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End of Fall Term

It is the final week of fall term and time has really flown by. This is my tenth term at OSU and I still find myself surprised at how fast everything feels once week 9 and 10 roll around. Of course, in the earlier weeks of the term things always seem to go much slower. I guess it just goes to show how my perception of time is very subjective and heavily influenced by events happening around me. This term I won’t have much work to do for finals, which is usually very stressful, so I am excited to finish everything up and enjoy winter break.

Today the v0.0.2 Progress Report was due. I certainly made progress on the features I have been working on since the previous report, but I don’t really feel that the progress was significant enough. The past week has been very busy with family visiting for the holidays and other distractions popping up, but regardless of that, I still think I need to try and contribute more time to the project. It’s hard to make steady progress on a feature of a large application when there are so many unknown factors such as figuring out how everything will fit together. Luckily the only way to overcome those unknown factors is to keep moving forward. Worst case scenario is I spend a lot of time working on something that ends up needing to be changed or redone. Either way, I will gain experience and learn new skills.

Overall, I think cs461 has been a good course. I appreciated the manageable pacing, organization of assignments, and frequent communication with staff. Like I mentioned in a discussion post on canvas, I do wish the process for choosing what project you will spend 9 months working on was a little more in depth. It would be nice if there was slightly more detailed information on the capstone project website, but I understand the need for some vagueness and flexibility. I look forward to seeing what cs462 has to offer as well as the progress me and my team will make on our project.

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Project Progress

It has been about 5 or 6 weeks since I was assigned to the Cloud-Based Algorithmic Trading Strategies for Individual Investors project group. The name is quite a mouthful but it is a very interesting subject. I think the more I learned about this project the more I realized how complex it is, or at least how complex it can be. My group and I faced a decision fairly early on where we had to choose if we wanted to focus more on the research and algorithm side, or more on delivering a full service application. Based on our interests and what we believed to be a more well-rounded choice, we went with the second option.

The trouble with a full service cloud-based algorithmic trading application is that it has a lot of moving parts which can feel overwhelming at times. This leads me into one of the benefits of cloud applications. The modularity of cloud apps is great, but it means that all the separate pieces or modules of a product have to fit together and connect with each other for things to work.

So far, my group and I have completed problem statements, a requirements document, preliminary designs, and a design document. Now we are at the point where we are actually put things together and trying to make it all work. A week from yesterday, we will be delivering v0.0.1. I feel nervous about it because I’m not sure if everything will work or if we’ll have enough time to address any issues which will likely arise. I guess looking on the bright side, no matter what happens it will be a valuable learning experience.

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First Post

Hello there!

My name is Kai and at the moment I am living in Beaverton, OR. I like to spend my free time watching movies, reading, drawing, playing video games, and spending time outdoors. Of course, most of my free time I don’t actually end up doing those things, but I sure would like to.

I am currently working a part-time job at a warehouse while looking for an internship or other opportunity to gain experience in the CS industry. I attended OSU on campus for my first 3 years but decided to move home and switch to online courses for my final year, which I think was the right choice. I initially became interested in pursuing CS while I was in high school when the software industry was booming and I liked computers, so I thought it would be a good fit. My favorite languages have to be Python and C++. I am very interested in learning more about developing and maintaining large projects.

The Capstone projects that I am most interested in are:
1. Algorithmic Stock Market Trading Strategies
2. Cross-platform Personal Trainer App
3. Language Immersion Virtual Environment (LIVE)

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