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The End of the Byte Trail

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Time really does fly. This will be my final journal entry, and it marks the end of Gerek’s “byte trail” and undergraduate journey in Computer Science at CSUMB. Looking back, I can see how much I’ve grown both technically and professionally. I’m glad I was encouraged to keep a journal because now I’m able to look back on my past entries to reflect on my growth. Throughout the program, I’ve developed a strong foundation in core computer science concepts like algorithms, data structures, databases, operating systems, networking, and software engineering. I learned important concepts for being a competent software engineer like documentation, testing, and clean code habits. I plan to carry these forward into my career. As I close out my chapter at Cal State Monterey Bay, I’m excited about the opportunity to step into the tech workforce. It seems learning in this field never truly stops, and I expect my education to continue evolving throughout my career as technology advances. I’m partic...
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Service Learning Reflections

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My Service Learning experience was quite rewarding. Through the Document Foundation I was able to learn how real-world software projects operate from the scope of a tester. By contributing to LibreOffice QA, I gained hands-on experience with bug triaging and reproducing issues across different operating systems. This helped me better understand the workflow on collaborative software projects. I think the most impactful part of this experience was realizing that meaningful contributions do not always require intensive engineering.  I was still able to support developers and improve the software quality by testing, reproducing bugs, and leaving detailed comments in Bugzilla,. This reinforced the idea that quality assurance, testing, and documentation are just as critical as development itself. One of the main challenges I faced was the learning curve associated with tools like bibisect repositories and setting up consistent testing environments across Windows and Linux. At times, tro...
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Project Finalization

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This week, our team finalized the core deliverables for the Capstone project. We completed and submitted the testing report, incorporating client-based testing feedback, deployment validation, and individual contribution sections aligned with the rubric. We also adjusted our Capstone Festival presentation slides and recorded a polished final presentation video. I  quickly resolved some audio issues and ensured the video was accessible. The project is in a presentation-ready state and it seems major requirements are satisfied.
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Refining Documentation and Planning Final Deliverables

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This week, our team met with our clients Tian & Shuhe to go over the remaining parts of the project as we move toward final submission. During the meeting, we discussed the two different types of tests that will be conducted: a user test performed by Shuhe and a deployment test conducted by Tian himself. This meeting helped us understand what each evaluation will focus on and what we need to prepare for. Tian also requested that we create documentation for the project, specifically a README with a developer-oriented quickstart guide. I contributed to planning the structure and content of that documentation and began outlining what developers will need to quickly understand and run our system. Next week, our main focus will be making the README file, including setting up clear quickstart instructions. I will help consolidate our existing notes, scripts, and architecture explanations into a clean and easy-to-follow document. At the same time, we will begin preparing material for the ...
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Capstone Update - Reflections, Final Phases, and Refinements

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This week, I focused heavily on the automation and testing side of our Capstone project. I finalized the automated bi-monthly deployment pipeline by debugging environment inconsistencies but I ultimately getting the entire scheduler running successfully on Linux. I added header comments to the automation scripts that will need to be run on the host server.  I also contributed unit tests with pytest. Each team member took up the task of creating unit tests for each of our 4 core services. I worked on unit tests for the summarizer. This included tests for sentence cleanup, stripping Chinese notes, markup removal, and edge-case handling with short or markup-heavy inputs. Next week, my plan is to assist with any last-minute fixes needed for incremental updates or environment setup, and help polish our final presentation. I will be completing the Conclusion & Closing section of the project. We may potentially use Playwright for end-to-end test coverage, but we still need to talk abo...
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Steady Capstone Progress and Continued Improvements

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This week my group refined the multi-language functionality across all tiddlers. We did this by verifying each page's content and tags correctly switch between English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. We spent time testing the summarizer service and ran multiple test cases to verify consistency across all three languages. We also implemented unit tests. As a team, we divided the testing responsibilities across the four main services (crawler, extractor, summarizer, and publisher). My role was to focus on the summarizer tests. I made sure that functions like sentence cleanup, Chinese note removal, and the core summary-generation logic behaved predictably. I also verified that each test correctly handled edge cases such as short content, markup-heavy inputs, and different language outputs. Next week I plan to contribute to the upcoming testing phase by gathering feedback from peers and verifying that the summaries are consistent across each language. I also want to stre...
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UI Refinements, Deployment Progress, and Early Testing Prep

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This week our group focused on improving the UI and overall presentation of the project. I contributed UI feedback as we refined the homepage layout and made decisions about colors, backgrounds, and the general look-and-feel. We also deployed the site to GitHub Pages and tested the live link to make sure everything functioned correctly. For the most part, the deployment worked smoothly, but we discovered a handful of tiddlers whose summaries were either missing or cut off.  Next week our plan is to officially begin the testing phase. We’ll primarily do this by reaching out to peers and gathering input so we can evaluate the reliability of the summaries. We may also start implementing unit tests for some of the core services and potentially work on system-level tests as well. On my end, I’ll continue debugging the issues we found with incomplete or empty summaries and help verify that all three languages remain consistent. I also want to support the deployment process by testing the...
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