STEAM Coding - TurtleStitch

1 1 2 2      My goal for this code is to alter it so I could make the diameter of the circle smaller. I also want to make the white space greater in the design. My prediction for making this happen is to change the blocks in the inner repeat block. Some changes would probably be removing the extra "move 10 steps" block. I believe I need to change those certain blocks because it is what creates the circles. I will try out my predictions and see what happens!

This week, I coded a design I used to think was difficult, based off of its appearance. I was playing around with the blocks and when I ran the code, it looked similar to a design I saw a while ago from the TurtleStitch gallery. I later played around with the code and I tried making new designs with it. From gallery Original Design For the two above designs, I altered the code by changing the repeats to 5 and 15, I added two extra "move 10 steps" blocks in the internal repeat and I changed the angles to 270 and 40 degrees. Original code For this, I altered the first repeat from 30 to 4, changed the angles from 15 to 18 and 90 to 180 For this, I changed the angle from 90 degrees to 180 degrees and it altered the distance from the center

This week, I created social media networks in order to communicate with everyone. I will be announcing my work and I will be reflecting back here. The rest of the week, I am coding and creating a design with the blocks I introduced from the beginning of my blog.

Hi everyone, I would like to introduce you all to my social media accounts for updates on my TurtleStitch activities. The link for my Twitter is here:  https://twitter.com/steamct The link for my Instagram is here:  https://www.instagram.com/ steam.ct/ I will post photos of my current progress and my work on those accounts so feel free to follow me. Best, Jennifer L

Putting up my work was an accomplishment for me. I loved sharing my work with people around the school and a lot of friends came up to me and wondered about what I was doing. They thought it was really amusing and wanted to learn more about TurtleStitch. Some people were confused about how I was able to print out my code so I explained to them and they were really interested. I will definitely put up more of my work in the future to show my progress and by the end of the school year, I will have a collection of my work!

Today, I printed out the codes from my previous blog post. This reminded me of my experience last year with the machine, except this time, I feel a lot more experienced with it. It was amazing seeing the digital fabricator in motion again and I uploaded a few photos for you all to check out! Next blog: During my MIT Scratch presentation over the summer, the question I got asked the most was how I was able to connect the coding with the machine, so I would like to discuss with you what my experiences have been. Stay tuned!

When commenting on a code, it is easier to understand how certain blocks add to the entire code. With that in mind, I decided to play around with the variables from the  "769 commented"  code and here are the ones I came up with: Changes made: set max_stepsize to 10 set  len  to 20 repeat: 30 max_stepsize/ 5 reps + 2 turn 225 degrees len  + 6 Changes made: set max_stepsize to 10 set  len  to 20 repeat: 20 max_stepsize/ 2 reps + 2 turn 120 degrees len  + 6 Changes made: set max_stepsize to 30 set len to 10 repeat: 60 max_stepsize/ 5 reps + 3 turn 210 degrees len + 2 Changes made: set max_stepsize to 10 set  len  to 10 repeat: 30 max_stepsize/ 30 reps + 3 turn 60 degrees len  + 4

Here's something I have to admit: I was too afraid to break down the "769" code that was in my previous blog post. When I opened the file, I told myself that there was no way I would ever be able to understand such a sophisticated code. When I look back at the "769" code, I understand it so much clearer than I did before. Breaking it down helped me realize the purpose of each block and the contribution it has to create the design. It also helped me realize that I only believed it was hard because I didn't understand what a few blocks meant prior to adding comments. I made the same TurtleStitch design, but I called it "769 Commented" because I wanted to have comments next to each unique block so I can always look back at it in the future as a reference. I encourage you all to edit comments if you know more about the blocks. If anyone could figure out and explain the  reps  block, it would truly make a difference to my understanding of this code...