Reflections Compilations

# Reflections 131012-131019

Tuesday we talked about a bunch of tools we could use for our next project, such
as HTML5 presentations, dexy it, bibserver, JSON, and basemap. Thursday we had 
Professor Stark come in and give a lecture. To be honest, I was rather lost with 
the lecture. It would have been more clear if at the beginning, he would have 
concisely explain the purpose of the lecture, so that we would have something to 
focus on when he lectured. Instead, I felt as if I was bombarded with all these
facts and data, and was unable to focus on any given thing. 

Most of my notes consisted of what was just written on the lecture slides, which 
is not really useful, but I didnt realize that we would have the lecture notes 
posted online. Next time I'll try to focus more on what he is saying. 

Set up for the homework assignment went more smoothly than last week. We were 
all able to meet on time, everything installed seamlessly. I look forward to 
working with my group members and learning JSON.

Also, Roland helped me change how I had been updating the pull requests for
the reflections. Hopefully everything looks good now. 

Also, Teresa made a good suggestion about how instead of a google doc, we 
should upload the stark notes into a shared repository like we do for our reflections.

# Reflections 131005-131011

--Group Improvements--
After looking over all the presentations, I made a list of some things
that both our group and other groups could do better in future projects:
- explain why we did certain things (ie eliminate data)
- make sure to mention how many points we took out 
  (either in code or in visuals)
- make captions for visuals
- keep a log of problems, and the steps + tools used to fix it
- keep a log of resources used
- keep a log of skills we learned

--Group Comments--
I also made a short commentary on some of the group projects. Here were
the groups that stood out to me:
Group 5: I liked seeing how their graphs evolved, and it was interesting
to see that people who were kinesthetic learners tended to know more programs.
Group 10: I liked the word cloud because it was immediately understandable.
A suggestion I had would be better axes labels, and that their learning
style graphs should have a 3rd dimension to the points (density), so we 
could see how many people answered for each point. 

--Other Thoughts--
I enjoyed working with my group. Everyone is supportive, and when things 
failed, we all worked together to help each other. It's an encouraging 
environment, which is helped by the encouraging atmosphere of the class 
in general. 


--Aaron's questions/comments to groups that I will keep in mind--
1. Reasoning for decisions
   - WHY did you remove certain data?
2. Clarity
   - What does this plot mean? (should add captions for their visuals)
3. Roadblocks
   - I liked how you focused on your roadblocks
   - Can you focus on the PROBLEMS you encountered and the STEPS you took to fix that?
4. Tools
   - What TOOLS worked well for getting over roadblocks?
   - What RESOURCES helped you the most? 
	- How much did you rely on horizontal groups, github trackers, etc
   - What were the CS skills that you LEANED ON OTHERS for
	- troubleshooting
	- what did you pick up BY YOURSELF?
5. Collaboration/Reproducibility
   - BEFORE you started, what were your ideas on collab/reproducibility?
   - NOW, what are your thoughts?



# Reflections 130926-131004

--Issues--
This week we began our first homework assignment, and our first role
assignments. The biggest issue that immediately cropped up in our group
was finding a suitable meeting date that worked for everyone. 
Unfortunately, none of us were able to meet in person until Saturday,
and then someone changed their plans and now we have to meet up last minute
on Sunday night. This has caused me some degree of anxiety
because I cannot do my work as the Visualizer until the curator has completed his.

Perhaps for our next group assignments, we can assign groups based on 
another survey of when people are most free to meet up with each other,
and those that overlap can be assigned to the same group.


--Suggestions--
It would be useful if the powerpoint slides of the guest lectures could 
become available, as well as our previous in-class lecture notes. 
While I have been taking notes during the guest lectures, I find it
distracting trying to copy down all the lecture slides verbatim while also
trying to take real notes (which for me include commentary that I have about
the lecture itself, as well as specific phrases the lecturer uses that 
helps clarify the images at hand). It's also virtually impossible to understand
some of what the lecturer is saying without seeing the graphs the lecturer
was using at the time.


--Positives--
It's great that we finally started the ball rolling with our first project!



# Reflections 130922-130925

I was gone for my sister's wedding starting from Sept 120925, so my 
reflections will cover mostly just Tuesday's class. We were able to get 
resources for python learning (the safari textbooks in the UC lib system)
which I thought was helpful because I did not know about it before. 

In class, I learned a useful command for quitting a program while in the Virtual 
Box terminal (control z), and then you can still run the program in 
the backgroun (bg)! I thank my tech lead for this useful tidbit.

I agree that having feedback about reflections would be nice. I am still
not 100% if my reflections have been submitted, so having a quick confirmation
either via bspace or github would be nice.

I agree that having a google calendar would be a good idea. 

This week involved guest lecturer speakers, and did wnot involve new 
installations. I did struggle some more this week dealing with ipython
in the Virtual Machine, but after talking to some classmates about it,
I believe everything has been sorted out. 



# Reflections 13/09/14 - 13/09/21

This week involved guest lecturer speakers, and did not involve new 
installations. I did struggle some more this week dealing with ipython
in the Virtual Machine, but after talking to some classmates about it,
I believe everything has been sorted out. 

All the other installations I had completed last week. I look forward to
using our installed programs this upcoming week!



# Reflections 13/09/08 - 13/09/13
--Improvement Suggestions--
The class this week seemed more disorganized than last week because the lack of
 homework posts and in-class summaries. The professor did explain in class that 
 it was because he was busier this week, but it would have been nice to have sent
 a quick announcement via space telling us about the delay.

--Classroom praises--
This week we discussed how to improve the classroom dynamics as well as seeing 
what the strengths of the class were. I liked this because it established 
further than the instructors cared about creating an effective work environment
and we were able to create a conversation between the instructors and the groups. 

--Personal Challenges--
I realized that I did not submit my reflections homework in correctly last week.
I was confused on how to do a pull request and the purpose of it. I realized 
that I should have gone to the IRC and asked my fellow classmates for help if 
I was confused on how to do this. I also realized that I needed to spend more
time on the github help section.

--Personal Improvements--
This week, I've begun a journal documenting what we've done in class and what
I've been doing outside of class. This helps me look back at what we've done
before in class more easily, and allows me to remember the questions that I've had. 

Questions:
I'm confused about what we are going to do with ipython, how to check if it
works for us, and the purpose of all the other programs we have been downloading.



# Reflections 13/09/01 - 13/09/07

This week involved mostly installing new programs into our computers. I've 
had experience with most of the programs installed, so there wasn't too much
of an issue with installation for me. I struggled a little bit with accessing
the IRC group chats because I have had no experience with that before, and 
Google was not very helpful. I messed around with some variations of the
join command until I realized that Adium only needs a "#group_chat_name"
input to join a chat room. Clearer instructions on that would have been helpful.

I did have a question about the specific set-ups for Virtual Box (such as 
how big should the hard drive be, did the professors want us to set up the 
virtual hard drive, etc), but this was eventually answered in class.

The final struggle I had was understanding the concept of forking and pull
requests. I have been reading github sections on the respective topics to
make the concepts clearer in my mind.