Final project due Monday, December 17, by 6 pm!

Here's another copy of the specs.

Access day 3

So sorry that this is the last day of class!

Here are the files for today, from Chapter 13 of the Go book: file 1 13A, file 13B Access, and file 13B Excel.

110 database day one

Today we will work with the program Access. Here is a file to download for the book's Project 12A — we'll use this for an example — and then there will be a second project for you to do. We will do more of this on Tuesday.

Questions on your final project are also welcome, of course!

Random colors

Most people did random colors by selecting one from a set of several using if statments (e.g., if :rn = 2 [...set pen to second color choice...]), but here's a way of making an even more unknown color:


to randomColor

make "myRed random 256
make "myGreen random 256
make "myBlue random 256

setpc (list :myRed :myGreen :myBlue)
setfc (list :myRed :myGreen :myBlue)

end


The syntax of making a list took a little while to figure out!

Supposing that you are calling the code for making a square frame in the center of the screen centerSquare, this code will fill it with color, over and over:


to go
cs

repeat 50 [
randomColor
centerSquare
fill

wait 35
]

end


Final project

It's a program with a lot of latitude and a few strict requirements. For complete information, click here.

I will be happy to help. It's best to e-mail me your code and then come see me. Second best: e-mail me your code and call me while you're at your computer. For design help, be sure to ask before final exams begin.

Due before Monday, December 17, at 6 p.m.

Logo day 5

Still looking for that sweet surprise...

Logo day 4

Today we will talk about x-y geometry in Logo. Then you can choose to use either x-y or turtle geometry in your program.

Working with your partner, finish the program surprise with (at least!) these three elements:

• randomly chosen regular polygon


• drawn in a randomly chosen location


• in a randomly chosen color

Randomly means not known in advance, with each possible outcome equally likely.

Suggestion: work on the three required elements separately, then combine them. Everything you need to know is in the Logo handout! The beauty of programming is that you don't have to do it in a prescribed way; you are free to invent your own alternative way of doing things.

Submit your work by showing it to me at your desk, then copying the text of your program (with all its procedures) into an e-mail to me. Make sure that both programmers' names are included.

It is OK to make a diffeent program of equal complexity, but check with me first!

New Logo gallery

Check this out!

Logo day 3

Today's topics:

• saving your program



• making a regular polygon of n sides



• using random numbers

Today's assignment: write a program called surprise that draws a regular polygon whose number of sides and color are randomly chosen. For this, you will need to decide in advance on a collection of colors.

If this is easy for you, then snazz it up — ask for suggestions if you need them.

Here's a link to my page of Logo miscellanies.

Logo colors galore

Last week we talked about how colors are made: a familiar topic, since we had looked at binary numbers and RGB before. The syntax of Logo requires a list of three values in the range [0, 255] for each color component: for example,

      setpc [255 0 0]

to set pencolor all red, no green, no blue.

We also talked about writing subprograms, such as:


to square :n
repeat 4 [
fd :n
rt 90
]
end


Page 16 of the handout tells us how to write a procedure that allows us to use color names of our own choosing:


to blue
op [0 0 255]
end


With this, we can say, setpc blue rather than setpc [0 0 255]. This excellent technique is one of many great things offered by Simone Rudge here.

I encourage you to make a palette of your own pet colors.

You can see my variations on the Rudge technique in these files — one, two.

Logo day 2

Thoughts for the day:

• It's a lot easier to think of drawing a square by saying
  
          square
  
  than by saying
  
          repeat 4 [fd 100 rt 90]
  


• It's a lot easier to think about what you're doing if you say
  
          repeat 8 [ square rt 360/8 ]
  
  than if you say
  
          repeat 8 [ repeat 4 [ fd 100 rt 90 ] rt 360/8]
  
  — isn't it?



• It sure would be nice if all the squares weren't the same size, wouldn't it?



• And it sure would be cool if not all the polygons were squares.

Logo day 1

Today I will bring hard copies of my minimum opus on Logo, which you may also view here — click.

In case you're at a machine without Logo, download this, which is MSW Logo by George Mills et al.

I do hope that you will find this art site as inspirational as I do.

Here's a concise list of commands for Logo, which is taken from this wonderful complete college course in computing with Logo.

You can also read Brian Harvey's books online (scroll down the page) — click. Serious fun.

BASIC PowerPoint still evolving

Try it, you'll like it — click

Programming day 3

Here's a presentation on programming we've done so far: click

Today, flowcharts and some more looping and arithmetic. The big challenge: allow the user to enter numbers and find their average.

Programming day one

Resetting the clock here...

Today we start programming mdash; our reason to live! Handouts will be provided. You can get started by checking out a language called Liberty Basic using your fave search engine.

Day umpteen + 1: a snootful of PowerPoint

Current assignment, due via e-mail by 5 pm, Friday, October 19: a judiciously composed PowerPoint based on your ten-itme web bibliography.

Judicious? You shouldn't even try to show everything. Pick some of the best stuff, and use PowerPoint tools to make good illustrations of your thoughts.

Many links follow.

Tufte's lament click

Derek Miller's collection click includes two exemplary photos

Death to PowerPoints? not really click

viral video showing a popular minimalist style
click

"Presentations are as much about slides as poetry is about handwriting," according to Doc Searls click

two strictly HTML alternatives to PowerPoint: S5 click and Slidy click — small file sizes, as portable as websurfing, accessible to us with our knowledge of CSS!

Lovely fractal drawings

Links to programs here and here...

Mathematically beautiful screen savers

Delicious. Click here.

Software to explore

If you like spending your time trying out software you used to get along without (who, me?), then I recommend this page of links from the Shareware Industry Awards.

iPhone and the "cheap revolution"

This article from the Wall Street Journal says that it's users in Eastern Europe and India whose spending power requires our prices to drop. Interesting!

This link will die soon, so click now.

One laptop per child

OLPC is an effort to get cheap laptops into the hands of children around the world. See the video from David Pogue at the New York Times; visit the site at laptop.org.

Submitting the web page assignment

You will submit two ways: one, a hard copy in my mailbox; the other, a URL for your web page on your NVCC web space.

Will I check your links and code? Yes.

To see all the specs again, click here.

Day 13: more Excel

Today's assignment, due not later than Thursday, October 11, is Project 11D, loan calculations, on pages 817 - 820 of our textbook.

You must use formulas for this assignment to work! Be sure to do Paste Special with FORMULAS and formats.

E-mail me your finished workbook with both pages.

Day twelve: intro to Excel worksheets

Today we will be doing Chapter 9 of the textbook. I will demonstrate a sample like Project 9A, but somewhat simplified.

Your assignment is Project 9I, pages 665 - 667, which is due by 11 a.m. on Thursday, less than 48 hours from now. If you prefer to work independently rather than follow the demonstration, please do.

Day eleven: a research paper

Before beginning today's work, we'll talk more about XML files.

Here's a page of XML examples. Look at the ones in the top group. You can see that their structure is just like HTML, but where HTML is about appearance, XML is about content. Any programmer can write a programs to use XML-formatted content.

To learn more, try keywords "XML tutorial," "XML examples," etc. in a search engine.

Microsoft has learned from history and published a great deal of description of how it uses XML in Office 2007. This will make it possible for Microsoft's rivals to read and write Office 2007 documents.

Our work for the day: formatting a research paper. See projects 6B, beginning on page 354, and 6-Oh, beginning on page 406. E-mail me the result of 6-Oh when you have finished it.

Here is a very interesting page on evolving citation practices for electronic resources in APA style. The APA handout for a sample paper is at the bottom of this page.

Want to try Office 2007 at home? free 60-day trial

Want to stick with Office 2003, but need to read 2007 files? free download

Day ten: Word in Office 2007

Today, an introduction to the latest upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 application Word.

Download this file for initial practice.

Items to note:

• different interface with




• Office button for big filing functions


• ribbon with tabs




• XML file format


• lots of online extras

Take time to check out the interface. We'll do something kind of off-the-wall to check out the XML file format.

Assignment for the day: Project 5G (find it at the book's web site). Carry out the tasks and e-mail me the result.

Day nine: stylesheets

Here is a stylesheet template which you can download and change on your onw computer. Our textbook's summary of CSS, or cascading stylesheet, properties begins on page 179.

Assignment for the day: Change your one-hour biography so that its appearance is controlled by a stylesheet embedded in the HTML page.

Properties that you should control in your stylesheet:

• background color


• text color


• margins


• headline style


• fonts

Web bibliography assignment

Here's the scoop. Due Friday, October 5!

Making a color chart

Now that you have experience in making an HTML table, you could make your own color chart, like this one.

Day 8: formatting HTML with tables

In old-school HTML, our only tool for controlling layout on the screen was to use rectangular tables and tables within tables. The method is crude and cumbersome, but effective. Some work with tables will make you salivate when we get to stylesheets, next meeting.

To see today's handout, click here.

References in the book:

• Chapter 3 generally


• simple examples, beginning page 83




• table, tr, td tags


• align, border, bordercolor attributes


• cellspacing, cellpadding attributes


• bgcolor attribute


• colspan, rowspan attribute

On pages 97, 100, and 110 you can see some sample formats. Look at some of your favorite webpages for rectangular tables.

Assignment for today: Make four (4!) webpages. Use the drawings on the handout for models. Fill the cells of the table with pleasing colors, chosen from combinations that you find using the color chooser. When you have finished all four, show them to me.

How to do a clickable picture

Here's my Rasta-girl cycling page with clickable pictures.

How to do a clickable pic:

<a href="THE_LINK"><img src="FILENAME_FOR_PICTURE"></a>

if the picture is in your folder; or

<a href="THE_LINK"><img src="LINK_TO_A_PICTURE"></a>

if the picture is on a web site.

Note that in either case, the picture has a picture-type lastname, such as .jpg, .gif, etc.

Day seven: finish one-hour biographies!!

"I uploaded it, but it's not showing!"

This is usually because you're looking at something other than what you uploaded. It takes care and practice to handle pathnames correctly!

Today we will minimize problems by doing development locally. Do all your work on the desktop until it's finished, then upload at the end.

Here's a PDF of the day's handout.

And send me the URL at the end of the class meeting!

Day six: one-hour biography

 

Tasks for the day:

[1] Undo the automatic log-in in WS_FTP. We don't want the whole world trashing your web space.

[2] Download this zip file with the latest, greatest quickHTML.html.

[3] Unzip the zip and use the daySix folder as the basis for today's work, which is...

[4] Your one-hour biography. Tell the world about yourself — or your fantasy self, as the case may be — and things that interest you in links and pictures. Conditions!

Minimum of six working links

Minimum of three pictures, which must be clickable

[5] Keep the file structure, with a folder daySix and your page and pictures within it.

[6] Important! You must e-mail me the link when you've finished.

Day six: readings in Felke-Morris

p 46: font tags

p 54: HTML validator at w3.org (we'll return to this)

p 72: absolute and relative links, same idea as absolute and relative pathnames

p 75: FAQ why won't my page load?

p 129: GIF, JPG, and PNG file types for pictures; note that you can Save As in Paint and other drawing/ painting/ photo processing programs

p 134: attributes of the <img /> tag for more efficient loading of your pictures

p 138: how to make a picture into a background for your web page

p 140: FAQ about images

p 150: free pictures to avoid copyright problems

p 157: color schemes

Color choosers

Here's another great color chooser. It's complex at first.

And the next is by default limited to the 216 "web-safe" colors.

The next one gives all the silly names and changes the background color of the page when you click on one of them. Please let me know if you find another one we should all see!

Take my slides, please!

Here's a PowerPoint presentation on writing web pages, summarizing much of what we've been talking about for the last few days. Kind of sketchy, but maybe useful to you!

In case you can't easily read PowerPoint where you are, here are note pages that you can print out and improve.

Your NVCC URL and ftp settings

Your NVCC web space has this address:

www.student.nvcc.edu/home/UserID

where UserID is your LAN ID.

The program we're using for ftp is WS_FTP.

Your ftp settings:

Profile name: (doesn't matter)
Host: www.student.nvcc.edu
UserID: nvstu\UserID

Day five

Your task for today is to create a web page with links and pictures. Do Page/ View Source on this page for an outline that you can save to your desktop. Be sure to Save As type HTML only. Saving otherwise invites grief!

Web-safe colors

Our author's web-safe color chart is a handsome one. This grouping from WebMonkey is also attractive.

110 day four: web pages!

Topics for the day:

• the Internet generally
  
• how web pages look under the hood
  
• edit-admire cycle
  
• student web pages at NVCC
  
• getting our files to the web
  
• edit-upload-admire cycle
  

Here is the text for our first web page:



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>

<title>My First Web Page</title>

</head>

<body>

Hello World

</body>

</html>



(This is the text that appears on page 28 of the text.)

The author's interesting web site is at http://webdevfoundations.net/. Here's a link to all the files in the book.

The World Wide Web Consortium, at w3.org, provides this helpful start guide for HTML.

Here's a very simple web page that I wrote as a start page for beginners. Use View/Source!

Day three: file systems

Today we will discuss how computer file systems are arranged. We need to know something about this in order to get started on our web pages, which naturally we want to do as soon as possible!

Independent reading assignment

In the giant GO! book, you should be familiar with Chapter 1 on Windows XP, pages 1-49, and the quiz questions on pages 54-57, as well as parts of Chapter 4 on Computer Systems, pages 118-218, describing hardware and software components.

Day two: operating system, user environment

On this day we defined an operating system and accidentally-on-purpose made a mess of our desktop backgrounds. We also practiced downloading to the desktop, unzipping a file, and sending an attachment with an e-mail.

Day one: find your account names, send me an e-mail

 
Welcome to the class! I am looking forward to working with you for the next few months.

Two things I ask you to do today:

First, find out your account names.

You need to know TWO account names to use NVCC computer facilities. To find out what they are, you need to know your 7-digit EMPLID number and your date of birth.

First is your LAN ID, which you use for logging on to the college network when you're in the lab or elsewhere on campus. (You will also use it for creating a web page on the college network.) Your password is 8 digits, MMDDNNNN, month and day of birthday, followed by last four digits of your Social Security number, or your year of birth, if you don't have an SSN.

Second is your NovaConnect ID, which is also used for e-mail and Blackboard. You get to create your own password for this one. Your e-mail address is your NovaConnect name followed by @email.vccs.edu — so if your NovaConnect ID is student345, then your e-mail address is student345@email.vccs.edu.

Second, send me an e-mail.

Subject line: 110 day one

Body: Please tell me your actual name, since your online identity may be different...

My address: vfitton@nvcc.edu

Please send the e-mail from whatever account you are most likely to read. Hotmail, Gmail, etc. are all OK; and, of course, the college e-mail system is OK.

Last class: Monday, May 7

Yes, we do have class today!

Final project!

due Wednesday, May 9, at 11:59 p.m.

Submit a bitmap, 600 x 600 pixels, and the Logo code that generated it, in two e-mail attachments.

Minimum requirements:

One procedure that can be called from the command line creates the whole drawing.

That procedure calls at least one subprocedure.

The drawing has at least two colors other than white, set within the program.

The code includes at least two loops, or repeat statements.



You can use the procedure 3whee and its relatives on my Logo webpage as a model for the organization of your work, but not as a model for your drawing!



One of the most challenging aspects of this assignment will be testing your submission by e-mailing it to yourself and then running it as if you had never seen it before. Make certain that you leave at least an hour to practice that!

Day 25: a second programming language

Today we are going to move to a language that will give us a little more flexibility than BotsInc does. The new language is called Logo, and you can find the resources I have collected for it here. I will give you a hard copy of my fairly detailed handout.

Start thinking now about a Logo program for a final project. My suggestion to you is a drawing 500 by 500 pixels. If you would like to do something else, please talk with me about it.

Day 26: programming with loops

 

Today, reinstall BotsInc on your desktop for a clean start.

First, clear out old Squeak or ReadyPC shortcuts and copies on your desktop.

Then download from this link and do the new installation on your desktop.

Goal for the day: to show code with a loop in it for your own creation. A nested loop is even better.

It's better to open my presentation from the browser than in PowerPoint itself.

Day 25: programming with BotsInc

My presentation has been updated; click here.

Assignment for today: Make a Bots drawing with more than one component and more than one color. Using the timesRepeat command in the Workspace window should be a goal.

Then show me your drawing!

A great color chooser

Here's a Java color chooser that gives colors in both RGB and hex, and for each a palette of diffeent hues and complementary colors. It's the best I've seen!

Day 22: BotsInc presenation

Click here for my PowerPoint on BotsInc, a programming environment by Stephane Ducasse.

Projects 3 and 4

Project 3, due Friday, March 9, at 6 p.m.: page EX 142, item 3, a worksheet with formulas

Project 4, due Friday, March 30, at 6 p.m.: page EX 223, item 3, a worksheet with what-ifs. Study the chapter from pages EX 146 to EX 223 independently.

Day 15: binary numbers

Today we will begin a study of binary numbers and binary logic. These are the nuts and bolts of all computing, and if we don't do them, then we haven't done computer science.

Here is a book chapter that will be our basis for study.

Day 14

Today we will work on Excel formulas using arithmetic in a computer-scientific fashion.

First I will demonstrate some simple arithmetic operations and the way that we put them in Excel.

Our second task for today appears on page EX 132, with instructions on page 133.

The third one begins on page 142. We will use the third one for Project Three, due at the end of next week.

Here are data for today's work. You do not need to type all the words and numbers! Use Page menu/ Save As to copy this page to your desktop, and cut and paste from it.

There's a lot of interesting stuff about importing data in the book, beginning on page EX 120. Please look into that if you have finished the work in class faster than other students.

Day Thirteen

Ms Fitton has been stuck in the Midwest and today's class is canceled. See you Wednesday!

Help today

I will be in the lab (AA 156) between 12:30 and 1:30 pm today.

Day eleven: beginning Excel

We will work on Project 1 of page EX 58 in the textbook. (Hope you brought it.) Here are the data to cut and paste:

134204.50
117436.25
128526.50
150567.35

119444.50
119657.43
143582.40
221734.00

129975.43
127634.90
167340.75
231982.75

189456.23
129087.50
148965.25
193141.00

Project two: my sample

Click here.

Project Two: a famous web page

Our second project is, of course, a web page. Here are two suggested topics:

1. a Web bibliography on a topic of your choice

2. a Web biography, all about you (fiction and fantasy are OK!)

Requirements: First, you must have a coherent narrative. This means a story that flows, from beginning to middle to end. At the campus Writing Clinic on the third floor, you can find people who will read with you to help you improve your work.

And web-wise: your page must include at least ten links and ten pictures. We're talking good links, not just the first ten you happen to find!

The pictures can either be links to other websites, beginning with http://, or they can be pictures that you have copied and uploaded to your own NVCC webspace. In the latter case, it is not necessary to give the entire URL; a path from your directory will suffice. We will practice this in class.

How to submit: Send me an e-mail with the URL of your magnum opus. You must have it on your NVCC webspace.

When to submit: Due date is Friday, February 23, 2007.
Samples will appear here by the end of this week.

Day nine: work on web pages, create PDFs

We will soon finish working on our first web pages.

Among many protocols and formats intended to make it easy for machines of different types to work with each other is the format PDF. This stands for Portable Document Format. It's a translation of your work from, for example, Microsoft Word, into codes that can be interpreted by any machine with a PDF reader.

To read PDF files, you need a PDF reader, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. To write them, you need Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Distiller (both $$$) or a program such as PDF995 or PrimoPDF.

To create your PDF file, go to the File/ Print menu on your Windows machine. (Not just Ctrl-P for Print.) From the Printer drop-down, choose a PDF writer. Check the filename of your creation, then upload using FTP.

Day eight: download and install FTP Express

Downloading and installing new software is not only an essential skill, it's also one of the most fun things to do.

Two reliable sites (among many others) for clean software and lots of it are download.com and tucows.com.

After trying out software, you will want to un-install some of it. On a Windows machine, that's done via Start button > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.

For uploading software, you use one of many programs implementing the FTP protocol, or File Transfer Protocol. Do a search on FTP to get an idea of how many there are...

For instructions for downloading and using FTP Express, click here.

Day seven: upload that webpage!

Today we will work with a program called WS_FTP for transferring files from the local machine to the Internet. This leads us to the "Hey, Mom!" stage of web-page writing, where we make our productions available to the world.

Here are two new files to serve as a base for copy-and-paste:

quickHtml.html and quickStyle.html.

You can save them to your Desktop (or better, a folder on the Desktop) and work with them there before uploading to the net.

Project 1, due date changed

The due date for Project 1, described below, was changed to Friday, February 2, at 5 p.m.

Day six: creating a web page, take two

Goals for today:

• think of a topic for a quick web page
  
• make a web page better than Monday's: five links, three pics!
  
• understand how the browser reads HTML script
  
• map a network drive for use with your web page
  

Create a new folder on your Windows desktop and call it web.

Save this page, quick.html, in the folder web. Use Page > Save as... in the browser.

Open the web folder, right-click on the file, and choose TextPad. TextPad is a program that works with plain-text files, like Notepad, but it has the advantage of syntax coloring, which makes our HTML easier to read.

Go back to the web folder, and double-click the file to open it in the browser. Now you should have three windows: folder, TextPad, and browser. Make changes in the TextPad window, File > Save, then in the browser window, Ctrl-R refresh to see the effects of the changes. (Surprise!)

What changes in quick.html? Change its colors and fonts, add links for other websites, copy pictures to the folder web and show them in the web page.

Here's a good, simple HTML reference from WebMonkey.

We will talk about how HTML colors work when we talk about binary numbering; in the meantime, here's a listing of all the crazy color names you can use, from the author of the book, Learning Web Design. The colors actually come from an orderly palette. More on colors: one, two.

Simple FTP, or file transfer

More later...

When you're ready for snazzier HTML:

Here are links to lots of tutorials. Our near-term goals are to learn about HTML and CSS.

Save this file, quickStyle.html, in the web folder, and see its simple example of use of a Cascading Style Sheet, or CSS.

Here's a great tutorial you can use to guide yourself further into CSS.














simple font info for stylesheets
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/css-ref/article.php/3470291


good cut-and-paste reference for simple CSS

Day five

Today, after some cut-and-paste and customizing practice, we will start making a web page. Woo-hoo! Copy this zip file to your desktop. Extract the files in the zip file. A double-click on one of these files opens it with the browser. You can read the underlying HTML code using Notepad (right-click, Open With > Notepad) to see how web pages work.

Another way to see the HTML code is Page menu > View source. This will show you the code underneath any web page... but most of them aren't as simple as the samples in my zip file.

Project 1, due January 26

Page 134, the books's Word Project 2, item 2. So that you don't have to type in the text of the research paper, I provided it (filename wireless.txt in the zip file for Day two.

This project is due by e-mail at 4 pm on Friday, January 26.

Days three and four: in-class assignment

On page WD 70, Project 3: Creating an announcement with...

Here's a .pdf file of this project. You can cut and paste the text to avoid typing.

And speaking of avoiding typing, here is a complete list of Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts. There's an amazing number of them, and they aren't all obvious — but maybe you will find that the exact one you want is already built in.

Comments work now!

You will be able to leave an anonymous comment after every class — or, for that matter, at any time.

Safari — a wonderful resource

The NVCC library subscribes to a fantastic online database called Safari. It gives you full text for hundreds of expensive, absolutely current books on everything related to computers, plus a search engine.

It's a great reason to memorize your VCCS login name and password!

Day two: in-class assignment

Show me the zip file on your desktop, and send me a Word document attached to an e-mail.

Day two: downloads

I will put some of our course content on this web page for practically every meeting. Everyone needs to be able to download and use files like this one.

[1] Click on the link above.

[2] When asked, Save the zip file into a new folder on your desktop.

[3] Navigate to the folder, unzip the zip file, explore its contents.

Files online, as well as on our own computers, cameras, cell phones, you name it, are typically compressed for faster transmission. Here is an animation of the granddaddy of compression algorithms, Huffman encoding. Don't you wish you had thought of it?