jamie wannenburg | projects

This is where I will put some of the programming projects I want to share with people. When they are at an appropriate level I will likely put the source on github.

[projectsjamie]

jamiewannenburg.com

www.jamiewannenburg.com

So, in this post I'm gonna be all meta. I built a website for myself, that redirects here, which is right now redirecting you there. That's how the web works, and also how a brain works. People have no infinite loops.

The purpose of the website is to market myself (much like this blog), but my problem is that I have a wide variety of skills and interests and I want employment in any of them. However, it quickly becomes difficult to both separate (as in facebook) and integrate (as in linkedin, or soundcloud) these interests on the web. So this website is my attempt to integrate my web persona. 

In keeping with the meta theme I built a (pseudo) RDF database structure, with the purpose of allowing circular references. For instance; I use facebook and tublr and talk about a cetrain project on both of these, which are connected to myself. It is clear that a tree structure is not suitable, that is why I chose to implement a graph structure. With the current data, that is not clear but it will become clear once I add everything I do on the web.

Other than the data structure I make javascript objects that draw themselves on a canvas and is subject to a certain physics. In this case I gave all the balls a charge and mass and placed them in a viscous fluid. (Finally, something I did in engineering helped me...) Once the objects are far enough away from each other they stop moving. Enough physics, if you are interested have a look at the code. (in index.js)

The next step will be to tune the physics and the results set so that one can easily navigate my mind graph and the irrelevant bubbles become small and sit in the corner. Once this is done I will start adding more data, eventually incorporating all my tweets, posts, sounds, vids, etc, in one big graph. At some point I want to implement a real RDF type structure using the RDF.rb gem.

So, big dreams and a big project, but you know; it is supposed to impress.

Hope you enjoyed oppi-koppi. It's almost my birthday. 

-so it goes

[projectsjamie]

Grow Letters

www.github.com/jamiewannenburg/GrowLetters/

This week I started playing around with the idea of making my own website. While thinking about fractals I got a bid carried away with an idea. I wanted to make my font grow dynamically. So, I started diving into the world of SVG. I don’t think I will end up using it, so it’s on github for anyone to try out. I put up the sylvester.js which is probably bad style. But now you can just download everything onto your computer and it works. I read somewhere about a google initiative called "numerics" (or something like that) which has some support for vector algebra, so at some point in the future I will replace the sylvester functionality with numerics.

This is the idea:

[projectsjamie]

GLITCHWORKS

http://glitchworks.herokuapp.com/

I am developing the website for GLITCHWORKS; a new film production company. I made a cool canvas glitch effect for their logo. The site is still under construction, but you can play around with the glitches while we are working on it.

I used the getImageData function and then payed around with the pixels. The drawback to this method is that the images have to be on the same server as the script. There are two effects that get triggered when the mouse goes over a canvas and leaves the canvas. The first effect simulates corruption of the file, if a certain amount of pixels are deleted from each of the color bands. The second effect simulates scan lines. This is when a row of sensors on your camera is broken and only produces one color.

I learned a lot about javascript and canvas. I also had the opportunity to practice my image processing skills. (Not really, but at least I can now translate what I know into javascript when the opportunity presents itself) It was great to work for commission for a change, and to do a real project.

[projectsjamie]

Log Hours Android App

“What do you do when you see a spaceman? Park your car, man.”

https://github.com/jamiewannenburg/LogHours

I will be doing some freelance work in the near future. My challenge is to ­­­get my rate right and to know how many hours I would spend on a project.

Like I mentioned in the previous post; I HATE repeating myself.  I am not sure how DRY my code is, but to me it is a born-in life principle.  Also I really enjoy working, particularly on something new. So a when my mother asked me to keep track of the hours I worked for her I wrote an android app.

It is a very simple idea. (As apps should be) You press a start and stop button . The app records the times and uploads it to a Google Drive spread-sheet. I do all my admin in drive these days, since I tend to forget tedious things and like to be able to get to it whenever I remember something or need to access it. I especially forget things like time, when I am doing nice work. So I figured I would expand the app a bit to use as my check in card, and upload it for anyone with the similar problems.

Obviously I learned how to make an android app. Also this was my first experience with java. The last couple of days I have been adding SQLite functionality. I am also learning how to work with an IDE and building GUI’s. While doing this I realised that I need to learn about (graphical) design. So that will probably be my next big undertaking. (While still doing maths first and foremost) As a side note, I disdain mechanical engineering design, since it is tedious and boring, so we’ll see how it goes.

The app works fine on my Galaxy S III running Android 4.2. I would appreciate it if someone try it on another phone and/or android version and let me know what you think.

-So it goes.

[projectsjamie]

UP TimeTable App

https://github.com/jamiewannenburg/TimeTable

This app downloads the time tables publically available on web and saves them in a database so that you can easily find the combinations of your subjects (which lecture group and practical session etc.) that has less than a specified amount of clashes. It gives you all the options that work so you can choose one that gives you that Friday off. Once you selected the combination you like, you can upload it to a drive spread-sheet so you have your time table anywhere you go. (Assuming of course that your mobile internet works on campus.)

It is now the start of a new semester. I am no longer studying engineering, so I have to work out my own time table. Even the thought of finding combination of subjects manually on a piece of paper drives me crazy.

What I learned doing this project:

The publically available repository on github is the second iteration, prepared for the public. In the first iteration I discovered custom classes for the first time. I really went over board with it. I made a class for everything and a sub-class for every property of that class. The interface was an interactive command line. All the data storage was done using files.

On the second iteration I first decided to make a GUI. This is the first time I have made a GUI in python. I used Tkinter. I think this is a useful skill to have. Then I decided, in order to improve performance that I would move the data into a database. So I built a Model class, so handle the database connections; like I saw they used in some android tutorials. This class was so clean and functional that I realised I had completely missed the point with my other classes. So I improved my understanding of objects. Then I wrote most of the combinatory logic into one (long) sql statement. The algorithm I used at first has kept me up for months, so I decided I would rather use sql optimisation written my people much smarter than I am. So, lastly I learned a bit of sql.

So, tell your friends. I hope I am not to late, as the semester has already started. If I am, sorry, but remember this app so that I can save you some time next semester.

[projectsjamie]

UPMarks: a program to automatically check your marks

So, this is my first project I am making public. It is a python script to automate logging into the University of Pretoria website. It checks whether a any of the marks changed and then emails it to you and pops open notepad.

You can find it at:

https://github.com/jamiewannenburg/upmarks

This was a project I started a couple of years ago, just after I first learned how to program in matlab. The first iteration was in matlab. The idea was to stop stressing about my final marks. (and to stop my fingers from compulsively logging in every ten minutes) I HATE to do things twise, so I figured I will have to this at the end of every semester, so I might as well automatise it. In the mean time learn a couple of things. 

So what did I learn? I learned early on how to work with strings. Searching them, finding patterns, etc. Later I would learn about parsing libraries (/modules) like beautiful soup. I learned a lot about networking and curl and pesky ssl and javascript. Later I wanted to make a binary version so I can automate the task in windows, so I learned python. Recently, how to write unit tests in python. Now, I think this is a good candidate to learn how to make code public. I want to learn how to format the code and tests so that others can read it and contribute. All this took me about three semesters of coding between the last exam and when the final mark came out. This semester the website has changed a bit, so my parsing functions stopped working, so I decided to start over with some of the tricks I learned along the way and up load it to github.

So why do this? Well, firstly to learn things. I am quite excited about data and big data (I am currently studying mathematics), so a though a bit of web scraping experience would come in handy. Secondly, since the process of getting to your marks and logging into our website is immensely irritating. I would have been happy to refresh my browser every time I got to the computer, but it logs you out every ten minutes. Once again I am willing to do a lot of work to keep from doing tedious repetitive tasks. 

So, since this was my first program to solve a real problem I think it is apt that it be the first one I share with you. I will hopefully upload my program to work out your time table somewhere in this vacation. Till then: I need some funky sign off.