About Gerson Lehrman Group

      On June 5, Mrs. Ramirez will lead the web design senior class to a office tour at Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG). According to Wikipedia, GLG "is an American expert network that operates a membership-based platform that provides independent ad-hoc consulting services to business professionals around the world." It's founded in 1998. Its headquarter is in NYC with is where we will be visiting. They have aprox. 1500 employees. And their motto is "GLG is transforming the way the world's top professionals share expertise and learn."

      Their exact location is:
375 Park Ave, New York, NY 10152 at Seagram Building

      "GLG is a technology-enabled learning platform that connects top professionals with experts." Companies can use GLG to "help solve complex strategic and operational challenges, test hypotheses, gain market feedback, and seek mentorship, all within our rigorous compliance framework". So according to these statements, I'm guessing that they help companies understand more about their product so they know how to improve it or advertise it better to make better decisions and better sell their products.

      The company has many jobs ranging from fields such as Business Development ("Build relationships with top professionals at leading companies, investment firms, and consultancies."), Research/Client Support ("Connect clients to top experts across industries and all over the world."), Engineering ("Be part of our tech team, build exciting new products and tools used across the organization."), Strategy ("Join a team of former consultants driving solutions to complex business challenges."), Operations ("Join our Finance, Human Resources, Legal, or Public Affairs teams to be part of our day-to-day operations."), and Events ("Conceive, organize, and execute clients events around the world.")

      Some questions I want to is:

- What is a day in your life like?

- What kind of environment do you work in?

- What types of qualities of character is helpful in this field?

- What is the average income?

- Does this business have a high upwards mobility?

 After the trip...

The trip was very interesting. The office space is very public and pretty. It looks like one of those Tech. companies. The thing that stuck with me the most was the speech given by the CEO of GLG. He said that curiosity is the important thing to have at work, that it is the one thing he look for in most people that he interview. He like those who ask a lot of questions because it shows that they are interested and is willing to learn. We then also got to network with the other employee and listen to them about their stories. It was very interesting...

WBL Workshop #6: Be Money-wise

      This workshop held on May 4, 2017 with the inspiring, amazing, knowledgable guest speaker, Mr. Franck, who is also my economics teacher. The topic is "Be Money-wise", which, of course related with money because that' Mr. Franck's expertise. 

      He first discussed the importance of time and our perception of time which changes as we grow older. He said that time is finite, it waits for no one. We all have an expiration date. Time has a cost, therefore we need to learn to budget our time. He told us to read more. Become a learner instead of the one who looks only to be entertained. "Risk comes from not knowing." 

      After reviewing the ideas of assets and liabilities, he talked about habits. "Humans are creatures of habits" he said. I agree. Successful people understand their habits and try to create positive ones. They are in control of their habits, therefore they can improve their habits to improve themselves. "You can't solve problems with the same thinking and habit that created them". "Chains of bad habits are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken."

      He told us to be an owner rather than a customer. "You are in control of your money until you give it away, so take control of your finance". Surround yourself with others who think like you, or those who you want to become as you are a combination of your 5 closest friends, he said.

      He then talked about debt, the enemy of wealth. He advised us to avoid credit cards and student loans. He told us to be an avid saver and be frugal.

      We must create goals for ourselves. But to create these goals, we must know who we are, our strengths and weakness. Write out long term goals then work backwards in small increment to achieve the that goal. Write down each step and revisit your goals daily. By doing so, we pay closer attention to the goal and check up on our selves on where we are at. 

      Guard your reputation. It's one of the most important assets that you have. Pay attention to those you hang out and compare them to who you want to be in the future. Guard your privacy. Don't share everything about you online. It's should be a privilege to know you as a person, not something anyone can just check online.

2017 Spring Project: NYC Tourist Attractions

      This is definitely the biggest project I’ve ever worked on. For project 4, we were ordered to create a website with 20 pages. It can be about presidents, art, or tourist attractions in New York City. I chose the third option for my passion for exploration, going to new place, and my love for New York City. I first made a list of what each of the 20 pages will be. Then I began to work on drawing an outline or a design on paper of each of the pages. For the colors, I simply use coolors.co as this website always give me the best complementary colors that works perfectly in my website. 

      Like all of my projects, I spent most of the time creating the home page. It is where I create my header, my footer, and other special designs that I will be using repeatedly throughout my whole website. Many things that I created in this website are things that I did not knew how to do prior to the making of this website. It took a large amount time to research on all these things such as how to make the images, while in proportion all fit into the table cells that I’ve created. I also had to learn how to have all different kinds of overlay effects when the images are hovered upon, all using CSS

      The design of this website is very similar to my previous design for the Identity Website Project. It’ almost like an improved version of that project. I took a great step with that project, achieving new height, learning how to create an amazing looking header with a fixed image background and a navigation bar under it. I also incorporated some JavaScripts in there. On this project, I kept that header of which I love. But I wanted to create something new, something even better. 

      After I’ve completed my drafting of the website on paper. I knew exactly what I wanted and how I wanted my website to look like. I just needed to learn how to achieve them. And now days, with the internet, what are things you can’t find? But it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was very time consuming. It was the part where I spent most of the time on. Just researching and trying again and again until it finally works. That’s my learning process for almost any projects I guess. 

      In this project, I’ve learn to make images of various sizes to fit into table cells of the same size without creating a disproportion of the figures (I hate it when people have images of disproportions). Creating beautiful overlays on images that links to other pages. I also learn to embed Google maps right into the website. It’s probably the easiest thing I’ve learned through the creation of this project. Simple take the code Google give you and put it into the website. It’s a very useful feature, thanks to Google. Then I’ve also created a footer that is an huge improvement compared to the one from Project Identity, with so many links and everything.

      I think I did an amazing job at this website. I’ve achieved all the things I wanted in the website. The website looks fantastic to me and everything functions perfectly. It’s the website I’ve worked on for the longest, and the website I’ve put the most efforts into. I’ve learned a lot from this project too, which is one of the main purpose of creating this website.

Project 3: Identity

      After having my websites so similar for so long, I decided to change it this time. It was good, but I want to make something better. I also want to improve my creativity and productivity since I've always been copying and pasting the theme to all my web pages. I even forgot how to code some of the basic HTMLs. But this time, I am doing everything from scratch! I also learned to use some jQuery recently, so I wanted to incorporate some of that to improve the website as well. This is a website about identity. When I thought about identity, I could not think of anything besides myself. Therefore, I've came to a conclusion that, I am my own identity, not my age, looks, grades, status in society because all of these things change over time. So I have created the whole website around this idea. At the same time, I was brainstorming for this website, I was reading a book called Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. A book about the history of philosophy. I was just so on to the Chapter about Hume during this time. And it had two amazing quotes that really supported my idea of what identity is. So I have included these two quotes into my website, which is in the My Thoughts page.

      So the first thing I did before anything was to design a logo. I sketched a few in a paper. I chose the one I wanted to use and tried to digitalize it using Photoshop CS6 which I've not used so frequently lately. But before I can draw out the logo on Photoshop, I had to choose a theme color for my website that the logo will also have. I really didn't want to spend too much time choosing colors, so I went Googled "color schemes" and found websites that randomly creates complementary colors for you, which is amazing. I used this website call Coolors.co and the loved the first randomized color schemes and decided to use it. I used these colors to create a logo. It's a huge block with a question mark created by blocks each with a letter inside, that spells out "identity" together. I really liked it, but I just wish I chose a different font because it doesn't fully match my website. Then it was the biggest step of this project for me, and that is the design of the web pages, more specifically where should I place my logo and navigation bar. I spent almost 80% of the time of this project working on just on the navigation bar. At first, I wanted it to be all the way on the top with the logo within the navigation, but I kept messing it up, and it wasn't coming out in the way I wanted. I usually get bored to hell in my English class, because the teacher always just never stop talking of not so important things...so I decided to do something actually useful with my time and I started to draw layouts of my website on a piece of paper. It actually turned out quite well. I created a few very nice designs of how the header, footer, and navigation bar would look like and where the placement should be. I also created layouts of how each page will look like. Then I just chose the best one from there.

      I wanted to have a header with a fixed image background and a navigation bar on the bottom of the header that will take more than half the page. I want to make my website very visual, so I chose some of the amazing images that I had to put into the website after editing it to make a blue-ish color to fit the theme of this website. It took so long for my to finally have the header exactly the way I wanted, I had to mess around with the relative, absolute, and fixed position for so long. I was also struggling to make a nice and simple footer that gets the job down, but I simply created a new one to fix the issues I had. 

      After I finally I got the header and the footer done, I just finished the homepage with an introduction, and those circle image links that I used on the previous project, on the PRO: Pet Supplies Store website, because I really liked it. It sort of originated from my first ever Digital Design project, the website about my "Top 3 Favorite Movies," which is my all-time proudest project in this web design academy, because I create something new, unique, it looks so good, I was so ahead of everyone to have a navigation bar with hovering buttons and it was only my first project... I guess this will be a legacy of mine after I leave...(sad). But this website about Identity is also one of my proudest and best projects that I've ever created. It's been a long time since I've put so much effort into a lab or a project, to be honest. And I really like the way it came out. Also, at the most of the times, I focus solely on the design aspects of the websites that I create. But this time, I not only spend so much time and effort in the design, I actually focused a lot on the content, the things I was writing about too, so I highly suggest everyone to read all of the things I wrote on my website. I then added a fade in effect to the website using jQuery. I made it that the header will show then few elements will also fade in after each other. I also learned a new jQuery method that allowed me to fade in the elements only when the user in scrolling down to the website. So everything will look like it's fading in which I did to all the web pages. And on the "My Identity" page and the "Nature vs. Nurture" page, I made the content to fade in only after the user clicks on the website. Hoping to make my website different and interactive.

Also, each of the web pages is a bit different in terms of their structure, but my favorite is absolutely the "My Thoughts" page. It not only looks the best than the other two. It just has so much content to it. Almost everything I wanted to talk about the most is written in there, that is also why it is so long...but the long paragraphs actually makes the website look more fuller and better. 

It was a lot of work but it was really fun. I just hated when a certain student just come by every now and then and say "why are you working so hard" in a way trying to mock me.

Wow, what a such long blog. I've never written so much on a blog, but this is such a huge project for me that there are just so much to talk and write about. If you have read this far, thank you so much! It really means a lot to me. But I don't think anyone would read through all of these anyways...(sad)

Link to this Identity website:
http://techteach.us/WCP2016/HJiahua/Projects/project3/PJ3_mt.html

Lab 14: JQuery Stop()

      After we do a certain lab in class, we would always have a follow up lab that adds to the previous lab. And this is one of those labs for Lab 13: JQuery Animation. This time, instead of creating animations, we are stopping these animations, using the JQuery Stop() Method. This JQuery is so easy to use...that's what I thought when I didn't struggle at first. All we have to do is to copy and paste the previous lab into a separate document, and name it lab 14, then add the stop method to it. We need to demonstrate the normal stop, which stops only the current animation that is playing, another that freezes the animation at the point that it is in, and one the stops the animation that goes to the end of the animation. 

      The first one was easy, just one function with the stop method added to the box. But I've noticed that it's hardly noticeble because I have so many short animations put into one, stoping one of the short animations doesn't making much of a different, so I moved on to the other two stop methods. I was so stupid that I was literally putting the words "stopAll" and "goToEnd" into the stop() method because I not only forgot that they are suppose to be Boolean values, I didn't read the webpage on w3schools carefully. I was wondering what was wrong. But I realized how stupid I was when I saw a classmate's lab... I really don't know what else to say. There isn't much to say about this project. I basically just added three buttons with 3 extra stop functions to the previous webpage.

Lab 13: JQuery Animation

      This is lab 13 of the year. Another JQuery lab. But this time is special. It is animating. We can literally use these codes to make animations within a website without using any video editing tools. How cool is that? But that will take so so many codes to achieve, though it is achievable. At first, we were shown how to this JQuery .animation() method would work. We can move an object around, change it's color, opacity, position, turn it into different all shapes and and sizes, and even make it crazy. We are basically manipulating the CSS with JQuery. And that was the goal of this lab: to demostrast each of these animations with 4-5 boxes created by a <div> with CSS.

       I didn't want to create so many boxes, so I just made one and created all the animations to animate that one orange box that I've created. For some reason, I don't have much to write or say today. Everything is so short. Well, hope I have more to say while I am writing the blog for the Identity website, which I put so much effort in. So I created 5 button linked to 5 different functions with JQuery that demosrate each of these five animations. There is move, change opacity, change into a circle, change size, and make it crazy, which is a combination of all that took a long time to make. I had to combine all the codes and created a very big block of code for just one short animation that last a few seconds. The reason is that for something to be crazy, it has to fast, so no matter how much animations I add to it, it doesn't make much different to the overall time of the flash of animation. I don't think any of the students that saw this knew how many codes were involved to it. When Ms. Ramirez showed it to the class, she said "That's crazy?"... I had nothing to say... Anyways, I also tried to make the box actually animation and not just one animation that changed, so that means that I would have quite a huge amount of codes for each function.

http://techteach.us/WCP2016/HJiahua/Labs/lab13/LB13_Jiahua.html

Lab 12: JQuery Slide Down List

      So, another lab about JQuery. That's always my introduction, just saying lab it's about. It really got boring, so I kind of started to commentating on to it, I mean, not many people are reading this anyways. In this lab, we have to use JQuery to create a list. Not just a simple list, but a list with JQuery...and JQuery...just kidding, this list will actually only show its content when you hover on to it. We also learned so next HTML tags this time. Which is the <dl>, <dd>,<dt> tags that does almost the exact same thing as <ul> and <li> tags. But it's always a good thing to learn next tags...I guess... I'm thinking of going to major in Computer Science in College, but I am still not very sure. I've always thought that I'm a math or tech guy, but what if I'm not? I've always been interested in different things when time goes. I hated reading almost my entire life until now that I kind of felt in love with it..."because you know what I like more than materialistic things? Knowledge!" (comment below if you get this inside joke.) lol. Let's get back to the list. We have to choose a subject that we like a lot, and make this list with 8 questions and answers about it. I mean...we have to choose WEB DESIGN! No questions asked! But I just really can't think of any questions or answer for it, so I chose Economics which I recently just felt so amazed of how incredible that class is. It's one of those few classes where I don't even what to be late for. I guess it's because Mr. Franck make it so good. He's a cool dude. And he promises that we will all know how to get rich by the end of this class...but he also said non of us will do it. It's one of his strategies to make us work I guess. But everything he's been teaching have been so interesting. It is one of the best classes I've ever had in this school along with Web Design and the College Now Propaganda class that I took last year. These are classes that really make a different in our everyday lives, Specialized Knowledge as Napoleon Hill says.

      And the list is about my economics class, but I clearly stated on the webpage that it's my favorite subject "BESIDES web design of course". So on the list, I simply chose a few questions with short answers to and put them into the <dl>, <dt>, and <dd> tags to make the list. Then I added some CSS to match my website as always. Then I added the JQuery codes that make the the content to show when the mouse is hovering on to the that question (<dt>). But somehow I got an 9.5/10 because of the CSS of the website. I guess I've been using the same style for too long, I've been a bit lazy. There is a thing call SENIORITIS you know. It happens and it's very difficult to control. I really just want to enjoy the rest of my high school days chilling with friends and stuff. But I also just got this internship at CSNYC and everything, it's good but that's gonna be more work. I think I will be STRESSED! I wish I can be a little kid again...But I still need to get creative again to make things different. New colors and everything. And that's what I will be doing on my next project, which is about IDENTITY. Stay tune, because it will be good, and different of course. The blog get so long doing this, it's getting out of hand...but at least it looks better from a far and I can have more fun writing these blogs.

Lab 11: FANCY BUTTON! by Jiahua

      This is the second lab with the use of JQuery. In this lab, we have to create a button that can change opacity when you hover on to it. This is for to make it more interactive to the users. And it makes it cooler if things changes without the need to click on things. It also tells the user that the mouse is hovering on top of the button. Ms. Ramirez showed us an example of this button which is done by Mark a talented alumnus of ITHS...this makes me think of the 3 months that I have until I leave this amazing place...so much amazing memories here. I really don't want to leave...so many friends and amzing teachers and staff here...I really don't know what to say... Anyways, back to the lab, we had to create this special button with JQuery.

      I first made a button, changed the CSS to the one that I use for all my other buttons on this website to match my website and maintain a nice consistence. I goal was to have it normal went you don't hover on to it, but when you do hover on to it, it will change it's opacity to a less visible or let's say fading away, but it does't fade back until the mouse is not hovering on it any more. At first I wasn't exactly sure how to do this lab until I saw Mark's project, I really want to thank him for his amazing work and the legacy he left behind here, I really wish I can do the same as well, but I do see Ms. Ramirez so my old stuff to the younger Web Design studens, it makes me proud something. I might as well just be known as the Minion guy, lol! I really wished I had the chance to get to know Mark. He must be a very interesting person to talk to. I might be able to learn more of web design from him. Anyways, I'm getting off topic here again, but I needed to fill the space out as there isn't too much to talk about in this lab... it's just a button that changes when you hover over it. I simply made it fade to a different oppacity on mouseenter and mouseleave, which is inspired by the code of Mark Munoz.

Lab 10: First JQuery Document

      After we have learned the fundamentals of how to use JQuery in Khan Academy, the amazing free website of knowledge, the website the helped me on my math exams, JavaScripts, and even my SAT, we finally get to make our own website using JQuery. The task is simple, we only have to create an object, an example can be boxes of different sizes or colors which that one is hiding, one showing, one fading in, and one fading out using JQuery. It was very easy, mostly because I fully completed the whole JQuery tutorial in Khan Academy unlike some... I was too easy so I tried to add something more to it.

      Instead of making boxes with CSS, I decided to use the images that I took last year at Gantry Plaza State Park, it's an amazing place, I still hang out there with my friends once in a while, when we have the time...school keeps us very busy. I didn't wanted to have everything in the way it already it, so I wanted to create a button that can change everything only it you click it. And if I was to create a button, what if the user wanted to swich everything back again? so I made two buttons instead of one, one is to trigger the function to hide, show, fade in, or fade out the images. Then after you clicked this button, it will also toggle (something I've learned in Khan Academy that was not required for this lab) this existing button and the hidden button that switches everything back. The other button will unhide, unshow, and fade back the images, puting back things to its original state. I also remembered the slideDown JQuery function from Khan Academy, so I added into this lab as will. To do this, I combined all of what I already learned before with the new things. I really impressed myself that I made this happen. I was also the very first to complete this lab and was wishing to have a few extra points added to my grades...but it didn't...well, at least I got 10/10 in it...

CTE Expo 2017

February 13 of 2017, the day before Valentine's day was a even more special day. It is the annually CTE Expo for both Web Design Academy and Video Production Academy. It the time of the year where we welcome the new comers, the freshmen and tell them about this amazing opportunity that we have in the school. I stayed 5, 6 , 8, and 9th period. I wanted to dress up a bit, but it was unfortunately cold that day so I was in a business casual. But my friend Aarish, which you see in this picture, is wearing a full double breasted suit despite the weather being uncertain.

I am not good at communicating with people. I just don't talk much. But I did try my best to help these freshmen to make the better decision and that is to take the opportunity to apply for Web Design Academy. I even prepared a list of the benefits of being in web design for me to tell them, so I don't forget any. Everything was fine, I told them about the trips, the college credits, the internships, the skills they can learn, the lesser Spanish courses, the benefits for their future, and some of my favorite projects and labs that I did throughout the years. It is great being in the amazing Web Design Academy, and I hope that the freshmen can make the right decisions and nourish their lives.

Budget Challenge

Lab 9: Validation

This is lab 9 where we have to create a form using JavaScript Validation to validate whether the input is correct or not. First we have to create a form with a legend that states the title of this form. In this case, the legend is Your information. Within the form, it will have a first name, last name, age, day of birth, phone number, and email. The difficult part is to use JavaScript to make it work and make it validate whether if the input is correct using boolean and if/else statements.

First I wanted to make every box require to be answered. So I would use: 

 if(something.checkValidity() == false){

    document.getElementById("a").innerHTML = something.validationMessage;}

this will write a message out saying that the information needs to be entered. After I did that for each, I also make it say thank you when you enter the correct input to the box. This is all the basic validations for the names. For the age, I also added a maximum number to 130 and minimum of 0. If the user enters anything outside of this range, it will notify the user. Also if the user enters an age under 18, it will say that the user is a kid, if it's over 18 then it will say the the user is an adult. We all know that we use 2 "/"s while listed birthdays so most of the time. And that is the validation for the birthdays, it must include 2 "/"s. For the phone number, I gave it a validation of a minimum number of 1000000000 and a maximum of 99999999999, because phone numbers are always between 10-11 digits and this includes all numbers that are 10 to 11 digits. And last, for the e-mail, I made a validation to require the "@" symbol and the "." because an e-mail can not exist without these two symbols.

Interview Lesson with Michael Chow

One day, a representative from the Wood Tobe-Coburn School, Micheal Chow came to speak with the two CTE classes at the CCEC of our school. One of which is the Web Designg that I'm in. He taught us many interviewing lessons. But the first and most important thing is to be open minded. He first told us how we should dress. Wearing a blue navy suit, white shirt and a red tie for guys, just like our president-elect, Donald Trump. Guys also have to take care of their hair to look sharper. Girls should wear heels to their confidence. They should also tie their hair up to shoe their face and neck to show that they do not have tattoos. He said that employers might not like it and it might leave a bad impression on them.

He also taught us how to talk and how to use good body languages. He say we should not move around while we talk, and also don't say ''um'' all the time. He even randomly picked students to practice their self introduction and hand shake during the beginning of an interview. I'm surprised that most students don't even know how to shake hands properly. He said that er have to get ready while the employer is coming towards you, let them introduce themselves first so you know who they are. Give a nice and firm handshake and remain good eye contact, not look else where. And say your own name nice and slowly. Is was the part I messed up on while I was chosen. I don't know why but I feel awkward saying my own name while I was shaking his hand. I always feel weird saying my own name. And I was not looking at his eyes. But everything else is fine. I just need to improve on whatever I need to improve on.

Project 1: JavaScript Calculator

      This our first project of this school year and it's by far the most difficult project we've ever completed in this class. The target of this project 1 is to create a calculator that can add, subtract, multiply, and subtract multiple numbers using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I knew how to create a simple calculator for calculating just two numbers but I didn't know how to have more than just two numbers. Most of us didn't know what to do in this project. Although there are a lot of resources online, it's quite complicated to understand in a small amount of time. I really wish I had the time to be able to fully understand all the code, but I didn't. In the HTML file, I used divisions and spans to create the calculator using the method taught by my teacher. In the CSS file, it was mostly inspire by the calculator from The Code Player (http://thecodeplayer.com/walkthrough/javascript-css3-calculator). 
I really like the modern design to it so I made a very similar looking CSS to it, but I did customize it to fit the colors of my theme, using mainly blue, white, and some red and orange. Then I changed the sizes to my liking. The JavaScript is where I did't fully understand, I followed the tutorial from The Code Player and typed accordingly to its code suing mostly if/else statements. But since I was very busy with other important things outside of the classroom resently, I didn't have the time to fully understand all the JavaScript needed to create a calculator. I'm quite disappointed by myself because I usually understand everything pretty quickly and complete the project better than I expected. But since I really want to understand what I didn't, I will redo the whole project and try my best to understand everything later on when I'm not as busy.

JavaScript Booleans

      A boolean value in JavaScript is either yes or no, it is one of the two opposing values. It can also be on/off, true/false, and more. Strings or any number except for zero or equation that are correct is true. Basically, anything that is real retures true, and anything not real will reture false.Here some exercise about Boolean conditions from W3schools:

Exercise 1:

Exercise 2:

Exercise 3:

Exercise 4:

Exercise 5:

Exercise 6:

As you can see, typing "John" will reture a true boolean that writes the string "Hello John!".

And not typing "John" will reture a false boolean that writes "You are not John!".