Journal

Week 1: Jan22-28
1/26: Decided to keep a paper journal until I need to put one online. Seemes more hassel free to me. I was assigned to the Campus Tour Guide project. I have to build a mobile application on an Android that guides visitors through the St. Norbert College campus. It must describe areas of interest upon approach. It must be able to give directions to a place of interest. It is allowed to speak but it must have visuals as well. All in all it sounds like a fun project!

Week 2: Jan29-Feb4
2/1: Created my journal webpage and therefore I am now writing this journal in pixels instead of ink. I still need to relearn some HTML in order to turn my individual webpafes into an actual website! I need to make my system scope and move the files from my desktop at home onto CompSci02.
2/2: Struggled logging onto CompSci02. Ran into Geoff Irving and he set me straight. I have decided to go with text-to-speech instead of pre-recording canned directional commands and all the details of the buildings.

Week 3: Feb5-12
2/6: Started working on the Time-line. I figured it would be easiest to start this first rather than the Gantt Chart. I can go off of the schedule in the syllabus to develope an outline for my timeline and add specifics of the creation process for my project where they should go.
2/7: I finished the Time-line, therefore the Gantt Chart should be easy to make in Excel. I got Eclipse installed on my computer at home so I can work from home and build my entire prototype at home, instead of being cooped up a dusty old room in the attic of the PAC building :P
2/9: I uploaded my Time-line and Gantt Charts. I also have my website loading seemlessly with the addtion of the index.html file. I sorted out all the linking and html. I still think it looks ugly, but aesthetics are only important for when it's lie for the world.

Week 4: Feb13-20
2/17: We're celebrating my Grandma's 90th Birthday this weekend. So bringing my computer with me since there are none there. Planning on getting a Java program where I can draw a fake map and navigate it with a circle to represent a user moving around a map. Then at the end of the weeknd I will upload my folder and Journal updates from Starbucks. Yay for free Wi-Fi :)
2/19&20: Seeing as I had the only computer at my Grandma's it was in high demand whenever I was not using it. Well life happens and my sister finally put my laptop's keyboard out to pasture. It could take one spill of milk, but not two. Therefore, I was sent back to the dark ages and had to computer or internet access. Add to the severe cold mucking up the trucks starter and I get a perfect storm. Maybe fate is telling me Java animation isn't the right way to go about my project....

Week 5: Feb21-26

2/23:

- Met with Dr. Pankratz today. He pointed me in a few good directions. He first showed me the map that the Office of Communications had on the St. Norbert Mobile website. It already uses Google Maps and layers to put all the campus buildings onto the map.

- Dr. Pankratz also showed me that Google has been having an event for sutdents to make maps of their campus using Google Maps. He suggested joining the forms so that if I have specific questions about Android integration with Google Maps I would have a place to go.

- Dr. Pankratz also gave me the names of a couple students who had been using java for a previous course. I've added them as Java references for me.

2/24: Emailed the Office of Communications to enquire about the map on the Mobile website.
2/25: I heard back from the Office of Communications and they informed me that Scott Crevier had done the work with layers and Google Maps. I emailed him to see if he wanted to meet. He replied promptly asking me when we should meet.

Week 6: Feb27-Mar4
2/27: Presented our "Proof of Concept" to class today.
2/28: Found out fate was right afterall. After hearing my proof of concept, Sergii told me to forget about Java animation because Android and Google Maps are so integrated that I should be able to use all of the tech that comes with Google Maps to be able to create my Android app. I also emailed Scott Crevier back to finalize a meeting time.
3/1: Since I hadn't been able to meet with Scott Crevier yet, I decided to try out an alternative method by taking a fixed capture of Google Map's view of the heart of the St. Norbert Campus. I would have to get a GPS and mine coordinates to get the point of origin of my map as well as the other conorers so I could calibrate the value of +1 to X-coord or Y-coord in terms of pixels. This would be time consuming and possibly unreliable depending on how in-sync the GPS satellites are with Android's satellites, but since I had not met with Mr. Crevier yet I wanted to see how viable an option this was before I went ahead and solidified my design.
3/2: Started my Walkthough for Monday's class.
3/3: Finished my Walkthough for Monday's class.

Week 7: Mar5-11
3/5: Presented my Walkthrough in Class. Received some good suggestions from the class, such as adding a grey 'inactive' layer.

3/7:

- Met with Scott Crevier and finalized my design for the map. He showed me how you can add layers of buildings and paths, whose coordinates you get from Google Earth, to Google Maps using KML. He showed me how he had used the KML to load data from an SQL database and map the outlines of buildings on Google Maps.

- This is great, because if I were to go with using a fixed screen capture of the heart of campus from Google Maps I would have to walk around campus mining GPS coordinates and then hoping that those Coordinates from the GPS match well with Android's satellites. Instead, the map and the directions are being gathered from the same satellites. So I have eliminated some time consuming work.

- We also discussed how to represent smaller points of interest including paths, and emergency phones

Week 8: Mar12-18
3/12: SPRING BREAK
3/13: SPRING BREAK
3/14: SPRING BREAK
3/15: SPRING BREAK
3/16: SPRING BREAK
3/17: SPRING BREAK
3/18: SPRING BREAK