Pull back the curtain

Computational Media is super cool to me for a couple reasons:

1. 1. Pulling back the curtain on programming and thinking like a computer.
      I have limited programming experience that mostly involves expletives and frustration. I see this class as the perfect opportunity to increase my code literacy and increase the intuition involved when trying to get the computer to  do what I say!

      
      (when the p5 shape wont move)

      I like what we have done so far in p5 because its a very WSYIWG approach to programming. Instead of having to print() every line and interpret it, you can visually see what changing a function or number is doing to your program. Yet I look forward to the challenge of this no longer being available, just now equipped with a new understand of how the computer works, and being able to navigate the internet for the answers I need more efficiently (i.e. how to google like a programmer.

1. Completing an understanding browser-web interaction.
   We have already started to observe the Javascript console available in our web browsers. In combination with my knowledge of HTML and CSS, I would like to finalize my basic knowledge of how to make (or modify!) a web page. I hope that I will be able to build the front end of a website that has all the features I want by the end of the course. For example, I would love to find a way to get around these annoying screens that tell me to disable ad block when I just want to read some clickbait!!
2. Making things automatic: data pulls, APIs, and all that jazz.
   Many of my current project ideas are based on ‘real-time’ information: the weather, the price of a stock, the score of yesterday’s baseball game. In order to bring these ideas for life, I need to develop a strong understanding of how to pull data from the internet and put it where I want it, in the style I want.
3. Making sweet animations and visuals.
   One of my ultimate goals at ITP is to experiment and discover marriages of sound and video. I look forward to seeing the ways I can visually ‘interpret’ both data and sound, and what can be done with the interpretations from there.

These 4 goals should be enough to keep me busy, wouldn’t you say? Are there any awesome projects or ideas you think I should know about? Let me know in the comments.