Progress

This has been one busy weekend. Getting the code wasn't as straight forward as I thought it would be. On top of that, a couple of my team members were sick this weekend so we didn't get to meet very much. We did get the opportunity, however, to decide that Fortune Hunter would be the way to go for our team to contribute to. Our decision may have been slightly swayed by the fact that PacMath was inactive and the one person who has consistently been keeping in touch with us works on Fortune Hunter. :) One of my team members, Jaime, also figured out how to get the code on ubuntu (and installing git, which is needed) and shared it with us.

I personally prefer to just be able to work on my mac (ubuntu gives me migraines unfortunately :/), so I had to do a little research myself into how to get things rolling on my mac. I started with some links that the guy from Fortune Hunter (Jonathan Meschino) gave our team. As I was installing the things on the list, I stumbled across a GUI called OpenInGitGui. I should go ahead and say that I put the link here, not because I am using it and think it's awesome, but because if anyone gets curious and can get it to function properly I would love to know how :) . I tried using it and it seemed pretty self-explanatory, but I kept getting errors telling me certain things didn't exist or they couldn't get access to them and it became more of a headache than it was actually worth. So I decided to go the terminal route and check out everything that way. The command to get the code in terminal was the same line that is used in linux to do so (which Jaime had already provided), so I was able to successfully (and semi-painlessly) get the code. Once I got the code, I also went ahead and made sure I could view the code and everything in Netbeans (my savior), which was easy enough. After all this, I'm just glad I get to work on my mac os this semester.

On a semi-unrelated side note, I paid my graduation fee today....it's that much closer. :)

'Til next time...

Subversion Test..1,2,3...

I can't believe how much progress my team and I are making on this project. Although we have yet to actually look at the code, our wiki is looking better than ever and we all work wonderfully together. Our next assignment is to check out the code and install what we need for our project...Once we get to that I will be sure to post information on that.
Our current assignment is to log into the 462 subversion repository and play around with it. At first, I was looking at this with another classmate and we were confused as to how to use Subversion. I've used subversion clients before, but I've never used them and Subversion. After figuring some tweeking and asking some questions, I figured out that I can view things with Subversion, but I need an actual client with a GUI in order to add/delete folders or files or anything like that. I created a folder called brittany with a text file in it called FYI. Once I added the folder/file, it immediately showed up in my web browser on Subversion.
We also had to read the Subversion book Chapters 1-4. I've already read parts of this book when I first started working with CIRDLES, but re-reading/looking over it again may be a good refresher. We also were assigned to read TOS Ch. 4. I haven't gotten to finish the readings yet, but I'm sure they will be very helpful/informative.


More to come soon...

New team name...the Math Squad??

It seems as if I can't escape programming for mathematical purposes. First CIRDLES and now this...I think I've found my calling :).  As I stated in my previous blog, my team (4's Company) is going to work with Sugar Labs on their Math4 Project. We have been in the process of learning more about our project, things like its history, who the important people are, what their goals are, etc. I can't speak for my whole team on this, but I can say the more I read the more excited I got. The project itself is very well organized and the people involved are as helpful as ever. If you check out our team wiki, you can see some of the information we were able to dig up on the project. Although this is only the beginning, I believe this going to be a great and successful project.
I would also like to note that I am very happy with who I've been grouped with for this assignment. We all just seem to agree on things concerning management of the team and project. We all contribute equally and we don't have to meet everyday to get things done. I have a good feeling about it and I can't wait to see how this project unfolds!

Stay tuned...

Project Progress...

The decision has been made! My team will be working with Sugar Labs on their Math4 Project. My tema and I are very excited about working on this project and learning more about it along the way. Our first assignment is to 1) find an IRC client and investigate and 2) sign up for the mailing list and check out some threads.
Lucky for our team, Sugar Labs has a page dedicated to the communication channels used when contributing to their project. The first thing we decided to do was actually make a team email address, that way we could use it to sign up for the mailing list and everyone would have access to what everyone was working on. Once we got that done, I went ahead and sent an email to add a thread to the list and see who I heard back from. Within an hour I heard back from someone. I got an almost overwhelming welcome for 4 different contributors to the Math4 Project.  Everyone was friendly, welcoming, and willing to help me help them in any way they could. I even got links from a few people that would help my team in future assignments. I also looked at some of the threads that were already there but it ended up being much more productive to try and talk to some people as well.
We also found links to IRC clients on the communication channels page. I decided to check out the web-based chat called qwebirc where you can pick any username and the channel you want to join and it connects you right to it. The interface isn't much, but it does what it's supposed to. I decided to check out the sugar-newbies channel (being that I am a newbie). It was fairly simple to use and I even got to talk to a couple of people. There wasn't much activity going on, but I got a feel for what to expect when using it later.
On a side note, we also had to read The Cathedral and the Bazaar and blog our reflections. Although it was a lot of reading, the concept of hacking and open-source software being related is something I never thought of before reading this. It was also interesting seeing the comparisons in styles of developing software, particularly that of Linux which I don't know much about. The lessons given were for the most part familiar. There were familiar concepts from readings I did in 362, and they even quoted one of my favorite readings "The Mythical Man-Month". I didn't fully read everything, but I did understand the lessons being taught.

Next step, full report...more to come soon!

Down to the wire...

After doing a little more research into the final 3 projects my team and I chose, I have been able to narrow down my interests. For each of the final 3, I looked into the various ways to get involved. I am most interested in working on developing code for the projects, so I focused on development opportunities. The project that interests me the most so far is the Math4 Project (Sugar Labs). I am also interested in creating an Activity for Sugar Labs and their software. After looking at some of the resources provided, it seems like creating an Activity could be a fun way to get involved.
Even though these are my favorites, I did see quite a few interesting projects for One Laptop Per Child. A couple that really caught my eye were Write, a collaborative word processor, and Free Fome Malaria, a game teaching the importance of protecting yourself from Malaria.
I'll be posting more information soon....stay tuned folks!

Initial Progress

Although it is only the second day of class, a lot of individual and team progress has been made. Individually, blogs have been put up and posts have been posted. The most progress that has been made has been  made on my team, 4's company. In case anyone is wondering why we're called "4's Company", there's 1 male and 3 females in our group. We got the idea from the old T.V show 3's Company (if you haven't heard of it, you should Google it...pretty good show).
Today we got the opportunity to get together and begin to discuss potential projects to work this semester. After each of us considered our individual interests and then came together, we realized that we all were interested in working on similar projects. We finally were able to narrow our choices down to three:

Sugar Labs
OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)
OO4Kids ("OpenOffice for Kids")

The Flux Capacitors, which includes my arch nemesis Alex Johnson ( :D ) has chosen the same three as we have...but I believe we have decided to settle our differences and keep our same ones and work around it. (love you Alex)
Our next move is to figure out which of these three projects interests us the most, and give more detail on it. Brief descriptions of each of our top three are located in our team Wiki (the link is in the upper right hand corner under 'CSCI462 Links'). You can also visit the websites and see for yourself what they're all about.
I think I myself am leaning more towards working with Sugar Labs, especially since that would still give us the opportunity to work with OLPC.

I am open to any input or anything from anyone...this is going to be a long, fun semester :)

First Impressions

After the first day of this course, I can see that I am going to thoroughly enjoy it. My classmates are a familiar group of people that I have had at least one other course with, so working together should not be a problem for anyone. I am very excited about my team (4's Company) and what we will accomplish this semester.
The first individual assignment is to read Teaching Open Source Chapters 1 and 2 and to, of course, create this blog. Teaching Open Source seems to be a great resource for learning how to work with open source software in a team development environment.
Our first team assignment is to decide on some FOSS projects that interest us and write about it on our team wiki (which we were also assigned to create).

More updates to come soon...

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog! More posts to come soon! :)