Connor Morley IB CAS Blog

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 ...