Getting started for code sprint with Ingres!
Thursday, September 24, 2009

Tomorrow is the start of the code sprint for my project course, where all the students that are enrolled in UCOSP from universities across North America are invited to meet face to face to get things started, and know each other. As preparation for the great event, I have installed Ingres 10.0 build 107 on my 32bit machine that has Windows XP home edition on.

I once have encountered the problem "Invalid Ingres Username. Please check username, for invalid ingres characters". If you also have this problem, check if the user name of the Windows XP account that you are current log in has any space in it. If there is a space, renaming the user name into one that doesn't have space does not work. I solved it by creating another account that does not have a space and it works well.

Posted byA nerdy girl at 3:50 PM 0 comments  

What every project should have for management
Monday, September 21, 2009

When I was going through the wiki pages of the Ingres Community, I spotted a page that I think every project should have, regardless of its scale, to enhance effectiveness.

Right now the progress speed of Geokudo is nearly 0 character/second due to serious damage to the architectural structure of the code by part of the team from misunderstandings. Due to this, I am appointed as the new project head, to rewrite the project from scratch to improve usability and project management.

Posted byA nerdy girl at 8:56 AM 0 comments  

UCOSP: Ingres Geospatial
Thursday, September 17, 2009

For this fall semester, I am going to work on an open source GIS, Geospatial by Ingres under Andrew Ross and UCOSP, which counts towards my CSC494 credit. I am very excited about it and hope that I can contribute successfully in Geospatial by the end of the term.

This is so far my second time cooperating with an open source organization. Recalling from some very precious experience from my first time working with HackyStat, I have answered the following questions to myself.

What skills do you think you will need that you do not have yet?

  • Working with project using Scrum
  • Using a profiler
  • Code reading cramming with little support of documentation
  • Co-operating with a team of tester instead of a few

    Which of your strengths will help you?
  • I am not shy to ask questions
  • I write code that has been receiving feedback with the phrase "code with a second thought"
  • I always use a diagram to illustrate ideas well enough that are complicated to demonstrate

    Which of your potential weaknesses will be ones you need to watch out for?
  • Need to polish on skills to solve conflict in a group
  • Also need to polish on skills to find the right thing to blame for problems that a debugger can't solve

    How do you see this project helping you in your career?
  • Help me to develop skills that I don't have or not so good at which are essential when I start my career after I graduate
  • Obtaining connections to open source organization which are also essential to me

    What in particular interests you the most about this project?
  • The project itself!
  • It is an open source project
  • The technologies that it is used
  • The experience that I can get from contributing into the team

    Posted byA nerdy girl at 7:59 AM 0 comments  

    Education with open source
    Tuesday, September 15, 2009

    Today I have attended a talk by Mark Surman, the director of the Mozilla Foundation, at the Centre for Social Innovation with a couple of grad students. This talk is one of the series of Toronto NetTuesday, and the topic was about Mozilla Service week and CiviCRM.

    It was very kind of him to spend more time with us, the students to have a separate talk. It was about how open source has been co-operating with education to improve the quality of participation and commitment nowadays. Also, he talks about the importance of commitment and openness in open source organization, regarding those two as the key philosophy of open source.

    However, it leaves me a message that it is getting harder to participate into open source if you are new and not very well-known to the industry. Your ideas to contribute will either be cruelly banned, or accepted but with a harsh future. People need to fight very hard for their ideas in order to get funded, which means it's very not likely that they will share until they get the fame/funds that they want. That exactly violates the key philosophy that Mark has proposed. Does that also explains the low men:women ratio(0.1%) in open source area, which women care more about relationships while men care more about goals? What I take away from that talk with Mark is that somehow at sometime, the culture in open source needs to be more open in order for it to be prosperous.

    Posted byA nerdy girl at 6:52 PM 0 comments  

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    Geokudo sprint #2
    Saturday, September 5, 2009

    In the previous few weeks, Geokudo, has been tested with the end users on usability flaws. From there we discover that a majority of them like to draw directly on the map rather than grouping what they have drawn into projects. Also, they find themselves less likely to move from mouse to keyboard when drawing on the map. Considering this, our next sprint will be focusing improving usability, revising the structure of the code due to any effect, and improving documentation.

    A new member, Claudio Yin, has been recruited in our original team of 4. A new fresh mind also have brought us back to think about problems about the structure of the code after refactoring. There are too many source files and the function chaining for each operation is too long. The refactoring problem is, how to make the code easier to read, yet easier to code?

    Our team has another a problem that hasn't found a solution yet. Most of the team are recent grads or full time student who have other things prior to Geokudo. Time to devote is the main concern.

    Posted byA nerdy girl at 7:04 AM 0 comments  

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    Schedule
    Tuesday, September 1, 2009

    Posted byA nerdy girl at 8:37 PM 0 comments  

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    Niagara on the bike
    Sunday, August 30, 2009

    Summer was going to end. Fall is already coming which means school is starting soon. 3 other friends and I planned to put an end to this summer with a biking trip from downtown Toronto to Niagara Falls and back.

    Sounds impossible? But we did it and we are glad that we did it! Here are the details that make this 137 km * 2 biking trip possible!

    1. The trail that we biked is the Waterfront trail.
    2. We pair ourselves up, 1 pair of bikers and 1 pair of drivers, then swap at specific locations on which we agreed.
    3. Each leg is around 28 - 32 km long, and we stopped occasionally during each leg for checking out maps and consuming drinks.
    4. The bikers need to carry 2 bottles of water/energy drink per person, snack bars, gel seats, a wrench and other tools for fixing the gears and tires .
    5. We had our luggage on the car to be carried by the drivers
    6. For the last half an hour for the bikers and drivers to meet, we turned on the walkie talkie for confirming the arrival.
    7. We also have the bike maps highlighted and binded such that they are more durable.
    8. Other things that we have also brought along are buggie cords for holding bikes at the back of car, recharger for batteries and personal necessity.
    9. We lived in Diplomat motel which is very clean, has a good price, nice staff and a convenient location.
    10. We had all you can eat breakfast at the corner of the motel for 6.99!
    11. Total cost for 4 people, 2 nights 3 days = 133(motel) + 40(drinks and snacks) + 30(gas) + 70(food) = 273

    First day(2009 August 26): Toronto to Niagara


    2009-08-26
    Second day(2009 August 27): At Niagara


    2009-08-27
    Third day(2009 August 28): Niagara to Toronto


    2009-08-28

    Posted byA nerdy girl at 8:08 PM 0 comments  

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