Movie Ratings App, My Project, and Visiting Facebook

Movie Ratings

We spent four days working on a movie ratings app similar to Netflix. My amazing partner Amy and I had a little fun with the design. Here is our homepage:

This is me adding a new account:

These are all the ratings one person gave to a bunch of movies:

We also wrote a function that could predict how much you would like a movie based on your previous ratings and the way that other people rated movies (we were given user data from about 900 people). That was pretty cool, but I'm pretty sure I'm not into big data. I had more fun making it pretty and funny.

My Project

I am going to build a game for young girls to introduce them to basic programming concepts. I want to do something that's a bit of a combination of Blockly Maze and Cargo-Bot.

    <-- Cargo-Bot (addictive game on iPad)

I like the idea of using drag-and-drop arrows to learn about programming, but I really want my game to appeal to little girls in a genuine way, like Goldie Blox does. I am going to create something like Blockly Maze in concept and like Cargo-Bot in design. But it will be with a little bunny trying to get her carrot. The user will help direct the bunny to her carrot by dragging and dropping arrows and other simple buttons. I am going to map out a few levels to get a sense of where I am going with it. But I am really excited about getting started and it has been officially approved by both Liz and Christian.

Facebook

Yesterday we took a field trip to Facebook's Menlo Park campus. It's a lot like Disneyland there. You go through security and get special badges and then inside there's a weird, fake village. A 50s burger and milkshake restaurant, a sweetshop with gourmet pastries and ice cream, an arcade, a bar...It was pretty strange. The food was pretty healthy and extremely tasty. We met with several women who work with Diversity at Facebook, and one of them was a computer science dropout turned software engineer who has been working at FB for about two years. She works in "capacity," which means that she is trying to make sure all the photos you uploaded to Facebook five years ago never have to be deleted.

A tech accessories vending machine:

Their thumbs up sign had been dressed up for Halloween:

Going to pick up Lindsey from the airport in two hours! She starts at Hack Reactor in a week and a half! It's about to get magical.