Michael Klosiewski's CSCI460 project weblog

I received my project earlier today.

Project Description: Develop an application that represents complex data sets in visual and understandable ways.

Specifically, I am to be looking at counting words to find out the most used words in a data set, keeping track of their locations within the data so that they can be referenced later, and building a pleasing user interface for viewing the data by keyword. There will be more filled into that, but that's a pretty good overview of what I'm looking at initially: reading data, organizing it, and representing it.

One of the challenges I will be facing is keeping my project running efficiently due to the large volume of data I am supposed to be representing. The software should work with any type of data (or at least be easily extendable to be able to do so), but one of the useful possibilities that has already been mentioned is survey data, which can get quite large.

Another challenge for me will be keeping a good schedule and keeping my attitude very forward facing. Projects of mine have failed in the past due to my not allocating enough time for planning and debugging, and have suffered particularly from my inability to throw away things that don't work and start over. The foundation for a project of this size, speaking especially in terms of it being carried out by a single individual, needs to be really solid so that I don't drown trying to fix things later. I have already set dates for when I should be done with planning/early testing, coding, component testing/debugging, and final testing/debugging. The first testing phase, if done properly, should be the only stage of the project in which I have to completely throw out designs, code, and other choices, but I will do so later on if necessary, probably at that point keeping a copy of what I didn't like as much in case that ends up being all I have.

Despite sounding negative, I'm very hopeful about the project at this stage. It seems like I have a lot of resources and good people at my back as long as I make the effort to communicate, and I have no intention of working in isolation. I will work on the project day by day, keep short term goals, and check those dates that I have set out for myself. If I'm feeling brave, perhaps I will post them in my next entry.

I also plan to back up all of my work after every session in some way or another, including pages of this website (as long as it remains offline), which I will enjoy working on while I still have time.

- Mike

Since receiving my project I have thought a lot about how I am going to carry it out, and I have arrived at a preliminary design plan. Starting tomorrow I will attempt to carry it out, working as much as I can on it in this first week. If everything goes well I may lock it in as my basic design choice, and if things don't then it will be time to think of something else.

I am going to create two applications: one that converts raw data into useful data, and the interface generation program that will interpret it. The first application would be used by a publisher of the data, will be written in C#, and ought to have a pleasing, but simple user interface of its own. The second will take the data generated by the first and create the fancier end user interface that the project originally envisioned. The first program ought to be able to start the second program upon completion of its task, and the second program ought to be able to be ported to the web—a feature made possible by the nature of flash programs. These will be the basic goals I'm shooting for.

Dr. McVey gave me a flash book that I think will be very helpful, and I have looked it over, noting which chapters I ought to look at and which ones I can most likely leave alone. One of the things I will be doing over the next couple weeks is studying it a lot to get better at flash, since I'm leaning toward that as my GUI design language. I will also be experimenting as I go. I admit that I'm worried about my ability to work quickly enough in this area, because it seems that there is a lot of material that I may need to cover to be as successful as I want to be, and I have always been a slow reader. I will have to budget a lot of time for this, and be diligent about finishing my study in a timely fashion.

Speaking of timely, I would like to be done with planning, studying, and preliminary testing by midnight of February 24th. For the C# program I think this is a reasonable schedule, but for the Flash program I think this is going to be tough. I have never worked with flash before, and I know from experience that the only way I'm going to be successful working with something I've never dealt with before is to study and experiment with it very thoroughly. That's going to take time, and the actual design is going to have to come after that. I suspect I will need to give myself separate deadlines for the Flash program, but I will try my utmost early in the game to prevent that.

On the bright side, the website is nearly presentable, and I am ahead of schedule on that. Aside from blogging, I shouldn't have to do too much to it this week, leaving more time for the actual project (read "studying Flash like crazy").

- Mike

I ran into my first major problem about a half hour ago. My computer does not meet the minimum requirements to run the Flash development environment I was hoping to use. I am looking into finding another way to use it, and in fact I just got an email from Dr. McVey that has made me hopeful. As such, I will continue my study of Flash unless it becomes clear that it will be a disadvantageous use of my time.

Despite saying that I could continue studying flash, it felt useless to do so when I couldn't practice applying it, so I have not. No word on the workstation I requested as of yet.

Also, this website will be going up tomorrow. I'd like to catalog any changes I make in the future, but since it isn't very high priority we'll see if it actually happens.