Over the weekend we started designing a Prezi for our final group presentation. I had never used Prezi before, so I went through the tutorials to learn the basic functionality. Working with a fully customizable blank canvas poses the added complexity of design flow. I really like the concept of Prezi over PowerPoint, since it is so much more customizable, but I do think that it will take longer to finish.
As far as progress, we have not gotten very far yet, but it is fun to work with, and today we will be working on it more as a group.
In addition to playing with Prezi, I also finished the group evaluation form that is due today in class.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The End is Nigh
Our big group bug ended up being a flop. Glenn spent a week or so to stitch together 3 images to test the bug and our solution (<3Gb, =3Gb, >3Gb). The bug stated that images over 3Gb wouldn't render properly, but we were having issues loading MUCH smaller images, even less than 1Gb. Having only 1.5 weeks left of class, we don't have the time to futher problem solve this issue.
Since our group bug seemed like a dead end, our group considered working on my 2nd bug as the new big group bug, since it ended up being more complicated than I initially thought. However, when trying to test for the bug existence, the patches and test files included in the bug report were alone proving to be troublesome.
To further complicate things, this bug requires design clarification before we can imlement a patch, and would require many back-and-forth emailing with the VTK developers. We would have to discuss implementation specifications before even starting to fix the bug. Based on past experience communicating with the developers, this conversation alone could take weeks, especially since we are not very established in the VTK community.
This bug would probably have been doable if we had initially chosen it as our group bug, but now it doesn't seem like there is not enough time.
That being the case, we are planning on bringing our bug fixing to an end and instead start to focus on our group presentation (using prezi). At least we were all able to experience the entire OpenSource code commit process from our first individual bugs. Today, we are planning on meeting to start our designing/creating our presentation.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Next Bug
Over the weekend, I took some time to implement the patch code from the attached files on the bug report (http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=11231).
I had some issues getting the images to render, so I decided to spend the rest of my time reading and understanding the code.
Today, we need to work on our group bug.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
An Approved Code Submission, and the Ominous Superquadric Source Bug
After our meeting last Tuesday, I decided to poke the VTK developers again, since my bug fix code still hadn't been reviewed/approved. According to email responses that my other team-mates have received, the VTK developers are going to try to be more proactive in approving smaller bugs, since this is how new contributors get involved.
Yesterday, I got a reply email from David Thomas, one of the lead developers, saying that my code had been reviewed, and that the changes were approved.
I can officially say that I have completed the full cycle of contribution to an Open Source project!! =D
(and it feels good)
However, we still have to complete our group bug, and our 2nd individual bugs.
That being the case, I started doing research for my next bug squashing:
0011231: Superquadric source has y axis orientation but claims to provide z axis orientation.
Basically, there are two conflicting statements. vtkCylinderSource.h states that the axis of the cylinder is aligned along the global y-axis, where as in vtkSuperquadraticSource, the default axis of symmetry is stated to be aligned along the global z-axis. HOWEVER, when rendered, both the cylinder and superquadratic appear next to each other aligned along the same axis of symmetry.
This bug might be as simple as changing the verbage in the documentation and IO statements, or as complex as re-rendering in the appropriate direction.
I need to send out an email to the developers to clear up this discrepancy. A plus though is that the bug tracker has test code attached, so I should be able to start hacking away at it soon.
Yesterday, I got a reply email from David Thomas, one of the lead developers, saying that my code had been reviewed, and that the changes were approved.
I can officially say that I have completed the full cycle of contribution to an Open Source project!! =D
(and it feels good)
However, we still have to complete our group bug, and our 2nd individual bugs.
That being the case, I started doing research for my next bug squashing:
0011231: Superquadric source has y axis orientation but claims to provide z axis orientation.
Basically, there are two conflicting statements. vtkCylinderSource.h states that the axis of the cylinder is aligned along the global y-axis, where as in vtkSuperquadraticSource, the default axis of symmetry is stated to be aligned along the global z-axis. HOWEVER, when rendered, both the cylinder and superquadratic appear next to each other aligned along the same axis of symmetry.
This bug might be as simple as changing the verbage in the documentation and IO statements, or as complex as re-rendering in the appropriate direction.
I need to send out an email to the developers to clear up this discrepancy. A plus though is that the bug tracker has test code attached, so I should be able to start hacking away at it soon.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
UPE Indution
Today was the UPE Induction Ceremony. Pothering, Pharr, and Stalvey were in charge of the induction. Overall it was a nice quaint ceremony, and a great honor. The food and socialisation afterwards was very enjoyable.
As far as the VTK project goes, I still haven't gotten a response from my code submission, and will have to contact the developers again. Hopefully today we will make some headway with our group code change.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
POSSCON
Last Thursday (24th) I attended POSSCON. I rode up with Tony to keep him company, but ended up sleeping the whole way >.>
The building that POSSCON was being hosted in was spectacular. I loved how open it was, and felt that the organization of the event was nice. Before attending any of the lectures, I grabbed a muffin and stopped stopped by a few of the interesting booths including Oracle, HSSC, MakerBot, and Linode. At each of the booths, I engaged in conversation with the representatives. The 3d printer, MakerBot, was pretty fascinating, although I had heard of them prior to POSSCON. The plastic models were cruder than I expected them to be, but I see it's value for prototyping.
The rest of the day, I bounced back and forth between the Education and Healthcare sessions.
First, I attended Education seminar by Allen Tucker about FOSS projects and using them for educational purposes.
For the 2nd session, I attended Healthcare to learn about models in Healthcare Information Systems, but was disappointed when the spokesperson didn't show. Instead they ended up holding a panel of individuals who discussed opensource in healthcare and were available to answer questions.
During lunch I was introduced to Ian Sanderson, the head organizer of the Healthcare sessions. We talked about HSSC (Health Sciences of SC) and Bioinformedical Informatic Services. I explained my interest in data mining, machine learning algorithms, and my past experience doing research at the Department of Bioinformatics, Biostatisticics and Epidemiology over at MUSC. He seemed to be impressed, and introduced me to a man named Randall Alexander.
I then spoke to Randal Alexander, who is the Program Manager at MUSC in Biomedical Informatics Services. I mentioned that I was considering grad school in the future, and he asked me to send him an e-mail with my resume for a potential internship opportunity.
After lunch, I attended Walter Bender's presentation on Sugar Labs and was very impressed. I have always been interested in his work, and it was really nice to hear him talk about his goals and ideas firsthand. I really wanted to talk with him after the lecture about future educational methods (since progressive education is one of my interests), but he was swarmed with people, and I thought it best to try him another time.
The next session I went to was on Education by Corey Donohoe. I found what he had to say about higher education and open source interesting. At this point, I remember feeling appreciative that we have an open source program in our cs path at CofC.
After that I went to the Healthcare lecture by Dr. Dan Russler. To be honest, I wasn't too interested in this lecture, and zoned out hardcore.
I ended up leaving a little early with Carlynn and Alex. To my dismay, upon returning to Charleston, I found out that my name had been called at the raffle to win a book on iPad Programming. I was disappointed because not only do I never win ANYTHING, but also I've been looking to get into mobile app development. qq.
Overall, POSSCON was a great experience, and I'm glad that we were 'forced' to attend.
The building that POSSCON was being hosted in was spectacular. I loved how open it was, and felt that the organization of the event was nice. Before attending any of the lectures, I grabbed a muffin and stopped stopped by a few of the interesting booths including Oracle, HSSC, MakerBot, and Linode. At each of the booths, I engaged in conversation with the representatives. The 3d printer, MakerBot, was pretty fascinating, although I had heard of them prior to POSSCON. The plastic models were cruder than I expected them to be, but I see it's value for prototyping.
The rest of the day, I bounced back and forth between the Education and Healthcare sessions.
First, I attended Education seminar by Allen Tucker about FOSS projects and using them for educational purposes.
For the 2nd session, I attended Healthcare to learn about models in Healthcare Information Systems, but was disappointed when the spokesperson didn't show. Instead they ended up holding a panel of individuals who discussed opensource in healthcare and were available to answer questions.
During lunch I was introduced to Ian Sanderson, the head organizer of the Healthcare sessions. We talked about HSSC (Health Sciences of SC) and Bioinformedical Informatic Services. I explained my interest in data mining, machine learning algorithms, and my past experience doing research at the Department of Bioinformatics, Biostatisticics and Epidemiology over at MUSC. He seemed to be impressed, and introduced me to a man named Randall Alexander.
I then spoke to Randal Alexander, who is the Program Manager at MUSC in Biomedical Informatics Services. I mentioned that I was considering grad school in the future, and he asked me to send him an e-mail with my resume for a potential internship opportunity.
After lunch, I attended Walter Bender's presentation on Sugar Labs and was very impressed. I have always been interested in his work, and it was really nice to hear him talk about his goals and ideas firsthand. I really wanted to talk with him after the lecture about future educational methods (since progressive education is one of my interests), but he was swarmed with people, and I thought it best to try him another time.
The next session I went to was on Education by Corey Donohoe. I found what he had to say about higher education and open source interesting. At this point, I remember feeling appreciative that we have an open source program in our cs path at CofC.
After that I went to the Healthcare lecture by Dr. Dan Russler. To be honest, I wasn't too interested in this lecture, and zoned out hardcore.
I ended up leaving a little early with Carlynn and Alex. To my dismay, upon returning to Charleston, I found out that my name had been called at the raffle to win a book on iPad Programming. I was disappointed because not only do I never win ANYTHING, but also I've been looking to get into mobile app development. qq.
Overall, POSSCON was a great experience, and I'm glad that we were 'forced' to attend.
Pushing my Bug
As I stated in my last post, I was able to make the changes to the source code to correct my bug, and all that remained was to commit my change. Last week during our team meeting I finished the process by pushing my branch of the code using git. Now I just have to wait for feedback.
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