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Journal - Week 2
::: Day 1 - Monday 06/13/05 ::: Yesterday I went straight to bed after I got off the bus, and still this morning I feel so tired and not ready for another week. But I did get out of bed and I did go to work. I spent the entire day working on GUI stuff. I have the energy information window working; with some modifications I got a similar window that displays the temperature data collected by each node. Then I started thinking of having some initial screen that would pop up when then the application is running. Then the user would choose whether they want to view temperature, energy, or coordinates data. I made that and then worked on creating a window that displays both the temperature and energy for each node. And that was it for the entire day - swing swing swing.
::: Day 2 - Tuesday 06/04/05 :::
New Foo Fighters CD out TODAY!!! And it's obviously been on my mind all day. I ran to Amherst right after work. Ah yes, work. Well, today has been a very tough day. I started working on the part of the GUI that displays the nodes on a XY-coordinate. The entire morning I was just staring in front of the computer thinking of ways to plot the nodes on a graph and have some Swing components. Java makes it hard to combine graphics with Swing. By lunch I had the backbone of the window, but no plotted nodes yet. When I came back from lunch, I redid the entire thing; I created two classes that were to aid me with the graphics. One class was creating a custom JPanel, the other one was
overriding the paintComponent method which would allow me to draw the dots for the nodes. For the entire afternoon I fought with this graphics thing. By 4:30 pm I finally had it working, with the nodes coming up on the graph. It does look kind of
ugly, I admit, but that's all I had time for today.
::: Day 3 - Wednesday - 06/15/05 ::: Today I am back to the Coordinates.java file. The display of nodes as points in a coordinate system is completed and this morning I just fixed a couple of last details and tested the class. Next I moved to creating two more windows - one with the coordinate system and energy values, and one with the coordinate system and temperature values. Obviously, these two had very similar code, the only difference is the arrays used - data vs. energy left. After completing those, I went back to the java file with the code for the main screen (ChoiceScreen.java). I added a couple more options so I could trigger the display of the coordinates windows from the main screen. The last thing I had to do was a window that displays all three types of information. I worked on that, and connected it to the main screen. So now all 7 user option have been completed and working. Depending on what checkboxes the user checks in the beginning, an appropriate screen opens up and displays the information.
::: Day 4 - Thursday - 06/16/05 ::: Today was day for improvements. I already have the basic things working but there were things to be changed. I first started with adding a scrolling option on some of the windows. This was necessary so the program could be used with unlimited number of nodes represented in a finite area. Since I had figured out the deal with the JScrollPanel yesterday, I thought that my task was straightforward. As it turned out the scroll pane was messing up the layout of some of the windows so I had to spent a little more time than originally planned. I had to redo parts of the GUI for the energy and data displays, but at the end it all worked out fine. It looked much better and was definitely more user friendly. In the afternoon I decided to go through all the files and fix things that didn't look properly or were not good programming. I formatted the files, moved pieces of code around, changed a few variables, and so on. This part of the day wasn't necessarily exciting, but was a good exercise. I realize now how important it is to not only have working programs but to make sure they are well structured and exhibit professional programming.
::: Day 5 - Friday 06/17/05 ::: Friday :) Next, after checking all files. I proceeded to the commenting part. I know how great it is to comment code, but I also find it a little boring. Especially when you know your code so well that you feel you are repeating yourself and doing useless work. But I know it is NOT useless. Well, while commenting I went off on a tangent and was surfing the internet. I found this article that talked about how comments in the code are not so useful anymore (esp. when it comes to Java). The author argued that code should be written in a way that each line is meaningful and extremely clear. He suggested that only very rarely code should be commented and that before proceeding one should try to rename variables and methods to ensure understanding. I looked back at my code and it seemed pretty clear. I added several comments. Then I decided to write a readme.txt where I explained the purpose of the program, listed the classes and briefly explained their significance. As I was typing that up I came up with a change in the GUI I wanted to make but I did not have time to work on it, so I left it on Monday. During lunch I met Natalie. She is another undergrad that is interning through DMP. She is working in the Computer Science department and that was the end of her first week there. We had lunch and talked about the work we do, school, etc. We decided to meet up on Sunday for dinner. After work I headed to Amherst to meet my boyfriend who was coming from Boston. When I got in Ahmerst I was there was a fair - with food, music, games, and many many people. Since the Peter Pan Bus was late I hung out at the fair for a while and waited. It was fun, and luckily it wasn't raining. The event was called "The Taste of Amherst" and they had wine and beer tasting... I truly wish I was over 21 because I am interested in whine and would have loved to try some local production. Oh well, maybe next year :)
::: Day 6 - Saturday 06/18/05 ::: Oh yessss, sleep in late, no work. I just hung out around the dorm and watched some family guy with Matt. At 3:30 I met Sami, my professor from Mount Holyoke. She had been kind enough to let me store a bike with her for a while and drove to UMASS to give it to me. It's been many years since I have biked so I have to be careful but it will be nice to zoom to work and back. After I saw Sami, Matt and I headed to the store so I could get some food. Big Y is our friend. Food is good. Um, that summarizes it well. Matt and I had dinner and he had to head back to the bus. He's got wortk on Sundays so he can't stay for the whole weekend :(
::: Day 7 - Sunday 06/19/05 ::: Alone again in my dorm room, I slept till around 10, watched a movie and read. I talked to friends online, and Natalie and I decided to meet at 5pm. When she came to pick me up we headed to Northampton. I showed her around the town, we went in a couple of stores and had dinner. We got sushi (finally someone else who likes raw fish!). We got some ice-cream after dinner and then came back to UMASS. She came upstairs to see my room and then went to the common area to watch TV. Family Guy and American Dad we on so we had some cartoon fun! When Natalie left it was
already 10pm. Soon after that I went to bed. after all, it was a new
work wee tomorrow!
::: Week 1 ::: Week 2 ::: Week 3 ::: Week 4 ::: Week 5 ::: ::: Week 6 ::: Week 7 ::: Week 8 ::: Week 9 ::: Week 10 :::
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Maria Kazandjieva - makazand@mtholyoke.edu - last update: 06/20/05 |