Archive for October, 2005

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College Searching w/ Google Maps Interface

Thursday, October 27th, 2005


Notes so far:

A few simple use cases:

1) Me
Looking for a masters program:
Search/sort by:
Geographic Region,
Size of the City,
Ranking of the School

2) Ben
Goes to the site because "its cool". Expects:
Get the map
Ranking slider bars
Numbered or lettered according to ranking, if there is one
otherwise
Search for the city / name, sort based on proximity
Certain sized school
Update dynamically

3) Graham
Looking for a phd program:
Search/sort using:
quality of teaching
how published / cited people are
Specifics: program keyword searches ("computer audio", etc)
Size of the city, culture of the city

4) Titus
Ratios

Looking for a grad program:
Major Specializations
Admission requirements
Average GRE
Number of students
Religious/Political Affiliations
Number of plublications (Impact factor)
Cost
If there are "out of state" benefits
Regional Weather (how cold it is)
Extracurricular activities
USNews rankings
Tiers / Risk Minimization

Undergrad:
class size
Acceptance
Retention
Average GPA
Internet Connectivity / Most Wired / Restrictions (OS, Firewalls)

A "Good" search result: 20
Search by "course", like "Semiconductors"
Biases:
Computing Platform
Research groups
vocational vs theory
political
religious
GALA
Landscape:
buildings vs trees
city vs town

Where they go after school:
Grad programs
Companies (colleges that recruiters visit)
Startups

Posted in A Boring Default | No Comments »

Hackfest 1010 Mortem

Thursday, October 27th, 2005

Since Last Week:

Ben-
    Added interactive invoke main method. Ran up with issues, but it’s usable.
    Still has issues with Settings in JavaBeans. TAs will start using his autograder in mere days.
Graham-
    Speeding up a pop song seems to work, but my output has glitches.
    The glitches happen even when you speed up by a factor of 1.0, which should in theory do an exact segment-by-segment copy. So the glitches come from an error somewhere in the process, above any errors that may be in the segmentation process.
Vinny-
    Wrote a small GMaps application for finding CS schools.
    Wants your support – workshopping support.
    Has started working on db support with Ruby on Rails.
    What is the most useful feature for you, applying to schools?
Titus-
    His Article is due Nov 1, it’s on doing PIC microcontroller sims in Linux.

Plan for Today:

Ben-
    Debug Settings object in JavaBeans.
Vinny-
    Leading discussion map app. Maybe gamey stuff in Commotion.
Graham-
    Refactor some of my segmentation, try to kill glitches.
Titus-
    Testing bleeding edge and fixing software GPSim, GPASM, SDCC, all to write an article.
Mike-
    Doing the school, math and linguistics.
Stephen-
    Nonlinear optimizations.

This Week’s Reality:

Graham-
    Stole music, chatted with Stephen and Mike, gave Vinny a use case. Suggested Dynamic Queries for CS Map.
Vinny-
    Installed rails, wrote caching scraper for college board. Collected use cases.
    Has compiled a document of several use cases for his systems.
Ben-
    Danced to the music, over and over and over again.
Titus-
    Working on his article, came up with examples. How to do interrupts (pushbutton), using the built-in timer. Should finish article this week.

Posted in Personal, Plans, Project | No Comments »

Photos on Flickr

Thursday, October 27th, 2005

My recent digital camera purchase has resulted in a stream of photographs.  If they are good enough, they make it to my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ynniv/.

Titus asked about saving photos from flicker – I think this was a ploy to get me to allow photo downloads.  The default setting is to allow other flickr members, but I have switched to the Communist setting of Anonymous.  Go forth and pirate my camera!

Posted in People, Personal, Places | 1 Comment »

Hackfest 1010

Wednesday, October 26th, 2005

Come regale and hack and Octane.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Hackfest 1001 Postmortem

Thursday, October 20th, 2005

–  Since Last Hackfest
    –  Luke
        –  found blurb about alpha Firefox UI feature, tabling his
              firefox project
        –  wrote simple CLI for jhymn  on Linux
        –  spent some time hacking a linux bootloader for palm treo
              (like GARUS)
    –  Matt
        –  Idea: chronological scale for google maps
    –  Graham
        –  Went to startup school
            –  Is going to write it about it tomorrow (says vinny, really on the weekend)
    –  Ben
        –  More autograding stuff – added something so that it can
              read in a request for a complete regrade of a test
        –  Made things nice and user friendly
    –  Vinny
        –  been playing with lisp/scheme, made cool drawings in
              logo/scheme
–  Today’s Plans
    –  Luke
        –  Website cleanup/maintenance
        –  play with Palm bootloader more
    –  Matt
        –  Haning out, might head home to work on PC
        –  Sketch user interfaces
    –  Graham
        –  Music editor is STARVING
            –  fixing "write with speedup"
    –  Ben
        –  Write something to let the TA run a specific method
    –  Vinny
        –  muck around with scheme/logo more
–  Today’s Realities
    –  Matt
        –  on vague timeline-animated-map-idea: babysteps, in the
              form of touching base on java(?) and GIS
        –  Also: brainstorming on a slick name, with approriately
              pretentious allusion
    –  Luke
        –  Got website things done.  TikiWIki updated.
        –  mail organizing and DHCP debugging via packet sniffing
    –  Graham
        –  Defeated the System.EngineExecutionException by
              reorganizing variables… marshalling issue?
            –  still buggy, tho
    –  Ben
        –  Reorganized some code
        –  read a lot of PhD Comics.com
    –  Vinny
        –  learned the shape of a nautilus shell
        –  wrote some scheme/logo to draw one

Posted in News, People, Places, Plans, Project | 4 Comments »

SNAKES ON A CARTESIAN OR PERHAPS MERCATOR PROJECTION

Thursday, October 20th, 2005

Here’s an edited for content and length, but not the size of your tv,  log of my talk with Graham, RE: map-time genesis:

(21:19:22) Matt J Alexander: also: I need a hip, pomo name.
(21:19:34) Matt J Alexander: Because a project without a name is nothing.
(21:19:49) Graham: will, you could insert meta into the title
(21:20:07) Graham: mapistry?
(21:21:19) Graham: metamap
(21:21:41) Graham: maplysses
(21:22:09) Matt J Alexander: hrm.
(21:22:25) Matt J Alexander: maplysses is interesting, but syntatically vague on proper pronunciation
(21:22:57) Graham: mapberto eco
(21:23:59) Matt J Alexander: I like the direction this is going in
(21:24:48) Graham: 100 years of map solitude
(21:25:05) Graham: maptavio paz
(21:25:39) Graham: maps joyce
(21:27:29) Matt J Alexander: So the current implementation idea is based on Event atom (or class,or whatever).
(21:27:49) Ravelite: ok, so an event moves a border then?
(21:27:58) Matt J Alexander: A border would be an Event.
(21:28:12) Matt J Alexander: An Event can be one or more Events, or a vector/tuple.
(21:28:19) Matt J Alexander: Vector being:
(21:28:38) Ravelite: ahhhh, so a border event is a vector of border vertices
(21:28:59) Matt J Alexander: {(where: GIS date[lat.,long.elev.]), time, country/tribe, person, short/long descriptions, causes, image/connector images, accuracy}
(21:29:05) Ravelite: so events have a limited time of validity,
(21:29:13) Ravelite: and are replaced by more current ones?
(21:29:27) Matt J Alexander: Yeah. I’m not sure if this is covered by accuracy or would need something like "lifespan"
(21:29:41) Ravelite: Well, probably you don’t need lifespan,
(21:29:46) Ravelite: just chose the most recent.
(21:29:51) Matt J Alexander: I’m also not sure if this ends up with overly large dataset.
(21:29:56) Ravelite: that partitions the timelime well enough
(21:30:07) Matt J Alexander: Since a border would necessitate several events as points just to define all the curves.
(21:30:15) Ravelite: yes
(21:30:42) Matt J Alexander: Is there a more elegant way, or can I just fall back on the mantra of SPACE IS CHEAP, TIME IS EXPENSIVE
(21:31:10) Ravelite: Well, go for simplest to make a prototype.,
(21:31:18) Ravelite: avoid premature optimization
(21:31:28) Ravelite: assume you will throw away this prototype
(21:32:08) Matt J Alexander: Historically, are even the most ardously planned out prototypes thrown out?
(21:32:19) Matt J Alexander: Or do arduously planned prototypes just never get created :p
(21:32:38) Ravelite: well, it’s just one of my design philosophies
(21:32:48) Ravelite: I just think it’s hardest to create something from the start
(21:32:50) Matt J Alexander: One Luke shares
(21:32:59) Ravelite: and you will learn many obvious things once it is build
(21:33:07) Ravelite: that you can’t imagine about right now
(21:33:12) Matt J Alexander: True: certainly I don’t have any domain knowledge about mapping currently
(21:33:25) Matt J Alexander: And only barely so in history
(21:33:39) Ravelite: I agree with your point, the more planning, the harder to do and the greater chance it doesn’t happen
(21:33:59) Ravelite: and most planning will be made irrelevant unless you know a lot about the domain
(21:34:08) Ravelite: and since your app is highly experimental,
(21:34:18) Ravelite: almost no one knows about the domain right now

Posted in Project | No Comments »

Hackfest 1001

Wednesday, October 19th, 2005

Again, it’s at Octane.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Hackfest 1000 Mortem

Saturday, October 15th, 2005

Oops, forgot to post this.  =P

Ben
 o This past week, put together a working demo for the TAs, got some feedback.
 o todo: want to put together a new test type that allows the TA to run a specified test.

Graham
 o This past week, installed frootyloops on his notebook, did homework like a madman.
 o todo: will install emacs.  read swimm sourcecode

Luke
 o This past week, started working on developing apps for trio.  Started writing a bootloader for linux.
 o todo: came up with an idea to improve usability for firefox.  (Navigability without a mouse).  A "generate links" button.
   Also, intelligent transparency.

Vinny
 o This past week, did 3d integration in commotion.
 o todo: want a behavior that puts a terrain in a 3d scene.

Things we learned today:
 o Courtship is the platform of the socially inept.
 o Jesus was a hippie.
 o Graham wants to cruise Nebraska to knock up women.

 

Posted in People, Places, Plans, Project | 2 Comments »

Hack Fest 1000

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005

It’s at Octane.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

HOWTO: From magnitude spectrum to sound

Sunday, October 9th, 2005

Calling all atlhack signal geeks!

Given a real-valued signal it is fairly straightforward to generate the magnitude spectrum. To plot it in matlab it’s


spec = fft( signal, size );
plot( abs( fftshift( spec ) ) );

The purpose of the abs is to get the complex modulus of the transform values. To get the original signal it’s


plot( real( ifft( spec, size ) ) );

Question: if I only knew X where X = abs( fft( signal, size ) ) and signal is real, could I properly reconstruct signal?

Posted in Computer Music | 4 Comments »

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