Downloading Images (Fri 7/25)

First off, the Lenovo laptop seemed to be running smoothly enough with Windows 8 installed, and we were finally contacted with a registration key for Smoothboard for the Lenovo. Apart from that, we spent most of the day manually downloading images from the SDO for some of the wavelengths with inconsistent time codes. This will be for a different version of the SuN, which will be able to run without a network connection

Different Options (Thu 7/24)

Today's meeting combined with the REU students brought some questions about our code, as well as some possible answers. Bethany suggested that instead of attempting to retrieve and check the images from the server each time the program is run, that we could instead download 100 images from each wavelength, and have them be accessed from the computer itself. This would allow the SuN to be run without a network connection, which is something that not all schools necessarily have. This is something that we have to consider, but the DSE still needs a network connection, which is something that are not able to change. We worked on this, as well as the other bugs we've been trying to squish for the remainder of the day. Also tried a factory reset to Windows 8 with the Lenovo laptop, as it had slowed right back down about a day after we tried the previous factory reset. I had to leave early for a doctor's appointment, so I'll see how well this worked tomorrow.

Thank you Maryam (Wed 7/23)

We brought Maryam in this morning to attempt to help us understand the interaction between our code and the server as the images are retrieved. She told us how the browser communicates with the server, and that there is a simple check in Python, which would lead you to believe that there would be a similar check for a 404 error in JavaScript. We continued working on this, but still couldn't get the code to pick up the 404 error before the images have already been loaded.

Defined Roles (Tue 7/22)

Had our first Insight lab only meeting this morning, as opposed to the combined meetings which were previously combined with the REU students. Those combined meetings will continue happening on Thursday. At that meeting, we defined everybody's jobs moving forward, as almost all of the students in the lab will now be helping us with some parts of the suit case. After the meeting, we continued trying to work through the same bugs we've been dealing with.

Nobody likes CSS (Mon, 7/21)

Spent most of today trying to get the instructions guide to fit onto the sphere when projected. I was trying to help Jimmy with the problem, and Zach was working on it at the same time. It took far too long for such a simple problem, but eventually, they both succeeded at around the same time. I really enjoyed the talk with Matt Montanero at lunch time, it gave me some good insight into college and beyond.

Fooling the Computer (Fri, 7/18)

Began working to make the program more user friendly by working with the instructions that Jimmy made. Spent the majority of the morning trying to figure out a way to have a button on the Wii remote bring up the guide which came up with a click. I finally accomplished this by having the program simulate a click on the button when the enter button is pressed. Once this was done, I was able to have it bring up the same pop-up on load of the page. After the picnic and volleyball game, I tried to help Jimmy fit the instructions guide onto the sun, so that it displays correctly on the sphere

Fixing the Egg (Thu, 7/17)

Biggest achievement today was getting the sun to fit correctly on the sphere while being projected from the Lenovo lap top. This was achieved by changing the dimensions of the picture in the source code. I originally did this with CSS, changing the dimensions in inches. However, I then tried to adjust the dimensions of only the green sun using JavaScript, and that required that the picture was set within the image tag, using pixels. Even though I made this change, the green sun was not very cooperative. The image itself is still 1024, but the sun itself is smaller. Thus, there is a larger border around the outside of the sun, and so when the sun is re-sized to fit the sphere, it is lower than all of the other images, and so it does not project onto the sphere.