in mostly an identical format for each piece. It was cross-hatching on the side where the reflection was and hatching near the top sections. Every reflection was hatched horizontally. I realized the way the reflections were placed corresponded to how the object will look if its very backside became its bottom component. Exercises such as these are helping me see the images from an artistic perspective. I am aiming to search for another exercise or a scene that would use elements I utilized.

Reflection 10

This week, I continued my normal schedule for the week. My mom was not readily available to help me along with the song, but by now I know most of it to continue working on it myself. I have been working with the song for about two weeks, and I've come to playing it pretty well. It's not as seamless as it probably should be, and I probably should work on it a little more, but I want to move onto another song, and possibly come back to it later. During my 20% time in class, I've been researching different guitar tabs for songs that I know. I am hoping to try one of them out, but that will require a lot more practice with the chords. So, this week I am planning to take a break from practicing my mom's song, and instead I will try to learn another piece in the upcoming weeks.