In first, the hardest simple code I have ever programmed, the tide calendar. So why is this in first and not something else? Well, what else would be in first, this is the big project that I did this this year, I stood after school more than four times for this as well as countless hours at home. So how long did this take? Well when I first got this project I went to work right away trying to find the equation that would make a tidal graph. For a week I looked up how to make tidal graphs, I found a few equations, tried working them out with Darren but dropped the idea because of the time restraint and the lack of resources including the supercomputer used to graph each day. So after that was done, I realized that I needed to cut to the chase and just get it done. So I found a website, http://www.almanac.com, where I copied the set of points from each date into a file, where the program will use those and graph using several attempts as I tested my way through. Making a graph is simple, making it curve was the whole point that make this project so hard. The tidal data I received had a range of mostly 4 points, sometimes 3; in which each point had to curve nicely and accurately to the next. Unless you want to type in 1460+ numbers for 53+ weeks (there is a plus for the runoffs into the next month) into excel, I doubt it would get done. Yet all of the points need to be graphed and labeled and oh the numbers.
So after that program was there, I needed a way to efficiently write all the numbers into those crazy files. So what I did was I MADE ANOTHER PROGRAM!!! YES, I did it, made another program, and this is only HUMANITIES!!! (Darren still is wondering why I am using harder math in humanities than I am doing for his class). So what this does is it:
Gets all the data off the Internet and saves it as files on the computer
Goes through each file and does the following:
Looks though each line in search of “PST” or “PDT” (or time zone)
once found, it de-html codes the file so it can be read
place markers are set
values are determined by place markers
Saves all the files and reopens all of them to:
open up the previous day and saves the last point in it's structure as the starting of this day
opens up the next day and saves the first point as the last point of this day
Looks through each file and make sure the data is not too far off from what I would expect
makes sure there are:
at least 2 points
next day's point is set
previous day's point is set
the timezones are messed up from the next/previous day
That $12 is looking quite generous for this calendar yes? As if that is not enough major revision with debugging were needed to make it look better. The “curve-i-ness” of the tides needed to resemble that of an actual tide which needed to have a lot of revisions. Text needed to be added in able to read the points of the graph, while the lines in the background were removed so that it looked nicer. Only highest and lowest text would appear. And the worst of all, they needed to connect and continue their curvy pattern. So what really killed me is when I was updating my graphing program and I needed to solve three things:
connecting graphs
fix graph ratio from 4:3 to 4:2
fix text to not block text
And the top ones messed me up as I tried to fix my code failure as it just went from worse to worse, and eventually the lines started appearing from the top as well as lines going in circles. The text problem from blocking out the date number was fixed on the first try (it was that easy). I soon after reported into Randy that a Photoshop job with my backup graphs would be a lot better to handle than doing this to who knows when. It took us quite a long time to do it by hand when a graph took 40 min to complete and there were 12 months (8 hours) of making lines in Photoshop. As well as the tidal highest and lows had to be redone because of the size ratio.
And in second, will be my website page in flash. Starting from ver 1.0 and going to 2.0 in a day as my second flash project I made, it looks very nice. And it works too! So if you have seen the website around when I actually posted this message, you would say, “Why no photo essays show anything yet besides empty boxes”. And I would like to assure you that my flash does work, but just separately, and that is because of security issues built into flash programs to help make the computer be more secure. So what do I mean by these “Security measures? I never see any thing pop-up on you-tube about this stuff?”, and the reason is just simply explained how Paul explained it to me when he told me why it wasn't working.
“If you invite someone over to your house, you would not like it if they were to invite another person with them.” Well in this case, the website has invited a friend over, my flash site, and my flash site is trying to call another person over (in this case call over pictures and text from the Internet). So really, if they were seen separately, they would be able to run as smoothly as intended. He has said before school ended today that he knows how to fix it, so with 16 other thins I sent him in an email to fix eventually, this is got to be done.Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000168 EndHTML:0000012873 StartFragment:0000000489 EndFragment:0000012856
In first, the hardest simple code I have ever programmed, the tide calendar. So why is this in first and not something else? Well, what else would be in first, this is the big project that I did this this year, I stood after school more than four times for this as well as countless hours at home. So how long did this take? Well when I first got this project I went to work right away trying to find the equation that would make a tidal graph. For a week I looked up how to make tidal graphs, I found a few equations, tried working them out with Darren but dropped the idea because of the time restraint and the lack of resources including the supercomputer used to graph each day. So after that was done, I realized that I needed to cut to the chase and just get it done. So I found a website, http://www.almanac.com, where I copied the set of points from each date into a file, where the program will use those and graph using several attempts as I tested my way through. Making a graph is simple, making it curve was the whole point that make this project so hard. The tidal data I received had a range of mostly 4 points, sometimes 3; in which each point had to curve nicely and accurately to the next. Unless you want to type in 1460+ numbers for 53+ weeks (there is a plus for the runoffs into the next month) into excel, I doubt it would get done. Yet all of the points need to be graphed and labeled and oh the numbers.
So after that program was there, I needed a way to efficiently write all the numbers into those crazy files. So what I did was I MADE ANOTHER PROGRAM!!! YES, I did it, made another program, and this is only HUMANITIES!!! (Darren still is wondering why I am using harder math in humanities than I am doing for his class). So what this does is it:
Gets all the data off the Internet and saves it as files on the computer
Goes through each file and does the following:
Looks though each line in search of “PST” or “PDT” (or time zone)
once found, it de-html codes the file so it can be read
place markers are set
values are determined by place markers
Saves all the files and reopens all of them to:
open up the previous day and saves the last point in it's structure as the starting of this day
opens up the next day and saves the first point as the last point of this day
Looks through each file and make sure the data is not too far off from what I would expect
makes sure there are:
at least 2 points
next day's point is set
previous day's point is set
the timezones are messed up from the next/previous day
That $12 is looking quite generous for this calendar yes? As if that is not enough major revision with debugging were needed to make it look better. The “curve-i-ness” of the tides needed to resemble that of an actual tide which needed to have a lot of revisions. Text needed to be added in able to read the points of the graph, while the lines in the background were removed so that it looked nicer. Only highest and lowest text would appear. And the worst of all, they needed to connect and continue their curvy pattern. So what really killed me is when I was updating my graphing program and I needed to solve three things:
connecting graphs
fix graph ratio from 4:3 to 4:2
fix text to not block text
And the top ones messed me up as I tried to fix my code failure as it just went from worse to worse, and eventually the lines started appearing from the top as well as lines going in circles. The text problem from blocking out the date number was fixed on the first try (it was that easy). I soon after reported into Randy that a Photoshop job with my backup graphs would be a lot better to handle than doing this to who knows when. It took us quite a long time to do it by hand when a graph took 40 min to complete and there were 12 months (8 hours) of making lines in Photoshop. As well as the tidal highest and lows had to be redone because of the size ratio.
And in second, will be my website page in flash. Starting from ver 1.0 and going to 2.0 in a day as my second flash project I made, it looks very nice. And it works too! So if you have seen the website around when I actually posted this message, you would say, “Why no photo essays show anything yet besides empty boxes”. And I would like to assure you that my flash does work, but just separately, and that is because of security issues built into flash programs to help make the computer be more secure. So what do I mean by these “Security measures? I never see any thing pop-up on you-tube about this stuff?”, and the reason is just simply explained how Paul explained it to me when he told me why it wasn't working.
“If you invite someone over to your house, you would not like it if they were to invite another person with them.” Well in this case, the website has invited a friend over, my flash site, and my flash site is trying to call another person over (in this case call over pictures and text from the Internet). So really, if they were seen separately, they would be able to run as smoothly as intended. He has said before school ended today that he knows how to fix it, so with 16 other thins I sent him in an email to fix eventually, this is got to be done.
Sorry if this seemed like my life story, I just like electronics...........
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