igor-midak-cas

[igor-midak-cas]

Final Reflection

Through my long CAS experience, I think what I most enjoyed is just working with others collaboratively and seeing us achieve success together. I’ve done a lot of collaborative work when working on my website as part of service. I’ve mostly been showing my work on the posts and not mention others work, but there have been many things done by my team in the background such as: design, community engagement and ideas. My expertise still lies in anything that is technical and I think that will continue to be the case. That’s why I also did enjoy doing CAS from Service so much as I did what I enjoy most which is programming.

I think through CAS, my skills of writing have been the most developed. My writing was quite subpar when I started. It was okay, but there was definitely a lot of room for improvement. But my experiences in different situations for writing such as making random writing prompts for someone else, writing a lot of reviews, participating in zines and other events has made my writing significantly more diversified. I went through many different experiences that I’ve never thought I would have ever participated in my life. My writing has started to include more descriptions, depth and most importantly, proper flow of the dialogue with the story. Reviews of others of my work has also helped significantly as well as trying to do more initial preparation before starting to write as to plan the story ahead more carefully. This entire experience has made my writing achieve levels of what I thought was impossible as I’m still a person who doesn’t really enjoy any subjects connected to language studies. I hope that in the future I will continue to write and maybe even try to publish my own original work. Maybe with the progress I made here I will be able to achieve new heights.

[igor-midak-cas]

CAS Evidence

1. Evidence for completion of CAS project.

Name: Website for posting Web Comics

Project Proposal: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/751668742138855424/cas-project-proposal-2205

Investigation: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777614117035032576/cas-project-investigation?source=share

Preparation: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777614159262121984/cas-project-preparation?source=share

Action: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777614197499510784/cas-project-action?source=share

Reflection: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777617649139154944/cas-project-reflection?source=share

Demonstration: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777614836499660800/cas-project-demonstration?source=share

2. Evidence of identification of strengths and areas for personal growth (LO1).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/766213431392075776/creativity-2710?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/752441073262002176/creativity-2801?source=share

3. Evidence of undertaking new challenges and developing new skills in the process (LO2).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/762267878801162240/service-1509?source=share https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/762267845410291712/service-2508?source=share

4. Evidence of initiating and planning a CAS experience (LO3).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/734957487986540544/activity-121123?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/734956765452632064/creativity-111123?source=share

5. Evidence of commitment and perseverance in CAS experiences (LO4).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/762267795791691776/service-3006?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/762267080626208768/activity-809?source=share

6. Evidence of demonstrating the skills and recognizing the benefits of working collaboratively (LO5).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/768684673443446784/service-2311?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/762267818878222336/service-1108?source=share

7. Evidence of engagement with issues of global significance (LO6).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/738530170175127552/service-261123?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/752442052360421376/service-1003?source=share

8. Evidence of recognizing and considering the ethics of choices and actions (LO7).

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/752442380735725568/service-2605?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/766211998519345152/service-1310?source=share

9. Evidence of reflection on significant CAS experiences (all three strands). 

Creativity: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777630107624980480/creativity-2302?source=share

Activity: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777634377413853184/activity-2302?source=share

Service: https://www.tumblr.com/igor-midak-cas/777635939144138752/service-2302?source=share

[igor-midak-cas]

Service - 23.02

So, the final function I'm going to be making for this website for the CAS Service is definitely the most complicated single feature. I will leave my overall feedback of Service at the bottom.

As per some requests, I will be creating a tool for the submission of audiobooks to any chapter on the website so people can listen to community created audiobooks of chapters.

The code is definitely very complicated and I will not be showing all of it, but the system basically works like this:

The user submits an audiobook to a chapter

The author receives an email and must either confirm or deny the audiobook for their chapters

Then, the audiobook will become available for anyone to hear.

It looks like this:

Programming for a small community of writers for so long has proven to expand how much I value this community. I've had many challenges and I will continue to overcome any of them as I plan to continue this activity by myself. I learned how much you can get from listening to others and how much you can actually give while expecting nothing in return. All I needed, is a smile on their faces and I will continue to cherish that.

[igor-midak-cas]

Service - 30.01

For today, I'm creating a function that was requested a bit and that is the ability for anyone to edit a given post if the author consent to it.

This creates a button that a user can click on the page which allows them to easily edit the post. There are some restrictions, but this creates some kind of 'wiki pages' which is the goal of this function.

I hope this function will lead to more people enjoying to use the website and continue to support the project by using the website.

[igor-midak-cas]

Activity - 23.02

This time, the weather was good so it's time to finish up Activity. I will put my final reflection at the bottom.

To measure my progress, I with my trainer decided that we should do the last 150 meter sprint as fast as I could. We didn't prepare me the best for it as I did many sprint runs in a row before that. In the end, I got a 21 second time which is not bad for such a distance. It seems that my time extended by exactly 7 seconds with the 50 meter increase. This shows that my consistency in running has become better and I felt less exhausted after the entire thing.

(I don't have exact footage of the run so here is something I could find as a substitute from the day)

Since the beginning of my CAS Activity in running, it feels like I've improved by quite a lot. I'm definitely a much better runner than I started and I'm also more resilient and faster. The progress towards getting here was quite long, but this just shows that the desired final effect takes a very long time to achieve with running and I did enjoy my time that I spent.

[igor-midak-cas]

Activity - 30.01

It has snowed quite a bit so that's not quite ideal. It doesn't matter really.

I've continued to do more exercises in preparation for the last post where I will try to assess how everything turned out to be. For now, more exercises for stretching and stamina so that I'm adequately prepared for what is to come.

I've learned that exercise takes a lot of time to see progress in and I hope to see some on the final reflection.

[igor-midak-cas]

Creativity - 23.02

My last Creativity post. I will first finish the rest of the chapter and then, talk about my progress overall in CAS.

To finish the chapter of, I've wanted to add one small short story as I tend to do at the end of each day.

This is to bring more of a backstory to Xavier and to also talk about Ryder which is going to be a very significant character in the story, but I've not yet decided if they should be dead or not.

Either way, I hope this will bring more depth to the story in general as always.

To talk about this in general, I think my writing has progressed quite a lot. I liked that I had to adapt to many different situations and many of these experiences did diversify my writing, making my style more unique and developed. I think that CAS has been quite a positive experience for me and I will continue with my writing outside of CAS for sure.

[igor-midak-cas]

Creativity - 30.01

So, after taking many deviations, I think I should finally finish that chapter. I've prolonged it so much already.

This time, here is more of the scene where the characters are trying to buy a place to stay after they've arrived in the new town.

Nothing of much is happening here except that I'm trying to fit in some symbolism into all of this to try to give some subtle details to the reader as they always improve the readability of the story.

In this case, I wanted to indicate that they are in Kyogre town which is the territory of the fire type nation. With this, I put a particular pattern that I've showcased how it looks in one of my previous posts.

This shows that I'm able to plan ahead and implement ideas that I hope will bring more depth to the story and to my writing.

[igor-midak-cas]

CAS Project – Reflection

The project was quite liked by most of the beta testers, but it had many bugs and issues that needed addressing.

The most major issue I will mention is the lack of functions for the comic creators to schedule the publishing of pages. Most of the pages that comic creators can take as much as for a creator of a written novel to make a single chapter. That’s why scheduling is so much needed for them as they need to make sure pages are updated on time.

I’ve had to create quite a robust workaround, but I did get something to work. Here is a video below of how I showed comic creators how to schedule chapters (there is no sound):

The rest of the issues I’ve managed to handle to varying degrees of success, but I hope it will be enough to at least get some comic creators interested in posting their comics on the live website.

[igor-midak-cas]

CAS Project – Demonstration

The final product didn’t differ much from what I created initially. Quite a few different comic creators were coming to create their comics when the function was available to the public, so I would think that this was quite successful.

There were no major complaints from the general public, so I think it is safe to assume that everyone is satisfied with what I created.  

Reactions from some of the users:

[igor-midak-cas]

CAS Project – Action

The action part of the CAS project was the most time-consuming for me. It was not easy at all to make the comics properly display and easy for anyone to create.

Some of the code was difficult, especially making the images transfer properly to the website's front end. It was time-consuming, but it eventually worked.

For someone to create a comic, they can do it by clicking a dedicated button for creating comics. Then, they will be prompted to create a ‘gallery’ of images with the order deciding which images will be first and last. Then, they only need to click to publish their comic.

Most of the front end is handled by JS, which hides all of the images and displays only the first one at the beginning. The user can navigate the comic by clicking the directional buttons or by clicking on the image, which takes them to the next page.

There could be some issues with this current system, but I will try to summarize as much feedback that I will get from beta testers in reflection. My partner has successfully got quite a few comic creators from many different communities and so I hope to get some varied feedback.

[igor-midak-cas]

CAS project – Preparation

To properly prepare for the CAS project, I have been at work making a test environment since there needs to be a space where all of the beta-testers will be able to test it out while it also needs to resemble how it will be when it comes to a live website. Local hosting would make it much cheaper, but I still have a lot of resources on a server I’ve been using to host a different website, so I will just use that.

In the meantime, my partner will be looking for all of the beta testers. As I said before, I prefer handling anything specific to programming and such, so I will be sticking to that while they will be handling the beta testers.

(screenshot of my partner communicating with the beta testers)

(screenshot of the files for the dev website that was created)

[igor-midak-cas]

CAS project – Investigation

From the initial research, it seems the best way to allow for the creation of Web Comics inside the WordPress environment is to create it as a plugin. Another thing that will have to be used is the WordPress blocks, which are coded in a completely different programming language than I’m used to, ReactJS. Most of WordPress is coded only in PHP with CSS and JS, and that’s why I only know these. My partner also doesn’t know it, so it will create complications.

We will also need some beta-testers since these functions will be quite major, and we need some people who have actual comics to test our functions and give their opinions. I’m a lot worse at gathering people for testing and organizing them, so I handed that part to my partner mostly while I will mostly be focusing on the coding portion.

(screenshot of the documentation of blocks that I’m trying to learn from so I can create custom blocks)

[igor-midak-cas]

Creativity – 29.12

It’s been recently getting close to Christmas and like last year, I signed up for secret Santa. This time, I’ve created a review of someone’s story. It has only two chapters so the review was short in general, but they have really good prose, it’s quite astonishing especially as it’s the person’s first-ever story. They must be a native English speaker as I cannot see any other possible conclusion.

I hope to use this example of really good prose in my own writing in the future and become a better writer with descriptions and what not.

[igor-midak-cas]

Creativity – 15.12

I’ve signed up for another corpse recently and so I wrote for it again. It was a bit difficult for me to write this, but I’ve managed to do it. The theme this time was a spooky mansion. I didn’t have much to work with, but I decided to make the characters try to run away from a red ghost. I didn’t come up with a lot of details for the ghost, but I don’t think they are needed.

I’ve learned to further expand my adaptability skills in writing so I am able to create better stories of my own in the future.

[igor-midak-cas]

Activity – 29.12

Today, the Agrykola seems to have been closed again. We don’t know why, but we suspect it’s just because Christmas is coming and no one is working there for the time being to open it for us. So instead, we went to the same spot as last time to do more of the stretching exercises as it didn’t really matter where we did those (though, not having a ledge to grab on did limit some of the ones we could do).

Despite the hurdles, we’ve managed to do more exercising and stretching to improve my strength, so I’m able to achieve my long-term goals.

[igor-midak-cas]

Activity – 15.12

Today, the Agrykola seems to have reopened so it’s time to start doing more exercising. We’ve decided with the trainer that there was practically no need to do more time trials during the rest of this year so, we will be instead focusing on improving my muscle strength. This is done with the training focusing more on stretching than anything else, which I quite dislike, but I know it has to be done to achieve my long-term goals.

Today, I’ve learned that I need to focus on activities that are not so pleasant so I’m able to get better at running and achieve faster times.