Author Archives: Breon Perry

The Final Step

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What a rollercoaster of a class. I went from being completely misunderstood from the first day, to at least being able to make some sense of the things I was coding. Web Development introduced me to a world of knowledge that I didn’t even knew existed. I was learning things I never expected to learn, in a much different capacity than anything I’ve ever experienced. The idea of developing a website that would highlight my self seemed like something that would have impossible to achieve. However, with a bit of help as well as figuring things on my own no matter the circumstance helped me to produce something I am proud of.

While I have now caught the bit of a bug that is coding, I could see myself being interested in exploring python. It is interesting to uncover different types of coding measures that could be used for any number of things. I think the best part about this class was to understand the practical meaning of the code we would be using in any given event. To understand what I was coding made a significant improvement on my ability to understand what it was I was typing in Sublime.

I appreciate this class for challenging me and for the knowledge I have gained from this class. A lot of credit goes to my professor and his manner of teaching the class. I hope I can take the things I’ve learned from this class and hopefully use it for something in my benefit for the near future. To be able to have some experience with coding in this class will gratefully benefit me when it comes to speaking about or even working with similar technology in the near future. I hope to continue my learning of this skill and perfect it in a way that it may benefit or advance my legal career. Thank you.

Reduced Speed Lane

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At this point during my process I was starting to feel a little nervous. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to finish this project the exact way I had envisioned it in my head. Reading through other people’s analysis post, I was not sure that this was going to be even worthy of turning in. So I went back to the drawing board and tuned into Codecademy. The small refreshers help to inspire me to get back into a believing in what I could do. So I started with, what would I want someone to see about me from this website.

The first thing I went to add was my resume. What other way does everyone get a full scope of the work I’ve done and also a sort of view of what I wanted to do with my career path. So I went to see how to embed a resume in my website. The only problem with that though, a resume is always changing and so how annoying would it be to consistently have to replace the code in my website every time that my resume changed. So I express this problem to my class mate, Jess, and she mentioned how she embedded her google docs link for her resume in her website. Instantly I was inspired, so with a little bit of her aide, she was able to teach me how to put my google doc resume into the website. Voila! A problem was solved and there was some progress.

The next thing I found for people to see the person I was, was to see who I was on social media. There is no more important tool in the world than social media. With this thought process I then decided to add my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. I’m not active on Facebook or Twitter, but I would be an obvious liar if I claimed not to have one.

I was still looking for one last modification, and what came with that was a newsletter. I enjoy writing so why not have someone get my thoughts on a bi-weekly basis?

We’ll see how it turns out…

End of the Cycle

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Well, here we are, at the apex of this class. I can say 100% that I had no idea what I was getting to when I signed up for this class. This course has truly been an experience, to say the least. I thought by the end of this class I would be able to go talk to all my computer engineer friends and brag about how I learned all they knew in four years in 4 months. Today, I stand here a humble man and can I say I have the utmost respect for those guys.

Coding is a beautiful art, and like with any art, it takes a bit of talent, but there are ways in coding to become great without the talent. Yet, I think some of my classmates had a knack for it. They found ways to work through problems they had an come out on the other end. I even found myself in similar precarious situations that I was able to get through with a few Google searches.

I am proud of the fact that I did build a website for myself. I came into the class believing that it was going to be easy for me to whip up a website whenever I needed one. Yet I came to find out in the middle of the semester that it possibly might not happen for me. I also know I was fairly inconsistent with my performance in the class. In the beginning I was doing very well with learning and then it came to applying and it became a bit harder, however still a bit fun.

Most importantly, thank you Professor Linch for being patient with us throughout the class, even though you were going through things that I’m sure are very elementary to you, you still made it interesting while being very helpful. So for that, thank you!

Getting Back in Order

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After what was a tumultuous couple of weeks for me, personally and academically, I am starting to feel like I’m getting back into a productive groove. With scheduling and organizing it feels good to feel at least somewhat on top of my work.

So I’ve truly begun the process of starting to find modifications that I would be interested in applying to my final project. The contact form example that we worked on was very interesting me, although it may seem like a basic part of an e-portfolio, it helped narrow the scope to things that I deemed to be practical. I’m thinking maybe leaving a comments box on the page could be a plausible idea. Hopefully I can come up with a few more ideas to solidify my modifications and then from there I can put them and motion and get my web portfolio up and running.

The readings this week were informative. I was confused watching the API video, but the article helped to break down the term piece by piece. This is a modification I could see wanting to put on my website. The possibility of being able to schedule an interview or something else through the website could prove to be useful.

Coming up with a Plan

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Another late post, apologies. This week I remember reflecting on the PHP assignment. It was difficult to come back and try to remember what I had learned and make it effective. Thankfully Google is my friend, as well as Professor Linch. So I used a bit of the code from W3 Schools to finish this assignment. It was beneficial to say the least. I did have trouble trying to move my code into GitHub, as usual, but after figuring that out it became a little bit more clear what I needed to do.

As I was doing this assignment, it became clear how much more I need to plan for the final project. As mentioned in a previous post, I had seen some modifications I had seen that were of interests for me. Yet, I am afraid of the difficulty of some the modifications and if I have not only the skill, but perseverance to go trial after trial to make sure its correct. This class has been a process for me. It started off easy-ish, but now I feel the full force of what is coding. At least what I think is the full force.

I look forward to putting these past two off weeks behind me, and making something I can be proud of.

Moving Forward

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This week was a tough one for me seeing how I even missed this analysis post. It was interesting to start to see all the coding languages come together. PHP was a bit difficult, but it wasn’t the worst.

I’d like to think that I have a good ideas for my portfolio. I’ve seen other people’s portfolios through WordPress and I think that I could make something similar that I would be proud of. It would take a great deal of effort, but I think I can put the effort in.

It would feel a bit self-liberating if I was able to make a functional website that portrayed all my thoughts and ideas. I’m looking forward to finding other modifications that will stand out on my portfolio. At this point though, I do feel a little lacking in my skills, but I’m still confident I can make something work.

It is nice to know that I will be versed in a different aspect. I am so far, happy with the progress I’ve made as a “coder” yet, I know I have more to go. I just hope that I won’t disappoint myself with my final project. More to learn, but still satisfied.

 

Final Pitch

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What/Why: After really spending the effort to come up with something clever or different,  I figured that it was in my best interest to develop a personal portfolio with my new skills. It is unoriginal (suggested, actually, I believe), but it is an opportunity to put all the hard work I’ve done in my undergraduate career into one place. I have made portfolios before, but this one will be the one I use moving forward that will have all the cool gadgets. I plan to include my resume, a generic cover letter, and example of my work ranging from academic papers to news articles and even a little bit of photography I do on the side. I also plan on linking my social media and contact information on the site. The plan is for this to show my best work as well as show off the ability to create a functioning portfolio on my own. Just in an effort to show my versatility in all facets of content media, and even those things that happen behind the scene.

Who: This will be for future employers, as well as friends and family who are curious to see what it is I am up to these days. Those who may see me on LinkedIn or other various websites can go to this page to see if I fit their criteria for an employee.

 

 

Midterm Szn

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This week was dedicated to finishing our midterm assignment, which turned out to be a bit of week off. Coming off of last week, where most of my classmates and I were confused, it was nice to research on something a little different. For me, I was able to focus on a project that combined my love of law, and the very intriguing things I am learning in this class. It was quite enjoyable to see these things mix. Along with seeing this, it sparked my interest to see if I could find different law schools that had similar design teams in their schools. It was one of the best aspects that came from the project that has opened my eyes to more things available. This school year has started to pick up and I am already feeling the pressure. While this class is a bit difficult, it is a change of pace compared to my other classes. While it has to deal with aspects of journalism, that is not its complete focus. It is an opportunity to engage in something new — almost foreign — and it helps end my weeks. The challenge is also something to look forward too, since I am not hearing the same jargon like in the rest of my classes. Having to find my own solutions to issues rather than just explaining it or convincing someone of an argument is something I enjoy about the class. The middle of the semester is almost here, time to buckle down and finish the semester off strong.

The Legal Design Team and Their Endeavors

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My main academic interest throughout undergrad has been in law and the legal system. A few weeks ago after brief research, I came across a group called “The Legal Design Team.” They are an interdisciplinary team based at Stanford Law School and working at the intersection of human-centered design, technology and law to build a new generation of legal products and services. They have a track record of developing a few apps designed to help navigate different aspects of the law — from what to do with the deed of your house after a natural disaster to communicating with legal professionals for advice.

The Court Messaging System app has been the most effective. The initiative is designed to improve the number of people who actually appear for their scheduled court dates. The Legal Design Team believe that what is arguably the most widespread form of communication, SMS messaging, tied along with web interfaces used my court employees, can be combined to produce the most effective way to get individuals to attend their court dates. They have already established this system in various judicial districts to help improve attendance rates. It’s an interesting topic to see the connection between a back-end interface and a front-end interface. I plan on doing a small profile of the developers who’ve worked on the project, but mainly discussing what elements they used to create this website to aide these judicial districts.

Two of the key developers from the Legal Design who worked on this project are Briane Cornish and Margaret Hagan. Cornish,  who has facilitated and participated in legal tech and design workshops, was born in San Jose, Calif. and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. She received her B.A. in English Literature and a Certificate in Ethics, Law and Society from Tufts University and her J.D. from Stanford Law School. Hagan is a lecturer at Stanford and a fellow at Stanford Law’s center on the Legal Profession, working to bring law and design together. Margaret holds a J.D. from Stanford Law, as well as an A.B. from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from Central European University in Budapest, and a Ph.D. from Queen’s University Belfast in International Politics.

The problem the app attempts to address is the alarming rates people with court appointments didn’t show up. The Court Messaging System is designed for two specific users: the court employee and the individual they are trying to reach. The designers first staged a specific scenario to gauge whether or not this tool would be effective. They first asked those who could benefit from the system what did they not like in the previous way courts communicated with people and was there anything they liked. The most important part for the creators was to make the system more efficient and in sync with the already-available technology. This was all in an effort to see if the scenario staged is could potentially be a real scenario. They then developed a system map, which functioned as a draft to show the operations of the would-be system. The idea was to decide which kind of interface would best be suited for civilians and the court employees based on the scenario they created, but this was not the final version of the system. It was a prototype they could show to would-be users of the system and receive feedback.

The main coding at hand was an effort to make the back-end interface, which was being used by the court employee, able to: provide for data entry, give confirmation emails of sent and received items, and customize user information and preferences. In order to develop a back-end interface that can be used with other front-end interfaces, such as mobile phones, coding languages such as AngularJS, jQuery and Bootstrap CSS were used.

The designing of an SMS system that allows for an automatic response and release of information to litigants is a key advancement of the legal future. It makes for a more efficient and effective form of communication that hasn’t since been seen in the legal system. The reminders and calendar events sent straight to an individual’s phone are key. The main goal of the designers was to combine their love for web design along with the legal system and provide a cost-effective solution to an issue facing many legal districts. Using these systems and allowing for continued customization and improvements, the Court Messaging system has already proven its worth. By addressing what were once alarming rates of missed court appointments, this project has an opportunity to be seen as one of the key advancements of the legal system.

Tough Week at the Office

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This week was not fun. Coming off of last week, which was the beginning of the JavaScript learning, I was anxious to be able to add a new kind of code to my work. The Codecademy assignments, at first didn’t feel to difficult but definitely started to pick up compared to html and css. However, the main difference when it comes to all 3 coding languages we’ve learned, was JavaScript was significantly more difficult to apply than the other two. I had little to no difficulties applying the Codecademy lessons to the assignments we had in the beginning.

With this gallery though, there felt like there was no end in sight. I sat down on Monday and figured out out my html that was already started in class, add the css aspects of the code and after about 45 minutes in my confident was pretty high. I thought to myself “hey look at me, coding, nice.” Little did I know this confidence and enthusiasm would soon fade.

I first took a look at what we had done in class and tried to use that as a base to move forward. The problem being that I really had no idea where I was trying to go. I got the gist of the assignment, hide some photos, press a button, the photo shows up with a new caption, going back and forth back and forth. The buttons weren’t too hard and neither was adding the images. It’s when it came to hiding the photos and having the captions show up I had difficulties. I tried to go on YouTube and watch videos that would show me how to get where I wanted to be. I, without any hyperbole, watched different Youtube videos for 2 hours on Monday night looking for guidance. I even texted 2 different classmates to see if they had any idea. What was funny was when they told me they were going to text me for help. That’s when I figured this may not come out the way I wanted. All in all, it was a good to experience the struggle for now I must guide myself until it all comes together.