top of page

January Blogs

Winter Break Ended and School Came in Like a Blizzard:

Week of 1/04 - 1/08

Weekly Goals:

  • Complete a minimum of 3 units in ‘Python for Astronomers’ textbook

  • Edit the GitHub website

  • Begin Research Ideas for Coding Projects.

  • Complete the Evidence of Learning Assignment

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • No School

  • Tuesday: 

    • We were introduced to the Evidence of Learning assignment due at the end of the week.

    • Confirmed schedule for weekly mentor meetings from now on: Friday at 5:00pm

    • Revised the Document Ms.Hutchinson wrote explaining the basics of Gits, GitHub and creating websites.

  • Wednesday:

    • Spent 2 hours finishing up Units 1,2 and 3 in the Python Textbook.

    • Spent some time editing my personal website

  • Thursday:

    • In class we were introduced to SMART goals and their significance.

    • Finished Unit 4 on the Python Textbook and found a great youtube video detailing everything about the basics of Python by CodeAcadamy.

    • Began my Evidence of Learning assignment for the week

  • Friday:

    • Met with Ms.Hutchinson, revised my progress this week, went through some questions and fixed some problems.

    • Completed my evidence of learning assignment, revised it and turned it in.

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

Weekly Reflection:

              As soon as school began and winter break ended, I was overwhelmed with work. Similar to the feeling of a surprise snowball falling on your face when you expect sunshine. Despite this, I was able to complete my weekly goals and gain new resources. My biggest accomplishment would be completing 4 Units in the Python for Astronomers Textbook. This textbook is a great resource with detailed explanations. I hope to complete the entire textbook by the end of next week. I have learned various elements and commands in Python, such as strings, integers, arrays, libraries, and conditionals. The way certain commands are formatted is different from what I learned in Java, but overall there is a large similarity making it easy for me to understand. The biggest challenge I faced this week was that certain resources I used wouldn’t work. Over winter break, the anaconda package refused to open, Jupyterlab stopped working and even the ipython in my terminal refused to cooperate. However, during the mentor meeting I had with Ms.Hutchinson, we found out that this problem was due to my malfunctioning Anaconda Package and easily fixed it. One other significant thing I learned this week was that any file using the extension .py could be run on the terminal. This made the work I had been doing over the week a lot easier and I intend to practice creating and running .py files next week. I had many successes this week regarding Python, but by focusing on learning this I did not do as much research for the types of code I would like to create in the following weeks. Therefore this is another aspect I shall be focusing on next week. In the end, I had many successes this week but I intend to have many more the next. The weatherman has forecasted snow this Sunday and I forecast that next week will be even more accomplishing.

To be or Not To Be Productive: 

Week of 1/11 - 1/15

Weekly Goals:

  • Complete the rest of the units in ‘Python for Astronomers’ textbook

  • Continue Research Ideas for Coding Projects (with more detail).

  • Complete the Original Work Progress Assignment

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • Workday- researched websites with lots of data to use for future coding projects.

  • Tuesday: 

    • Completed the ISM recommendations for next years ISM candidates

    • I finished unit 5 from the textbook

  • Wednesday:

    • Used the time given in class to edit my personal website and upload Changes to GitHub 

  • Thursday:

    • Finished Unit 6 and 7 on the Python Textbook and spent some time watching the youtube video on the basics of Python and taking notes on it.

    • Wrote down the questions and topics I need to mention to Ms.Hutchison tomorrow 

  • Friday:

    • Used the time given in class to start the Original Work progress assignment

    • Met with Ms.Hutchison, revised my progress this week, went through some questions, and decided on the goal for next week.

    • Completed my Original work progress assignment, revised it, and turned it in.

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

Weekly Reflection:

This week was a constant fight between balancing all my school work and the work I wanted to complete for my Original Work. For example, I had hoped to complete the textbook this week, but I was unable to do so due to the immense amount of work I had to do from all of my other classes. However, I still believe I made decent progress. This week was similar to last week where my main focus was learning Python and researching ideas for future coding projects. The mentor meeting I had this week helped solidify my plan for next week. We decided that I would finish up learning python basics, complete a few exercises to practice and complete as much as I can on the first coding project of the year. This project will take data from an existing website, read all the files then classify each star based on the temperature mass and other factors inserted by the viewer. Miss Hutchison told me that I should start with an outline for my code then use one file at a time and add it in. This way I can constantly see the updated output and I will have a product finished no matter how detailed it is. I do believe this project is completely doable for my first one however I don’t know how much time I’ll require. So one of the other things we plan to see by completing this project is how long an average project will take for me to complete.  I also need to get into the habit of updating my original work log more often, because I forget a lot. Overall this week wasn’t what I expected but it still turned out to be good enough. I do have to learn how to prioritize better and be okay when I don’t get enough time to complete everything I wanted to.

The Earth is Wobbling and So is My Motivation:

Week of 1/18 - 1/22

Weekly Goals:

  • Complete the last unit in ‘Python for Astronomers’ textbook

  • Continue Research Ideas for Coding Projects (with more detail).

  • Complete at least 3 hours of Original Work

  • Start the star classification project

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • No school

  • Tuesday: 

    • Finished unit 8 from the textbook

  • Wednesday:

    • Used the time given in class to start the Star classification code (read through the readme file) 

  • Thursday:

    • Wrote down the questions I had to ask Ms.Hutchison tomorrow 

    • Came up with a new idea to incorporate into mentor meetings

  • Friday:

    • Used the time given in class to write the first few lines of code for star.py

    • Met with Ms.Hutchison, revised my progress this week, went through some questions and decided on the goal for next week.

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

Weekly Reflection:

I was able to finish the textbook over this break, however I had not been able to progress through the classification code as far as I wanted to. It was a lot more complex than I had thought it would be and I had to take quite some time to stop, plan then find what type of code to use and finally type it in. On top of this this week has been so busy that I have barely had time for much else. As time progresses, my classes begin to pick on and this means that I probably won't be able to finish as many coding projects I have wanted to do this month. I will instead focus on making sure that the codes I do write work well, and are complex enough to be useful. I did run into some problems this week apart from finding time. The main problem was how I would read and analyze a fits file. After that I had to read, not one, but a total of 61 files. I had originally planned to create a conditional loop to run through all the possibilities, but I was stuck on how I would start. However, during my mentor meeting with ms.Hutchison at the end of the week, I learned of a specific function in the astropy package used to read fits files. Instead of using the long and repetitive loop I was planning, Ms.hutchison showed me how to change the file until the file matches in one line of code. This was extremely helpful and we decided that my goal before next week’s meeting was to find out how to sort the files in ascending order and what to do when the given temperature is not in the value of temperatures given. In the end this week was definitely an unsure one, with many obstacles that often threatened to slow my progress, but the most important part was that I was still able to accomplish a good amount.

I Don’t Like Cherries :

Week of 1/25 - 1/29:

Weekly Goals:

  • FInalize Idea for Coding Project #2.

  • Complete at least 5 hours of Original Work

  • Complete goals for the star classification project

  • Finish the Original Work/Product Proposal and Calendar

  • Submit the Evidence of Learning Assignment due at the end of the week.

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • Rechecked and published the weekly blog

  • Tuesday: 

    • Was introduced to the 2 assignments due at the end of the week: Original Work/Product Proposal and Calendar and the Evidence of Learning Assignment 

    • Had time in class to work on the Original Work Project: tried to sort the model.txt file

  • Wednesday:

    • Began writing the Original Work/Product Proposal and Calendar that was due at the end of the week.

    • Finished up editing the star.py code so it displays the closest temperature’s information when the input temperature is not available.

  • Thursday:

    • Had a mentor meeting with Ms. Hutchison,revised my progress this week, went through some questions and decided on the goal for next week.

    • Finished up the Product Proposal and the Calendar

    • Started the Evidence of Learning Assignment 

  • Friday:

    • Finished the Evidence of Learning Assignment and turned it in

    • Made sure to email the Product Proposal and the Calendar to Ms.Hutchison, CC’d to Mr.Pirtle

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

Weekly Reflection:

I don’t like cherries. And I especially don't like the cherry flavored chocolates in most chocolate boxes. But in the end that's how every week so far has felt like. I keep waiting for the next week to get better and easier, to pick a better chocolate, so I can relax and still be able to complete all my work. But it hasn’t happened. And I think I am starting to face the fact that every week might be this hard. And even if it is, I will need to learn to prioritize what I need to accomplish. I should stop waiting for a better week and make the best of the one I have right now. This will be one of my main goals starting from next week, the first week of February. I intend to accomplish more even with my limited time. This week, as usual, was busy but productive to the end. My biggest accomplishment was to get the star.py code working using a conditional statement to sort the temperature. Although there were only 2 tasks for me to finish on star.py, I still spent around five and a half hours on editing and figuring out how to do it. But it was all worth it when I got to show my mentor how I got the code to not only work but also make the output print in different colors. During the mentor meeting this week, we discussed supernovas as we decided on this topic last week. It was extremely informative talking about supernovas to someone well versed in them and also served as a small break from the constant coding that I have been doing so far. I enjoyed the discussion immensely and can’t wait for our next meeting to talk about blackholes! Lastly, the biggest challenge that I faced this week was completing the product proposal. It was a big task and although I split it up into two days worth of work, it was still a lot to do. I often wanted to just stop typing or end it shorter. However I stuck it out till the end and I am definitely proud of the result. 

bottom of page