I decided to create physical paper cards instead of anki cards. It’s easier for me but also very time consuming. There’s enough time spent on screens as it is so this will disconnect me a little bit. I almost ‘finished’ lesson 4, but I really don’t think that I’m ready to take the quiz. The first quiz score was a 60 something, and the next one was a 74. I was pretty disappointed as you can imagine, so I obviously plan to study hard to pass this one with at least an 80. I’m going through each lesson and making cards for important concepts then I will do the same when I review the Ruby Docs for String, Array, and Hash. Hopefully this will help me to remember methods and concepts. My original goal was to take the 109 assessment sometime in September but I’m not sure if I will make it. If anything, the start of October. I can’t even think of taking the assessment without going through all the lessons and problems and attending as many study sessions as I can. Ugh it seems like so much work but it’s gotta get done. Sometimes I wish to go faster with this but I know it can’t be rushed. Tomorrow I have to take the car in to get the ac fixed and also have to spend 6 hours retaking a drivers safety course. It’s going to be so exciting, I literally can’t wait. -,-
Day 49 – New Kitten!
When I woke up this morning, I was a cat mom to 1 boy, and now I’m a cat mom to a baby kitten! He’s so freaking cute! I feel like we (kitten and I) had a connection. He loves to roll around and play, which is great for the older cat because we’ve always known that he needed a playmate. Anyway, the house is full of boys!
I felt that I was more organized today. There are a few things that I didn’t get to do but it’s okay, that will be pushed back to tomorrow. I’m trying to learn how not to be too hard on myself and just let it go if something doesn’t go according to plan. Well, I never was an organized person to begin with, but now that I’m trying to be, sometimes I fear that if I don’t get to do something on the list that it means that I’m not doing well enough, and that’s not true.
I did manage to get a couple problems done for Easy 4 in Lesson 4, however I noticed a considerable amount of difficulty has increase. It’s gotten to the point that no matter how much I read of the problem and try to understand it, I just couldn’t do it. That really worries me 😦 These are the easy problems, how am I going to be able to solve the medium level ones for the assessment?
I’ll keep trying for tomorrow. I also managed to make a video for YouTube since I made it a goal to make one every Monday of every week. I can’t let the people down now. Even though sometimes (almost every time) I realllly don’t want to, I do it anyway. I sometimes take comfort in the fact that no one will even watch them, or care, so at least no one can see how much I probably suck. JK I don’t suck, but I am a newbie and it shows. That’s the whole point of me doing the videos though because I want to visually see and hear my progress.
That’s it for now. It’s been a long day and tomorrow will be even longer. I got a speeding ticket two weekends ago and now I have to do driver’s ed tomorrow. Yay.
Day 48 – 1 Hour of Code
By now I’ve probably miscounted the days but I don’t really care. When I missed my first day I felt like I having a crisis because I didn’t want to break my streak, but who cares!! When I need to take a break now, it just happens and I try not to worry so much about it. One of the cool things I learned over the weekend was how to create channel art for your YouTube page, so it’s different now from the random image I found on the internet. And I made it using Inkscape! Since I’m only a newbie at pretty much everything that I’m doing currently, it’s very simple and elegant. That’s how I like most things in my life to be I think. At least any work that I do, it’s just easier on the eyes for me and less difficult for me to understand (when I code). Tomorrow is the start of a new week so hopefully I get more done. It’s on my channel art thing that vlogs will be out every week, and now that it’s up there, I feel it’s important to try and meet that as best as I can. It’s relieving for me to know that there’s software on my laptop that’ll record work on my screen because my phone is full of crap and there’s literally no more space on it for a 10 second video. Bummer. When I have the energy to deal with that, I can make more videos about myself and Launch School, and whatever else I can think of but for now, I’ll just have to stick with coding problems. Not that that’s a bad thing; it’s very beneficial to me because I get to hear myself (as embarrassing as it is) talk as I code and see what needs to improve.
Goals: 1 video every week, blog every day, code for 5 days.
That’s it for now! Goodnight!
Day 47 – How to Select a Key-Value Pair from a Hash
Super exciting, I know. I saw this problem this morning and my eyes glazed over, for whatever reason. After trying my hardest to figure it out for a very very long time, I ended up caving and had to take a peek at the solution. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have figured it out on my own. It’s that whole ‘two-layer problem’ thing going on, I know it! I just don’t feel that I’m totally grasping ruby just yet, but that’s okay. After much time spent looking at the problem and really digesting it, and also talking with another student about it, I think I’ve got it. Thank you to Melissa for your patience and letting me explain it to you in the best way I could. Here is my best take of understanding:
We have a hash called ‘produce’. We have 4 key-value pairs, each key is a string that points to its value that is either a ‘Fruit’ or ‘Vegetable’. Next the method ‘select_fruit’ is being created that takes one parameter, in this case it is called ‘produce_list’. After that, three things occurs. First, we assign the return value of calling #keys on produce_list, which is an array, to the variable ‘produce_keys’. So now we have an array of produce keys: [‘apple’, ‘carrot’, ‘pear’, ‘broccoli’]. Then we create an empty hash and call it ‘selected_fruits’.
We enter the loop now. The first thing to do is to add an if condition statement that breaks out of the loop if that conditions is met. It says to break out of the loop if the counter (which is counter = 0) is equal to the size of the ‘produce_keys’ array. This will save a lot of work if the array turns out to be empty. Next we create a variable called ‘current_key’ that is assigned to the key at the current produce_keys[counter]. Meaning, since arrays count by zero-index, it will start at 0 and run for the length of the array. The element at the 0th index of ‘produce_keys’ is the first element to be assigned to the ‘current_key’ variable. ‘current_value’ is being assigned in I believe the same way, but this time to the produce_list hash that will be passed in, and to its value. Whatever key is being assigned to ‘current_key’, it’s corresponding value will be assigned to ‘current_value’. Now we have the key and it’s value, in the first instance, we will have ‘apple’ => ‘Fruit’.
Now we get to the ‘if’ statement. This says that if the value of the value is equal to ‘Fruit’ (in the first instance with apple, it is), then we simply replicate this key-value pair into the new ‘selected_fruit’ hash. Increment the counter after this to continue on to the next elements in the array until it’s done. If the value doesn’t match ‘Fruit’, nothing will get added, and it moves on to the next element. When we pass in the ‘produce’ hash, all of this work will take place and what is returned is a new hash:
selected_fruits = { ‘apple’ => ‘Fruit’, ‘pear’ => ‘Fruit’ }
Super cool.
Crooked Colours – Flow
Day 46 – New Video, and New Month for My Journal!
I love when a new month starts, it’s so exciting. I know I could start anything at any time, but it’s just something about starting a project or goal, or whatever it is at the beginning of a new month. Like a breath of fresh air. For my bullet journal, I created a couple new pages for August which include an ‘at a glance’ calendar, color map for my daily activities and a goals/bills page. I plan to put in more pages for the days specifically to cover any other thing I do in the day that isn’t already in my color map. Overall the design is much neater but I would like to buy better pens and markers later on. I’m thinking I’ll stick to what I have for a few months and if I keep it up, it’ll be a little treat to myself to buy all those nice things!
For my channel, I finally found a software that’ll record your screen. This is perfect for what I wanted to do! Now I can work through ruby problems and not mess around with my phone. That’s another story. The video camera on that thing is utter garbage. It’s so grainy and the video camera zooms in so close to my face and I can’t figure out how to switch it to the front camera to record anything in front of me!! Soooo annoying. Until I get a better one, it’ll have to do. Maybe for Black Friday I’ll do some shopping for a new camera also! Tomorrow I’m planning to meet with another student who is further along in her LS studies, Melissa, who will help me try to wrap my head around basic ruby loops. My video today showed me working through a problem, one that I have found to be troublesome for me before and STILL is now! I need to figure out some other way to solve it because it’s just not sticking in my head.
A few goals for this month: spend 15 minutes every day learning German, spend 30 hours a week studying, row for 5 days a week, learn to bake a cake and frost it. I have so much more but for brevity I won’t list them all. Organization and time management are two areas that I’m seriously lacking in, so I’m actually surprised that I managed to keep up with for the past couple weeks, for the most part. P.S don’t make fun of my lettering/ drawing, It’s not that good but it’s okay! I deal.
Temples – The Guesser
Glimpse of New Office Setup :)
Day 44 – More Ruby
Today I managed a little more than 3 hours doing ruby problems! I was battling a migraine literally the ENTIRE time but I managed to almost finish the Easy set!! Yay me. Tomorrow I will aim to get in about 5 hours, maybe 6. The NEW goal for my study weeks it to get about 30 hours, so 5 hours a day for 6 days should be sufficient. I want at least one day where I either journal, or rest or do anything but code. My mind needs the rest and I know now that if it doesn’t get that, I’m screwed. I literally will not function. Today I made dinner! Bean and cheese tacos with bacon and avocado, and cookies! God I miss having an oven. Baking is something that I’ve been wanting to get into for a really long time, and very soon that might actually happen. Tonight I made a cookies from one of those premade package thingies from Pillsbury and it was heavenlllllyyyyy. That is the roundest, most perfectest cookie I’ve ever made and I’m so proud :’). Anyway I’m now in bed with Vin watching dumb dark souls 3 videos and laughing my arse off. With that, Goodnight my little world!
Felicia Bacon 