Elgg development and other activities

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Dean

Hey guys, only got a few more weeks of Elgg development at least for the foreseeable future anyhow, to which to I have mixed feelings about. Seems like everytime you begin to get used to and fully in your stride with something its time to change, which is a shame but equally help keeps my work and life interesting.

As of what I’ve been working on, erm.. Well I’ve been continuing with the work on the videos plugin, which for the moment is almost ahead of previous expectations. Currently I have videos uploading and being able to be played, sound’s simple but it’s not quite. I’m in the process of being able to link the videos with the opportunities on the site, but need to be told how they are to be match, or I may just implement some sort of assumption. Also been working on some cool stuff with a piece of software called GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering), which is intending on being used to ‘mine’ the text and help find offensive words/phrases. I have been working with a fellow colleague Dr. Ying Zhang, who is in the field of text/data mining to help set up GATE for our particular context, which is now working (at least for the moment).

A very small program has been written to use the backend of the software, getting strings of text that will eventually be sent from Elgg. I’m hoping to integrate it all from this Monday, with some re-engineering of how Elgg deals with any type of entered text, sending everything to GATE first for checking, if something isn’t allowed an error message will be sent to the user. Other than that I have to try and prepare Elgg to be able to integrate with BT’s MOSAIC, which I’m unsure of my ability to complete that in time. After the project, if I have time I am planning to try and generalise the video plugin so it will work with other Elgg installations and release it on the Elgg Development site under GPL open source licence.

From December I’m then starting the iPhone game with Mammoth Graphics at Ealing Studios, which I’m actually getting quite excited about. I hope the guys have started preparing the material that I need to get started and hopefully will have a version of the game implemented for February. I just have concerns about my pay as I’m having to come off general payroll and go back to hourly slips (which is really annoying). As long as I’m not being paid less than I will be getting from my PhD bursary then I don’t mind, as I guess an agreement has been made for me to spend time on my PhD during this project giving me almost an extra 2 months for it.

At home, I’ve been working on a little project of my own. I have a lot of music and when I go to music stores I’ve found several times I can’t remember if I have a CD already. So to solve this problem I am developing two applications:

A backend file crawler, that trails through my music library and automatically indexes the artist, album and songs in a database, for which a PHP set of APi’s are being written to search and retrieve this data and relay it using XML.
Because I have an Android based smart phone, I’m developing a app to get these details and help facilitate easy searching of what media I have already.

The backend app is already beginning to work, though have run into a few issues already that I will need to look into. The first issue being the speed, perhaps the speed of the crawler is going to be slower as I am not testing on the machine that will be run on and the crawling is being done over a network. Other reason I think is that I need to turn it into a threaded app, and allow more songs to be sorted concurrently. This will be something I implement last as to me efficiency and speed is something you look to once everything is working. The second issue is how to deal with multiple combinations of artists, as some song aren’t made with only one artist, leaving you will potentially copies of artists and combinations of artist which may affect search results if you only type in the one of the artists. This something I will need to look into more as this project progresses. Hopefully once the backend is complete (or as complete as I feel is necessary) work on the android app will commence which I look forward to completing as the app I think will be useful by myself and my step dad as we both have the same phone.

Anyhow, until next time chums

Close to beginning the PhD

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Dean

Hi guys! Lately I’ve been working on the mobsventures Slenky project still, which is progressing as expected. I’m beginning to work on a Videos module for Elgg which will hopefully be able to integrate with the British Telecom MOSAIC Platform. This I think will be a difficult task, but hey if it was easy to do, why do it?

Anyhow for the minute I’m aiming to get the Elgg part of it working hopefully within the next few weeks. The plan is to be able to simulate what MOSAIC will do and get it working to our assumption, as I’ve yet to receive an APi document from them, which as you could imagine doesn’t help me out much…

Though over than that, I’m nearly closer to beginning my PhD, which I’m really having mixed feels about, mostly excitement but also feeling nervous about my ability to complete it in the typical 3 year time scale which I have funding for. Probably when I start doing the PhD I will be blogging more about my findings, readings and any discussion in the area that I eventually chose to take. I do suspect that the area that I will be focusing on will be Domain Specific Modeling Languages and accessibility with the visual impaired and/or deaf. I’ve already started talking with my preliminary supervisor Prof. Tony Clark about the direction I could take and about supervising my MSc project which I will have to undertake next year (part time, concurrently). For my MSc project Tony suggested I look into working with DSLs in the context of web and accessibility which could be a good start for looking into mobile accessibility for the PhD.

Anyhow for my Research Methods lessons I have a critical review of a research paper which I have to complete for next friday, which I will be reviewing:

Karsai, G., Krahn, H., Pinkernell, C., Rumpe, B., Schindler, M., Völkel, S. (2009) ‘Design Guidelines for Domain Specific Languages’, The 9th OOPSLA Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling, Orlando Florida, USA 25-26 October 2009

So for now at least just need to start doing some background reading on the area, then probably a good start to research on the credentials of the authors. Anyhow until next time!

Update on Poesia Issue

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Dean

Been on holiday, but kept myself in touch with the office with emails and such. Anyhow, managed to communicate with the project leader of Poesia and find out that the issue I was getting with Poesia not compiling had been sorted in one of many patchsets, though evidently no-one had uploaded a newer tar. Because of this I checkouted directly from the projects CVS and got the most current code. Though now the error I was getting is gone, I am now getting a different error that I think could be related to a gcc upgrade, though my superior has delegated the job of the filter on a fellow colleague which may try and look for another tool, I may see if i can sort the problem by removing the most current gcc and installing a legacy version in my spare time, if I can be bothered….

Other than that, I now have to see some one new about a project that is expected to get the all clear soon, which will be extending on what I did for Mammoth Graphics. Only issue is I’ve been told to share my code, which I’d prefer not to.

1 dedicated server and 2 VMs later…

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Dean

Hey guys, I think after about a week of failed efforts I can now say I’ve hit one of the key issues with open source software, the sometimes lack of support. Ok, for work I’ve been asked to use an Internet Filter called Poesia. This filter was created on a European project to try and create a filter to help filter material like text, photos and video of an explicit nature. So naturally because in the project I am working on filtration of this sort of content is needed using this tool and integrating it with our prototype seemed like the most feasible idea, ofcourse until I attempt to install it somewhere.

Now to start with we have a dedicated server at work which annoyingly is not accessible physically by us and has ridiculous security restrictions placed on it (because they are trying make our lives easier aren’t they?). So anyhow I installed all the prerequisites for Poesia, but the Poesia ./configure couldn’t find the package netpbm. So, anyhow like anyone would do they download the source and attempt to compile and install it. Though finding out that lots of the dev packages that really should have been installed with the OS are missing. I then trail to try and find compiled versions of these packages to save me time but some i have to compile and install separately. But just when you think you’ve had enough fun for one whole day you then find that netpbm itself does not make properly.

Anyhow I lose patience and decide to scrap the idea of the SUSE server at work and decide to try on my good friend, fedora at home. To do this on my fedora server (which this blog is hosted from) I setup a x86_64 VM using kvm/qenu. Everything is working fine, I managed to install most packages needed for the installation using the my favourite package manager YUM. Everything installed, well I had to compile and install Boehm’s Garbage Collector as the one shipped with the distro didn’t allow for pthreads which apparently is needed. Anyhow the Poesia ./configure can’t find the garbage collector (don’t they come early in the morning?).

I question if they maybe caused by the fact that I was using a 64bit OS, and maybe this was causing the error with SUSE with libraries being in slightly different places e.g. lib64 instead of lib etc. So I create another VM, this time a 32bit one. This time everything installed ok, but Poesia ./configure completed ok, but now a error occurred.

Now I am at the point where I don’t know how to proceed, and hope I can find a source to help me through. Though on the plus side I’ve learnt a considerable amount on managing VMs in bash that I’m sure will come in handy another day.

until next time.

How time changes you

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Dean

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

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Dean

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!

Tour De France Screenshots

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Dean

Sorry about the wait, I’ve been busy creating the standings program for mammoth graphics to create their standings feed for the iPhone app. Here are the screen shots:

: Main Menu image

: Stages Page

: A Stage Detail page

: Stage Detail Map

: Stage Fly Through image

: Team Pages showing different Tour de france teams

: Standings menu showing different categories

The app is still in review stage, to which I hope is all approved as soon as possible. Hope the app gains at least some popularity, at least till the next app is done 😉

BTW. The name of the app is TDF2009, support will be greatly appriciated!

Speak to you all soon

“On ya Bike” – Tour De France iPhone App

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Dean

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

Dean's Blog

A somewhat closer look at my life and thoughts.