My Projects

School has kept me really busy lately, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. My Python class is a breeze as I've been working with it since the beginning of last semester, but I'm still learning quite a bit about coding efficiently, which is kind of why I'm pursuing a Computer Science major to begin with. My electrical engineering classes are considerably more challenging this semester, but I'm enjoying almost understanding the science behind wireless communication systems. I'm even enjoying my senior design project which is at any given time the biggest obstacle between myself and my EET degree. I don't even mind too much the rate at which school is reducing my social life to the ghost of its former self.

I'm pretty caffeinated this morning--I'm sitting in my 8:00 AM Python Data Structures class, which is actually my 'easy' class this semester, so between the ease with which I understand things so far and the caffeine in my bloodstream, I am afforded the multitasking ability that has long evaded my gender; hence I'm blogging in class. And if I'm going to be blogging, this is the best time to do it as it's the closest thing to free time I have. Please pardon the errors and bear with my flighty, probably-hard-to-follow writing style--I don't have the time to translate ideas from the way I formulate and understand them to the way the rest of the English speaking population.

I'm not sure if I've blogged in detail about my Senior Design project, but essentially my partner and I are designing a circuit that translates an electrical signal representing sound energy into an electrical signal representing musical rhythm. In other words, we're making lights that flash to music. For an EE major, this is pretty minor stuff, but I'm timid and didn't want to devote myself to a project I can't finish (time management is and always has been my greatest weakness--Harvey Dent's weakness was his love for Rachel Dawes and a serious case of PTSD, my weakness is time management). Yesterday we actually managed to get the simple amplifier circuit working after wasting much time failing to input an audio signal with MultiSIM so it actually felt good to make some progress. By the end of next week we hope to have a good low-pass filter and a comparator circuit, which will comprise the bulk of the project. Once we get that done and fine-tuned, we can devote ourselves to adding extra features and generally polishing things. Hopefully when it's all said and done, we can put on a "bitchin'" light show.

The Python MP3 catalog project (the one I've mentioned several times but still haven't discussed in detail) has been put on the back burner of back burners in favor of school and my blog engine project; however, on the hobby front, I've been spending my trifle free time reading Object Oriented PHP by Peter Lavin.

I've owned the book for some time, but put it down after thumbing through it a little. At the time, by object-oriented programming (OOP) experience was very limited (for that matter, my general programming experience consisted of hacked-together PHP) and I didn't understand much of the book. In my humble opinion, the book doesn't really serve its purpose of introducing the OOP-unfamiliar to OOP PHP programming; however, it's tremendously useful for exemplifying OOP for the web to programmers who are used to working with OOP exclusively on the desktop. Having said that, since I've worked with the OO language, Python, this book has been incredibly useful for showing me how I can apply object-oriented concepts to the web, which is obviously beneficial toward my blog engine project. I plan on finishing this book and maybe starting another (if I can find one more specific to writing a CMS of some sort) before I actually start writing any serious code for the blog engine.

So this is what I've been doing since I last posted. Hopefully I can carve out some time soon to write something more-organized/better-thought-out and generally more enjoyable to read. Thanks for reading this much, and I hope you enjoyed it to some degree.