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.