Nathaniel Ashe

Accessories Missing From Start Menu Windows 7 Solved

2010-08-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

One day i needed to get to my command prompt to use it for a class homework and noticed that my accessories folder was missing from the start menu. I searched everywhere online to find a solution and it gave me complicated ways for a solution, such as: download a program and then change the folder of that program with everything that is in accessories which could be found in this folder.......and so on.

But as I looked deeper into the problem I figured it out!!!! Somehow the Accessories folder was assigned to be hidden, so you could not see it when you click on the Start Menu button. So to change it follow these steps:

1. Go to:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

2. You should be able to see Accessories there and it would look fuzzy compared to the other folders. Right Click it and select properties.

3. Under Attributes, uncheck Hidden.

4. Click Apply

5. Click Ok

6. Restart Computer

Kukuicup Billboard 2

2010-08-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

So last week I said that I was so close in making the 1,000 resources and that I had to stop entering resources and change the titles to be more interesting. So this past week Taka and I have completed that task and now I can go on in entering more resources in to the resources form. Maybe this time I will add the goal to be higher again, maybe 1200.

But other than the resources page, Taka and I have been tasked with recreating the resources page and this is what we have come up with as a mockup:

Personally I like this one, because it displays the competition name, logo, and the url.

What we based these mockups on could be found here: Billboard Requirements. Also, the project page could be found here: kukuicup-billboard2.

The billboard is going to be the recreation of the kukuicup-billlboard following the mockups above.

This is going to be another great experience because now I get to work more with javascript and html. My past projects that I worked on in Professor Johnson's class is in java, php, Content Management System, and CSS.

Tune in next week to see what me and Taka have created with the billboard.

So Close....

2010-07-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I made my goal to make 1,000 resources for the resources page. But that had to be cut short because there were complications with the titles of the resources that were inputted. Some were very general and probably boring to the viewer that is going to see them. So, to make the titles more interesting and grabbing to the viewer, me and our new member to the UH Dorm Competition: Taka is going to go through all the resources and change the titles to be more interesting.

Adding to gathering resources Taka and I are going to recreate the kukuicup-billboard. We are tasked to change the look and the information that is going to be displayed on them. What Taka and I have come up with to work on this project could be found here: Billboard Requirements.

Tune in next week to see what we have done.

1000 is the goal

2010-07-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

So for the past few weeks i have been concentrating on the resources page for the website. On average I think I have inputted about 200 resources a week for the past 2-3 weeks. And now we are at 638 resources. But I am going to make this week a goal to hit 1000 resources, which is twice the average that I have been doing. I think I can do it because I have a bunch of videos that I have found but I have to go through them so that I don't input boring videos.

I am hoping to get this done so I can try and get other things done for the project. I have been working on the skins for different universities in the beginning of the summer and that number is not as high. So I am hoping to get the number of skins high also.

I have found a lot of other dorm energy competitions that use Lucid Dashboard for their competitions. It looks really good; however, I hope in the future, through the many improvements that future students will do for this project, other universities will also use this design.

More Resources

2010-07-13T12:34:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Just like last week, I worked on the resources gathering for the project. Now we are close to 400 resources. I'm not too sure of the statistics of each topic but I am thinking now that I do not have that much videos for the site. So... I need to start looking for more videos. I have a bunch more resources today for Biomass so the count should go up to 450. The hardest thing that I am looking for is Careers in Energy savings.

All Resources

2010-07-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

This week, as apposed to last week, I focused on gathering resources for the project. Also, while gathering information I have found new topics that could be used for the project.

Since last week was the finals for the first summer session, I did not enter that much into the form that gathers the resources, however, I did note resources down to put them into the form later. So...there should be a huge boost in the past couple of days in the resources page. And now that I have more free time to work on the project, I will be able to contribute more toward it. I just hope that my contributions so far and in the future will pay off.

University Skins and Resources

2010-06-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

So far this week I tried to balance the creating of skins for other universities to use our project, skins for UH to use, and resources gathering. The RSS feed and the form conversion seems too complicated to work together. But I guess the only way to do it is directly through a spreadsheet because there is no one in blogs asking about a form and import feed conversion. So, I've been putting things manually. If really used, the RSS feeds could be created in a separate page in the project and students could choose certain feeds to look at.

What I worked on this week was skins for different universities. Last week I tried making themes that we could use for different weeks, but the layout doesn't work so well. But What I did mostly for the skins for different universities was to recreate the look of their home pages. You could see the university's home page compared to what I created. The only thing that I could not change yet was the tabs at the top of the page, which are green. Once I figure where the code for those tags are then I will change them right away. But I was told from my group member that he has changed a bunch of things in the layout so I'm not sure what is compatible now with mine and the new one. So hopefully not much things will break.

But here are the following skins that I have worked with so far:

Cambridge University

Harvard

Chamiade

Yale

MIT

HPU

Since this is the last week for the first summer session, I will be able to balance everything more easily and get more work done. So get ready for a lot of input from me.

2010-06-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Last post I talked about RSS feeds, which is really a great feature that could be used for gathering information for users to look at for our project. However, the way we set up our google spreadsheet to gather information is through a form. I would really like to use RSS feeds because it is recent postings from others about a topic they advertise, such as news RSS feeds, energy websites RSS feeds, teachers of the university in the sustainability field RSS feeds. Instead of the "project makers" going around and looking for information and manually entering it into the form, I am trying to figure a way for the command importfeed and the form that we enter the information we find to work with each other. Also, if the form gets to a limit, it will delete entries so that it does not get full. Any ideas of getting this to work would be greatly appreciated.

I don't mind looking around for information because it teaches me about things also, but I think that it could be very useful for us not to manually enter information all the time.

Other things that I am doing this week is CSS file for the website. What I have thought of doing is different themes for each type of energy savings, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro. Also, I tried to make a base page that follows the UH Manoa theme. What I have done so far is the following. However, the different themes for each energy savings is tasking because the pictures I try to gather looks odd when displayed on the homepage. It takes up a lot of time to try and make the pictures flow.

This one I tried to follow the main UH Manoa website theme with the symbol on the top left. I added the picture of the 4 different types of energy savings to add a little of what the website is about.

This one I just tried to fool around with looks.

The following is the beginning of the different types energy themes. If you look at the windmill one, it looks a little odd. Not with just these two pictures but other pictures that i experimented with also. I chose to display this one because it looked the best of the others.

The solar theme i was going to have the sun and a solar panel, but like I said it doesn't look that great. So I tried doing it like this and I think it came out better, but I still want something like the sun and solar panel.

So far I think the themes look a lot basic, but I want the themes to work with the website. I am not a great visual graphic person but if there are any other ways that could help me would be really really appreciated because the things I did so far looks a bit funny. Themeroller was the first thing I used but it only puts color in tabs and changes fonts. The page still looks plain. That is why i am putting pictures in the site, but that comes out weird also. So again any help would be appreciated.

Energy Resources & Configuring Themeroller

2010-06-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Last post I talked about a great feature that I found is using RSS feeds with Google Spreadsheets, how to do this could be found here. This is such a great feature because what we need for our project is many resources about energy saving. And what RSS feeds in Google Spreadsheets does is gather that information and display it. However, one difference in the gathering is that what is imported to the sheets is not permanently saved. The command =importfeed(url, , T/F - Display the headers of what is gathered. Title, url, summary..., # of entries you want to gather from the feed.) will gather what you want from the feed and update itself every time a new entry is entered in to the feed.

Other things that I have gathered for the project that does not have an automatic gather, which I wish it did..., is videos and other information such as websites, articles, and news entries. These resources can be permanently saved, however it is so much pain in the butt because it is done manually. But through the gathering process I did learn a lot of things myself that I did not know of.

TED is one of the great websites that I stumbled over about today's technology, issues, and energy topics. Information on this website could really educate a person on what is going on in today's technology, issues, and learning. One great topic was a boy named William Kamkwamba who was 14 years old and read a BOOK about windmills at a library. He later then went back to his village and built a windmill out of a bicycle and wood.

The next thing that I believe that would be great for our project is podcasts. All the information gathering that I gathered, whether it be RSS feeds, videos, and websites, I always saw a podcast feature also. A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and downloaded, and could be listened to via a computer or a ipod. For the competition this could be used by the students or whoever is on the website to listen to the podcast that talks about how solar energy works or how to make a solar panel.

The last thing that I worked for this week was themeroller. I am designated to make different themes that pertain to the different universities in the US so they could use our website for their university if they choose to do so. I have made a couple of themes that I believe closely match the university, however, I am unable to run it with the website as of right now so I cannot really tell if it is close or not. I have to speak with my group member George to get it going.

Resource Gathering and Themerolling

2010-06-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

So far I have learned about CSS and my newly bit complicated project, pinax. After having a good talk with my professor, I now know that I have to get down and dirty to learn, acquire and use software that is available out there. So right now I am still working with CSS for the project to have different themes for different universities to use our website if they choose to do so. The following slide show is some of the university websites that I will follow.

What I am also doing is researching for many resources about Energy Savings. May it be video, websites, papers etc. One great resource that I am looking at to automatically update itself is RSS Feeds. There are may RSS feeds out there that people post to, just like a blog, that contain different materials, such as Energy Savings.

To contain the many RSS Feeds I am using Google Docs. There is a great feature in Google Docs that can gather RSS Feeds via its spreadsheets. The feature could be found here.

It is an amazing feature. This feature will update itself because it imports the feeds directly from the url that is specified in the import command. It could also retrieve the feed, feed title, feed author, feed description, feed url, items, items title, items author, items summary, items url, and items created.

The only thing I need to do is organize this information in a way that could be retrieved for the project.

Other things that I am doing is manually searching for other Energy Resources. This is done manually but should be able to be done in a couple of days.

CSS Learning and Python and Pinax installation

2010-06-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I'm back again to show and talk about what I am going to do over the summer in my Independent Studies 499 class for the UH Dorm Energy Competition. Yes I am still working on it, but I am going to be in a different part of the project. So... no more Joomla!

However, this is not the only class that I am taking, which I wish I was so I don't have to stress... I am taking English 200 which should not be much of a problem and I am also taking Japanese 102 which I don't remember much because I took Japanese about 2 years ago SO..... remembering everything is the challenge. Ganbarimasu!!!!!

I will not bore you with Japanese and English because that is not where the cool technological stuff is. haha. So what is Pinax, Python, CSS!!!

First off I am now working with a new person: George Lee. He is the leader and main project manager for the UH Dorm Energy Competition Pinax Website. I am working under him to create CSS to brighten up the website and make it look good. What he is doing is the structure of the website.

So... so far I have been trying to learn CSS and install the Pinax website. The CSS for the website so far looks like this. I will be creating more of these in the future. I will also be using JQuery which will allow others to easily choose a type of theme/CSS for the website. Installation so far of the website has given me trouble. The trouble so far I have found is the execution of x64 and x86 executables. I downloaded Python 2.6 (x64) and it runs perfectly. Then I need the Python Imaging Library which only has x86 and is the one that gives me problems. It may sound dumb in how I did not see something as easy as that but the error I saw is: Cannot find Python 2.6 in registry. But by using regedit, I found that Python 2.6 is there!!! And by looking around for a long time I found this post. It will download the correct PIL for 64 bit machines and run perfectly.

The next wall I have run into now is the installation of Pinax. I now have the error ValueError: [u'path'] and 0.7.2 failed with error code 1.

The other bad thing I have run into is that I forgot to meet with my group yesterday!!! It completely slipped my mind. I think it was the Monday holiday. So I hope my professor is not too mad and I want to get this Pinax running so I can get on to working on the project.

Milestone 4

2010-05-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

It has finally come to an end and we have actually almost finished a working website which hopefully our professor will keep working with...

Joomla! is a great CMS. I think for a first time website creator, Joomla is the best and easiest way to work with. In the beginning, I worked with SilverStripe, which is also a great CMS, but I think because there is no standardization within SilverStripe there are a lot of complications. One being
tinyMCE which filters out html code when inputted by the user. That fix could be found here. And switching between themes, which makes code that did work not work.

But anyway, what my group and I made so far could be found here. And this is what the main page looks like.

For participants in the competition to log in they will login through the UH CAS login system. Then it will display their own file and dorm energy statistics in the Energy Data tab. They will then be able to see Activities/Events that the admin has posted and what they have submitted (we worked on this so hard for this last milestone because of trying to remember databases).

This next image shows what the admin would see when they login and post or accept/deny participant's submissions.

So, this was our main project for this semester. Creating a website that handles users/participants in the UH Dorm Energy Competition, but there was other groups in my class that worked on different projects that will be tied with our project. Those projects could be found here. Hopefully continuing ICS majors will use what we have developed and UH will use what we started for the Dorm Energy Competition.

Almost Done!!!!!!!!!!

2010-05-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Alright, if you have read my last two posts it almost seems there was a faint light at the end but we have actually made progress. My group and I was able to get user submissions (Text only) for their activities. This is what the user would be able to see, submit, and see what they submitted.

And the admin would be able to see activities that they submitted and users who have submitted.

There are some things that need to be fixed such as the buttons for editing and creating new activities in the back end. For some reason they are not working when we show user submissions in the back end. It should be something small like a colon that is misplaced. But yes we are almost done!!!!

phpMyAdmin Database

2010-04-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

So last week I said we were trying to remember how databases work, and what we found was ?????? However, what we have right now is this schema.

jos_verification is going to be our intersection table which collects user's submissions of their activities. This table will be accessed hopefully with the front end and the back end. We are having trouble though being able to save the submissions right now, but it should not be a problem. We just have to read more on the book we found to create modules.

Database Refresher

2010-04-20T01:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we are able to stay with our groups and continue to work on the same project!!! But what we have ahead right now is a bit complicated. It is a refresher of ICS 321 which deals with databases and MySQL.

So, as of right now my group and I is trying to figure out how to follow the verification process in the UseCaseActivity. We have some ideas, but trying to remember what we learned in ICS 321 is kind of holding us back. However, the following image is what we have so far.

Hopefully we can remember how everything works and get this schema working with our website.

Milestone 3

2010-04-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

Alright!!!! These past couple of days has been really hectic, because my group member Joel and I needed to create a Joomla! module by today and we only had about a week and a half. It was super hard in the beginning because we both had no php experience and we didn't really know how and where to start. But looking back now, we both learned something very valuable, and I think we both can create Joomla! Modules pretty easily now. There were many sources we had to go through but mainly the book we had helped us the most. The resources we used can be found here.

What we followed to create our Joomla! Module was the UseCaseActivity. The Admin and User will "follow" these steps to post, accept, answer, do..... on the website. As you can see, the UseCaseActivity is very very very long, and the user and admin has many steps that they go through to just post and accept things. So, did we finish all of it... I wish!!! BUT the amount that Joel and I did so far is pretty good from starting with no experience.

To finish what we have, Joel and I split up the creation of the module. Joel took what was the Admins Back End and I took what was the User Front End.

So, to see what I did here are some pictures:

When the user logs in and navigates to the Activities/Events tab, This is what they will see. Now events posted by the admin has a "type" field where they select either Action or Event for the Activity. Then on the Front-End they will be filtered to their respectable spots under their type. And the user could choose to do an action or attend an event.

Actions are simple things around the dorm room or campus. The user/participant, I should say, could change a light bulb in the room or on campus (if allowed by the school).

Events are things such as a convention or concert.

When the user decides to choose one of the events, they will see this page. For now I did not make the event very descriptive, but the user will mostly see description of the event, what they have to do, and things that could be learned such as the video above.

To display these two pages the admin would post events on this page:

And for the two pages I created, they grab that information from the Joomla Database which is in the next picture.

Now for those of you who want to use a CMS, learning some SQL will help you a lot also.

The hard part of splitting up in this Milestone was how we both named things differently from the book that we used. And at one point it took me over a day to figure out why something was not displaying, and it was just because the database had a different name. So, when separating the workload, have some kind of structure or naming.

OK, so this is what I have done and if you read Joel's Blog, you can see what we have done. There are a lot of things that still need to be done on the UseCaseActivity, But I think we can do it. I just hope I don't switch from Joomla! because it has been a really great CMS to me, unlike the other on I worked on....

Creating a new Module

2010-04-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

As for the last time I blogged, I said that I found the perfect module that will do what we needed for this milestone. I was wrong and didn't follow these guidelines that we need to follow for the participants and admins to easily post or see events.

By looking at the guidelines, there is no such module that will do what is needed to be done. So the awesome module that I found, Seminar for Joomla, will not be used for this milestone. However, it is a great module for events.

By not knowing about the guidelines, we are now behind for this milestone because to do the guidelines, we need to create our own module. Creating a new module is very difficult and at this point in the milestone, I do not believe we will be able to finish and have a running module.

The Perfect Module for Our Website

2010-03-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

Spring break is over and now it is time to start working on the UH Dorm Energy Competition Project again. From the last time i blogged, I said I am working with David now on a great new CMS Joomla.

This time the goal is to figure out how the activities and goals for the participants and admins will be carried out. And I found the perfect module that will do what we need to do. Seminar for Joomla. For the activities and goals for the participants and admins we need to have something that will display to the participants events that they can participate in by signing up for it, know the start and end dates, and location. And for the admins, something they can easily just sign into the website and post a new event and manage it. Awesomely, Seminar for Joomla can just do all that.

Milestone 3 Beginning

2010-03-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

For Milestone 3, my group is cutting down the CMS's from 4 to 2, and unfortunately I had to give up SilverStripe. I think SilverStripe is a great CMS, but I believe because it is fairly new, there is just too many problems and not much documentation.

One of the problems I found from SilverStripe was tinyMCE, and the fix could be found here. This little/tiny thing would comment out any script or other html tags that you put into it. So, for the UH Dorm Energy Competition Project which needs graphs, videos, and scripts; it would not allow any of it on the site.

Another problem is things such as themes are not standardized within the SilverStripe community. When I had a layout on one theme and needed to change to another, the layout I had did not transfer over and certain things did not work.

The biggest problem that made a huge deal with the project was the CAS Login System. SilverStripe did not support it. Also, there is no documentation and no one could answer my post about it.

But besides these problems, I think that SilverStripe has potential.

So, I am joining David to work with the CMS Joomla. I am excited to work on this CMS because it has been around for a while and there is plenty of documentation.

So, tune in next week and I'll show you what we have put together for the UH Dorm Energy Competition so far.

End of Milestone 2

2010-03-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

We have finally reached the end of Milestone2 and my group Kukuicuptech1 has pulled our hair a lot trying to make our CMS work.

Some main things that my CMS does not do is the CAS login. There is a module called External Authentication which can do what the title says, but not CAS. I posted on the Silverstripe forum for help in the CAS login but unfortunately no one answered. Also, the last person who did post something about CAS login did not get an answer.

So instead of keeping on trying to do the CAS login, I worked on the layout of the website following the Mockup provided by the Design team. Now I tried changing some parts around to have a layout to choose with my group's CMS. So instead of having tabs along the top of the website, I had the tabs on the left side.

This is my home page where users will automatically go to first.

The next page under would be the Kukuicup page.

The next under would be the resource page which talks about energy saving. As sub pages, I put in the games provided by the design team for users to play with.

The Last pages would be the login and logout pages. Now, since I could not apply the CAS login to my website, I just used what the CMS had. Silverstripe has two different ways of logging in. One for the admin and one for a regular user. So I could not make the login to just have one place to login. I had to make two different links for people to login.

When someone logs in there will be other tabs that will come up. One is the user's page and the logout button. The user's page will contain information about the user's energy savings and the logout button will just logout the person. It does look funny though that the login tab is still there when someone logs in but if that is not the person's login they could go to the login and login as themselves.

To use my website that I have built with SilverStripe, click here.

Milestone 2 Stuck

2010-03-02T03:15:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. As of right now my whole group is stuck at getting the CAS login to work for each of our CMS'. But for interest of time and being told by our professor, we are going to press on with other parts of our project and leave the CAS login on the side for now.

At least for my group's CMS', they are able to have the CAS login to actually login via a module. Silverstripe has no CAS login module, but it has a module for external authentication which I am trying to use. I put a post on the SilverStripe Forum and have gotten no response yet and the last post about a CAS login was from someone 4 months ago and they don't even have a response for one yet either. However, despite this setback, I notice through my post others are looking for this solution also because people are visiting my post. If I am able to actually make the login work then the SilverStripe community will benefit from what I find.

So as of right now, I am working on the layout of the site following the Mockups provided by the design group. I don't really have any problem yet but just looking at .css and php files.

Implementing SiverStripe Fully

2010-02-22T20:06:00.001-08:00

Ok this is week 2 for milestone 2 and my group has been working on our CMS' and following a skeletal mockup. What I said last week was that now, for milestone 2, we need to have certain things working perfectly within our CMS'. E.G. - CAS Login through UH and Admin and Student home pages. But SilverStripe again is giving me problems and I have to change certain things within the code.

I found a module called External Authentication which can use an outside source to login. It uses authenticate against an LDAP server, Active Directory, a mail server, or some other external source. Now it is not as easy as some other CMS that just works right away, so I have to look more into depth on how to work this login process.

Just looking for this information is taking a lot of time just to get it working. I think this is because SilverStripe has not expanded that far and fast yet so there is not much modules that can just plugin and have it working.

I am still having fun working with SilverStripe though, and learning things that I did not know. Maybe all these things that I have to look up in order for it to work will benefit me in the future because then I would know how to fix it.

Work for MileStone 2

2010-02-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

Alright, we just finished talking with our professor and what we are working for MileStone 2 is to actually get our CMS' working. We have to get the CAS login working, user/admin pages working perfectly, and have the layout of the page working. OH MY.... I am glad to have gotten my CMS working how it should be but what wasted my time was that tinyMCE. And what I had to do to get rid of this was to change the code within SilverStripe, which can be found here. Other problems I found was if I wanted to change themes the transfer would mess up the code and then I would have to go in the code again to make everything work again. I believe this is a really big disadvantage for Silverstripe because compared to my group's CMS' they did not have to do what I had to do.

Milestone 1

2010-02-09T22:33:00.001-08:00

So far my group has worked on our chosen CMS': dotCMS, SilverStripe, Joomla, and Drupal. My CMS, SilverStripe has given me a lot of grief. The main things that we looked for in our CMS' is the implementation of google gadgets, charts, forums, CAS login. At first SilverStripe did not allow any javascript code to be entered in its html editor. There was no documentation on this anywhere in the SilverStripe website. I thought I was going to be the first one to drop the CMS. But as I heard from Joel that SilverStripe looks a lot like Joomla and that Joomla kind of had the same problem and he had to change a setting within it, I kept looking for a solution. AND I FOUND IT. tinyMCE is the html editor that SilverStripe uses, and it comments out certain code when entered. Now it was not as easy as Joomla where all you had to do was change a setting. I had to change code within the CMS just to have it work. So now I was able to catch up to my groups standing with their CMS'.

I was able to implement all the main things that we needed for our project. However, I am still playing catchup with the layout of the site, but I am glad to have gotten it working.

Milestone 1 for our group was to be able to get the CMS' to kind of do what we want the website to look like. And we have all completed/gotten through this milestone, but with some problems. My problems as of right now is the layout and the implementation of the CAS system.

For Milestone 2, I believe we are going to narrow down the CMS' we are working with to at least 2 and come closer to choosing a final CMS to work with.

SilverStripe Learning

2010-02-02T05:36:00.000-08:00

Alright!!! now so far our group has researched the four different CMS' that we chose, dotCMS, Drupal, Joomla, and SilverStripe. And so far, it looks that all four of the CMS' can do what we want them to do. At first we were following the mockup that was shown like this.

But as each of us tried to work with our CMS, it was difficult to make it that way. So we all agreed to "try and make it the way the CMS wants to make it". And so we set off to make what we can.

The difficult thing I had with SilverStripe was getting the thing to work. And that wasted a lot of time. But do not get me wrong, SilverStripe is very easy to use and download and get running if you already do not have another server running on your computer. I had Apache and the one that downloaded with SilverStripe. So if you do not have a server application already, then the SilverStripe download will be super easy.

But during that time of frustration, I researched first for the things that SilverStripe can do. And I found that it might be a problem with google gadgets, which is one of the biggest things that is needed for our project. So far there is nothing in the documentation and online that says google gadget can be easily used.

This is a big problem for the project, so as far as I can see right now, SilverStripe is something that we might not use. But that is not final yet, because I have gotten SilverStripe working correctly on my machine and I will see if google gadgets will be a problem yet or not. So wait for next week on my new post and see if SilverStripe will still be used.

CMS Researching

2010-02-02T05:05:00.000-08:00

Our team, Kukui Cup Tech 1 was tasked to research different types of CMS for our project. The CMS' we looked at was Anahita, dotCMS, Drupal, Elgg, Joomla!, MODx, Ning, Pligg, SilverStripe, and Wordpress. These CMS' are platforms that help create a website, and what we are looking for is a platform that can be easily created and accommodate the things that is needed for the website, which is Google Gadgets, forums, and charts.

By looking at the above picture, we compared all of the CMS' based on the listed criteria. What we came down to was the 4 green highlighted CMS'. Each of us will take on one of these four and present them to our teacher of what the CMS can do and what it can support.

The CMS that I am working on is SilverStripe. It is a very nice looking platform and from the looks of it very easy to use. I am excited to work with this platform, and next week I will show you what I have learned.

ICS 414

2010-01-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

Back again with a new semester and new projects in a bigger and better class! This time, my software engineering class is all about the UH Dorm Energy Competition, which we are setting up for next Fall. We are divided into groups again, and this time I am with DJ, Shaun, and Daniel. Our group is assigned to the Kukui Cup Technology Prototypes and our goal is to explore different technology infrastructures.

This week, our task was to research systems for our project. What we were focused on was Drupal and Joomla. So far, according to our friend Remy, Joomla is the best system to use for our project. At our first meeting this week, we will discuss what we have found out about Joomla and Drupal with Professor Johnson. But so far, I believe we will be using Joomla for this project.

If you have been wondering what Joomla and Drupal is about, check them out here: Joomla Drupal

The Last Review for this Semester

2009-12-18T03:52:00.000-08:00

Although there was so much reading and implementing a lot of code. ICS 413 was a very informative and fun class. This class taught a lot about standardization and major development. I believe these two things made me a better programmer. By doing all the reviews for classmates, it was very noticeable that standardization was very important in programming.

What I would like to learn more about is User Interface. I noticed that we all have problems with a good user interface. When any group went up in front of the class to present their project, they then notice that a part of their project could look better, and the teacher would point out something we would not notice.

I had fun in this class because the teacher was the most interesting teacher than any teacher I had so far (This is not me brown nosing). I think that the only thing that was hard was the major reading. It was hard to get the reading done, code, and get other classes done also. However, overall this class was fun and informative.

The Final: Greendepot 2.1

2009-12-18T03:34:00.000-08:00

It has been a long semester of cramming code together to finish our last project, and it is over!!!! Since the 16th of November, we have worked on a project called Greendepot. This project takes what we learned in Wattdepot and output the information for users on the internet. It is just like any basic website, homepage and links to other pages. Certain pages inform the user about the carbon intensity. The stoplight page tells the intensity now and Gridinfo outputs a graph. And we have a home page and a contact page.

What we did now was update a lot of the looks for our website. It was a really hard start for this project, but if you look at the differences when we first started and now, there is a huge difference. Between 2.0 and 2.1 we tried to implement bonus things and we fixed a lot of the errors we had at 2.0. I tried to implement the google visualization, but I could not figure out how to implement it very well. I was able to have it output to the screen but not get the information i needed for the output to be correct. So, instead of leaving a non working visualization, I left what we had before for 2.1 Overall, we corrected the errors we had such as default settings for the drop down lists.

SO, version 2.1 could be found here. My last 413 project. Until next semester with 414. Have a nice break.

Review of Greensmart

2009-11-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

After the cramming of making our projects work, now it is time to review each others projects and if we got them to work correctly. The group project I was assigned to was Greensmart. Their project looked very good. The home page looked very professional and the logo they have makes it a legit looking program.

The project was able to handle anything that i threw into it. Al l the error handling captured each thing I wrote. What I really like from the error handling was that it knows when you have entered a date too long ago when electricity was not being documented yet and if you enter a date after today's date, it says it cannot retrieve things in the future.

To look at my full review, click here.

But overall, I think the project looks good, but for a brand new computer user, it would be hard to understand how to work the program. The changes needed would just be to make it like Greensmart for Dummies.

The OscarWebApp called Greendepot

2009-11-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

So far throughout the development of Wattdepot, there were many struggles. If you look at my previous blogs it would tell you a tale of hardship and pain. Greendepot is an add on to Wattdepot. But instead of just printing numbers to the screen, this project uses a user friendly web page that displays the carbon emission of the given day and displays when a home owner should use electricity, via green, yellow, or red flag.

This project was a very big task. It was hard to implement this project because setting up the build files, hackystat, and subversion took us a lot of time to get them up and running. Although, it was not our fault, hackkystat was giving a lot of errors and that stopped us from moving forward because without hackystat, our work for the project would not be displayed. From the countless time we took looking into the error, we found that it was an update to the site and everything would be normal later. If that was known we would have been able to start the project earlier. With this setback, we now had to rush and make the project.

The group worked very well together. We met during the day and when class was not in session. The build of the project is not so great because of us rushing to get it working.

Above is the work that my group has done. As you can see not much was done in the beginning, (Commit). That was where we were trying to get hackystat and the .xml files working. Then we started on the project and that is where you can see spikes in the build. I really believe that if we were told about hackystat, the project would be complete.

As of now, the web app takes in the user's input and just echos it. But we have the command line printing what is suppose to be in the web app. We could not integrate the output into the web app in time.

The download for our project could be found here.

WattDepot 2.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-11-16T02:41:00.000-08:00

After our class reviewed each others code for Wattdepot, we all needed to remake everything. And now here is 2.0!!!!!! The program could be downloaded here. Click on WattDepotCli Version 2 by Team Eiwa.

This project, Wattdepot, collects information about electrical data from meters in certain areas. We created a program that takes this information and organizes it in a way for easy readability. And what is new in the new version 2.0, we added a SoftwareICU system called Hackystat. Hackystat gives us great information on analysis, visualization, interpretation, annotation, and dissemination for us to monitor the project.

Our system fulfills all of the requirements. We changed most of the issues made by our reviewers, but documentation could still be improved. We also created a somewhat high-quality system design. I had it in a way where test commands and regular commands was in different packages for easy readability, but there was changes to that. And due to our reviews about testing our code, we made test cases for every command.

The group could not meet regularly due to conflicting schedules. We did split the work equally, but changes were made to each others code so we both corrected each others code.

The Software ICU shows that our test coverage is mostly stable. It also shows that our builds, tests, and commits a spiky, this is because the group doesn't meet regularly so we are doing the project on our own and that makes the graph jumpy.

The following is the questions we had to answer using our program:

What day and time during the month was Oahu energy usage at its highest? How many MW was this?
Time: 2009-11-02T20:00:00.000-10:00 Power: 995.0 MegaWatts

What day and time during the month was Oahu energy usage at its lowest? How many MW was this?
Time: 2009-11-02T04:00:00.000-10:00 Power: 493.0 MegaWatts

What day during the month did Oahu consume the most energy? How many MWh was this?
Time: 2009-11-02T00:00:00.000-10:00 Power: 14764.0 MegaWatt-Hours

What day during the month did Oahu consume the least energy? How many MWh was this?
Time: 2009-11-01T00:00:00.000-10:00 Power: 14089.0 MegaWatt-Hours

What day during the month did Oahu emit the most carbon (i.e. the "dirtiest" day)? How many lbs of carbon were emitted?
Time: 2009-11-04T00:00:00.000-10:00 Carbon: 29959472 pounds

What day during the month did Oahu emit the least carbon (i.e. the "cleanest" day)? How many lbs of carbon were emitted?
Time: 2009-11-07T00:00:00.000-10:00 Carbon: 22908808 pounds

My Review Experience

2009-11-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

After reviewing my peers code, I learned a lot of things. A lot of us procrastinates. When the deadline is near, everyone starts putting whatever they can together. That is why there is no test cases, comments, and "one person doing the job". What we all should do differently is set for ourselves an earlier date so that we do not procrastinate on the real due date.

Not much people did test cases because they are concentrating to get the project done. But while rushing to get the project done, they have been "testing" it the whole time, because they look to see if what they just made is outputting the right thing. However, just because we see that the program works we still need to make test castes. We should show test cases because then the programmer/reviewer can know that the code is working correctly or incorrectly. But the most important thing that I saw while reviewing my peers code is comments. Comments help the most for the user or reviewer to know what is going on in the code. It may seem stupid to comment something small, but it is important.

What I learned from my reviews is that to start early. It is bad to start late because you will get crappy code and not get everything done and lose sleep time.

Wattdepot Reviews

2009-11-09T06:06:00.000-08:00

After the long nights and cramming the making of our wattdepot-cli projects, we were tasked to perform reviews on our peers' project. The Criteria for this review could be found here. We were tasked to review two projects, the two that I reviewed was ewalu and umi.

Ewalu:
An overview of this project is that it builds and it runs. However what I could not figure out is how to do other methods than just quit, help, and list sources. The other commands do not work. What could be improved in this project is the separating the commands into a package and each in their own class. To see the full report click here.

Umi:
An overview of this project is that it build and it runs. What could be improved in this project is the separation of the commands and putting them into a package and different classes. Also, to make test cases for the project because there is none made. To see the full report click here.

Learning integration through Wattdepot

2009-11-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

For one week, my class has been working on a new project called Wattdepot. Wattdepot is a system that is accessible by anyone to store and analyze power consumption. This tool is great for consumers that want to monitor their power consumption. However, this tool can make the bill more accurate and could cost more if you are not careful.

My partner for this project is David Mau. We split the work up by looking at the list that needs to be done and did every other to split the workload. David did a great job in making the code easily read and understood. I say this because I had to do the CommandLineInterface and every file he made, I was able to implement it easily. To not stray away from his style, I followed it as closely as i could so that the whole project has the same style.

About every goal was achieved during this past week. However, on my part, I did not make any test cases for my commands and the CommandLineInterface that my teacher wanted was not implemented. But what I did do was make a CommandLineInterface that was able to run everything with no problem. As for test cases, I should be able to make some but not before the deadline. Plus I think I did so many test cases for myself because I did the CommandLineInterface and checked to see every time that what I needed to print printed. ahahhahaha. date, timestamp, description.... By looking at our project code, everything had a return statement except for the quitCommand. Also, for the power chart, I tried my best to figure out how to get the file, but I am really not sure how that works.

Overall, I had fun working with David even though we could not meet up every day. I think not meeting up about every day or other day broke a communication barrier for this project. We both had things to do so setting our minds straight for this project was difficult. But, David is a great partner and smart is coding.

After this, I will definitely fix the code to work properly and look more efficient. Click here to download our project. Our project name is wattdepot-cli-eiwa.

Hudson the System Checker

2009-11-02T04:52:00.000-08:00

Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently/daily. Each integration would be verified by an automated build to detect errors. By doing integration frequently/daily, there are less integration problems and it allows the team to develop software quickly.

What we are using for our watt-depot-cli project is Hudson. We configured Hudson to work side by side with SVN, which checks changes made to the project. Whenever changes are made to the project, Hudson would ensure that everything is working correctly. If it is not, it would send email notifications to whoever is associated with the project. This great feature allows developers to know that there was an update made that failed, and it can be fixed by anyone.

Right away when testing small parts of our code, I could see the benefits of using continuous integration. It keeps the user updated for every single thing. Also, it gives little symbols of what is going on with the code and if the code is working correctly or not.

One small problem I see with Hudson is that the little cloud symbols don't give the right symbol. It starts off with a sun saying everything is great and running correctly. Then when we tested Hudson to see if it works with our project, it gives a little cloud. Which was correct because we were just testing it. But when we fixed it, it did not change back to the sun. If anyone was to just look at that symbol, they would think that the code is not doing what it is suppose to do even though it is fine.

I think that this is a great tool to use when in a group project. If you cannot meet with the group all the time, this tool helps by keeping you updated.

Quicky Questions

2009-10-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Midterm is coming up! What could be on the test? Here are some questions that ask what we have learned so far.

1. As a programmer, why is the code "import java.util.*" not something you should have in your code?

You want to let the viewer to be able to understand and trace every part of the source code.

By using a wildcard, this makes the viewer unable to help resolve issues, if there are in

your code, because the viewer does not know what you imported.

2. Why is a FizzBuzz program being used as an entry question to any programming job?

There are people who know a whole lot about programming, but not a lot about writing

source code. FizzBuzz weeds out those type of people at a programming job interview.

3. What is it called when someone watches tv, checks their phone, checks their email, checks their myspace, and trying to do their programming all at the same time? As a programmer, why is this bad?

Multi-tasking. For a programmer this is bad because their focus is not 100% on their work.

If a programmer does not have full focus on their work then the code will not have high

quality also.

4. Write a FizzBuzz program, but instead of using for loops and while loops, do it recursively.

public class RecursiveFizzBuz {

private static int x = 1;

public static void main(String[]args){

recursive();

}

public static void recursive(){

if (x != 101){

if((x % 15) == 0){

System.out.println("FizzBuzz");

} else if ((x % 3 )== 0){

System.out.println("Fizz");

} else if ((x % 5)==0){

System.out.println("Buzz");

} else {

System.out.println(x);

}

x++;

recursive();

}

5. What is open source software? What is so good about it?

Open source software is source code that is viewable to the public and is open for the public

use. The public can use, change, and improve the software, and redistribute it. What is

so good about it is that any one can help improve the code because the code is viewable.

6. In a forum, does a subject "HELP!!!!!" give you any insight of what that person needs? Is this a proper subject line? What should be a proper subject line?

No. No. A proper subject line should describe something fully and precisely on what you

need help on.

7. Why would you test your own code? What are three types of testing?

You should test your code to see that your code is doing what you want it to do. Acceptance,

behavioral, and unit.

8. What is so good about ANT? What are some things that ANT does?

ANT is a java-based build tool that checks your project and says if your project is ready to

be distributed. Some things is that it checks your source code, byte code, and runs

tests.

9. Why should you comment your code? Is updating your comments important? Why?

You should comment your code to state what is going on in certain areas of the code, what

the program is about, and why it is doing what it is doing. Yes, it is important because

if you do not update your code then whoever is looking at your code is trying to figure

what is going on, they will read that comment, and that comment and the code will not

match each other.

10. What is subversion and why is it helpful.

Subversion is a free open source version control system. It is helpful because it manages

files and directories and the changes made to them. The owner can keep track of what

has changed, and backup to older versions of the code if they want to.

Project Management and SVN

2009-10-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

Working with Google's Project Management and SVN has shown me two programs that are very useful. SVN or subversion, is a useful tool that a group could use when working on a big project. It allows the group of people to make small or big changes to the projects and commit the changes to the source server for everyone in the group to update. SVN differs on different machines, so what I used was TortoiseSVN, MAC uses smartSVN. What is really great about SVN is that it always checks for the most recent version, so if you were to try and commit the code you fixed and someone else has done so before you, you have to update according to their fix before you can commit yours. This feature gets rid of update problems.

By learning so many things about programming, it has shown me lots of resources. I did not know Google had so many features. Google Project Management has made it easy to load all my project files on to one server, and anyone can access it and make comments. Which is really great because the more input from people the better my project will be.

To go to my discussion page click here

To go to my project page click here

JUnit: Robocode Testing ... not a Crew

2009-10-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

JUnit testing is code that is programmed to test a programmers main code to see that the code that they wrote is doing what it is suppose to be doing, or it could be used to see statistics in the code so that the programmer can make the program better.

When we first started using JUnit, I noticed that not just me but everyone was having a hard time just trying to write code to test our main java file. I thought it was a little funny but it is pretty hard. However, now that I know how to do it and how it works I think I can make more JUnit cases for future programs.

What I tested in my robocode program is if my robot can beat two sample robots, if it turns to try and ram another robot if another robot is close, fire power, if my robot loses all its energy, and if it at least hits another robot when it fires. I believe that all these test cases were hard to make because at first I had no clue on what I was doing. I had to sit and look at classmate's JUnit cases and understand how and what they are doing. And since I took too long I am turning in my assignment late. I could have turned it in on time, but I wanted to understand the code fully instead of just turning it in.

Now that I do understand it, there is no problem making another one. What I could change though is how I made my robot because then writing these test cases would be a whole lot easier. What Emma did for me is run my test cases and show me if they failed or executed. This showed me what needed improvement.

Alright!!! without taking more time and not turning my code in, my robocode could be found here.

A Nightmare for a Programmer

2009-09-30T02:58:00.000-07:00

Anyone can write the best code that they can, but there will always be something very small that could mess up the whole program. The one nightmare for a programmer is a program that was written in one hour but still being debugged for three hours. Any programmer or ICS student knows what I am talking about. But what I have learned about Ant has helped tremendously in making sure my code is correctly made.

In a workplace, having a standard for everything can keep the workplace safe, quickly done, and easily understood by others. Formatting code helps greatly for others in the workplace to understand your code, but what about the world? What about other platforms that want to download the program that you made on your own computer? This is where the program Ant comes in. Ant is a program that contains a bunch of xml files that can check your program and the build of your program. It can check the style of your code and prompt you for every line that is incorrect. Also, it can look for bugs which check your code for incorrect inputs. The most important thing that Ant does is create a file that could be run on any pc.

When I started this program, I found that the style of my java file had a bunch of errors. What was great even though it had a lot of errors was that each error said what was wrong and where it was. It took me a while at first to figure how to correct some errors but they were easy. Most of my errors was when I was commenting about @params. But after fixing that and some whitespace my program was fine. Also what was hard was correctly assigning the titles for the xmls. I had to find each title and change it to mine.

I you would like to learn about my new Robocode file click here.

KillaRobot is ALIVE!!!!!!

2009-09-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Up until now, we have been messing around with a program called Robocode. We have been looking at how the robots work, learning how to make them move, and brainstorming strategies to defeat other robots. Coming up is a tournament that has been put together by our professor called Robowars. In Robowars we can challenge other people over the internet with the robot I created and the robot they created. But for now we are going to challenge people within our class. The robot I put together now to challenge my classmates with is called KillaRobot, KR for short.

Now that we have learned the basic movements and some strategies, it was time to design our own robots. KillaRobot does basic movements, but it destroys 7 out 8 sample robots at best 2 out of 3. The sample robots can be viewed in my last blog entry.

Creating KillaRobot
Upon building my robot, my main concern was how am I going to fire at the other robots. After doing the basic scan the battlefield and fire on scanned robot, then came the idea of just moving straight to be able to dodge enemy bullets. But after getting those two basic movements and observing that with just the basic movements I can destroy most sample robots, Ramfire comes and just destroys me. I did not know how to counter Ramfire. I tried moving away when I got hit. I tried doing circles. But it kept on winning the overall battle. Then I thought, how about I just hit Ramfire back, because I have the advantage first because I shoot it a couple times first before it hits me. Then after applying this thought, I was able to make "KillaRobot".

Movements
KillaRobot's movements are really basic. It moves in a straight line while scanning the battlefield. When it sees another robot, it fires max power. If it hits a wall, it will turn right and move forward again. What is unique about KillaRobot is that when it gets hit or hits another robot first, it will act like Ramfire. It will run into the enemy robot and fire max power. Another thing that makes KillaRobot unique is that when it gets hit by a bullet it will turn right and move forward. I made it do this when it get hits by a bullet because I noticed that it died alot when facing Spinbot. I thought how am I dying by Spinbot. I found out that since KillaRobot moves in a straight line, if it moved horizontal on the playing field Spinbot was able to hit KillaRobot. When applying the turn when KillaRobot gets hit by a bullet, KillaRobot was able to defeat Spinbot.

Victories
The robots KillaRobot was able to defeat was RamFire, SpinBot, Crazy, Fire, Sitting Duck, Corners, Tracker. Tracker wins sometimes, but overall KillaRobot wins. A win is a win. Walls is the only robot that KillaRobot cannot defeat. The next build, I will concentrate on defeating walls. Since Ramfire was what I concentrated on first, I stuck with it. And it destroyed 7 out of 8.

You can see my robot's abilies HERE.

RoboCode: Review of the Sample Robots

2009-09-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

After learning the basic movements for robocode, it has become fun and interesting. Seeing the robot move, track, and fire has made this ICS class fun. But the time is getting near for RoboWars and we need strategies for making our own KRs. KILLA ROBOTS. The following 8 robots are samples that I have reviewed to make a KR.

Walls:
This robot's movement has the simplest movement. It finds the nearest wall, goes to it, and moves along the walls shooting at the enemy. It only shoots at the enemy with medium power and when the enemy is in front of the gun. The movement for this robot is not very effective. If there was an enemy in the robot's path, it treats that enemy as a wall. The enemy robot could be towards the middle of a wall and if this sample robot hits the enemy robot, it would then move along the middle of the map as if it is moving along a wall. The firing for this robot is also not that effective because if it is correctly moving along the walls it would only shoot when the enemy robot is in front of the gun. If it is not moving correctly along the walls, then it could be missing the all the robots it does not see.

Ramfire:
A robot that is like a bulldozer with a gun fixed to it. This robot will pick an enemy robot that it will fire at and run into until that enemy is dead. This would be a very effective robot if it was able to stop the paths of other robots. If it doesn't stop the paths of other robots, it is just a straight moving robot because it does not fire at the enemy until it rams the enemy robot first. Ramfire has no special movements but ramming and getting extra points and no special fire abilities because it will not shoot the enemy robot until it hits the enemy first.

Spinbot:
This robot is a very dizzying robot. It spins in a circle while wildly firing at an enemy robot at full power. Most of the time this robot misses its target. The movement of this robot has no strategy, when it has an enemy in front of its gun it fires and mostly missing. It is a little effective for dodging bullets but not very. If its target is sitting still, then this robot will win.

Crazy:
Crazy is pretty crazy... The movement of this robot is very effective for enemy robots to miss. In its code it uses setTurns, setAhead, and waitFor in the AdvancedRobot. These methods give this robot the ability to move in a curve. Unlike robot, it has to use call a lot of methods to do the same. Although it uses advanced movements, its tracking and firing abilities are terrible. The gun and radar is fixed, so when the enemy is in front of the gun, it then shoots. What is worse, it fires with the least amount of energy.

Fire:
Ouch I got hit let me move from this spot... The movements of this robot is very bad. It sits in one spot until it gets hit, then it will just move a little either left or right. The tracking is also bad because the radar and fixed gun only turns to the right scanning the field. And judging only if the enemy is close, less than 50 pixels, it will use max fire power. If the enemy is far then it will use the least fire power. What is good about this robot is if it gets hit, the gun will turn real fast pointing to the enemy robot who hit it, and fires at maximum power.

Sitting Duck:
Shoot me!!!! This robot has nothing at all. There is no movement, scanning, or firing. Basically it is a target.

Corners:
Go to the corner... This robot has a good thought strategy but is very ineffective. It is good that it goes to a corner because no one can shoot it from behind. However, if it is stopped from getting to an actual corner, this robot is useless because it thinks it is at a corner but it is not. The tracking for this robot is ok, when it reaches its corner, it sweeps its gun from 0-90 and does a little tracking when locked on to a robot. Its firepower is also ok because it fires at the enemy when it is in front of the gun. It uses low power if the enemy is far and max when the enemy is close.

Tracker:
I got you in my sights... This robot is like Tracking02, but when it gets withing a certain distance between the enemy it open fires. The movement for this robot is not effective. It just tracks an enemy and either moves toward it or away and then fires. Its targeting is good because it sweeps its radar left to right if it lost its target. If it finds it then it moves foward or backward. If it does not find it in its left to right sweep, it then spins looking for another target. Its fire power is at maximum when it gets to a certain distance between the enemy. If another enemy hits the robot, it will open fire at maximum at that robot.

Reviewing these robots have given me a little insight on what I can use as strategy for my KR.

Coding Standards - Why they are important

2009-09-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Coding Standards in our codes is very important in today's developing world. If there are no standards, how can anyone read your or anybody's code? If there was no MLA formmating in writing, everyones citations for their paper's would be all over the place and no one could understand where that writer got their resources. MLA formmating and Coding Standards give guidelines so anyone anywhere can read the code.

So far using using coding standards in class has not been difficult. I have been using it for my college career and it is easy to read my own code when I bring it up again to look at it. The only difference between now and when I first started my Software Engineering class, is the use of tabs. Tabs made the code look real nice and organized, however learning that tabs could be interpreted differently in a different environmet made it hard to stop using it. But since eclipse has a format option, it made it easy to eliminate those tabs.

Click here to see my new robocoding standards.

What is new in my code
While looking at my classmate's code, I noticed that on some of my codes I use the most complicated way to make it work. This reminded me from what my professor has said about his career, there is always a way that what your doing could be made simpler. While looking at my classmate BJ DelaCruz's code, I noticed that the code I wrote is a billion lines longer than what he had. So I looked at his code and made mine similar to what he had, I tried to make my code unique so it is not like I copied his code line for line, BUT his code is so simple that there is no way to not see the difference.

In everything you do, there will always be someone that could do better.

Robocode ***&&%%%%^^&^%

2009-09-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Oh my, robots have taken over my mind... This assignment was tough on some parts and easy on others. To look at my code click here. The assignment had robots that had to do nothing and robots that had to track another robot and follow them or shoot them. IT WAS CRAZY TO FIGURE OUT ALL THE METHODS. aaaaahhhhhhh. But in the end when the robot worked, I understood very well how the robot works.

Experiences

Some robots needed a little bit of math. I have forgotten some basics of math and i needed to refresh it by looking it up in google. For example, the robot for Movement05 needed to move to one corner and move to the opposite corner. I forgot the basic a^2 + b^2 = c^2. I just needed the distance c to move across the board. lol But it was a funny refresher. Other codes needed some sitting back and thinking because they needed to do things specially. For example the tracking robots, they needed to scan the field and follow the robot it scanned.

Future build

From learning basic movements, tracking, and firing, I think that when we have to make a competitive robot, I will be able to last for a while. I would make my robot be able to recognize fired bullets and dodge them.

OSS Experience

2009-08-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

Overview:

jEdit (http://sourceforge.net/projects/jedit/) is a programmer's text editor written in Java. It is like any other text editor, but with a little more power. It is supported on multiple systems, mac or pc. With the correct plugins, this not so simple text editor can be a powerful tool for a new java programmer.

PD1:

Right after download and startup, this text editor is like any other text editor. I tried writing my previous posted program and it was like notepad but with a little more features. Unlike eclipse, this text editor does not help too much when first downloaded. However, with the correct plugins, jEdit could be a powerful editor (said by the website).

PD2:

When downloaded, jEdit is just one executable file. After download, with just a few clicks as to where the user would like to save the program and have certain features, the program is up and running. If the user is a first time computer user, this type of download could not be any easier. However, when using this type of text editor, it should not be a for a first time java programmer and computer user, because without the correct plugins, it will not help for a first time java programmer, and finding the correct plugins for a first time computer user is not so great also.

PD3:

For an experienced computer user and java user, this program can be very easily used. Again, with the right plugins this program could be very powerful, even though it is like a simple text editor. To improve this program as a developer, I would give the option of downloading the program with plugins already installed. As it is now after download, the program is almost identical as notepad. If it came with an option for certain plugins, jEdit could be like eclipse after download. As a new developer, this program could be easily modified because it gives the new developer to write and update modes, write macros and plugins, and fix plugins or core bugs.

FizzBuzz

2009-08-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

The FizzBuzz Program:

The purpose of this program is to print integers from 1 - 100 with the following exception, every number divisible by 3 prints Fizz, 5 prints Buzz, 3 and 5 prints FizzBuzz. It was assigned to test
"programmers", who say they can program, but in reality they can not. This simple program helped companies to not hire people who can not do a simple program.

Time took to do this: 5 min

Problems: A little basics

Solutions: Look for examples online or the java API

Overview:

Fun refresher when done in class. It was interesting to learn the JUnit test case program and implementing it with this program. So far the class seems great. Love the structure of how we are doing work in class and not mostly at home.

Code:

public class FizzBuzz {
//Constructor to print out the numbers.
public FizzBuzz(){
for(int x = 1; x <= 100; x++){ if((x % 15) == 0){//number is 15 because that is 3 and 5 System.out.println("FizzBuzz"); } else if ((x % 3 ) == 0){ System.out.println("Fizz"); } else if ((x % 5) == 0){ System.out.println("Buzz"); } else { System.out.println(x); } } }

public static void main(String[]args){
FizzBuzz fizzer = new FizzBuzz();
}

}