Fresh Start

I've been talking with my parents a lot lately about school and our ambitions as a whole to be successful and happy. I haven't had a chance to do that and just think about the future in the while because of the time put into this semester's courses, but it's a lucky feeling to have been able to since summer started. My boyfriend and I even walked for an hour and a half to Inner Harbor Baltimore - I love things like this. I DID come out with blisters between my toes (because someone wore flipflops for the trip ...), but I'd trade that any day for an amazing trip like that. It's only been a few days into summer but I feel like so much has happened already, and I'm constantly learning everyday about myself and natural language processing at my research lab.

These are all the tasks I completed yesterday:

Todo List
+ (check) learn about ssh/secure shell
+ (not yet!) complete 'Generate Newsworthy HIT'
   (check)     + get a more solid understanding of JavaScript/CSS/HTML
+ (check) correct escaped string in newsworthy.csv
+ (check) getting acquainted with GitHub
+ (check) start learing Perl

CSS/HTML
<!-- COMMENT --> (how to comment)

JavaScript
How to Show/Hide text
1. create a controlling link with <a href="javascript:function(id);">Click</a>
2. give elements an id <div id = ...
3. javascript function: getElementsByTagName("div")
4. use .style method to get style object of element if (item.style.display = 'block' ...
(I followed this tutorial: http://webdesign.about.com/od/dhtml/a/aa101507.htm)

Linux Commands
+ ln -s [path] (to access directories of another user with all the read/write permissions intact)
+ scp [file] username@domain.name:directory (to pull files from remote machine onto another)

SSH/Secure Shell
Secure Shell is a program developed by SSH Communications Security Ltd. that allow users to log into other computers over a network. They use public key crptyography to match a public key and a private key to allow users into the system (and might also prompt for a password). Through this, I can login to another computer through my laptop, store files there, move them to my own, and perform any other edits as I want.

Generate Newsworthy HIT
+ added paragraph that Chris wrote, fixed up little errors in value options
+ fixed the tables (much more quickly than before). The time I spent consolidating some CSS concepts (tables) really helped :)
+ changed document to JavaScript generated HIT template so that could be used to unescape string AND it's much, much neater

How to approach problems
+ Sometimes, it's a good idea to make a fresh start. Perhaps you've got a bunch of code that has a bug in it somewhere, but you just can't figure it out. Opt Pulling up an older version or starting from scratch if you feel like debugging is taking way too long. I frequently do this for bugs that are right in front of my nose but due to familiarity are overlooked.
+ Good idea to design your code beforehand if it has many things going on at once. I had to rewrite the Generate Newsworthy HIT, and I felt that I could have been more efficient if I had planned out what needed to be done beforehand. All in all, I did learn much more about CSS/HTML/HIT design in general, so the 1st draft created a template for me to write even better code
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These are the tasks Chris sat down and figured out with me today

Perl
+ $ (single, like an integer) metacharacter
+ @ (multiple, like an array) metacharacter
+ substr([string], [starting character], [length of substring])
+ open FILE "<$path" (reading a file)
+ <FILE> (read one line at a time of file)
  - (tutorial at http://www.perlfect.com/articles/perlfile.shtml)

Yay I've learned some perl and fixed the generate_newsworthy.pl code to be able to generate the HIT with the first sentence as well. So if the Wikipedia article is "Twitter", the variable lead_sentence# will have "Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets." This is the HIT currently:

(HIT template)

  

(example HIT)

Todo List
+ make worksheets since Theresa asked me to teach Molly and Amy about Mechanical Turk

(need to add more............)