ValuBlast.Us!!

Required reflections for the week:

What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

I finished the site, published it at ValuBlast.Us, ValueBlast.Us, ValuBlast.com and ValuBlast.me, called four clients, met with three and corresponded with testing details for the project.

Finishing the site involved an enormous list of perpetual 24-7 to-dos which I finished up around 4am this Sunday the 27th.

I created the site in an awesomely scalable way by writing in a JSON parser that allows me to write the interface in JSON directives for easy customization and vast applicability. There are two interfaces built-in but anything is possible. The underlying data science code is amazingly minimal, which makes it all the more easy to customize if needed for wider applicability.

I left off last weeks journal saying I had gotten all the front pages done and built all the graphics and designed the control panels.

The actual todo list completed this week was something enormous, like:

Build a drag-n-drop file-upload interface

Build a sample-file and How-To and information dialog

Finish the drag-and-drop uploading capability

Build the cars control panel

Build a JavaScript framework that parses JSON for scalable component building

Build a dial-field component

Build all the other components

Assemble them in the framework I created into the car controls interface

Make each of the components fit perfectly together in a physically scalable way on the screen

Add functionality to each component in the data that builds the controls to control the functionality of the program.

Revisit the Python data science backend and write a small python object framework that takes data from the front end and process it in a parameterized expandable fashion

Realize I wasn't able to use sessions the way I set it up

Discover how to build the site all in one place using Flask template engine in Python

Port the work I had to the new all-Python site for having Sessions and optimized data transfer

Finish the JavaScript framework and the cars interface to work with the Python data science functionality.

Complete the cars interface to make 720 degree plus requests - first it sends the data file, stores it in a session variable, analyzes the data and sends it back with characteristic set averages, characteristic coefficients and a value estimate of a hypothetical entity featuring an average of the data set as a value for each characteristic.

(See http://valublast.us )

Then the knobs can be turned, which blasts away the value (because the characteristic it's based on was changed), plays a thump sound effect and an animation. Then when a 'Check' button is hit, the values of the characteristics listed in each of the fields is sent to the Python in the backend to estimate a new value based on the new characteristic values, as turned to by dials in the interface.

The dials all click like a real dial should. They all have both default as well as easily addable custom functionality. The number of cylinders dial does just 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12 as dial selections, where the square footage gross living area dial spans from zero to the average of the data set and then all the way out to an exponential value based on the average rather than just twice the average or something, so the scales the dials turn to are what humans would expect them to turn to, as specified in each customizeable dials's data specification, where it is written in the program.

All the graphics and the page are scalable physically with the screen, as they grow (although currently render different on other computers, but I am sure I can fix that very soon here)

Lots of stuff has sound effects and animations.

The cars interface has hierarchically related characteristics, for example Chevy Lumina Lx Sedan where the choice Lumina depends on the first choice being Chevy, etc. That functionality is built-in, however I might have to simply cut it out for layout unification.

I perfected the cars interface and moved on to the real estate interface. This meant adding a JSON directive area specifying the interface and then specifying each customization for each component where it is listed. The framework I created is very efficient, and I extrapolated a lot of stuff. There is always a balance to that, because too much extrapolation can get super confusing and for a small project that can backfire, so I extrapolated just enough, wrote really fast with what I built, and got the real estate interface completed as well. The biggest changes were at the Python end, I lacked unification and went for two-working objects, one for cars, one for real estate. That was smart because it's expandable and that they could actually be unified simply is dubious, there were a few significant differences in the data sets.

After I completed both controls interfaces, both frameworks, the front page and the drop-uploader page I finished the coefficients chart under each of the controls. That section didn't take a whole lot of time but any time is a lot of time when you're working after 2am every day to get something super fast.

When it was done I switched the front page and forwarded the domain name.

That was 4:30 am Sunday morning I think, that it got finished, so Sunday I contacted clients and got meetings with three right away, and that was pretty easy, and a written review from a fourth. Then I wrote two papers, a journal, and somewhere in there I also completed a four hour computer-architecture lab, and a three hour lecture for that class as well, and banned the orange neighbor cat from coming over to attack us, and bought and ate a two-chile-relleno plate meal at the new taqueria that just moved in up the street on Sunday since my project was finally completed.

What is your plan for next week?

Well, it looks like making a super awesome video for the project is on the schedule for next week! I also want to fix up the layout issue that is negatively affecting the project, and finish up assignments in both of my classes. I have to finish up a MIPS program that takes a 32 bit string integer, compares it with a list of 32 other 32 bit integers and checks to see which one is the closest match. Then the MIPS function returns the index of the closest match, or -1, if the number of different characters is more than seven. I also have two more architecture labs a book excercises homework and a cache trace homework to complete by the 13th I think. I don't think the video is going to be that hard. I'm going to make sure everythig is saved and backed up, and then close everthing out so I have memory. I have had super great luck with OpenShot video editor in previous classes here at CSUMB, and equally great luck using Zoom as a simultanous screen-and-face-video maker. I made a quick song for the video weeks ago and the last video I made I remember my lightning going into it super easy too, so that could be an ending effect. The very first video I made here at CSUMB I repeated the audio literally ok well figuratively a hundred times. But that was before I did any video editing. Once you see how the editor works you see it's super easy to cut out stutters and mis-spoken sections, so now I can simply say what I want, repeat what I mess up, and cut those parts out during editing. What would have taken me months in CST-300 I think will take me just a couple days now - I'm hoping.