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Blueyeti – DevXS team challange

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Blueyeti

As part of DevXS, Team UWL decided to implement a bluetooth based indoor tracking software which provides location related information to students inside a university, named Blueyeti. The idea behind is to provide a mechanism to deliver information to students based on their location within the campus. This can help new students find out information regarding the place where they are, activities being held, without them needing to check any website/twitterfeed etc.

The software works by the use of a bluetooth application running on several base stations, that listens for bluetooth clients nearby, its then logs the device mac address, and sends its information out.

On the other end, the user has a mobile application running on a smart phone. This is then ideally left to listen for any connections from the base stations (when walking within range), receiving this information and then informing the user.

 

 

The sourcecode repo can be found at: https://gitorious.org/blueyeti/blueyeti

End of 2010

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So this year is finally drawing to a close, and I can’t help but think and reflect on what has been an overall good year, great in some aspects, not so in others. Firstly I think back to myself talking and finally meeting in February someone who really has stolen my heart. I really do hope that she looks after it and feel next year will be even better than this year.

This year has had some downs, firstly on an academic level. I started my PhD in February, which was a very exciting time. The problem I faced and still am slightly caught up in is the feeling of being lost, where it extremely difficult to know the path which you should take. Secondly during the Summer my mother was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer which was a real shock to the system, which I’m happy to see her treatment go to plan and hope she will enter remission soon and get some normality back to her life.

This year has been also great on the academic level also. I was lucky enough to author and attend the Doctoral Symposium at Software Language Engineering (SLE 2010) in Eindhoven which was a great experience. I feel meeting other PhD students was invaluable as it put alot of my worries to ease. I was then lucky enough to have my MobDSL paper accepted at NESEA’10 in China. This was a truly amazing experience, to see Asia and the culture.

I’ve found this year to be life changing for another reason, which I give thanks to my love for her support in me coming home to the Church of England. I started going to church in October, and now I am hopeful of getting my confirmation this coming February 2011. I honestly believe I received my calling and have never felt better. I hope overtime I will get closer to my God and let the light into my life.

Overall, this year I feel has been one of the most important years of my life.

I wish you all a Happy New Year, and hope your new year is filled with love and peace.

Dev8D 2010

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Last month I attended for the second year running the JISC supported Dev8D event in central London. For this year because of my change to a PhD, I had a bit more freedom to when I could attend so I decided to go two days this year instead of just one, concentrating on Thursday and Friday. What I found amazing, was how much the event had grown since last year! I’ve haven’t seen so many people like myself in ages, was really nice.

On Thursday I chose to attend the expert lighting talks in the morning with the Cloud Workshop in the afternoon.

Picture of Cloud Computing Workshop at Dev 8 D 2010

Cloud Computing Workshop

In the exper talks there a few talks in particular that stood out to me, firstly the talk about genetic programming, secondly the talk about web security which I took notice of some of the tips they suggested!

Arduino Workshops – Friday

These workshops were by far the coolest thing I’ve done in a good while! I attended two workshops, one for beginners in the morning and a more advanced workshop for the afternoon. In the morning we got a talk about the hardware and how to do very basic programs like getting a single LED to flash and also using a speaker to make very sounds, with one group able to program their arduino to make the Simpsons theme song!

Below are some of the things I worked on in the advanced workshop, including multiplexing LEDs and driving a motor using the arduino

Overall I had a great time, and look forward to next year. Hoping there to be more Arduino workshops.

How time changes you

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Hey guys, just got in after a night out so bare with me. To night I went out to celebrate a friends birthday, to which we went to what used to be our regular venue Mayhem. I offered to drive as its only fair to let the birthday boy drink and thought tonight would be some what something like what I was used to doing last year, which it wasn’t. It’s strange, since me and my ex finally cut contact with eachother Ive got a quite different Outlook on what it is I should be doing. For example I joined a virgin active club to try and turn my health around, and not only use up all this spare off peak time I get, but also use the time productively on gaining a healthier lifestyle. I also decided I should stay away from heavy drinkng, as that won’t make getting over someone any easier. And to be honest since this I feel so much better, I mean why pay money to end up feeling ill the following day when you can pay and feel good the next day. It’s this feeling that really made me feel out of place in the club. I actually was thinking how much I’m enjoying not going anymore, no hangovers and no trying to gain the interest of a young woman. Just occurred to me just how much some one can change in a good way over what might be thought as the wrong reasons. Will be interesting to see this holds or if its just a phase

Will sort everything in time

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Hi guys, as you may see i have actually got around to buying a domain name, though ironically I chose pretty much as close as I could get to the free one ive used for the last 3 years. Because of the domain name changes somethings have sadly gone sightly pete tong. I am looking into these issues and hope to have them sorted soon! Keep you updated!

“On ya Bike” – Tour De France iPhone App

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Hey Guys, good time now to say that the iPhone app i have been working on is a Tour De France app. This app now is in the final stages of development before uploading to app store this monday.
The main features of this app is contain information about the stages, including detail map images, profile images to show the contours of the stage, have fly through videos of the stage and to contain information about the different climbs and sprints.
Information about the teams including the riders in the teams is included. A history section is included in the app to show all winners of the Tour De France since the first race in 1903.
In addition to this, you will be able to keep track of the overall standings of the race, which categorises the results in to:

  • Individual (Yellow Jersey)
  • Points (Green Jersey)
  • Team
  • Climber (Red Pokadot Jersey)
  • Youth (White Jersey)

I will be putting up screen shots of the app on sunday when hopefully its complete (or near). I have been working with Mammoth Graphics to complete this app. The app i think will be on app store for free, so any tour de france fans should give the app a try and hope to give a good user experience for such an amazing race!

Anyhow, going for now but screen shots will be up soon!

Laters

And now press refresh

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Hey guys, sorry for the lack of blogging but I have been snowed under with work. This iPhone app that I am doing is on such a strict schedule that I have next to no time for anything but programming. Plus also I have a great assignment for my masters that need completing too :(. I do promise that when the iPhone app is done and is publically available I will show screenshots of it, but I don’t want to get into trouble showing it before hand! I have also some plans for the summer too.
The first is that my website and server need a complete overhaul! The website I did when I was 18 is massively out of date and I feel that I should have the Web 2.0 services I use shown. I also need to do a rebuild of my server as it is currently running Fedora 8 and I hope to upgrade it to Fedora 11. By doing this I’m hoping to add email support to this as by then I will have purchased my very own domain name with I hope will allow me to do this.

Secondly I have a idea of a taxi app for the iPhone, which I may start as early as June providing the other parties involved allow me to. Will Keep you posted!

Viva la France!

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Hey Guys! Sorry for the extreme length of time since my last post, to say I have been slightly busy would be a complete understatement! Since my last post I attended a paper workshop in Windsor for colleagues on our project to meet, discuss the current dissemination strategy and overall try and start some paper writing. This session proved to be extremely productive, but since has gone rather flat, well at least that’s my opinion. Since then I have been starting a new project for a client involving an iPhone Application development. This development has now commenced and has a deadline, at least for the iPhone development side in the next 4-5 weeks. Overall feel slightly concerned, mainly that I am the lead programmer for this (which I feel is slightly crazy for such a tight schedule). I’m slowly getting the hang of Apple iPhone development, though inexperience in using Interface Builder is causing me some head ache. Hopefully this weekend will prove productive and lower some stress I have currently. Until next time people!   

What an interesting day…

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Yesterday was a rather good day but ended on a different note. The day was going well, i had got lunch with a friend and then went shopping though i didn’t buy anything. When i was talking to another friend in the evening the friend started acting extremely judgmental and rather arrogant and nasty. I just can’t understand why i get spoken to nicely sometimes by this person then treated like rubbish the next? Thing that gets me is how I didn’t say anything to aggravate the situation and rather tried to not say anything back.
On that note last night i continued with my helloworld app on the apple sdk. Had some problems being caused by unhandled exceptions that i didn’t understand because the helloworld app is an example I got from a book. Today i went on the authors site and downloaded revised code directly and it was slightly different to the book (weird?). Anyhow the program is now running so just in the process of having a play around with the app to try and get a greater understanding of the language

Goodnight, Daisy…

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Ok today’s been a very good day. Had to get up at 07:00 to drive my parents to the airport which was a bit harsh as I had major insomnia until about 04:00. Didn’t do much more until about about 15:30 when I left to pick up a friend to see “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” at the Southend ODEAN. I really loved this movie, great storyline, lots of depth in the characters and a some what sad ending which did bring a few tears out. Was funny though seeing the guy getting struck by lightning loads of times. The film was about 2 3/4 hours, and by that I learnt why you shouldn’t drink your drink too fast! Overall had an enjoyable evening. Once I got home I didn’t do much really, just mainly sat around alone watching some tv. I did though have some Pie n’ Mash for dinner which was nice, but would have been nicer if my nan had made it.

Other than that good day really…