Connor Morley IB CAS Blog

At this point, I'm pretty much ready for the holidays. School has been going well, and it's only the first day of December, but I really want to be on break already. Nevertheless, things have been going well. It's been a while since I've received any substantial activity, although that's because I have been really preoccupied with school and my interests are primarily sedentary, although I do intend on getting more activity like I had been doing earlier in my CAS journey. Most of my creativity at this point has been researching different computer architectures and things of the sort in order to see what project I should pursue next, but soon the ball should get rolling in terms of fully undergoing these projects. (Learning Outcome: #3)

Well, things have not been going exactly as planned in terms of the club. I have still been trying to ensure that the scheduling works out for everybody, but things are a little bit murky. Honestly, it seems like a lot of people's schedules change from week to week, which I guess isn't necessarily surprising considering that we're dealing with a group of teenagers. Nevertheless, the two meetings that we have had were pretty good, if chill. I have several pre-built decks (there are hundreds of cards available to create decks for each player to use against each other) for the game that we used. Honestly, this club has really been turning out to be 'hang out and play Magic: The Gathering during lunch club', but I guess I'm really not complaining. (Learning Outcome: #1, #2, #3, #4, #7)

This CAS project is something that I've only recently been involved in, and which has more of a purpose than just within CAS. Last month, I got an internship, along with some fellow students with whom I am collaborating, at Rice University, specifically with a professor who has much experience in the business world in Houston as well as beyond. I have been researching to help him build a curriculum for a course that he has been teaching, specifically about the developments within the relatively new world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and how they impact the world. Although I had initially intended for a more computer science-focused internship rather than something like this which is more economics-based, I have discovered that this is still extremely interesting and has applications in computer science as well. (Learning Outcome: #1, #2, #4, #6)

Since senior year has started back up, things have been pretty great. So great, that I have even decided to start my own club. This had happened even a couple of years ago, where I tried starting a computer club at school, but that plan never really followed-through.  However, this time I'm fairly confident that things will go great. Back in September there was a club fair at the school, where leaders of clubs could create poster boards and try to recruit new members. I created a poster board for a Magic: The Gathering club that I literally thought of starting that day. I picked the game up over the summer, and decided that it would be fun to bring it to the school, as, besides D&D club, I feel like there is a lack of practicing the great art of physical, tabletop gaming at school. In order to properly carry-out this club, I negotiated with potential members who signed the sign-up sheet so that I could find a schedule that didn't interfere with the schedules of the potentia

Lately I've been continuing to practice my guitar. I've been attempting to branch out and explore some more esoteric styles of playing that really contrast with the blues-based styles that are so typical in rock music and that I'm so used to. I've also walked my neighbor's dog, Pepper, twice over this past month when her owners weren't home, which was nice. I usually don't even walk my own dog (that's usually my mom), to be honest, but I will occasionally, and it was nice doing this as Pepper is really sweet and well-behaved (which really can't be said for my dog all of the time). Overall, a nice relaxing month besides school with some music and dogs. (Learning Outcome: #1, #7)

I've diverted my attention at the moment from my GUI program to other matters, particularly guitar. For pretty much my entire life, I've had many diverse interests, but have typically only focused on one or two at a time, often to an obsessive point. This continues to this day, where mostly these interests have shifted back and forth from programming to playing guitar. I wouldn't consider myself a superstar or anything, but I would say that I have pretty good rhythm ability and can play fairly basic blues-based solos. I typically either noodle-around with blues solos and pentatonic scales, or try to learn and play the music that deeply interests me, primarily the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. There hasn't been a lot super specific going on , but this is generally what I've been focusing on before school starts back up again later in the month. (Learning Outcome: #1)

This past month I've been continuing to program my D&D monster generation program. It is still relatively complex, and all of the randomization and generation I still don't fully have the hang of yet. In fact, since the program is actually in a GUI (graphical-user-interface) window and not in some black command line with green text like some hacker's computer from a 1980s movie, it took a while learning the ropes of even creating the GUI in the first place, and there were some frustrating setbacks, as with any piece of coding work (this primarily took the form of . Admittedly, that is where most of the progress has been made. However, I'm pretty proud of the work I've put in thus far, and I really like some of the art that I've incorporated, including some of my favorite art of the beholder (a monster in the game) that I've seen (below). (Learning Outcome: #1, #2) Some nice 1990s D&D monster art utilized in my program

Now that school has been out for the summer for around a week or so, I've been quite busy catching-up on Netflix, YouTube, and video games...despite these distractions, I've also focused some of my attention on coding. I've been trying to improve my ability with Java and object-oriented programming in general, specifically building an application that randomly generates monsters that Dungeon Masters could use in their campaigns. I don't really have a ton of experience with random generation and randomly-accessed variables, so hopefully this will be a learning experience that will also result in a pretty cool program. (Learning Outcome #1, #2)

I would say that the ISAS Festival was a rousing success. Now, there, like with any event, there are definitely things that I would improve. Although I believe that I worked hard in preparation for the event, I nevertheless believe that I possibly could have prepared even more for the event. Although I did well, there were still some minor mistakes I made in my performances that I could have probably corrected. I'm still satisfied with myself, still, and I also think the point of the festival was mostly the overall experience itself: seeing all the young teen artists and their work, going to different master classes for different artistic disciplines (you're free to go to any of them, regardless of what arts or performances you're signed-up for). Additionally, I got a lot of activity in due to the large distances of walking required. The St. Stephen's campus is enormous, probably rivaling some college campuses in its size, and the vast distances covered each day were

The ISAS Festival is upcoming within the next week, which I guess is overshadowed somewhat by me parting ways with Blake; I've just decided that his style of instruction and working out wasn't for me I don't exactly know how I'm going to perform my activity going forward, but I'll find a way. Anyway, in regards to ISAS, I've been quite busy revising and determining what songs/passages to play, and how to play them and interpret them to properly suit my playing ability. To be honest, I'm a little nervous. I've performed in front of people before, but these performances have been few and far between. Plus, they've been in front of adults mostly, whereas at the festival it will be in front of almost exclusively fellow peers and teens from various parts of the country, not just Texas. Nevertheless, I believe that these nerves will possibly influence me to play and perform even better. (Learning Outcome #1, #2, #3, #5)

Over the past week I have been preparing for the upcoming ISAS Arts Festival at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas. I am quite excited for the event as I have been looking forward to it ever since it was announced that we would be going again in the fall. The event is comprised of numerous schools that are part of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS), which is comprised of private or independent schools from Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. For the event, each participating student is signed-up for multiple categories of their choosing. For this event, I am signed up for only two: solo guitar instrumental and coffeehouse. Solo guitar instrumental involves me playing guitar (vocal accompaniment using my own voice optional), whereas coffeehouse is really what it sounds like: an informal acoustic (occasionally electric, but usually not) performance involving some performer(s) and an audience.  Overall, I've been re

I have been continuing to attend D&D Club at school. I've also been continuing to attend Film Club whenever it occurs, although there really isn't a tight schedule to pull it all together; it is supposed to happen every Tuesday, although at this point I guess it's just whenever Trevor feels like it, which I honestly can't blame him for as I'm often pretty tired after school as well. I plan on going into computer science, which to set myself apart from the general crowd that will just go and study what they want in college, likely without much afterthought or passion, I want to begin doing coding projects again. For now, though, I feel that D&D, Film Club, and working out with Blake in addition to school is more than enough with everything else I have going on in terms of homework and school commitments. (Learning Outcome #5)

Much of this past month was taken up by the 3D Magnetic Sculptures J-Term with Mike, and due to the exhaustion that followed most school days, I have been a little lighter on CAS work than usual. Nevertheless, the month has not been entirely devoid of it. I have been continuing to attend D&D Club and have had a lot of fun with my friends in that regard. Also, I have been continued to go to the gym and get personal training from Blake. I understand that it is good for your body (and mind for that matter), and I intend on continuing, but I sometimes wish that there was some sort of physical exercise that I truly enjoyed. Talking to him while working out is okay, but I don't know if the exhaustion that I feel by the end is entirely worth something that I am not myself entirely invested in. I'll see where it goes from here, but for now I'm sticking with it. My goal is to keep sticking with it and improving my mental and physical fitness through exercise, but we'll see