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Weeks 42, 43, 44, & 45

 A whole month without a journal entry! I must be slipping! Or maybe I was having too much fun with some of the projects they were having us do these past few weeks. First there was making that Rick and Morty character search tool using an API, then there was me making my first real foray into Dungeons and Dragons with a companion app that allows users to look up spells and monsters on the fly. There were a couple of express apps as well, like a solar system viewer. Complete with a NASA picture of the day page. And just yesterday I finished an inspirational quote database interface that allows users to add additional quotes and authors as well as modify and remove ones already present in the DB. I'll admit, it's been just as much fun getting some of these to work properly as it is making them look nice with the help of both bootstrap and css code. Although the quote finder project was the most frustrating project thus far. Not for the code or styling, but for the database I was...
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Week 41

 Well I got the challenge I asked for. This week was all on JavaScript, the language that makes much of the more interactive features of webpages work. Contrary to its name, it isn't anything at all like the Java language. Save one detail: Most of the lines in a JavaScript file need to end with a semi-colon. Didn't stop it from being a fascinating topic. I'm curious as to what other new languages or libraries are going to get involved in the coming weeks' work.
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Week 40

 So now the Internet  Programming class is officially underway. And, I'll say it, I'm a little underwhelmed as to the material. It is bootstrap week for the course, so I can't be too harsh on it. I was expecting more than basic html writing however. Here's hoping things get a bit more interesting next week.
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Week 38 &39

 Once again at the end of another college course. Some how this one felt like it went by the fastest so far. I wasn't expecting it to go as fast as it did, but here we are. Real grateful that the professor extended the due date for the final programming assignment to this Saturday instead of the usual Tuesday. It's a lot more headache than the previous three, despite the fact that most of my rust in python coding has been shaken off. Ah, well. Computers and programming have been like that for ages, I really don't think that's going to change anytime soon.  The orientation for the next course, Internet Programming, is also going to be this Saturday. I wonder if it's going to include any webpage authoring and html.
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Week 36 & 37

 I really wish I remembered to write last weeks post, but there actually wasn't all that much to write about, frankly. The only major thing that went on in our computer networks course that week was coding a simple chat room between two hosts. Equal parts fascinating and frustrating, the assignments demonstrated that network programming was just as much easy to grasp as it was migraine inducingly difficult. But, then, isn't that just programming in a nutshell? As for this week, we went over some of the internet's architecture and its quirks. One of which may be a familiar face for those who used to be a part of LAN gaming parties back in the 2000s. Much of the internet has and still is using IPv4 protocol which uses a 32-bit addressing system. 32-bits provides 4,294,967,296 unique IP addresses for devices. It seems sufficient at first glance, but 4 Billion isn't exactly a lot in the grand scheme of the world wide web. One of the ways to delay the very real possibility o...
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Week 35

Even on the surface, barely past the basics, the concept of computer networks seemed fairly complex. Now having finished the Midterm for 'Intro to Computer Networks', I can say that it's far deeper than I could've expected. Like onions, ogres, and computer programs on the one computer, computer networks have layers. And there are a lot more packets being thrown back and forth on a given network connection than most realize. I found my self fairly overwhelmed as to how much is going on at once. I'd go further into detail but it is 5 minutes past midnight at time of penning this. I was practically nocturnal earlier on in the program, so what the heck happened? Is it some seasonal thing, or what? If I ever figure it out for sure, I'll at least try to have it in a journal or something.
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Week 34

 And this was me having gone through the trouble of adapting Sam's framework only for the only work this week to be a programming assignment. Oh well. I guess that's just the ebb and flow of schoolwork I suppose. Once one's past the initial phase of socket programming, the code isn't all that intimidating. In fact, I found myself pleasantly awash with nostalgia. All the fond memories of learning Python years ago coming back to me as I worked. There are few things that beat the sensation of completing a program or script, and watching it do exactly as intended. With the next couple of weeks' work available and the midterm coming up, I'm starting to see what they were talking about back when I was in the Proseminar course last fall. This program is moving faster than I expected it to.
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