Andrew's Blog

And the verdict says...

2008-05-20T10:12:00.002-04:00

I am done!!!! I presented my defense and the committee agreed that YES I was good enough to get my A and finish being a masters student at RIT. This has been a long and hectic trip getting this shit done, but it IS done now! Never again will I have to think about my capstone, lay awake at night contemplating these damn data logging!

Oh well... the point is, it works! and I am done FOREVER YAYYYYYAAYYYYY!!!!

Capstone Defense

2008-05-18T14:41:00.002-04:00

Its tomorrow..... w00t!!! less than 20 hours away and I will be done with school

T - 3 Days

2008-05-15T17:55:00.002-04:00

Hmm... so its official, this Monday at 11am in bldg 70 room 2400 I am going to be presenting my final defense. Over the past week there has not been much to write about, I have been doing a lot of final write up stuff for my defense and working on my presentation. Now I can see the end, and its glorious. So in roughly 3 days and 17 hours I will never have to worry about this masters again, and I will be done forever. Needless to say I am fairly happy about this but also slightly ass clenching terrified. Oh well, good bye school forever!!

Final write up

2008-04-25T15:49:00.003-04:00

So this exciting adventure is coming to the end. As of right now there are about 29 days and 5 minutes left till graduation. I am began my final write up about a week ago, and I am currently working on it right now. I am to have a rough draft finished tonight so I may hand it out to my advisors and get feed back / have it torn apart with comments. This being the case, hopefully I will be able to have the final final writeup done in 2 weeks after that then have my final defense, and finally be done. Wow, my stomach is flippin just a bit while I type this out :/ oh well it will be done, then I will go to my new job and start a new section of my life. (wow I sound emo.. oh well)

More Errors!!!!!

2008-04-15T10:48:00.002-04:00

Soo... This always happens with upgrades, I go and create more error handling (as stated in previous post) and more errors happen (with more accuracy!!!). I just finished fixing a bunch of errors that were little one line things, like forgetting to set something to true etc.

Then there was one major issue that made my gmail cry like a little girl, something like 600+ emails in about 2 hours. thats about 300 emails in 1 hour, 150 in 30 minutes, 75 in fifteen, 32.5 in 7.5 minutes etc...

So here is what happened:

First, the version of Joomla that I had, had not gotten up to date recently. So I updated that and this fixed the problem when you had tried to create an initial account, and it through an error. This was also the cause for the error after you clicked the link in your email. This part was not my fault directly, I should have checked for an update, but other than that it was just a bug in their program.

Secondly, the error that caused all of the errors in my Email... I have written everything in a language called PHP. In PHP you can have variables, think of these as boxes that can hold things such as names, or numbers. You say $someVar = "hi"; This puts the word hi in the 'box' $someVar. What I did was say: $tempObj = "something"; print $temObj; This would throw an error in any other language cause the word $temObj had not been previously assigned, however PHP will not do this. Thus, It messed up.

However, everything works now, so yay!!

Proposal

2008-04-08T13:57:00.002-04:00

So, once upon a time I figured out what my Master project was going to be and spoke with various teachers to see who was interested. I already knew one (Chris) becuase he was the one that suggested it to me. The project was time sensitive meaning it had to be done by the beginning quarter of Spring. So with some preliminary research I went and worked on it. With about 5 weeks left till Spring, both of my instructors came and queried me about the status of my proposal, to which I replied "Look, you can have working code by dead line, or a proposal... your choice" so thus it was decided that I would go and complete code, then move to the proposal when I completed the coding. So here I am , writing this forsaken proposal. That is what I am doing... oh what fun...

Version 1.5

2008-03-28T15:45:00.002-04:00

So today/tonight I am going to roll out the newest version of my framework.. there are less errors, and more error handling. Before, when an error occurred, it did not bubble up. It just triggered other errors so It was FUBARing up all my reports. However, now all my errors bubble up so when there is an error (HAHA like that would happen) it will give me a much clearer reason for having an error. I demo-ed things all day today to make sure that it was going to work, and fixed any little errors that occurred from the 'switch' so now I will move all the files from Server 1 to Server 2 and we will be in a good place!

Now I have to get my capstone proposal written and submitted, then I can work on the design of the visualizer.... T- 56 days till graduation, and 44 days till I want to have this all done. I think i can, I think I can, I thi....

Then the Gods said.... let there be errors...

2008-03-17T16:30:00.004-04:00

Sooo.... the frame work went live on Thursday the 13th of march, and Errors started rolling in Friday the 14th. As we all know there are going to be errors, and as far as errors go, these aren't that bad. It turns out that two errors happen with my framework (that I know about) First, if you try to upload an avatar that is too big (so rather than 100 x 100, they put 200 x 200) then it throws an error. Also it would appear that if they do not specify a recipient during a private message then it throws an error. I am going to attempt to remedy this situation soon. After this, I am going to try to come up with some more creative error handling to be more specific when Errors are thrown. Then I am going to start planning out the visualizer then graduate and get a job.... Wow this is just moving a bit fast huh?

Coding Done pt2

2008-03-05T23:48:00.003-05:00

Wow, so ya I just finished the coding for the data collection. I know previously I said I finished, however I forgot about 3 main keys, accounting for people closing the window instead of logging out. This was fixed over the past week. At first I used onBeforeUnLoad... and well if you read the post below, you can see how that turned out. After that I switched to onUnLoad which worked fine for sending one var back and forth. If I used more than one var, and closed the window it crashed on me. After much researching it turned out it was an async problem. So after some fussing around and re-working the way I handled my JS calls everything seems to be in working order.

Now I have finished posting all my new code to the prod Server so it is all ready for Monday! Hopefully everything worked and will work how its suppose to, and God Willing when/if any errors do occur, I can find them swiftly and vanquish them!

onBeforeUnLoad

2008-03-04T17:20:00.003-05:00

onBeforeUnLoad can go to hell and die.... words can not express how my BRC is rising (Blood Rage-ohol Content). So it turns out, that it is not worth using onBeforeUnLoad instead of onUnLoad. One of my teachers referred me to that for the 'IE crowd', this has caused so many screw up its not even funny. The things in the function that is called from this event will work erratically at best, unless you have an alert in there. I realize that this is most likely a timing issue or even compatibility. So what happened was I would call this function from onBeforeUnload, and it would or would not my one line of AJAX code (jQuery). This caused me to put in an alert to test it out, the alert would always fire, and my AJAX would successfully execute. Take out alert, call fails. Now I have said 'forget about that noise just use onUnLoad' and everything works peachy, including in IE. So the moral of this story... use onUnLoad unless you are POSITIVE people will ONLY be using IE

Coding Done!

2008-02-25T14:51:00.001-05:00

Done with coding, on Feb 16th, 3 hours before I was suppose to leave for GDC, thus I haven't been posting lately, sorry.

T - 6 days

2008-02-09T11:16:00.000-05:00

So it has been about 2 weeks since I have started coding... I have built up the majority of my frame work, edited my DB and coded lots! All of my progress can be tracked through this page http://icedev.rit.edu/test/generictest.php it shows what I have done, what needs to be done and test data that shows that what has been collected, has been collected correctly. With this much done and that much more to go, I have 6 more days. Here we go!

Let the coding begin!!!

2008-01-27T12:01:00.000-05:00

So let me see here... this entire project needs to be ready for testing during exam week, IE 2/25/08 I am going to San Fransisco on 2/16/08 so the coding needs to be done by then. Starting right now then this gives me about 2 .5 weeks to finish all coding and implementation, that is less than a week per system.

It is my plan to build in the functionality of one part at a time. So first I will get the new user / login script working on all three systems, then get the next function working on all three systems etc. All of the information will be published as I go and when all is said and done, I will publish all three systems so that the open source community can pick away at it if they would like.

Well now that i have realized that i only have 2.5 weeks to rock this out, I must go and commence the rocking!

Wow, who was incharge of this?

2008-01-22T10:33:00.001-05:00

So I went to Cross Roads yesterday (Martin Luther King Jr day) and this is what they had:

'The Martin Luther King Jr Special'
Fried Chicken, Collard Greens, Black-eyed Pea Rice & Cornbread $6.59
Served at the Crossbar for lunch 11.a.m. – 2 p.m.
Dinner 4:30 – 8 p.m.

Now don't get me wrong, they MIGHT be able to pass this off if they didn't specify what day it was but holy cow! What kind of organization thinks, 'Hmm... Martin Luther King Jr... well he was black... what do black people like to eat? OH I KNOW!!! Fried Chicken, Collard Greens, Black-eyed Pea Rice and Cornbread!!' Seriously what the heck? I am not of African American decent and I found this insulting. How did this get past the committee?! Oh well, I just got angry about it and thought I would share.

Data To collect!!

2008-01-12T15:03:00.000-05:00

So I realized, I never really gave a thorough explanation of what my thesis was. It is my plan to set up multiple servers and install various pieces of software on them, including Joomla, Moodle, and PHPBB3. Then through a series of plugins, modules, and raw code editing I will Collect a various amount of data (See Below). Then after is created, I will design a visualizer for this data so that your ‘average non-tech’ person will be able to understand all the data that has been collected. Also I will develop a series of tools that will be used for ‘measuring’ and ‘judging’ certain quantitative items. Such as ‘the direct communication between multiple people on a thread, and judging ‘social / technical’ noise that can be found on forums. An example of this is on a forum about Cooking Websites, when a person logs on and just posts ‘I LOVE PUPPIES’ that is social noise.

That, in a nut shell, is my thesis. I have the servers up and running, software installed and started sketching out how to log all of this data and how to store it all. That has to be done by the first of March AT THE LATEST, because it will then be used for classes in spring quarter. Then next quarter (spring) I will develop the visualizer / tools that will be used with the data that was created. Then Graduation, the beard comes off, I get a job and start my life (?) I don’t know but that’s alright, because I don’t have to worry about that for another 5 moths…. Wow… 5 months… then I am done, weird…

Data to collect:

(U) Frequency of participation
Count of log ins, log outs (with time stamps)
(U) Duration
(U) Posts Read
(U) Posts posted
(U) average length of post
(U) replies posted
(U) replies read
(T) length of thread
(T) originator
(T) unique replies
(T) total replies
(T) ”reuse of replies” we have to watch out for link backs, copying, and when the user paraphrases it in their own thread
(P) Avatar Use / Change / on / off
(P) Ratings Use
(P) # of posts
(P) categories (expert, novice)
(P) reputation Indicators
(P) Stars Polls

New Look

2008-01-02T17:14:00.000-05:00

Hello there all. Hope your Christmas was fine and dandy and that you got all thew new toys that you could want this year. Over break I tried my hardest to relax and not do any... whats that called.. oh ya, thinking. I succeeded with flying colors! The one productive thing I did end up doing was a make over of this site. Posted is what the site looked like before hand, and this (obviously) is what the site looks like now. I feel its a bit more me. I used www.fontifier.com to make my handwriting in to a font (as you can see to the left, right and very top). It worked very well once I switched from a pen to a fine tip sharpy. I would highly suggest using them. The only bad part is that they charge 9$, but even that isn't that bad.

Hand writing

2007-12-22T23:53:00.001-05:00

So Which handwriting below looks more like mine / describes me well? I am going to make a background with 'my hand writing' and I have no free way of creating my hand writing in to a font. Thus I have narrowed it down to these 4 fonts. What do you think?

P.S. if you know of a different font that works better let me know! Thanks!

Random Quote:

2007-12-20T14:39:00.001-05:00

"I don't have standards, they just hold me back.."
-Andy

Servers up

2007-12-20T14:35:00.000-05:00

Finally! the servers are done software is fully installed and everything :: knock on wood :: is operational. Now all I have to do is find out what I will be logging and start thinking up how to do this, and how to visualize it... let the fun begin

Servers are Mainly done!!

2007-12-19T15:32:00.000-05:00

Finally I am done with these servers… for the most part. All the software is installed and most of it is configured for what we need. I am not going to list off everything that is installed on each computer, however it is rather extensive. There are 3 machines, 1 machine took a while because it was the first, and I did some things that I had never been done before (https, subversion, finding and installing a wiki). The second machine went very fast, because I just had to repeat the steps of the 1st machine. Lastly was the third machine. This gave me a bit of trouble because I had to find some different RPMs (installs) for different programs (MySql, java, flash…) which turned out to be a bit of a pain in the butt. Then getting MySql to co-operate with PHP was a big annoyance, however we finally figured it out.
Now I am just customizing the one machine then going to port all the information across the other three machines, snap shot them, then call it a night.
After this I am going to begin research on various visualizations research, and checking on different ways to log various amounts of data. Still not sure what I am logging, however I have been promised I will know before weeks end.

Random Side Note 1

2007-12-16T23:51:00.000-05:00

For those of you who know me at all you know that i am not a very serious person. This being said I am going to try to come up with random side notes as much as I can to bring some sense of humor to this blog.

Random Side note number 1:

Reason Number 429 why Facial hair is amazing: the moisture in your breath makes random icicles in your mustache / beard / (in my case) chin beard.

I just finished digging out my car from a major snowfall, and about ten minutes in I realized that I had quite a number of icicles in my mustache and my chin beard was frozen. This was humorous because I looked down to make sure there was no ice on the ground, and stabbed myself in the chest. It didn't hurt at all; I just thought this was funny.

Beginning of the Server

2007-12-12T12:42:00.000-05:00

So today is the day that I begin the project. Right now I get to setup 3 different servers, 1 for production, and two for Development. Hopefully, everything goes well. All three servers are essentially have the same setup, just a typical LAMP server with a few different CMS’s on it. More to come after the break on how the installations go!

Hello World

2007-12-09T23:08:00.000-05:00

This is the first of many posts to come. Right now it is my plan to put up at least one post every other day describing what I am doing for my Masters Capstone.

A little about myself. My name is Andrew Luly, I was born back in 1984 (do the math). I am currently a Second year Grad student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I am in the IT masters program, focusing in Multimedia, Database, and Web Technologies. I originally came here with thoughts of Networking and Web Design, however after a few classes I realized the error of my ways.

My main languages are AS2, AS3, PHP(4 and 5), and web ‘languages’ (html, Javascript, CSS). I know others however I have not used them in a long time so they are not worth mentioning. I enjoy PHP because it is soooo lose (as far as data types and such) thus making it very powerful. AS2 was one of the first languages I went in depth and became proficient. AS3 is like AS2, however since it is strongly typed you can do lots of things better and faster. Not to mention you can use it with Flex which is my new best friend.

I have also done a fair amount of work with Oracle 10g, and MySQL, including installation, light admin work, and performance and tuning.

So, with that being said, I give you my Masters Capstone blog, and I encourage comments / questions / random facts / and any awesomeness that you might have to give!