U. Akron invited to compete at Case

The University of Akron’s computer science club has been invited to compete at Case’s Engineers Week in the Lego robot competition. They normally compete against high school kids, but in 2006, they have invited the local area colleges to come in and compete as well. Trick is Case has Lego kits. Each team gets the same exact kit and has to build a robot which searches for a light source. Once found, it must go to the light source to score a point. Two robots go at it at a time. Another trick is we don’t have ANY of the robot gear Case has. All our testing and development will be based on wild guessing. Later on, we’ll get a couple hours to play with the equipment and then we’ll build on the day of the event. Oh yeah, the gear they’re using had cost $800 back in the day. Today, you can’t get it and what you can get costs $400. Its cool stuff, but out of all of our budgets.

After talking with a friend of mine who graduated from Case, I’m thinking we don’t stand much of a chance. They’ve been doing the robot thing on some level for probably at least a decade. Akron? I think they JUST started offering a robot course not too long ago.

The cool part is I think I have some tools for figuring out the light sensing (anyone remember back when I had wired up my apartment?). We need to be able to measure light, identify the location of the light and instruct hardware to move towards it. Doesn’t sound too bad, but the arena will not be perfectly dark and we have to be able to lock onto an 80 watt and 20 watt bulb (if I’m remembering correctly).
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Slicing Floor Plan assignment in J2ME

J2ME (Java 2 for mobile) has had me curious. I have a J2ME friendly phone. I’m doing Java in DSA2. It can’t be that hard to write something for the phone, can it?

Turns out it really isn’t too bad. The bugger of it is fiddling with the right mix of software development kits and Eclipse’s Java settings. The other fun part is figuring out which SDK matches with the Nokia 6600 phone (for those wondering, its Series 60, v2 FP1 (feature pack 1)). I lost a good amount of time just trying to figure that one out.

But the development process wasn’t too bad once Eclipse was setup to compile and package. I haven’t mastered the art of persuading the emulator to run from the “run program” button, but I found I can use Nokia’s Eclipse add-on buttons to run the emulator from there.

The last thing to try was to actually write something to run on the phone. What better test than the current programming assignment (due this coming Monday, but already turned in). I had to water down the code since the phone lacks a lot of the features the desktop edition of Java has. Once I put together the interface, the rest of the Java class files just dropped right in with a little bit of tweaking here and there. Here’s some screen shots of the Slicing Floor Plan from my 6600:

The config screen – specify the plan here:

The drawing of the binary tree:

The drawing of the floor plan:

Feel free to browse the code. I don’t know if it’ll work on other J2ME gadgets. If it does, great!

Just like the desktop edition.
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I forgot. UA still has dialup access

Duh.

I remember using U. Akron’s dialup to ditch AOL dialup back in the day. I also remember using UA when I was in a jam at a network client site and needed a driver for something.

Now, I’m able to use the UA dialup numbers to allow me to go mobile and maintain a ‘net connection when wifi isn’t available (*cough* Tri-C). I just persuade my notebook to talk to my cell phone and have it dial out. This solves the problem of getting stuck with T-Mobile’s Internet plan for $20 a month (ouch).

One setback (not counting the fact its a low speed connection): the UA dialup account is only good for when you’re a current student. Good motivation to keep taking classes, right? This is one of those “you know you’re a geek when…”
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Making scripts available

Someone sent me a message via the website asking to make some scripts available. I don’t enforce email address checking, but at the same time, you kinda have to supply one if you want a reply (and I like to think I’m pretty good at getting all responses answered in less than a few hours – unless I’m sleeping).

I had a request for the script to convert WAPs to Google Maps. There’s 2 pieces of the puzzle: the HTML/JavaScript page and the script to convert the summary file to XML. Now, the HTML/JavaScript page can be swiped pretty easily (right click and save as). The XML page generation is a different story. I’m looking at the code right now and its poorly documented. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m not pulling everything available out of the summary files (like SID, and such). I’d like to have the XML file contain everything at some point.

At the moment, I’m leaning more towards setting the script up to run from the web. You upload your summary file and it converts it to XML. Then, as I update the file, everyone else will have access to the latest and greatest as well. Anyone else interested or would people prefer something different?
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Wardriving and Google Maps

I’m too lazy to hack NetStumbler’s .ns file formats. But the summary text files are pretty nice. I’ve got a ns2xml PHP script which pulls the data out and converts it to XML. Then I have my JavaScript read the XML file and pass the data to Google maps for plotting.

WAPs I’ve found

The WAPs in red (and have a red marker) are encrypted. The ones in green are open. Click on a link to view the marker data (the map will recenter and show some additional info in a bubble). Click a marker on the map to view its data too.
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Java assignments posted

I’ve posted my Java assignments. You can find them on the school page (scroll down to Data Structures and Algorithms 2). I’ll post them as I complete them. For safety though, I won’t post the code to an assignment until after its been graded.

The hexagon fractal assignment was rather fun. Learning Java Swing wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Figuring out how to draw in a JPanel took a little bit of work (as I learned, simply drawing on the canvas is sort of a no-no since Swing components will overwrite the canvas every time). You’ll need Java 1.5.0 installed for the applet to work.
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Kinda busy

The news I neglected to post in a timely manner? Eh, got busy.

I helped Employ Media by writing some scripts to automate a lot of the work involved in making “.jobs” domains functional. It was a bit of a time crunch. But I like to think I helped make a little bit of internet history.

Olessia is out of the house today. She and Amy (with Amy’s kids) went off to Toledo. They’ll be spending the night and coming back tomorrow.

Me? I’m hanging out at the house. I think I glued the last of the siding that might even remotely think about coming off the house. I’ve also mowed the lawn and did some shopping (food items, as well as some computer gear). Tomorrow I may go out to Lorain to check in on an autocross (assuming I get up at an early hour).

I’m still busy learning Russian in the mornings. I need to memorize “простите за опоздание” (if typed correctly, should say “sorry I’m late”). And another one that made Olessia laugh: Елки-палки

I’ve also been busy in my DSA2 class. Programming assignment 1 is done. Got a 50 out of 50. I’ve also just completed assignment number 2. I’ll post the code as I get the assignments back. Coding in Java has me pretty motivated to try my hand at J2ME (Java for mobile gadgets). I’ll post my creations as I come up with them…
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Olessia gives Russia Presentation

Olessia and I were invited by my Russian prof to come in and speak to two classes. Olessia showed pictures when she was in Moscow this year as well as pictures her sister took in Siberia (there’s new pictures in this album as of last week).

The Moscow pics were great. People really enjoyed the TGI Fridays pics. The Siberia pics were great. There were a lot of “oohs and ahs” from the audience. We worked on reading some of the signs. We learned a little bit about the largest fresh water lake in the world. It was great stuff (and I learned a bit too!). Plus, it was great saying the pictures displayed nice and big taking up a good part of the classroom wall.

Its понедельник (Monday) and its going to probably be another busy week of work and school. I have some other news which I’ll post later which will explain the delay in getting the news up on the site…
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Cats on the loose!

Ack!

Olessia calls me from upstairs – the cats got outside!

I come up and here, the sliding door is half open and both cats are milling around outside. Now its past 8pm and its dark already. We both go outside. Murzik doesn’t know what to do and is happily waltzing around outside. She’s sniffing the air and the grass. Powder, he’s busy sniffing too, but he sees me walking his way and he knows I’m out to end his fun. He bolts off towards the back of the yard. I tried to get him between me and the house. My fear was he’d jump the short fence we have or find a rabbit hole under the fence. He ended up bolting for the house and I freaked because we leave our side gate open. I called out to Olessia to watch for Powder because he was coming her way and to close the gate (Olessia almost had scooped up Murzik). She ran for the gate and he saw that and stopped before the house. Now he was a little confused as to what was going on. He ended up cautiously walking to the middle of the yard and I followed. On my way to Powder, I was able to scoop up Murzik. I wasn’t too worried about her. Murzik isn’t as street smart as Powder is. When I scooped up Murzik, Powder saw that and he was freaked out. His tail was poofed up and his back was arched with all his back hair sticking up. I was able to scoop him up as well and return the two to the house. I have no idea how the patio door got opened. I may have left it open because I was grilling. Or maybe I had left it a crack open and they managed to get it opened further, but for some reason I doubt that. the doors aren’t easy to open. Hmm… Well, they’re safe and back in the house.
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FEMA disaster website is IE only – Whoops!

The article.

And quote:


    “Mike Quealy, a FEMA spokesperson, explained to me that they are aware of the issue, and are currently working on a application that supports all of the most popular browsers. Quealy said that the application in question was originally an in-house tool, meant to be used by call center people. Internet Explorer was the official in-house browser, so the application was coded with IE in mind.”

How about designing a site to be cross-browser friendly (aka: base web standards) from the start?

From a consulting standpoint, who ever wrote the app will probably have to come back out to redo the IE code and get paid on top of what they got paid when they started. You really want to consult with these folks? If it was done in house, then this was short-sighted thinking on the part of those responsible for building the site.

Is it a big deal? Consider this: IE doesn’t run on Linux. IE is no longer supported on Mac. That’s now a healthy number of people your site can’t help. For an e-comm website, I’d say “who cares?” because that was the e-comm’s decision to make their site inaccessible to this market. But a government website?
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Fixing up the house

Labor Day weekend gave me some time to hammer out some house projects. Olessia wanted to display her dolls she brought back from Russia. So we had picked out some shelves and lighting and I got those mounted (pictures are in the gallery). I’m not quite ready to do my own track lighting install, so the wall mount approach was used.

We went to the Cleveland Air Show on Monday. We got back late on Monday so last night (Tuesday) I finished the last of the home projects – gluing the front siding back up on the front of the house. This was a different section which hadn’t been glued yet. So now the front of the house is looking good again.

The Air Show was good. Not a lot of static displays. There were about 4 A-10s, 2 F-18s, A C-130, a Navy helicopter (the Navy’s newest apparently), Metro Life Flight’s helicopter, a Continental airlines plane, 4 Canadian military aircraft, and some other Navy stuff. That was about it. No C-5 Galaxy or handful of C-130 aircraft. In fact, I don’t think there was any Air Force aircraft on static display (the C-130 was Air Force Reserves). I’m guessing all the aircraft are out and about saving the world from evil-doers. Sadly, and to put things in perspective, there were more consession booths then there were static aircraft.

The show wasn’t all bad though. We really had a lot of fun at NASA Glen’s display. Every year their display gets better and better (I think) and bigger too. They had a bus setup as a theatre and we kinda looked at it like it was goofy (it looked goofy on the outside), but inside it was really nicely decked out. They had a big flat panel display in the back and you sit in a swivle lounge chair. We watched a 7 minute movie on MER. The video was awesome. Great choice of music – Lenny Kravitz’s “I want to fly away” (I think that was the song) as they showed the launch and landing of a rover. Then the movie ended with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith telling us to stay in school (that kind of made us laugh). From the bus, we moved onto their display tent and it had a lot of displays showing the work done at Glen Research in Cleveland. If I read the display correctly, they used their wind tunnels to help test the foam insolation for Discovery’s return to flight (they even had foam we could touch). Olessia even had her picture taken – I have to get it scanned in. They had a setup where they take a picture and then almost instantly impose the person’s face inside a space suit and then print it out – all in under a minute, I would say.

Ok, so we had fun at the NASA booth. The highlight of the show, the reason we paid crazy prices for tickets and for food, the reason why we waited and walked around the show for 3+ hours, was all to see the Thunderbirds demonstration. It was an excellent show. What was cool was on Saturday and Sunday, we could hear the Thunderbirds getting ready over our house area – about 5-10 minutes before 4pm (4pm is when their show actually starts). It was good stuff. I have pictures from this event being developed – I should have them on Thursday, maybe.
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Russian and DSA2

I’ve started school already. Russian, I think, is going to be fun. The prof seems to be pretty excited about the language and is happy teaching it to us. Olessia helped me with my homework yesterday. It was simple exercises to practice writing a select few of the Russian letters in cursive. We practiced the sounds too. Olessia realized I knew almost all the letters to spell Murzik in Russian (she made me spell it!). Since I know how to spell Murzik, I know how to spell purr in Russian too! Its simply the “mur” in Murzik. And what’s also cool, is if you properly pronounce “mur” in Russian, it sounds like a cat purring. Kpyto! (means “cool” in Russian which sort of sounds like krewto)

DSA2 is going to be cool. Sadly, we’re not allowed to use a notebook or other gadget in class. Apparently too many students abused this privilege by playing games and such and the prof had enough. I guess the good thing is I don’t have to lug 7lb of computer gear in my backpack. The bad thing is I’ll have to decode my handwriting!

Here’s some freaky stuff about the two classes:

My Russian class only had 5 students on Monday! Of the 5, there’s another Rob/Robert (but don’t call me “Bob”) in the class. Rob, in Russian, means slave so I don’t think either of want to go with that. In my DSA2 class, there’s maybe 20 students. In there, there’s 3 Robs! My prof for DSA2 is also learning Russian this semester.

Now the one part that had me worried about DSA2 was the use of Java. See, I survived intro to computer science and DSA1 by using C++. It was the language of choice back then. But now the university has switched over to Java. Luckily for me, this is the class is made up of 50% C++ coders and 50% Java coders. This is also the first time this prof has taught Java. Hopefully she’ll have some mercy for us C++ coders. Sorry, but I won’t be able to post the class notes up. I’m not sure if I’ll post the programs.
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Fun with Google maps

This is pretty slick: Nora Event Locations Its Google maps embedded into the Nora website. Nifty! Its XML driven so when they change locations (which is pretty often), its a quick and easy fix up on the xml file.

Also nifty, is plotting NetStumbler data (the green markers are open WAPs and red are encrypted ones). Again, its all XML AJAX driven. I wrote a quick little PHP script to convert NetStumbler’s summary text file into XML. What is a LOT of fun is browsing the map and switching it over to hybrid view. And if you’re wondering, map roughly plots my path to work. If you know me well enough, you can probably pick out which router is my router and then identify where I live. Shh! Don’t tell anyone though.
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Computer Science for Life

Whoa! I’m taking a computer science class for once! I’m taking a break from the calculus (just have to take calc 2 now). Data Structures & Algorithms II, the saga continues. When I took DSA I, it was all in C++, which was really nice. Now its in Java, which should be even better but I haven’t coded Java in a class environment so this should be interesting.

Also, I’ve registered for Beginning Russian I at Tri-C (also known as Tri-High, Tri-Again or something like that). Russian is offered at Kent and CWRU, but Kent is at a goofy hour and a pretty lengthy class. The class at Case looks pretty intense. It too is at a goofy hour during the day. U. Akron doesn’t even offer the class. Tri-C offers it as an evening class, but its the same time as DSA II. So, I’ve managed to persuade work to let me out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Learning two langauges in 15 weeks – this will be hectic.

Oh yeah, Computer Science for Life! I finally had a chance to listen to MC Plus+. Great computer science tunes!
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