Posted
Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:36:54 GMT
to Posted in Projects
Tags conference, my.dsu.ca, presentation, tigerevents
Ah….. hard to believe it has been almost 4 months since my last post. There always seems to be just one more thing that needs to be done.
The most recent and exciting item was a recent conference. A few months ago, myself, Oliver, and Chris were invited to a local conference called The Student Edge. The conference was partially organized by an ex-DSU president, and he kindly gave us the opportunity to talk about our experiences building software for the DSU. The conference was somewhat different than other ones I have been to, with roughly a third of the time spent on ad-hoc information exchange sessions, where the attendees basically shared their own stories (Societies Anonymous!), and the other 2/3rds more traditional talks.
Our talk, titled “Help Societies Help You: Using the Internet to Build a Better Campus” was well received by about a third of the attendees. We tried to not only tell our own story, but to convey the message that if 3 students can build some applications for the DSU, then maybe they can leverage their own student population in order to do some cool stuff.
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Posted
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 01:40:24 GMT
to Posted in Projects
Tags rails, ruby, tigerevents
So….. I have actually had a release version of Tigerevents for a long time now. 0.7.0 is actually powering my.dsu.ca now, but was never officially released. As I added several features since then, as mentioned a while ago, I decided to just increment the release number, and push it out there.
This decision was prompted by an organization other than the DSU contacting me, saying they wanted to use it, and if I could just add this one little feature enhancement…...
Needless to say, the idea of other people using this pleases me, and hopefully in the near future I can point out to other in production instances.
The code, as always, is available at the Sourceforge, and Rubyforge locations for download.
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Posted
Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:33:35 GMT
to Posted in Programming, Projects
Tags hCalendar, hCard, iCalendar, microformats, tigerevents
The other day, I came across this Microformat Bookmarklet, designed to extract hcard and hCalendar markup from a website and into a format that people can use. ‘Hey’, I though, ‘that’s pretty cool, why don’t I use those in places’.
It was the motivator that finally got me to fix a long open feature request for TigerEvents. Now, the event view has hCalendar markup for those who care.
Once that was done, I thought, since I had already done hCal, why not figure out iCal export? Easier than I would have thought, thanks to the iCalendar gem and the send_data method. Now people can grab iCalender export by individual event, group, or category. People should even be able to subscribe to iCal files and have events automatically shown in their calendar app (if said app has this feature). Only future events are shown, however, in order to cut down on file size.
Finally, while I was working on the above, a friend stopped by, saw what I was doing and commented, ‘you know… it would be awesome if I could click on a link and have the event loaded into my google calendar’. So, quickly scouring the web came up with Google Calendar event publishing guide and after a few minutes, I managed to add that functionality as well.
Now for RSS feeds…
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Posted
Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:00:07 GMT
to Posted in Projects
Tags tigerevents, visualization
Some people might have noticed that the my.dsu.ca site has gotten a makeover. This visual overhaul was performed by the talented Andrew Shouldice. This overhaul has garnered a lot of positive feedback so far, and it is my hope that prettier site = more visited site.
Besides some obvious visual enhancements, some long standing backend items have made their way into the release. Notably, tags have replaced categories, meaning that individuals no longer have to scroll through a multitude of categories to select the one wanted. Additionally, there are a few more options for finding events, notably searching, and browsing by group.
There are still a few things that could be done better, notably with how categories are browsed (alphabetical as opposed to by order perhaps), how items are displayed on the front page (a month’s worth of events is hard to scroll through, though that is a sign that it is being used more).
All in all, this transition has made me want to do even more work on it a bit more often. As always, any comments and criticizms are more than welcome.
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Posted
Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:48:23 GMT
to Posted in School, Projects
At the start of this term, I thought I had one more degree requirement: one second year or higher course that was from Mathematics, Science, Engineering, Management or Commerce. ‘Crap’ said I, ‘I most likely won’t be able to complete that until next fall’.
Today, however, I checked over what I needed to graduate and all I will need after this term is any one course. ANY ONE COURSE. I forgot that I signed up for a 3rd year commerce (Entrepreneurship) course at the last minute this term. Which means I can basically take anything this summer if I wanted to.
Funnily enough, this discovery comes just after having a talk with Dr. Scrimger regarding the directed studies course. Sure, at the time I didn’t think I would be able to take this course. However, it is my opinion that simple course work doesn’t really cut it for preparing students for their post university experience. Sure there is Co-op, but that is more ‘ok I need a job, any job, and maybe I will like it or not’ where Directed Studies is supposed to be more of ‘Yeah, this stuff really excites me, I want to try it’. Sure, there is Honours as well, but Honours has additional requirements.
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Posted
Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:34:40 GMT
to Posted in Life, Projects
Tags acm, dal, tigerevents
Last week, Oliver and I were interviewed by the Dalhouse Gazette regarding TigerEvents, my.dsu.ca and Dal-ACM related items. The original plan, at least to my understanding, was that there would be a small blurb this week, with a larger article in the new year. I was not, however, expecting the article that actually was produced. Unfortunatly, I have to agree with several individuals that felt that it was poorly written and misleading. I don’t have any explanations, but thought that I would try to rewrite things so that they were clearer.
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Posted
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 00:27:40 GMT
to Posted in Projects
Tags rails, ruby, tigerevents
One month after the first official release of TigerEvents and we have achieved the following:
- 31 downloads on Sourceforge
- 20 downloads on RubyForge
- 17 downloads directly from TigerOnRails
- Currently Ranked 3,682/105,551 projects on Sourceforge (Top 5%!)
- Currently Ranked 83/999 Projects on RubyForge (Top 10%!)
- One individual (from the Netherlands) actually testing out trunk and submitting tickets
Wow, this totally, totally exceeds expectations.
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Posted
Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:44:40 GMT
to Posted in Programming, Projects
Tags rails, refactoring, ruby, usability
Today is World Usability Day. A day to work towards better user experiences in products and experiences. I also decided to use this day as a deadline for the next release of TigerEvents, one of the software packages I work on. 39 closed issues later…............... a brand new release. All that remains is to migrate my.dsu.ca to a new server, upgrade to the new version, and then all users can revel in…..... well….... errr…....... actually, I must admit there isn’t anything major in a regular user’s perspective.
Removing that pesky sidebar proved troublesome (due to Javascripting and CSS issues), and is unfortunatly pushed back (I’m working on it!). You will see that events actually have their formatting preserved, so no more giant block paragraph that is a pain in the ass to read. There are also some more subtle rearrangements and additions to some options, which I think will make posting events easier for people. Admins get a little more, mostly avoiding huge lists of groups and users when trying to navigate (pagination helper is your friend).
And the backend stuff is where most of the changes occured. I personally refactored the code so that the authentication stuff is easier to drop into other code (important since we want to use it in multiple projects. Additionally, I refactored the code to make the entire system database neutral, and to have as much as possible done through ruby. This includes important things such as setup and schema migration. This was the longest and largest changeset I have done in a while, and I am glad it is over. Of course, I need to pass this on to several budding developers so they don’t make the same mistakes, so…....... check back at some point in the future.
What however, is the future of this project? The individuals working on it (and by that I mean myself and Oliver) have decided we want to refocus on putting the ‘my’ into the ‘my.dsu’. Upcoming, expect to see new skins, a better actual interface devoid of those confusing multiple columns, and other things that will help the USER kick ass. So think of this World Usability Day not as a day for which we bring out a ton of usability fixes, but a day where we begin to devote more attention to where it is needed.
You know, after we take a much needed break.
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Posted
Fri, 07 Oct 2005 10:42:09 GMT
to Posted in Programming, Projects
Tags rails, ruby, tigerevents
Finally, after long hours, little sleep, and lots of work, the 0.5.0 release of TigerEvents, code named “It’s Finally Our So I Can Take A Break” was released the other day on both Sourceforge and Rubyforge.
The focus of this release was getting all the proper administration interface stuff working properly (sorry front end only users) and trying to document it enough so a person can take the code, set it up, and run it on another machine.
Now that the initial file release is out, all I have to do is upgrade my.dsu.ca (merging is going to be a pain in the ass), work on 0.6.0 (which involves merging my development branch back into the trunk, ugh), and redo that ugly, ugly interface.
Regarding the interface, I plan to do something even more minimalistic than some people’s ideas (the one’s I am getting are awesome though, don’t stop). It will, at the very least, grant more open space, as opposed to cramming everything important into a small area. A primary advantage of starting out small is that it will be simple (except for all the XMLHTTPRequest stuff I need to do), and if people want more, I just add more, instead of scalling back and forth.
Oh, and I will do my best to get rid of that blinking text box.
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Posted
Tue, 04 Oct 2005 19:16:23 GMT
to Posted in Geek, Programming, Projects, Work
Tags rails, ruby, tigerevents
As already mentioned I have been working on a project called TigerEvents, which powers the my.dsu.ca website.
This project, written entirely in Ruby On Rails, took 4 part time students 2 months to code a working, publicably usable beta. Pretty sweet, since some of us had other, paying, supposedly full time jobs on the go as well, and all of us had other responsibilities.
The my.dsu.ca website has gotten 102430 requests since Aug 25. Not bad I suppose, but I think we can do better than that.
The main problems? I know it, you know, it’s the visual layout. Sure it sucks. A layout like this is when a graphical artist that is supposed to do work totally flakes out and techies are left in charge. Also high up on that list is usability. Some things work well, some things…...... not so well (hey, it’s beta). So how do we fix this? Well…..... I am hoping that you, the public, the intended audience, the actual, non-involved USERS could give me a hand here. Let me know what you like, let me know what you don’t like, let me know what YOU would like to see.
Go ahead, chew me out, rip it to shreds, praise it, stomp it, love it, hate it. Just give me something I can use.
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