Wednesday - Making Guitar Hero

If you were to take away the background then my game would look something like this.

  Today after I finished creating the program Mr.Arkin asked us to make, I decided to take the initiative and create a new game. This game is Guitar Hero! It's so cool it even looks like the real game, I love it! There are 10 levels and to finish each level one must get the taps needed, in order to proceed. It first starts off as only two taps are required, then the speed increase's and so does the amount of taps needed. The game is approximately 260 lines and is fully functional, with music and all needed colors! The only thing that is required of me to do now is to write down a set of instructions. Turing is quiet is and when I accomplish something like this it gives me the feeling that I am one step ahead of many of my peers. 

  Tomorrow I will show this to my classmates and ask for their opinions on my game. They all thought it was literally impossible to finish the whole game in one day, nonetheless I did it in less than one hour.  

Tuesday- Successful Mark!

Look at this image very closely. Is it moving???

  I could literally feel the butterflies in my stomach as I awaited to receive my paper! Mr.Arkin called me and I sprung off my chair immediately, hastily I sprinted towards the desk. I looked at my paper for a moment and hesitated, I thought I had gotten a bad mark, as I reviewed the paper I found out that, indeed I had done well. I had three mistakes, therefore making it a 21 out of 24. This means I As-ed the test! This is exactly want I had hoped for. This news diffidently made my day and better yet I have no other major assignments, until the Christmas break. We also started to learn about how to make shapes appear as if though they are moving. I am aware of how to do this therefore, it was a breeze trying to figure out how to make a program to make zigzag like patterns. 

Monday- Test EASY!

DONKEY!

  Today, as I had expected the test was held, I looked through the test and noticed that it was so easy!  I loved doing it, it made me feel superior. I was writing the test and for one of the questions it asked me to create a function to give back the area of one length and one width. As I was writing it I noticed that if I put length as a variable there will inevitably be an error, therefore I named the variable length1. After the test I talked about with my peers, I noticed that the majority of them did not notice that length is a built in procedure! I laughed, they punted at me and I laughed some more! That test made my day, nevertheless, I just hope I did well, if I don't it will ruin my day. The mistakes I make are usually so called "dumb mistakes" and that makes me feel miserable. This is mainly because, I know that I could have done better, however I did not allow myself to do so. I am aiming for a 90 in ICS for my first semester report card! 

Friday- Be Wary of the Test!

WHAC-A-MOLE is so pro I just had to make a game like it!

  Today Mr.Arkin told us to be ready for a test, supposedly to be given to us some time next week. I believe I know much of the things that will palpably be on the test, nonetheless, I will review all the material that I believe to be necessary. I was informed by my fellow classmates that the test will be only on Subprograms and Substrings. I love Turing and how easy and simplistic it is, yet it still manges to baffle me with its complexity.  I started to love Turing thanks to Mr.Arkin and how he lets us think for ourselves and encourages us to do things on our own.  For example, when I ask him a question, he tries to lead me towards the answer, instead of bluntly giving me the answer.


  Another factor that strengthened the interest I have for Turing was, the Turing animations, one can make a whole game with Turing alone. I managed to make various games, for example one of them the user uses the arrow keys to move a space craft up and down. The user must then shoot the meteors that are coming his/her way. Another one of my games are a replica of WHAC-A-MOLE, however instead of moles you are hitting stars, IN SPACE! Isn't that awesome? these can all be done with Turing and I was not aware of it until a few weeks ago! I have shown it to my fellow peers and they believe my games are extraordinary. I few were so flabbergasted that they thought I had copied the game from somewhere else.

Thursday- Hard Work Helps!

It's what got him where he is today!

 
  Today was a day to catch up on the things that I had missed due to the swim meet yesterday, Turing is getting much easier for me and I love it! I love how so many things can be done with this one language. Today I also made a program which used only functions and procedures to get what the user wants. When I use functions are procedures it just makes life easier and my program much shorter, while at the same time much more effective. I thought functions and procedures would be confusing, nonetheless from what I had experienced today they are a "piece of cake". This is all due to Mr.Arkin's great teaching ability and how he get's to the point and try's to make our lives as easy as possible when it comes to programming. 
  
  In the beginning of the year I thought that all those notes we had done in class, simultaneously were for nothing and I would not use them. However, when it came to test time I found out that all the requirements Mr.Arkin requested us to do made my life much easier. For example, the dividers made finding my key topics easier, the notes helped me study for a shorter amount of time. However, that short amount of time proved much more useful to me than studying for hours and hours at a time. This is all due to organization and planning step by step what you are going to do in future periods. Now I am starting to understand why organization is so important and why in Middle school and Elementary school they stressed that point out so often. I think they were getting us ready for High school and were trying to make our lives much easier for future events. 

Wednesday- KILLED the Swim Meet

Go For Gold Every Time NO MATTER WHAT

  I was physicked out about the swim meet today and I thought due to my low age I was going to lose. This nonetheless, was not the case, instead I came first in all my events for the ninth grade and for the junior division I came first in every event other than the 50M butterfly. In the 50M butterfly I came second behind one other tenth grader, my coach said if I work on my open turn and timing I will definitely beat him next time. Today I also got to skip class because of the swim meet, therefore I am not aware of what was for homework. I will check the daily blog and ask my peers about it. I hope we have no homework and that Mr.Arkin did not teach anything new today. If he does I will be a step behind everyone else and I extremely dislike that! 

Tuesday- Functions are so COOL!

Learning is key

  Today Mr.Arkin taught us about a new type of declaration called function, a function in Turing declares a variable and stores information within it. It also gives certain requirements to the variable to run. For example,


function product (number : real, number2 : real) : real 
result number * number2 
end product


put product (1,2)
put product (3,4)

  The variables number and number2 are local variables, this means that they can be only used within the function, if I were to put, put number, there would inevitably be an error. The error will state 'number' has not been declared. I believe functions will help me complete my programs in less time and more efficiency than what they are now. Programming is quite difficult however, if one get's it then it will become fun. This is why I love fiddling around with Turing, it teach's me new things. For example, I learned how to make a game from fiddling around with Turing and Turing help. It astounds me when I think of how many different outputs are possible from this one language, which is believed to be a simple language!