Forem: MozzarellaMonster

Finished the CSS course!

MozzarellaMonster — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 07:57:30 +0000

I just finished the Learn CSS course on Codecademy and have earned the certificate of completion. I have to say, I'm excited to try my hand at designing my own website, which would serve as a portfolio for my completed projects.

If there are any resources for CSS and HTML tips and tricks when designing a website from scratch or resources for those looking to make a website to serve as a portfolio, don't hesitate to post them! I would love any extra assistance I can get.

This is honestly so fun, I can't wait to learn more!

Finished the Learn HTML course!

MozzarellaMonster — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:36:23 +0000

Recently completed the Learn HTML course on Codecademy! Excited to move on to Learn CSS and to try my hand at designing my own website!

CPU Simulation Project

MozzarellaMonster — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 06:55:42 +0000

Hi! I have been working my way through the Computer Science course on Codecademy's website, and have just finished the portion about Computer Architecture. To end this portion, I had to complete a portfolio project that simulates the functions of a CPU, so I wrote a program that simulates the work of a Control Unit, registers, and ALU.

I was free to decide exactly how I was to complete my project, with lots of room for interpretation. Since I was fascinated with the part of the lesson that explained how instructions are read from a sequence of binary characters, I decided to simulate that.

My program was written to read the instructions in the form of a 32-bit string based loosely on the actual MIPS R-type. I wrote three classes - Binary Reader, Registers, and ALU, each of which are meant to act as the hardware responsible for the inner functioning of a computer - the Control Unit and binary reader, the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), and the registers used to store data.

The Binary Reader class was in charge of reading the instruction to determine what data was to be worked on, what kind of processing was to take place, and would later output the results to the terminal. The ALU class was to provide the correct arithmetic functions such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The Registers class was to provide a place to store several pieces of data. It held two different functions for storing data, a load function, and was built on a list data structure.

I ran into several different problems while writing this program, including writing checks to test if the instructions sent were actually 32-bit binary strings, retrieving data from an 'address' (in this case, the index of the list containing the data), correctly converting the data from decimal to binary, and keeping track of the oldest data in the registers. At one point, I had even introduced a logic error by directly converting a binary substring into an integer for calculation when I was supposed to have used it as an address!

All in all, this was a very fun project that I had a blast working on, and I learned a lot in the process, both in terms of Python code that helped with the binary conversion and how computer architecture actually functions. I actually ended up writing another small program to generate randomized binary instructions to help with debugging, which was also fun to work on.

Testing out my program:

Feel free to look over my code and try it out for yourself. Feedback is very appreciated!

Github: https://github.com/MozzarellaMonster/Binary-Reader

Horror movie recommendation software

MozzarellaMonster — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 07:59:14 +0000

So, I've been working my way through Codecademy's Computer Science course and have just finished the portion about data structures and algorithms. To end this portion, I must complete a portfolio project using what I've learned to create a recommendation software.

The objectives of this project were:

Store data in a data structure
Use an algorithm to sort or search for data within a data structure
Use Git version control
Use the command line and file navigation
Write a technical blog post on the project

For this project, I decided to go with something I love: horror! I decided I would write a program that would recommend a horror movie based on tags chosen by the user.

I decided to use a MaxHeap data structure and heapsort algorithm to keep track of movies that satisfy the user's chosen tags. The movie data was stored in a dictionary with the movie name as the key and the corresponding tags in a list stored as the value. All the tags the user could choose from were also stored as strings in a list. I decided to use an altered implementation of the MaxHeap data structure and heapsort algorithm supplied by Codecademy to better suit the program's needs.

After using a while loop to get the user-supplied tags, I went and linked all the movies that satisfy those tags in a dictionary object, making sure to only include those movies that satisfy multiple user-selected tags.

I then changed that dictionary to a list of tuples with the name of the movie as the first index and the number of tags the movie satisfies as the second. After sorting through the list with a heapsort algorithm, I then returned the top three movies that satisfy the most tags to the user.

One problem I ran into was altering the heapsort algorithm and the MaxHeap data structure to suit my needs. Especially since there were no errors detected by my IDE, I needed to go back through and debug only to find out it was a logic error!

All in all, this was a fun project to work on and I learned a lot! Especially when it came to list comprehensions, which I did not know could also be used with a dictionary. I also worked with the .join() string method more than I ever had before in order to properly display all the lists and dictionaries I was using.

Surprisingly, the most time-consuming feature of this project was the creation of the movie data because I had to decide what kinds of tags to use and what would be most relevant to the user.

Go ahead and give it a try and see if there is anything that I could improve upon! Feedback is very appreciated!

Github: https://github.com/MozzarellaMonster/Recommendation-Software

Replit: https://replit.com/@MozzarellaMonst/Horror-Movie-Recommendation-Software?v=1

My first Python project - A text adventure game!

MozzarellaMonster — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 10:26:50 +0000

This is my first big project made in Python - a text-based adventure game set in a mysterious house. This project is the result of a Codecademy assignment and as such, has to meet certain criteria like using multiple files, using Git version control, and getting input from the user.

I'm interested in furthering my Python and game development skills and welcome constructive criticism or tips. I also had a friend playtest it multiple times before I felt it was ready enough to post here, but if there are any bugs or issues, please let me know!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this short game!

Note: I'm a horror fan, so I included some death scenes in some rooms of the house. My friend noted that they are rather graphic, so just be aware of that.

Replit