On final project

It has been 8 weeks from the start of the semester. The start of CS3216. There has been a lot of events and stories. Most important, I think I really can do what I love here. Spending hours, days and nights setting up the database, coding and debugging. And on things that I want to build! It’s really exciting to be part of the journey, got new friends, been through two assignments, picked up new languages :-). I almost wished that every module can be as awesome as this one, before I realized what will happen to my school life when I am going to spend over 20 hours a week for each of 5 modules.

Ok let’s talk about our final project. What makes it so great that I want to join the team? What can it make a difference to me? Ok, we are going to build an interactive storyboard based on a cartoon. This is for kids, obviously :-). To my thought, this is like a mixed between a cartoon and a comic book. You (the kid) can actually control the cartoon’s speed, and can really interact with the content :-). Isn’t this what I want when I was a kid? To watch over and over again the scene that Superman beats the villain? Now by swiping on the iPad, and playing games that embedded right into the cartoon. So it’s like making a childhood dream comes true to me.

So after the meetings and discussions with Prof and 2359, what are we supposed to do is to build a framework for the making of the storyboard, make it easy for the editor to insert pictures/scripts or animations into it. It should be scalable, and easy to use enough that can handle multiple episodes content. Maybe in the future it can be a framework that a cartoon maker company will think of when they are about to build an interactive storyboard. From the tech side, we will use the Sparrow based on the raw code supplied by 2359 to complete the framework. Other than that, we are going to build a 3D game based on the cartoon (stay tuned, you will know what it’s about in the poster session) :-) From my side, I have to pick up Obj-C and Sparrow fast in order to start coding this weekend. Hope things go well to the end of the semester. Really excited now!

Assignment, teamwork and peer appraisal

Ok, so it’s been 3 weeks without writing down anything :P. I don’t have any excuses but the thing called other modules. That includes midterms and deadlines (assignment 2 too). So all are over, and here I am writing updates about what happed so far.

It’s been a painful yet fruitful week, the last week before assignment 2 deadline. After spending nights working at the back end and implementing functionalities (and get them done), I was quite excited about finishing our assignment. Finishing strong :P. However I was a little disappointed when the UI part cannot handle all the functionalities on time. We can only finish the basics. It’s also a big lesson for me about planning and managing work, to avoid the situation that I finish features before the desire deadline, and then go on implementing “cool” features with a hope that the UI part can handle it on time. Instead I should learn how to work in the UI part earlier, to help my UI teammates at that time. It’s suck to finish my part, and watching your teammates working desperately to meet the deadline but can’t help them because I am not familiar with the API. But it’s over now (the deadline I mean :D), and one very big lesson learned.

Besides that, it’s very irritating when you are shown a UI mockup, and you know you don’t like it, but don’t have any suggestions (because you can’t think of any!) and don't know what is best to say. I often say to the designer that it’s ok, thinking that it’s like refusing all their effort working on the UI. But I know it’s not the right way for the application development process, I know. Hmm.

On the peer appraisal, my main “bad” and “need to improve” point is too quiet, need to speak up more. That’s true I admit, and I will spend time improving my communication skills seriously. (There are more problems can be solved by good communications more than I thought). And my presentation skills as well, as I observe, there is a huge gap between me and my classmates about this. Another “need to improve” point that made me think a lot, is “Familiarize yourself with real start-ups and how they operate”. It’s true, I don’t know much about sales, management or marketing sides. But I always think that it’s more useful to spend time picking up a new programming language, or a design pattern, than reading about cash flow and business models. I do not oppose these, I know they are among the “must”s when building a company, but then, there is business guy in the company too. Nevertheless, I often think that I will learn these skills at one time, when I think I’m full of programming languages and technology, but it doesn’t happen yet, so … yeah, I will pick up them later :-)