Fall 2007

Well I'll be doing my milestone report later tonight, so I'll add a link later. In general, I've made progress in the following ways:

Section forthcoming...

I have added the interface to display search results for authors so that in advanced search if the author field is not blank, it will look for authors with that name AND contents authored by that name. I have also added the messaging UI which displays inbox, sent messages, and compose tabs. Currently the message system is not functional but hopefully will be fixed soon.

My milestone report can be found here
This week I've been working on User Profile page editing.

Milestone report here
No more gains other than those mentioned in the milestone report.

My milestone report is . I fixed various bugs and added group control.

Milestone report can be found here

• Security is almost done I believe. Just a few more tests I want to do after looking at the security code
• Sorting will be worked on, but I have no progress since my milestone report a couple of hours ago.
• I've posted all the stuff Matt asked me to post on Trac for milestone stuff. All that I need to do besides that is transfer my own stuff to trac

Here's a link to my milestone report.

We basically got more work done on implicit trust and authority, and provided support to other groups as necessary, for fixing bugs and providing functionality.

I just wrote my milestone report, which pretty well says what I got accomplished. As a brief though, I found/worked on search bugs and worked on understanding notifications and figuring out what/where i need to add things.

Milestone report is here.

My major task was to work on creating UI functionality specs for all remaining features. The minor task was to work on implementing the sponsorship system.

the big obstacles that have hindered us are as always communication latency (although we are better than before), and the volume of work involved in filling out all of the details.

Also, hosting stuff has been something of a difficulty as we look at what needs to happen so that the customers can run the site on external hosting.

Additionally, the beta test hasn't gone as well as I might have hoped as we haven't really had a lot of testers. More on that below.

I didn't get as much done over Thanksgiving as I had hoped.  (One never does.  Plan on it! -- SW)  Which means more work for this week!

I also just can't get myself to sit down and work hard on video tags. When I start working on it and researching, I get distracted by other features and work on them instead.

The message system doesn't support the notion of "read" or "unread" messages yet and so I couldn't implement the UI aspects that deal with that. Otherwise, there are a ton of work that's left for me to do, like making things "pretty" and formatting the displays.

-I tried to save the information in Properties dictionary but it doesn't work. Before thanksgiving break I tried to save it using Properties and it works fine, so I'm sure we can store it in user Properties.

-I didn't work on the project during the thanksgiving break, and after the break when I tried to check in there are a lot of conflicts.

People being out of town and the holiday were obstacles; it's not easy being motivated on break.
There are a ton of methods in the backend that need to locked down with access control. I've been trying to figure out the best way to check permissions without changing the interface for all the classes in the backend.

I was planning to do more over the Thanksgiving break, but 440 took all of my time. I got everything done that absolutely needed it, but I was hoping to forge ahead and buy myself some slack a bit. Of course, when I'm hoping to do that in every class, chances are small that I'll get it done in any of them.

One issue that we ran into with sorting is that if a tree contains an OR node, and there is a sort parameter in one of the legs of the OR node, then not all results could be sorted by that parameter.

-I found I would get distracted from one of my task areas (search/notifications) by the other. This is a big part my fault, as I should have been more focused. Still though, having two completely different areas to try to focus on at once isn't my preferred way to do things.

-I've had a lot of trouble trying to understand notifications, as it is quite abstracted (which is good for what it does, but makes it harder to jump into), and being away for the weekend probably didn't help things.

One thing I ran into on sponsorships: even when information has been defined before, and written down in a place you can find, it often still doesn't jive with memory and current ideas. This leads to some extra work of trying to reconcile things so they can be implemented.

It's going to take a lot of concentrated effort to clean up all of the rough edges of this thing, but I think we're on the right track. To much of the work is concentrated in about half the class with the other half just coasting, but I don't know what can really be done about that (although giving them bugs in trac is a start).

I need to make it a priority to work with Corey and others to decide on a hosting solution and get that out of the way so that we can test deployment to it fairly soon.

This is not a harsh week (except for med school interview on Friday), so I should be able to get more work done.

Video tags will have to happen eventually. Maybe as more people get on UI I'll actually have to work on them instead of other UI features. I'll start taking a look at it once I finish AJAX tagging.

I will have to continue working on the UI components that are left to be done; I didn't get as much work done over the break as I had hoped because I got sick. But I think I have picked up the pace so I should make more progress in the coming week. In terms of the message system, I (or somebody else) will talk with the backend about how to store and retrieve that information. It shoudn't be too hard but just needs to get done.

-I may use Properties of entity in a wrong way, because it works at first.

-I will download the latest version of all the files, make necessary changes and make sure everything is working before I check in.

Not much to do about that now, just gotta work harder. I got some work done for other classes over the break, so this week I can devote a little more time to 410.
Brad added a method in the backend that requires a user to be associated with it; this makes checking permissions easier for us.

These last two weeks will be a push for everyone in all of their classes. I don't think much can help with the workload we'll be encountering, but if we keep a focused view of what must happen and don't take on any last-minute additional tasks I think we can balance the workload.

There may be some redesigning required to get around this issue, or we may just need to be more restrictive in what we can sort by.

-Brad and I discussed it, and I'm to focus on fixing search first, and then move back to notifications once I fix the bugs. This will allow me to focus on one thing at a time and help me keep focused.

-I talked with Brad some, and we agreed to meet again and he told me to e-mail him with questions once I move back to notifications. I need to not try to figure it out without asking questions, as communication is helpful (who would've guessed?) I've been on the other side of this (explaining search), but I guess this is the first time I've been taking over what someone else started.

Solutions at this point are more for use in 415, but interesting to propose nonetheless. I think it would help a lot to have had running spec sheets for all of the features from the get go, in a standard format. As changes are made, the spec sheets can be updated with current thinking. I think one person could be tasked with just keeping that documentation up to date, and even if that meant they weren't doing much if any coding, it would be very valuable.

The use of trac enables us to get a very good picture of where we stand and what lies ahead. I think we are getting very close to the place where we can clearly demarcate what exactly we can do, and how much work it is going to be.

It is good that this enumeration of remaining tasks seems large but rather tractable to me, and I think that we'll deliver something that is, at the very least, finished by the deadline. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your viewpoint) we are at a point where many of the cool but unachievable features are finally getting irrevocably cut.

Trac is working wonderfully. Again props to Corey for creating it. We can communicate a lot faster than e-mail and all the conversations are stored in one place and tracked for completion. It has helped me figure out what I need to do in the system and lets me quickly assign things that I need to keep working.

We all seem to have finally realized that the end is near and that the final push is now. Class today was very helpful in this respect and it's a sign that we're ready to make this system the best it can be.

We are working solidly as a team and able to reallocate resources as needed. After last week's "break", people seem to have picked up the pace and have gotten more work done this week.

-Trac is working well, we get a whole picture of the project and a long list of tickets. In today's class meeting we viewed the progress of most of the tickets, so we know where we are and what need to be done, and we pointed out some features that are not in high priority.

Trac is working to give us the tangible goals we need and also to help us keep track of what bugs we have.

Everyone is working at their tasks and knows what to do for the end product. Having a total list of bugs to squash (which is said to be coming shortly) will help us stay on track.

I'm glad we got Trac up and running when we did, because at this point it would be far too late to get people using it, and if we didn't have it then we would have very little organization in terms of tasks, bugs, and general completion status.

-We all seem to have moved over to Trac for what to do, and it seems to be working. We have more specifics on what we need to fix, and everyone is added things for one another rather than relying on a single person to give tasks. Especially for the point we are at, where what we need is to fix bugs and add small features.

The usual suspects apply here, really - I don't want to repeat things ad nauseum. I think one of the main strengths (and also weaknesses, at the same time) of the team is turning out to be adaptability. It often becomes necessary to devote more people to either problems or just unforeseen tasks that come up. That's inevitable really. For future classes, if you can set up your team to be adaptable in some sense, but still maintain cohesion, it will probably be of benefit to you. Especially if you can identify as many of those "unforeseen" tasks as possible before they come up.

To some degree, as I've put the pressure on to get some systems working (like access control) I worry we may get a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation where work conflicts with each other. I'm worried that we aren't communicating well enough to sustain this situation (there is a terrific and dangerous rift between what dave and hubert are doing and what aaron and I have been doing I believe - as exemplified by the access control branch).

Also, my hand-offs of features have worked to varying degrees. I don't think Rae has really gotten into the Notifications system yet, which worries me, since there's a bit of work left on it.

I think Jeeyun is doing nicely on messaging, but we'll see what happens as she starts actully testing.

The bug list is still just growing rather than shrinking. This needs to (and should) change over the next week as it peaks out and we start to roll down hill towards feature completeness. (well to be honest the number of bugs may actually increase, but some of the bugs right now are huge pieces of work, like "implement content replies" or "add all of the notifications")

Communication between people hasn't been the greatest lately (clearly the impending break and the break itself didn't help), and some people have almost dropped off the map.

I'm not sure we're going to finish polishing the system. We keep adding features and some features haven't been implemented but we haven't started the final push yet. As I said above hopefully that will start soon.

I think there's still some general underlying apathy as we near the end of the semester, although I would have to say it was a lot better this week and people seemed to care about what we have left to do.

-Because of the break, I didn't have much communication during the past week.
-There are still lots of UI works to be done, and the payment system hasn't been started. We have a long list of tickets on Trac, and I found most of them are about implement new features but we don't have time to implement all these features.

Not much happened over the break, but that could have been expected as people went home to relax. We have a ton of bugs/features/etc listed in trac that we need to get done.

The public beta isn't helping at all because, well, from what we can tell, the public isn't actually using it. I know people showed it to friends and family over break, but we had been assuming that our customer was going to provide around 100 beta testers as the bulk of the group (something he repeatedly said he'd deliver).

I'll be honest -- I'm feeling a little burnt out with the project. If I dedicate a lot of time to it then my other classes suffer (and they have been), and if I give the other classes the attention they need then I feel like I'm not doing enough work for this class. The big push to the beta "pushed" me over the edge if you will, and a recent ramp up in COMP 440 homework and the Thanksgiving break have not helped my work and teamwork in this project.

-We've all been very slow, unfocused and unexcited about the project, it seems. I know I have. We all need a refocusing and re-energizing (is that a word?) about the project.

I think the changeover to putting mroe and more people on UI work did not go as smoothly as some of our other transitions. Partially the break being during the middle of this process is to blame. Another large chunk of blame lies in the semester winding down and attention being pulled by projects and finals in all directions.

I think we'll be alright in access control, as its nearing the conclusion, and there's not all that much left.

We need to get someone working on payment and ASAP.

I need to make sure the situation with notificatons improves and it makes some serious progress this week.

Finally, I'm going to try to fill out the bugs quickly so that we have a good picture of where we actually are and we can make a combined push to get to 0.

I guess we have to realize that we can't count on everyone always to get their things done and that we need a backup plan in case a feature doesn't get done this week (or ever). We need to monitor the Trac system often to check out our progress and figure out who needs a push and a prod for this final effort, or who needs help.

We need to move more people to UI. I've been saying this for a couple of weeks and people agree, but nothing much has been done. I'm fairly sure the backend is virtually done, and they would be a great help in making UI. I also think that we should assign Sohum these last couple of weeks to work on CSS and prettifying things in general. He's our best web designer by far and we can't waste him in writing code that other people should have written to begin with.

I believe that our classmates are responsible enough to finish it off with whatever's left to do within their own team. I am worried about people who have just moved to the UI team as it would take getting used to and figuring things out before they can be productive. Still, I know that they are very capable people so I am not too too worried.

-We have to assign priorities to all the tasks and work on the tasks with highest priorities. We can remove some of the features with lowest priorities, split the tasks and get more people working on UI.

At this point, the best we can do is try to split all the items in trac amongst everyone as they finish their own parts.

We need to talk to Luke about the lack of use, but I actually think that at this point, it's really too late to incorporate any feedback. We can tweak UI, but we can't add major (or really even minor) features.

I need to find something to get back my motivation - it's as simple as that. I think that working with other people, seeing other people actually work on the project, would inspire me to work some more. Also, I think that with a COMP 440 project being due soon, perhaps after that's done I'll be able to dedicate more time to this class.

-Not sure how to get us back into it, honestly. For me, I think the problem is that I finished "my fun" with search, and am now bug-fixing it and doing notifications.

One way we could have made this easier for ourselves, since we knew about the transition to UI tasks fairly early, was to plan it out in more detail earlier. I think that means both management making choices about who would join UI and when, and also about internally in the UI team how the tasks would be split up. I think there are ways to divide tasks such that it is very easy to pass things off to new additions to the team (such as Sohum had talked about having different people doing the mechanics aspect of UI, while he came in and added the formatting on top of it). He actually did do things this way, which was good.

I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving

Hubert and Dave seem to be really be pulling through on the access control system. I have high hopes that the system will be useable when they're done writing for tonight.

Props to Brad - he's trying to hold together a team that (from my position) is falling apart, and he needs to get it to all come together for the final release. He's got the toughest job at this point I think, and I know I wouldn't be able to do it.

-Brad got a lot done, and tried to get us re-into the project. I think we seemed more alive today in class than we have in a while.

-Felipe and Sohum have both had to do a lot with the UI, as the largest portion of work has been pushed to them and their teams.

Thanks to Rae for helping me out by picking up copies of packets, assignments etc. for me in Stat when I've missed class.

I can't believe I got this journal done and formatted in time, along with my milestone report.

I've been trying to submit my journal and milestone for a while, but my browser just sits there. It's not timing out, but it's also not submitting. I eventually restarted my computer and it worked, but that's why this is late.

Late; -10 pts. --Chelsea