February 5-6

Thursday: 12:55-2:30
Friday: 12:25-2:30

     On Thursday, I continued my work on the app. I found a much simpler and more efficient way to code what we needed to have done that also tied up all of the loose ends we had left when trying to code before. I discovered this method by doing a lot of research on BeautifulSoup and all of its many functions. So, I turned what had been tens of lines of code into about 9 that did the same thing, only better. This only further proves the theory that thought and work in the preparation stages of a project can save exponential amounts of time and work when actually doing the project. So, now that we have figured out a way to scrape for this kind of data that we need, we can use the same process to scrape for some of the other necessary data. Not all of the data will be this simple to scrape, but I figured that it would work better if we learned by scraping the simple data, and then once we are more confident in how the scraping process works, we can start to tackle the more difficult items.
     Friday marked the February meeting of Byte Club, which was not any ordinary meeting. This week, we welcomed all of the new students who would be joining Byte Club in the new semester. These students are those who completed Computer Science Fundamentals 2 satisfactorily and have an interest in being involved in the club. So, we started the meeting and got all of the new students into existing teams so that they could make their own teams and projects in the coming years. We also made some decisions based on an upcoming fundraiser at the Aevidum lock-in. We were requested to set up a video game tournament similar to the one we hosted at the school fair at the beginning of the year. So, we decided that we would host a tournament, and that we would want to charge for the service. However, depending on how money for Aevidum will be made during the night, we will either charge a flat rate to the Aevidum, or will charge per-game or per-entrance to the tournament. I will get in touch with the adviser of Aevidum next week so that I can figure out their situation and come to an agreement on price etc.
     This week, I have seen some exciting strides happening in Byte Club and with the app development. Within Byte Club, the incoming members have a lot of energy and motivation to get started on projects and I think that they will help to push the existing members to work on their projects and make exciting things. Furthermore, we have an opportunity to get our name out once again, while making a bit of money for future use and maybe even scholarships, if we eventually get enough income. For the app, I was correct in saying that having another person to work with while in school would be great for development. My colleague and I push each other to do better and to get more done in the app, so we have done more this week than we have in the past few combined. If our progress continues, I think that we have a good chance of being able to test and maybe even finish the app before the year is over.