Category Archives: Phil

Phil 6.14.2010

7:30 – 10:30, 2:30 – 4:00 VISIBILITY

  • Swung by the site to check on things. All is running. Deleted some unused tables and checked on usage
  • Work with Dong today to finalize PPM for Wednesday demo
  • Switched all my passwords everywhere. Here’s hoping things will still be working tomorrow…
  • Discussing our need for a server with Rick Hally

10:30 – 2:30 FP

  • Built a linkage to have reaction motions work independently from the input forces
  • And that works. What this means is that for the system to work, there needs to be a “perceptual(?)” reference that the opposing motion can move relative to. So the prototype with the holes in it for actuators is actually close to what it should be.
  • Important thing to note – the kf motor should be connected to the reference structure so that the forces coming back from the kf device aren’t modifying the input forces. The test setup is adding these kind of artifacts.
  • Ordered threaded rod (93250A026), nuts (94804A325), and rod ends (60645K441) from mcmaster ($58.34)
  • Ordered two 12v/2A power supplies, a Servo Motor Controller and two 30mm linear actuators from Phidgets ($341.50 CAD)

Phil 6.11.2010

7:30 – 10:00 VISIBILITY

  • Deployed VISIBILITY with fixed slideshow and resolution check
  • Going to make the resolution check a method in EdgeUtils.Utils – Done
  • Updated vis2, IngestManager, and VisibilityScripting with the warning. AccountManagers doesn’t need it.

10:00 – 2:00 FP

  • Went looking for a 3D math library and found this: http://cmldev.net. Giving it a shot. Took a bit of time to find out where the properties are set to include an external library. If you right-click on the project and select properties, it’s in “Configuration Properties->C/C++->General”. Click on the “Additional Include Directories” In the case of cml, you need to point to the cml folder to get the paths working correctly in the code (i.e. <cml/cml.h>) Nope, the documentation sucks.
  • Rolled my own simple vector functions. Collision detect now works. Next, collision response.

Phil 6.10.2010

7:30 – 1:30 VISIBILITY

  • Pat still isn’t pleased with VISIBILITY. Too much resizing of things. We reset her display from 1024×768 to 1280×1024. We’ll see if this helps
  • Found some bugs with slideshows
    • This isn’t really a bug, but the individual and group dashboard windows should be labled
    • If you delete the only dashboard, you can’t drag new items into the target, and you get an exception
    • If you delete one of two dashboards, you get the same behavior, but no errors.
    • Mike has fixed all. Bringing in a new version, also with a screen resolution alert
  • Showed JW and AG the slideshow capability. Anne, liked it quite a bit.

1:30 – 4:30 FP

  • Added a PhysicsController
  • Added PointMass objects
  • Changed the graphics so we have colored balls, which will more match the PointMass objects
  • Got the graphics following the strain gauge input on both paddles
  • Next, calculate collision, and use that to set the motor offsets.

Phil 6.9.2010

7:30 -10:30 (VISIBILITY)

  • Checked out status of VISIBILITY. all seems to be working well
  • Quick status with JM
  • Set up a meeting with Anne to show here the new slideshow capability for tomorrow. She thinks we might have funding for a new project?
  • Viz-n is ungodly slow today and is not allowing ssh connections. Starting the process of setting up a VPS on steadfast.net. Asking for the “Nickel – Debian 5” package (25 GB of Disk Space, 400 GB of Monthly Data Transfer, Fair Share CPU, 384 MB – Guaranteed RAM, Fully Managed, $44.95 per month | FREE Setup)

10:30 – 4:00

  • Starting some actual kinetic feedback algorithms!
  • No, I’m not. The DataDictionary is based around char* for the key. If the pointer goes out of scope, the content is lost. Fixing it so that it works with string.
  • Got the dictionary fixed. Working on integrating with the graphics. Need to build a physics controller

Phil 6.8.2010

8:00 – 2:30

  • Meeting with S14
    • General
      • Make it so that the panel titles are not editable.
      • There should be no minimum character checks in string validators
      • Logging out should close all windows
      • What is “Create Project Form”?
      • Exec Summaries need to save more data. Can be several pages long
      • Eliminate redundant checks on budget center names, if that’s how we’re doing it. There will be things like “A123 – salary”, “A123 – travel”, where travel and salary will be a funding transaction name/type/something???
      • Vertical Scroll layout will work well. Will need the maximize button, though.
    • User
      • Need to add mailing address
    • Create Project
      • Add exec summary and description to project (It is different from the summary and description in funding)
      • Adding a Budget Center line needs to become a single dialog
      • Comboboxes in grid hive odd behaviors: They don’t always close right, they are too easy to switch back to “Add New”, and there is an interaction that causes new rows to be added when clicking elsewhere on the grid.
      • Clicking on add funding will delete the data in an already open funding panel
      • Budget centers may change over the life of the project. This needs to ripple through to the financial entry, but not sure about old funding requests (I think we should leave then alone?).
      • New “Add Budget Center” dialog:
        • Budget Center Name (Addable List)
        • Budget Center Number (text field – Addable List?)
        • Funding Transaction Name(text field- Addable List?)
        • Funding Transaction Number (text Field- Addable List?)
        • Funding Transaction Type (Addable List)
        • Capability (Addable List)
        • Expenditure Center (Addable List)
        • Investment Portfolio (Addable List)
        • Appropriation (Addable List)
        • Type (Addable List)
        • Save button then populates grid. The only editable components are then the numeric values.
    • Create Funding
      • Add an “Edit/Update” Funding
      • User information should be copied over from project
      • Funding Request should copy names from project
      • Mailing Address in funding is broken. No user address?
      • Appropriation should be a dropdown
      • Budget column should have “$0” at the start.
      • Budget should be totaled (Funding Total) and compared to the “Funding Value” entered above the grid on save. If they do not agree, there needs to be an alert
      • “Project Type” to “Funding Type”
      • No “Add” or “Remove” buttons for Budget Center grid.
  • Financial Entry
    • Obligation rows should be above outlay rows
    • Title for a grid will need to have more of the Financial Transaction text in it to uniquely specify
  • Waited for conference call from WPAFB

2:30 – 4:00 (FP)

  • Flailed for a while, then got the sensors reading the new paddles. Turns out that the sensor board closest to one paddle is actually the sensor for the *other* paddle.
  • Templated the bounding box class so I can use it with floats.
  • Worked out the first tests I want to try:
    • Opposing motion on input stick
    • Opposing force on other stick. (I’m starting to think that this may be more effective, since the motion will be relative to some sort of ground)

Phil 6.7.2010

7:30 – 2:30 (VISIBILITY)

  • Deployed new Vis and VSS. The query logging is set up and running
  • Dropped by JM. Full walkthrough is set for tomorrow
  • Telecon with WPAFB? Nope – postponed till tomorrow.
  • Walked through PPM with Dong – found a few bugs. Iterating.
  • Burned a disk to try tomorrow.

2:30- 3:30 (FP)

  • Added normalized sensor values. Spent a while figuring out a good way to have a center value that offsets the results

Phil 6.4.2010

7:30 – 2:30 (VISIBILITY)

  • The viz-n server appears to be slow again
  • Deployed a new version of VISIBILITY with query logging.
  • Adding a method to facades that will generate SOLR xml directly from a DbTable. Done. Need to burn a disk for Monday
  • Started to walk through Dong’s system, but ran into role-related bugs

2:30 – 4:00(FP)

  • Got the new sensor hooked up. Much more sensitive. Working on filtering and centering signal
  • Zeroing is done. Took out sleep() statements as well.

Phil 6.3.2010

7:00 – 1:30 (VISIBILITY)

  • It’s *hot* today!
  • Joe is going to look into setting up a proxy server!
  • Talked to JW about current needs. Nothing clear yet…
  • Going to add a user/query tracking log tables to VISIBILITY. Done. Had to add a check to ensure that user data was getting set in the AdvancedQueryWidget. Checked in code to GenericQueryWidget and Visibility2 java code.

1:30 – 2:30 (FP)

  • Getting the sensors to read correctly. Done
  • Added some data checks to the dictionary
  • Continuing the process of educating Tom about pointers

Phil 6.2.2010

7:30 – 2:30 (VISIBILITY)

  • Talked to JM:
    • Running the system on the appropriate servers by July
    • Adding project management capability
  • Talked to JW about documentation
  • Having Tom set up VISIBILITY, Scripting, and ProjPortfolio on viz-n
  • Laid out some of the issues about getting the Network widget into VISIBILITY, and did a little roadmapping on future work
  • Pinged Ken Beckman about how the install was coming

2:30 – 3:30 (FP)

  • Added in the sensors and set up the motor to hold the bar in place, but the readings aren’t shifting much.

Phil 6.1.2010

7:30 – 1:30 (VISIBILITY)

  • Walked through the newest version with S14 folks
    • Saving user and Funding requests failed
    • “logged in as null” on banner
    • There should be a way of creating a new project from an existing one (only the FY changes in many cases)
    • We will need to delete items that have been added in. How? As administrator?
    • For comboboxes and select buttons, include “Add” feature
    • General Notes:
      • Add Users
        • All fields should be blank
        • No ‘Phone’. Just ‘Classified Phone’ and “Unclassified Phone’
        • No ‘Classified Email’
        • New names for roles (should be common across all panels)
          • ‘Portfolio Manager (NSA)’ [NSA POC from funding]
          • ‘Service Project Manager (site)’ [Technical POC from funding]
          • ‘Finance Analyst (NSA)’ [Funding Mgr from funding]
          • ‘Service Finance POC (site)’ [Financial POC from funding]
      • Create Project
        • Does start FY have a validator for bad years (i.e 200001)? This could be a dropdown from current year -4 to current year + 4?
        • Year columns in grid should be based off of the Start FY
        • Make roles in project creation the same as those in “Add User’, above
        • ‘VFR’ should be ‘UFR’
        • ‘Appropriation’ should be a combobox
        • ‘Add Budget’ dialog should have the following fields:
          • Budget Center Number (validate for uniqueness)
          • Budget Center Name(validate for uniqueness)
          • Capability (Addable list)
          • Expenditure Center (Addable list)
          • Investment Portfolio (Addable list)
      • Add Funding
        • Populate information in funding request from project info: (project name, project number, budget center and budget
        • Move save button to lower right
        • Eliminate capability field, since it’s linked to budget center
        • Portfolio manager field can be deleted. It’s the NSA POC (which should be ‘Portfolio Manager (NSA)’)

FP – 1:30 – 5:00

  • Made Dprint a Singleton
  • Using displace rather than go_to_angle
  • Integrating sensors. Had a weird experience where the parent class seems to not have pointed the DataDictionary instance correctly. Odd.
  • Spent some time explaining to Tom how pointers work 🙂

Phil 5.28.2010

7:30 – 9:00 VISIBILITY

  • Made sure everything was working and checked on email. The place is *empty*

9:00 – 4:00 FP

  • More fixing Dprint changes
  • With Tom’s help, got the whole system working
  • Added Singleton DataDictionary. Need to do this to Dpring

Phil 5.27.2010

7:30 – 10:00 VISIBILITY

  • Checked to see that everything was working and prettied up edgeDemo a bit
  • Quick meeting with JW. Next time will be Tuesday
  • Meeting with Anne. Some discussion about form builder. We’ll get together next week to put together some slide shows
  • Went over status with Dong

10:00 – 3:30FP

  • Got Dprint working, though I wasn’t able to get it to handle the mapping from ‘…’ to va_args for my version of printf.
  • Fixing all the stuff I broke adding Dprint into the constructor for Executive and State
  • Working on Dprint(). Got the basics working.
  • Next, add to base control classes

Phil 5.26.2010

8:00 – 4:00 (3 hrs FP)

  • Deployed VISIBILITY with sideshows and improved user management
  • Deployed Dong’s new SWF
  • Sat down with JM and filled up a page with notes. Handed off to Dong
  • Got glut bitmap printing working (FP)
  • Now I need to set up a logging object . Started. (FP)

Phil 5.25.2010

8:00 – 5:00

  • Added a PMP role under S2A
  • Added PMP folks to VISIBILITY
  • Left a note with JM on progress
  • Testing role update
  • Also looking at new web hosts, since hostjava.net kinda sucks:
    • viz-n.com (hostjava.net) baseline:
      • ping (min/avg/max/med) – 156/327/442/348
      • 6.7% packet loss
      • tracert hops: 13 hops
    • feale.com (steadfast.net)
      • ping (min/avg/max/med) – 62/176/315/162
      • 11.8% packet loss
      • tracert hops: 9 hops
    • tanori.net (mediatemple)
      • ping (min/avg/max/med) – 84/256/406/260
      • 13.3% packet loss
      • tracert hops: 16 hops
    • philfeldman.com (dreamhost)
      • ping (min/avg/max/med) – 77/171/284/170
      • 15.4% packet loss
      • tracert hops: 21 hops
  • A lot of this delay seems to be coming from us. When I ping these sites from a dreamhost server, I get much better numbers. There is no packet loss at all, and the times are better (in the case of mediatemple, they’re phenomenal)
    • tanori.net ping (min/avg/max/med) – 1.8/2.0/2.1/0.09
    • feale.com ping (min/avg/max/med) – 78/78/78/0.078
    • viz-n.com ping (min/avg/max/med) – 87/88/88/0.268
  • Struggled with the role code for a while, until I realized that the actionscript object can come across to java with the children Lists being null. All seems to be working.
  • Burned a disk of VIS2 and PPM.

Phil 5.24.2010

7:30 – 3:30

  • Deployed new documentation in a test URL for JW to look at
  • Walked through the new S14 app with JM. Lots of notes – I called Dong and passed them along.
  • Meeting with Anne and a large group from S2A(?). Made the pitch that they pay for the development of a deployable version of VISIBILITY, which they liked
  • Need to put in the role editing that I worked out before the move. Done. Need to test