Final Project

I just submitted my final project presentation. I made it actually a lot longer than I though it was going to be. Five minutes was the approximate time needed to present the project, but I took nearly 15 minutes. Sorry Professor Joseph. It didn't seem that long when I was recording it. Once I got started on talking about my project I just kept going and going. What made it easier to talk a lot about my project was that it had to do with baseball. I played baseball all my life and love the game so it didn't really feel like work to me when I had to make the presentation. I hope I added in enough details about my project that the viewers will be able to understand exactly what I meant by charting the stats. I explained how these particular stats are not "regular" stats, they are more in depth and really no use for the general public. This is because these stats are used to help a team have an "edge" in a game. Sadly, I did not complete my final prototype. The ideas were definitely there, the execution part however was not. Like I explained in my video, I "slacked off" during the semester so I fell really behind with the assignments for this class. Road trips for baseball, games, practices, and others classes just added on to the workload and to my obligation schedule. I could have completed it and put more effort in it, but sadly didn't. This will just be a learning lesson for me to just be persistent and to manage my time better. I did learn a lot from this class and it was very interesting in the process. Aloha.

Baseball Stats

I looked around the web to try and find stat-taking programs that will be similar to what I want to do. The search is still going on. I honestly don't think there is a program like that open in the public. Or if there is, most chances it won't rank high in google search because lack of traffic that would want to come across that information. If some teams do have a program like that it will most likely be personally made for them. Currently we just write them down on a chart paper that we pre-make before the games. The only hassle would be to flip through a few papers in order to find the one we want. Making a program that collects it all into one application would make the process a lot easier.

StatTrak

StatTrak looks like a great program to track baseball and softball stats. It allows a user to take stats during the game of different offensive and defense stats. It takes just the regular stats to the next level because for example it calculates the ERA(Earned Run Average) for a pitcher which is something a little confusing if you don't know the formula. However, we already have a program like this that our sports information team uses.  StatTrak and our sports information team takes the usual batting stats, pitching stats, and defensive stats. I am looking into a program that will take stats that most non-baseball players don't know about. Some of those things are the pitchers time to home plate, what timing they use to pick-off, and how they deliver.

SSD upgrade?

In the blog What Can I Actually Upgrade On My Mac? on lifehacker.com, Thorin Klosowski says that "Solid-State Drives are the best upgrade you can make to your computer." That wasn't the only time they(lifehacker) said that. In a previous blog by lifehacker, they talked about what an SSD is and some of its benefits. They stated their reasons why it would be a great decision to upgrade to a Solid-State Drive.


I have been contemplating whether or not to upgrade my macbook pro hard drive to an SSD. My dad added an SSD to his desktop and he loves it. Ever since then he would try and persuade me to get one. I researched a little and just thought for what I do, my hard drive is fine. Now that I am doing a little more programming and the workload on my computer is slowly growing and growing, I have been thinking about the upgrade a lot more. I wouldn't want to change the way I work on my computer; I would rather change the way my computer works to fit they way I work. The only thing would be the price of the SSD's. It comes down to, is the speed worth the price and low memory capacity?

Interest of Stakeholders

One of my ideas for my projects is making a program for the HPU baseball team. The program would consist of taking stats for our team and being able to see visuals of those stats. We already do have a sports information team that takes care of our stats during the game, but there are other stats that we take that they don't. One thing we do is "chart" our pitchers. Charting is when we take down position-specific stats that our sports information team does not. These stats usually share no interest to the fans. The point of theses stats are to fine tune the little things within our team as well as to find patterns and tendencies of the other teams. One chart we take of the other team consists of their timing on the mound. Whether it being how long it takes them to pitch the ball or how often they pick-off to a base. We take down notes on different things we observe to get any edge we can on our opposing team.

A program that would be useful for all these charts would definitely have many persons of interest. Our team would be the user of the program so they would be a stakeholder for the program. They would be of interest in making charting easier for them as well as seeing their own stats visually. It would also be easier for our team to scout other teams and be able to input all the stats in a database that would be locally accessible to everyone on the team. Horizontally speaking, different players that play different positions will be able to use the program, but with different functionalities based on what they wanna do. Vertically speaking, our coaches would be of use to it as well. Our assistant coaches would help with charting and going over the stats with the players. Our head coach would go over all the stats and collaborate with our assistant coaches as well as the players. External users such as other baseball programs might buy into the program and they will be users of the program and be external stakeholders of this program. HPU athletics would be the clients as they will be the ones providing the funding for it as well as wanting to the see the success of the program providing better access to stats for the baseball team.

Bible Study

I am currently not working as I am just focusing on school and baseball. However, I am an active member of the church I go, Moanalua Gardens Missionary Church. Between school and baseball, it gives me little time to attend weekly service. So my friend and I started a bible study which would take place once a week. The people that attend are busy as well so they can't attend every week which means it will be hard for them to keep up with what we do during our bible study. We currently just have an email list and phone list in which we email and text everyone information about the previous bible study and future gatherings as well. There could be a more efficient way of handling all this if I made a program that would automatically inform others of gatherings or news of the bible study as soon as any update is made on my part. This would make it easier to keep in touch with everyone in the bible study group and has the flexibility to expand for more members.

Special Olympics

The Special Olympics offer a great opportunity for people to get involved in volunteer work. There are a lot of events that take place throughout the year which are in need of many volunteers. Volunteer work includes jobs such as setting up, breaking down, special event-related tasks, etc. I wanted to be a volunteer so I signed up to be a part of their mailing list and I would get emails of special events that would come up for the Special Olympics. I have to be honest that I have not yet volunteered, but would really like to. I just wondered how they kept track of all their volunteers that signed up. In order to sign up we would have to fill out an application that would be downloaded from the email they sent us. This means they would manually go through all the applications to collect all the necessary information about the volunteers. A program that would be able to store all the volunteer's information in an online database would be more efficient. Cloud computing is becoming huge in the technology world. It would only make sense to utilize this revolutionary system.