Project Ideas 1/12

For our big class project I think we should make a app which lets you take a picture of a resistor and it tells you the resistance range. The app should also display an image of the color bands for a resistor based on the resistance a user is looking for.

Trees 12/5

     Recently in advanced computer programming we have been learning about stacks, queues, binary trees, and general trees. Most of the labs have been manageable for me but the general trees lab took more time than any of the others. The general trees lab was a challenge for me. For some reason I had a really hard time trying to figure out a way to create a random tree. However, I was able to work through the problems with some help and finished on time. I am the proudest of the general trees lab over all the others because of how much time and effort I put into making it work. 

     In general things are going well. I am learning quite a bit in class through my small struggles. Elena and I have been working together on most of the labs helping each other debug. I have been distracted from my work by college apps and news. Now that college apps are wrapping up I should be able to work better in the future. 

SPICE 11/16

The spice circuit simulator creates circuits based on netlists and then will simulate all properties of that circuit. These properties can then be displayed in a graph and or measured using a measure statement. Spice will also let you make sub circuits for any part you want to make out of transistors. The hardest part about spice is remembering all of the parts to the measure statements, to the transistor statements, and any sub circuits. The way the statements are formatted makes it hard to visualize the circuit which makes it hard for me to understand what all is going on. Spice is mainly used to figure out propagation delays of a circuit and or rise and fall times of a specific part of a circuit. Spice allows you to measure basically any aspect of the circuit and change the width of transistors while logisim only deals with the logic. Logisim will run inputs through gates and gives you the output but will not let measure aspects of the gates. You use spice when you want to optimize a certain aspect of a gate or part of a circuit by modifying transistors.

Databases 11/16

In Google app engine databases work by using GQL to store or access elements of an entity. Entities may contain one or more properties which has a name and a specified data type. All properties are stored within an entity in the form of a table. Each entity is identified by its kind which is specified in the name of the class which creates the entity and a key which is unique. The Google App Engine datastores do not update instantaneously so accessing an element which was just entered into the datawstore can result in problems. The GQL syntax which is very similar to SQL is used to retrieve entities or keys from the datastore.

Transistors 10/19

A transistor is like a switch because the voltage at the gate determines whether or not current flows between the source and the drain. This creates a situation where there is either current flowing through or not much like a switch. A transistor is like a resistor when it is linear mode. This is because the p-type or n-type silicon used in the transistor restricts the flow of electrons between the drain and the source. A transistor circuit is like a RC circuit when a capacitor is hooked up to it because transistors have a resistance. The PMOS source is connected to Vdd while the NMOS source is connected to ground because this allows for current to flow in different directions through different types of transistors. This allows for the creation of Inverters. 

HTTP Get and HTTP Post 10/19

In Google App Engine the HTTP Get request is used to get content from the servers where as the Post request is used to update data. Get request parameters are also displayed in the url and have a maximum length. The Get request also can be cached and does not change anything on the servers. The Post request stores parameters in the body and does not have a maximum length. Post requests are not okay to cache but can change the server.

Vectors v Arrays 10/14

     Vectors and arrays are similar in that they both store data which can be accessed by indexes of the array or vector. The main difference in C++ between vectors and arrays are that you can add elements to a vector where as you can not change the size of an array. Vectors also come with many other methods which can be used to alter the vector where as Arrays do not. Vectors are comparable to Arraylists in Java.
     I think the class is going fairly well. I like the idea of researching certain topics and presenting to the class. The effectiveness of this will become more apparent as we get to the harder topics. I need to get a project to work on for when I finish the labs in order to stay occupied and focused.