Week 4 - hello world!

With both class and the labs, I learned a lot this week. I also developed my ideas for Project 1 into something I am truly excited about.

The first things that I learned about were Parallel Circuits vs Series Circuits and Digital Signals vs Analog Signals.

• Series circuits use two batteries following each other to increase the voltage. Parallel circuits use multiple batteries for the same voltage, but it lasts longer. The following image shows examples on how these circuits are made.

• Digital signals are made of set options. For example, it can be 1 or 2, but it can't be 1.5 or 1.19 or 2.001; it could only be 1 or 2. Analog signals or flexible and are not made of set options. The following image gives a visual that helped me understand better.

I also learned about passive components: restrictors, capacitors, and diodes.

• Restrictors restrict the flow, or pinch the hose in the water analogy.
• Capacitors turn crazy flow into a more steady flow and act as little batteries.
• Diodes only let energy flow in one direction.
• LEDs are a type of diode (Light Emitting Diode)

Bit is short for binary digit and is the smallest unit of digital information, working in only 1s and 0s. A byte is worth 8 bits and nibbles are half a bit. This develops further into storage sizes of gigabytes, megabytes, terabytes, etc. This was the first time I heard nibbles though and that made me laugh.

Some important aspects of code that I learned this week is the following:

• = sets variable
• == means equals
• != means doesn't equal
• The difference between print() and println() is that prinln() creates a new line after printing the information within the parentheses.

When it came to the labs, I did both 4&5 this week and it was a lot of information. I had gotten most of lab 4 done on Wednesday and planned on finishing it when I got home that night, but I was absolutely exhausted. Because of that, knew that even if I did it, I probably wouldn't necessarily understand it. I decided to go to bed and just work on it in the morning before class. I guess I needed that sleep, because I slept through all of my alarms causing me to be late for class. Luckily, despite being late, I had a breakthrough on my most interesting Project 1 idea during class.

Before this class, I had picked my "house model" idea because I felt it was the most interesting out of all of them, but I wasn't necessarily excited about it. I wasn't really excited about most of my ideas and was feeling insecure about coming up with ideas as an artist. However, as I tried to figure out a way to minimize set up for this concept, I came to an idea that made me so excited I could barely contain myself. Essentially, I would be using a chair that my family has had since I was a baby. It's a big recliner rocking chair that has been in every house that I have lived in. Sitting in the chair, the viewer would turn to different representations of each of these houses. As the viewer faces the different houses, they will hear audio in relation to that house, such as audio from home videos. As of writing this, my parents haven't confirmed that I can use the chair, but I am hopeful we will find a way to make the chair, or something similar work.