The Fibonacci Series - About This Site - The Making of 'The Fibonacci Series'

The Making of The Fibonacci Series

by Matt Anderson

ThinkQuest Team 27890 started as an idea in January posed by Jeffrey Frazier to me, Matt Anderson. I had never heard of ThinkQuest at that time but the prospects of designing an educational web page were promising. Jeffrey had in mind a third teammate who would be graduating in the spring but because of a combination of issues, all three of us decided to leave him off of the team. I asked my friend in Utah, Kris Popendorf, if he was interested in joining us. He was, and so formed the team as it was to be. We filled out the application forms online and found a coach (my dad). By then it was April, and we still didn't know what the page was going to be about. When all three of us discussed the page, it was in ICQ chat whenever we chanced upon being online at the same time. Other than the Fibonacci Series, we had seriously considered doing a page on logarithms. Spring was coming up and all the big projects were due, studying for finals was necessary, and none of us had time to work on the page.

[The Fibonacci Series]

We didn't actually start on the page until after our summer vacation started. Already there was an obstacle: though Jeffrey and I got out of school at the same time (we attend the same school), Kris's school in Utah didn't get out until weeks after that. While we were trying to get work done, Kris was busy with school. With three people, it seemed more logical to delegate tasks to each individual than to leave no structure at all. I became Designer, Jeffrey became our Writer, and Kris became our Programmer. It turned out that this was the best thing because Kris is incredible with computers (see his Biography page), I'm good with graphics and layout, and Jeffrey is an excellent writer. Of course, writing is a lot of work, so I helped lighten Jeffrey's load by doing some research and writing a few of the pages.

All three of us had unique schedules. I went on a 2 and 1/2 week-long vacation to Minnesota to visit family in the first part of July. I was able to have some limited contact with Jeffrey and Kris but no work was done on the page. Jeffrey played in the orchestra for the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute over a two week period during which he had to stay in a dorm at the University of Oklahoma (even though he lives here in Norman, where the university is, he was required as a rule to stay in a dorm). Suffice it to say, he was very busy during those two weeks. Kris was away on a trip to the eastern part of the United States visiting colleges for a couple of weeks.

Over all, we had a total of about 3 months time to complete the site by the August 16th deadline. This was a tremendous obstacle for us as some teams work on their pages through the school year and summer. We made the most of it, and I believe that's reflected in our page.

Here is a list of some of the software that was used in developing The Fibonacci Series:

EditPad by Jan Goyvaerts
Paint Shop Pro
Adobe Photoshop
Macromedia Flash
WS_FTP95
Netscape Navigator versions 3.0 and 4.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 3.0 and 4.0
Microsoft Graph
CoolEdit96
ICQ
RealProducer
Borland C++
Pico

No WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML software was used in the creation of this page (some examples are Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe PageMill). All HTML "coding" was done by "hand" (of course, HTML is not actual software code, nor is it written with a hand, but "coding by hand" seems to be the popular way of saying it nowadays). All of our JavaScript is original, written by one of us (most likely Kris).

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All contents, unless otherwise specified, are © 1999 by Matt Anderson, Jeffrey Frazier, and Kris Popendorf.
Created by Team 27890 for the 1999 competition.