Get Right to the point
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I’m posting the source code for the WikiGolf game that I submitted for my Software Engineering Project II module. My team was called “The Channel 4 News Team” and we spend about 5 weeks doing this. I outlined the concept for the game in my previous post, but heres a quick rundown. Its a WikiGolf Graph Traversal Game:
- WikiGolf – You start off on a random page on wikipedia, and try to get to a specific page in the fewest number of clicks. You can only use links that are on the current page.
- Graph Traversal – We had to take a text file off all the pages on wikipedia, with information on which pages those pages linked to. And convert that into a Digraph which we could then traverse.
- Game – It needed to be fun to play.
Continued reading >
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
These is the help page for the open source forum.
You need to install 3 things. I’ve given a step-by-step guide below
I’ve also given some links to some resources for you to learn more.
And I’ve given some commands that I’ve found helpful and that you should probably know from the beginning. Continued reading >
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
This is the first in a 3 part series of blog posts describing my computer setup.
- This one will be about the hard ware and OS.
- The second will be about the applications and tools
- The third will be about my environment.
So to start off, I’ll describe what I used to have: Continued reading >
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
About two weeks ago I managed to bork my computer. It wasn’t anything too serious… I just had to reinstall Snow Leopard onto my mac. While this may sound like a horrible thing never to be repeated, I actually like doing it now and again. It helps get rid of the cruft that an OS builds up over time, and gives it that “new computer” feel. Though Mac doesn’t seem to build up nearly as much cruft as Windows XP it has to be said…
How did I bork it? Well to be honest, it was complete user error. I have filevault installed on my mac which encrypts my Home directory so that its reasonably well protected from hackers and such. One thing that it does is create a .sparsebundle directory which holds all of the encrypted content, and it decrypts the files from this on the fly as it needs them. Why this is all a lovely idea, and seems to work just fine, as always theres the PEBKAC problem. (P.E.B.K.A.C. = Problem exists between keyboard and computer)
Recently I noticed that my hard disk was feeling awful full, so I decided to run an analysis to see where the problem was. Seems some file called chrissalij.sparsebundle was taking up 80Gigs :O. Well that had to be deleted right away, we couldn’t have some un-openable file taking up 80 gigs. So off to the trash you go…. Oh wait, the Operating System wont let me delete you? Well then lets go to the command line..
$ sudo rm -rf chrissalij.sparsebundle
Haha. Got ya there didn’t I? Now you’re deleted. Oh wait… Why can’t I open any files, why is my operating system telling me to log out… Why can’t I log back in…..
Continued reading >
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
I got a good laugh out of this one. I’d disagree about the Chome comment though, seems its secure too.
From College Humour Via Neatorama
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Update 28-May-’01: The Source for the project has been posted
That sounds like a fun game doesn’t it? Well that was our project description for our Software Engineering Project module. Needless to say its a bit fuzzy and a touch on the random side, but after a bit of research I came up with the following:
- WikiGolf is a game where you start off on a random page on wikipedia, (using the random page function). You then try to get to a predetermined finishing page in a set number of clicks. To do this you can only click on links in the main article. You can’t use the search function etc.
- The graph traversal part is done by moving through the graph of all the links on wikipedia. Somebody already trawled the links and we’re given a graph of all the links in a file which we have to read. For example the wikipedia page for Sex links to all of the following pages.
sex: gender male female sexorgan vagina prostate gender identity karyotype transvestism crossdressing discrimination sex segregation sexism reproduction sexual_intercourse
We have to use these links to construct a graph and traverse it.
- Game. Well it has to be fun to play….
So there you have it. Its kind of esoteric, but I think we’ve managed to get a good grip on it. So with that in mind, we set about forming our groups and making a plan.
The first 6 weeks of the module were based around doing practicals to get us a base level of code. Some with which we could work on to make to game. We started by writing a program that would create a graph of nodes with links to other nodes, as well as some basic operations on the graph. Then we modified it to be able to read the contents of a file. We finished with being able to find the shortest path between two points on the graph. Once we had those practicals done it was time to move on to the rest of the project.
Having formed our teams, everybody started having meetings, and devising how they wanted their game to look and play. The reason I’m writing this now is that we just finished our meeting to decide exactly how the game should look and feel. Everything will be done in Java, so we went with Swing, as it seems to be the easiest to learn. I managed to find some simple WYSIWYG editors in the group who aren’t too into coding everything from scratch like me.
I’m rather happy with how things are going at the moment. I managed to get pretty much the entire back-end working over the mid term break, so now everybody is just working on the GUI, and trying to get it to look pretty. Once the entire thing is done, I’ll try and post a copy of the program up here (if my team doesn’t object).
I’ve officially given up on php. I’m sick of it! I’ve been using it for over a year now, and it’s really starting to piss me off. It’s just the little things, and to be honest it’s probably to do with the hap-hazard way I started learning it. But alas, it’s gone! I’ve followed to crowd and I’ve gone to Ruby, and more specifically, Ruby on Rails.
I’ve spent the last few days, at the expense of studying for my midterms, (I’ll do anything not to study, including learn a new language) learning Ruby on Rails. I’ve no background in Ruby at all, but I’ve dabbled in python, and there are some similarities there. But all in reality I’m starting from scratch with it, and I love it.
Everything just seems so much simpler. This whole convention over configuration approach is brilliant, as well as all these little scripts and generators. To show just how simple it is, this evening I started with the plan to write a login system for my simple test website. Within 2 hours I had a working one, where I understood every line of code, and how it slotted into the bigger picture. Compare that with the week it took me in php.
I think I’m in love! Ruby is just so clean and simple and rails is a godsend. Once I get to grips with it all I can see myself churning out functional website after functional website. Not these half-assed php still-births that I’ve been producing over the last couple of years ….
(via inhabitat)
A very unique take on graffiti. Reverse Graffiti. Its where graffiti artists, instead of tagging a wall with spray paint, clean it, leaving behind their mark in another way. This particular example comes from a group of students in Durban, South Africa.
(via mrsmullerauh)
(via ed.tait)
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Other than to laugh. But I got a good 20mins of enjoyment out of this post - http://www.27bslash6.com/5pm.html. Please read it all the way through to the end. I particularly liked the following:
Despite your assumption, I have the highest amount of respect for authority. I actually wanted to become a police officer but failed the IQ test when I arrived on time at the correct building
It is a fairly large job as one of the backpackers is American and will therefore require a hole several sizes larger than normal. On the plus side, the other is from England which obviously means no dental records.
Brief Summary: Blogger in Australia gets a letter from the police stating that one of his blog posts violates the law. Blogger writes back. Hilarity ensues.
It’s all over this post – http://www.27bslash6.com/guaranteed.html
Enjoy
