Connor Morley IB CAS Blog

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...