iPhone Game – LyricalGenius

Months ago I spoke briefly about a new iPhone/iPod touch game that I was starting to develop for Mammoth Graphics, well recently (a week or so ago) the work was finished, but I hadn’t had time to really sit down and blog about it. The game is called LyricalGenius and is a game targeted at people that want a general quiz game about song lyrics. Obviously the aim of the game is that for each level there is a target of correct answers the player needs to get, and if you get too many wrong, then tough luck! Development of this game has really enabled me to build on my experiences with the development of the Tour de France application which I blogged about summer last year.

The game is now in the hands of mammoth, who are in the process of final testing and adding more questions (as song lyrics need approval from Sony Records) and hopefully will see it up on app store very soon, so if you fancy a new game, give it ago!

New year, new start, new experiences

Hi guys,

been a while I know but I have been rather busy with loads of different things. Firstly I realise its slightly late but still wish everyone a happy new year! Currently I have been carrying on with the LyricalGenius iPhone game which I hope to finish within a week or so. When the game is complete I will post screenshots of the application, and hope anyone with a iPod Touch/iPhone will give it ago and support it!

Other than the game, I’m starting my PhD officially this Monday which I am quite excited about, and sadly have a poster I need to get together ready for an annual PhD Conference, which should be quite interesting. I have also a paper I’m trying to start writing, well when i have five minutes that is.

For this paper I’m hoping to write a workshop paper proposing the use of mobile Domain Specific Language as as way of creating almost platform independent applications. Though this paper won’t be appropriate for a conference as I’m merely proposing something, I still think it will be a good starting point for my career in academia.

Because I’m looking at writing this paper with Tony Clark, he said for me to write using LaTex, which so I read could be a very good way of writing my PhD thesis. Because of the markup quality of LaTex, the thesis will be able to be tracked using normal SCM technologies e.g. CVS, SVN, or my personal favourite Git. With the use of SCM, different versions of the document can be stored and differences between different versions can be compared, which should be very useful.

Other than work, I’m also to Slovakia for 6 days from next Friday, which I am extremely looking forward to. This trip isn’t work related but more time to met and spend time with a very special person. I’m looking forward to seeing Bratislava, Vienna in Austria and over all having a great time!

Anyhow, will update you soon!

Android and iPhone progress

Hey guys! This will most likely be my last entry before the new year, which I’m looking forward to. One hopes next year will bring some great new experiences and hopefully a new start in some aspects of my life, though not forgetting to hopefully have more success in my professional life either! I think this year has been full of drama in some aspect, some sad moments but also a new opportunity to take my career to the next level.

Moving on, yes my mobile development seems to be coming along ok. Currently I am in process of designing the data model of the iPhone game, and also have started building the interfaces which is exciting to see come together. I will obviously have alot to do over the christmas holidays with it, but I guess it will keep my mind active in that sense. As more development happens and I have screenshots to show, I will post them.

As for the android development, like I said in a post not long ago I was planning to development a music catalog and mobile app, well I have artist data being stored, and also album names being stored (though I get the occasional unhandled exception, that I need to look into). I need to look into being able to get a album artist, as different songs may have different artists (Say if there was a colaborative song). I am currently thinking to get the album artist from the artist folder it is stored in, as I dont think there is way of accessing the album artist ID tag using the library I have. For the android side of it, currently I have a SAX XML Parser running, and just displaying everything in a console-like program. For the moment I am programming the logic and fetching of data, the representation layer of my app will be sorted last. Im thinking to have a search page that terms can be searched across artist and album…

Android app screenshot showing parsed artist data

Android app screenshot showing parsed artist data

Only issue that I am currently having is there seems to be an issue with either “/” or “&” in the XML when it comes to parsing, which I will need to sort out before I continue, though I think I’ve made a good start considering the limited time I have to put to this project.

Anyhow, will update you when I have to talk, or show.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Elgg development and other activities

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

Current Activities – Opportunity matching and mammoths

Hey guys! Been quite busy lately with this and that. Currently as you know I’ve been working with Mobsventures on their Slenky branded social networking system. This has been going better than it was, partly because of my learning curve with Elgg has excellerated lately.

Anyhow I’ve been working on opportunity matching on the platform that I’m now just polishing up for a littel demo and presentation I have to make this Tuesday for the client. I’m currently wuite happy with whats been implemented but like I said there are some parts that need polishing before I’ll be happy to display it to anyone other than my superior. Currently I have implemented different types of users (Client, User and Admin) which obviously have different functionality. The Client can add opportunties which can be diactivated and activated (not shown and shown). This opportunties can then are shown in the “All Opportunities” section for the user. The user can then choose to add these opportunities to their favourites for easy retrieval.

The nifty thing I think is that I created a kinda “smart” search. This gets all opportunities and matches based on the following in the following order:

  1. Same borough and on a category found in a favourite.
  2. Same borough.
  3. Category found in a favourite.

Tomorrow I’m hoping add a category hierachy system for the admin to control the different pre defined categories. Previding this can be done I’ll be ready for the presentation on Tuesday. If not, Monday night will be a very long one.

Laters.

Tour De France Screenshots

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:

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

Viva la France!

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!