9:00 am - 5:30 pm 

This morning, we met with Nate and Dr. Skubic to discuss more specifically what we will be doing. Dr. Skubic drew both networking and conceptual diagrams of the system, and many questions were asked as to why things were done a certain way and why we couldn't do them some other way.

Nate is working on getting us the source code, or at least some pseudocode. Dr. Skubic mentioned that the new app really needs to be modular. (We will be porting (rewriting?) a Windows/VB app to Linux/C++.) We discussed individual customization of the PC App, which may be done partly through the web interface that I'll be working on. Nate showed us the existing app on the test machine here in the server room, as well as the test server that it talks to there. 

My instructions for the next little while are to learn Perl.

I spent a lot of time just getting used to Gentoo/KDE. I thought I had to have web space to try out my perl scripts, so I spent some time trying to get SSH2 to work so I could connect to the A&M server where I have some space. (My goDaddy site won't do it, since it's economy and not deluxe. But did you know you can get 25% off this week only ...) In the end, Sam had to fix all my fixes. So much for learning on your own -- sometimes you really do need to ask for help. We found out that after all that, the main problem was that my A&M account had been deactivated since I wasn't enrolled for the summer. And then after all that, Nate showed me that I could run perl from the terminal window. Just as well, since I couldn't get files to transfer to that web space once I did get access. And it's much easier this way.

I've been going through a perl tutorial I found online. The basics look very similar to PHP, although I'm finding new and interesting commands. For example, "unless." It's the negative of "if" -- you could just as well use "if !(...)", but "unless" can make it more readable. Also, it looks like they didn't overload operators like "+" or "<" for strings and numbers. You have different operators for strings, such as "lt" instead of "<".

Nick has been looking for device drivers for the X10 wireless transmitters. That would save us a whole lot of coding. 

I'll continue going through perl in the morning. 

9:10 am - 5:50 pm

Today, I worked on learning Perl. I found that it had many similarities to PHP. As it turns out, PHP was originally based on Perl, so this makes sense.

Nick made progress on getting the cameras to work with his Linux computer. Andy (and I) worked on putting together the framework for the app in Rhapsody, although we don't have any source code yet to go off of.

I found a site with info that may be very useful in porting the program over. I also looked at a C++ refresher/tutorial. I played a bit with putting together a banner graphic for this site.

Things to (possibly) do:

• Find out about graphics and graphing capabilities of Perl. How can I test this out without server space?
• Finish that C++ tutorial, and look at the other links to C++ stuff on Dr. Skubic's page. Right now I'm working through the "Default Functions" section (p55 on).
• Start reading up on Catalyst, the framework Nate is working with. Documentation at http://search.cpan.org/dist/Catalyst/lib/Catalyst/Manual.pod .
  

8:40 am - 5:00 pm

Yesterday was Memorial Day, so today's Monday really. I looked a little at Catalyst, and I finished that C++ tutorial, and I looked a little at another C++ resource. I'm installing Open Office (or emerging it, actually), and that's still going.

Chinonye has been learning C++. Nick has been looking at drivers for the Keyspan USB->Serial thing, and some graphics stuff, and maybe other stuff.

When Nate came in, he helped Chinonye and Andy get started on the next step of porting/rewriting the app. Nate had been going to tell me to install Catalyst and play around with it, but decided that installing it would be pretty difficult. Instead, he showed me how to log in to the server and set up my own app using Catalyst. I'll work through the tutorials to learn the software, and then I can start looking at his online app. He says once I understand it, I can rewrite it because it's not the best implementation.

So here's where I am:

• Catalyst - working on users/greet in tutorial -- still getting an error about not finding greet.tt
  • I don't know how to install the plugins (if that would help)
• Open Office is still working on getting installed
• I need to remember to check on whether I can transfer files to/from people.tamu.edu from home

9:00 am - 4:40 pm

Open Office is installed, and now Firefox is much more finicky. In fact, the HTML Validator extension can't find the C code it needs, or something. New extension I'm trying: Crash Recovery. Very odd behavior - I've almost never seen Firefox disappear completely at the wrong click of a mouse -- it usually hangs for a while, then you see Mozilla Quality Feedback Agent. Maybe the Agent isn't installed, and it just works differently in Linux. Sometimes I have to click the icon several times before Firefox will actually start up. Nate showed me how to start FF from the command line (in the background: > firefox &) and how to list running processes, similar (I think) to what I use Ctrl-Alt-Delete for in Windows (ps -A).

I continued going through the Catalyst tutorial. I made some good progress and am beginning to understand the basics of Catalyst. Right now I'm stuck at the part where you make an auto function to force login. It may be because we don't have all the plugins installed that the tutorial claims to require. That would at least mean it isn't my coding that's at fault! Nate was going to show me how to install those today, but we ran out of time, so that's tomorrow.

I also created a rough banner for my Eldercare web site. I'll have to work on uploading it at home. I need to use my time for more relevant things at work, I think. 

Nate and I had a good meeting about my next steps on the web interface. I read over one of the papers he recommended and started looking at what nurses want in a data visualization. I'll have to go through my notes, but here are some points of action:

• Learn to install plugins, and get them all in
• Get auth working
• Learn to use genchart
• Keep learning Catalyst -- I am barely a beginner, and I need to be comfortable with this system so that it makes sense to not code everything from scratch. This can be done via
  • tutorials
  • looking at Nate's code
• Set up overall site structure. (Does this mean a flowchart of pages?)
• Read the other paper he sent me
• For now, focus more on solutions with what we've got than expansions/improvements to the system
• Think of different graphs and visualizations that would be useful.
  • I could spend my whole summer making one really cool visualization. Not sure that would be smart, though - if it wasn't what someone wanted, that would be a whole summer down the drain.
  • See the papers he sent me, and my notes on one of them
    
  • Sensors on floorplan with time lapse? How to do this, especially with Catalyst? Web 2.0? js? perl generate js? Need flexibility -- we may not have any 2 setups quite alike, especially with 4 x 2 different floor plans!

9:25 am - 5:10 pm
   +15 mins at home trying to get my tamu web space working so I can try running perl there

I finished reading the original project proposal that Nate forwarded to me. I gained a lot of useful notes about what to show and how to show it. I sat down and tried to organize lists of: types of sensors; what they can show; and how to show it / design elements to include. From this, I brainstormed several different ways to display data. I spent some time picking through Walter Zorn's drag and drop javascript, which could be very useful. I've got two 2-sided pages full of ideas now! I also looked into virtual assistants, since the proposal mentioned that seniors may find speech easier to understand when they can see lips moving.

A&M help desk called about my tamu web space. File transfer is partly working now. I emailed them back.

I found out that the genchart thing is not a Catalyst plugin nor a standard Perl function. It actually calls to GD::Graph::bars, which is related to Template Toolkit and to a module for Perl 5 (see TT bars and Graph).

I started looking a little through Nate's code ("view").

I'm not sure what I'll work on tomorrow. Here are some ideas:

• I need to do some Catalyst learning, but we don't have all those plugins installed, and I don't know if they might be part of why I can't get that one auto/auth function working (named auto, enforces authorization/login).
• Maybe I can also get familiar with that graph function,
• and look into what Perl has available to create and work with graphics. Also, can you do anything analagous to that drag & drop stuff with Perl? (I doubt it, since Perl is server-side.)
• Also, maybe I can start sketching a proposed site framework/structure.
• Think of more concrete implementation details for floorplan visualization?
• Research "Web 2.0"?
• I'd like to go over my visualization ideas with Nate.