Tag Archive: status


The Project – This week’s status

Filed Under: Meta, TheProject, Work by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2013.12.28

300px-Tomcat-logo.svgWith the holidays, the usual entertainment segment of the blog has been on holiday. We do promise not one, but two post Sing Off wrap-ups. I’m pleased to announce that many of you really seemed to enjoy the Armchair Judge; so we’ll be bringing her on as permanently as she wishes to participate.

But onto the project. Code in the project itself was fairly quiet. I put in some analytics and testing libraries to allow me to start getting the alpha into people’s hands to abuse and give feedback. In doing so there’s been a lot of Product Management and Software Management going on. As always, read the following “We’s” as the pre-corporate “I” 😉

We’re now running Jenkins, Bugzilla and Tomcat on our internal servers for the purpose of building, running, and monitoring our software. We’ve added in hooks for Flurry and TestFlight to make it easy to track usage, take feedback, and distribute alphas. I have been re-doing the company’s NDA so we can send out the alphas to people. Also, we’ve put dual 1TB RAID’ed drives in place for data security as well as system backups. We’ve been running gitolite for SCM. All of this is running on OS X 10.8 + Server on a Mac Mini. So updating that to 10.9 will be an experience.

I’ve also given the app to our first Alpha tester. In the first evening we got two bug reports (S, You rock!) as well as a few unanswered feature questions. I’m more than happy to get more testers like this! Further, I did do some coding to create a data entry front end application to let me enter and validate data more easily.

So, currently I am looking for Java folks who’ve done Tomcat, general hobbyist programmers who might like to do some pre-financing work, and testers. Feel free to drop a line on this. 🙂

Well, it’s back to Tomcat for Dummies for me.

More soon!

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The Armchair Director: The Sing Off, S4 Ep5 Post-Show

Filed Under: Directing, Media, Review by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2013.12.18

The Sing-Off_ Season 4, Episode 5- Movie NightThe main post will come by about 11am Eastern time tomorrow. It was two hours with a lot to talk about. I also took down about 50 quotations from twitter. Everyone will get attribution.

All I want to say is that I love when my pre-show guesses are wrong. I’ll break down how I felt, what I said, how it changed as the show went on, what others said, and try to sum it all up.

As always… how did you stack up against your pre-show guesses, the judges, and the performances? I know (from twitter at least) I am not the only armchair director out there.

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Project Update: JSON and other fun with data models.

Filed Under: TheProject, Work by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2013.12.16

Fear not friends, there will be a SingOff post or two today.

Today I’ve been working on the back end of my software. UI is one thing, but you can only get so far with ‘lorem ipsum‘ data. Well, okay… in my case some fake data that sort of fits the project. So today, I started the process of moving from fake data to real data. This is always an iterative process that programmers and project designers know far too well.

First we sketch out what we think is the data we want. I usually jump from a text editor to a spread sheet. I realise this would probably be better right off the bat with a database; but that’s just crazy talk. I start out by trying to map out my main object (not really normalised at this point) and then make one or two side objects where I think they will need to stand off by themselves. With this model we build up some quick code to insert data by hand to have it generate out into a couple of different formats: (CSV, XML, JSON, etc) This allows me to easily re-use this data once output.

Now I go looking for actual data. I know what data I’m working with, so finding sample data on the interwebz is fairly easy. HOWEVER, and that’s a big however; once you start looking at real data and trying to shoehorn it into your model; you begin to realise exactly how limited your model is and where you need to make fixes. (This is why lorem ipsum only gets you so far).

Unfortunately, I need about 10 entries to work with the data correctly and each entry is about 60 lines/2000 characters of hand transposed data. (The whole database side of things happens once I am happy with what I have.) Oh, did I mention… if there is ANYONE reading who knows how to go from MySQL through REST calls into a JSON output (preferably using Tomcat) I may have some work/hobby time for you? Not kidding here. Also, if anyone knows a service that does this (with load balancing, metrics, yadda yadda yadda) comments welcome… knowledge dump will be appreciated/rewarded (eventually)

So, currently I’m up to 3 records. I’ll be working this afternoon on the other 7. Now that the first part is done, each record takes about 5-10 minutes to research and build up. Then I turn the whole monster around and have the Project import and use the data. That’s when things start to get ‘exciting.’

Those who I talked to informally about “The Project” should feel free to message me if they want details or are interested in some questions.

Until later… having fun and making great progress!

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Yeah, but what about “The Project”

Filed Under: Meta, Server, Work by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2013.12.14

300px-Tomcat-logo.svgI have been known for having a penchant for finding a pet project and then blithely moving onto something else. It could be surmised by my silence on the project followed by a huge shift into analysing “The Sing Off” that once again I’ve been side tracked by something new and shiny. I am however pleased to say, that I am actually well managing two irons in the fire at the moment. Actually more than two.

While I have been very publicly posting about “The Sing Off” which I really missed doing; I have also been spending my daylight hours (when not drugged out of my gourd on Halcion) working on code for the first revenue step in The Project. So much so, that I’m currently reading “Tomcat for Beginners.”

Now I have to admit. My Java experience could probably be stuffed into the toe of a ballet dancer’s slipper while she’s ‘on point.’ Of course, when you are the only unpaid engineer on a project; you break out the interwebz and learn what you need to. Now granted… if any of my colleagues wouldn’t mind doing some coding for project credit that will be convertible to private shares when we see revenue… please feel free to write me.

That’s right; this isn’t actually a job offer. (Because I currently have no money to pay; but I will track time and effort) What I’m looking for is someone knowledgeable setting up Tomcat services, JSON, REST, and other such buzzwords.

If this piques your interest at all, drop me a line or a comment.

More as things come to fruition. 🙂

 

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Meta Armchair Director post status; Pre-review

Filed Under: Directing, Media, Meta by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2013.12.12

Having been heavily drugged since 9am this morning I am slowly regaining my faculties. I have transcribed my notes from Vocal Rush, Home Free, Voice Play and am in progress on SCR from last night.

Fortunately, tonight is a short episode with only 4 groups (I am assuming) So I should be able to get caught up by the end of tomorrow. Such is what happens when you slam 7-8 episodes into a two week period.

I’m curious what might make the reviews better. More detail, more background, more comparisons, or just leave it like it is.

Drop you opinions, we’ll go from there.

In the meantime I plan to stop funding air so fascinating by 8pm to take notes again.

Here’s the pre-review

In Your Eyes – Intro Production number

It’s really hard to mess up this 80s classic. I expect it to be full of love and tears.

 

Ten – Chain of Fools

Ten last episode took a step towards what they an do. This will assure us if they are on the path. A good choice for their style.

 

acoUstiKats – Amazed

This group has two speeds. Frat choir and new evolution in Acadameia a cappella.  Let’s hope that yesterday’s USO reminded them we’d like more of the latter.

 

SCR – Forget You

I am especially surprised when they take modern music and attach it to their style. This could be a strong entry for them. Or likewise may show us that they are a one niche wonder.

 

The Filharmonic – One More Night

I’m going to assume Maroon 5 and not Phil Collins here. Once again, Filharmonic deep in the heart of their style. It was made clear that Stockman is watching for missing notes; so now they have got to get the technical as tight as the performance.

Thanks for keeping up. See you soon

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