So much to do, so much to do.

So, Polling module. Remember that? Way back when, I was working on bringing accessibility features into it so it could finally become a proper part of the BigBlueButton client. Two things put the brakes on that: first, there were more pressing accessibility concerns in the main client which really were more important. Second, I kind of made a mess of the branch that the polling accessibility work was in.

So recently, I’ve been putting together what I think of as a “clean” branch for accessible polling, where I checked out first from master, and then the polling-specific files from the old “unclean” branch. After a bit of tinkering, the “clean” branch is approximately where the old one was, but focused entirely on polling. The trouble is, this has resulted in one enormous commit at the beginning and several small ones which don’t do a lot to increase the legibility of the entire affair.

Now what I need to do is check out another clean branch, and basically have my Eclipse open on one screen and the commit list from the “giant commit” branch on the other; with the commit list to remind me what needs changing and where it is, I can do this the right way with one branch for one feature the way it’s supposed to be.

This may take a while.

At long last

Finally, I am back in action with a working server, a functional dev environment, a clean branch that’s been synced up with the BigBlueButton master, and I can get to work on the accessibility concerns brought up before the Ottawa trip. It’s been a long time in coming, you guys.

EDIT: Great googaly moogaly, it is good to be accomplishing things again.

To everything, turn turn turn…

Alas, I must bid farewell to my old desk at CDOT. There’s been some restructuring of the workspaces, and I’ve been taken away from my window onto the vestibule near the mannequin and moved to… Well, what seems like a slightly nicer area, really. The new keyboard tray is going to take some getting used to, I suppose.

Anyway, down to business. Word has come down the line that Fred would like someone to beta-test the new BBB 64-bit dev environment setup instructions, and considering my current dev environment is non-functional, I thought I’d step up to the plate. So I’ll start up a new Ubuntu VM tonight, and tomorrow morning go through the new setup steps and report on my findings.

Breaking radio silence

Good afternoon, everybody! The last few weeks have been HECTIC. First, there was the pressure that always come with exam season: wrapping up projects, finishing documentation, and of course studying studying studying. Then the exams themselves, and a slight mixup about whether the labs for a particular course were mandatory for marks or strictly for our own understanding. THEN I was sent on a whirlwind trip to Ottawa for the BigBlueButton developer’s summit and hackfest. THEN I had to rush home early to attend to duties as best man for a friend’s wedding, and help him move.

But finally, at last, I get a chance to sit and rest and post a blog. So of course I’m using it to search for post-graduate jobs, see if my LinkedIn profile is up to snuff, get preliminary work done for PRJ666, and tinker with ideas for a personal game project!

So, if anyone was wondering as to the lack of recent posts, there you are. But with the new semester starting next week, expect to see posts again in more of a regular rhythm about school projects, BigBlueButton accessibility, and probably my job searching efforts. Speaking of which, have a look at my LinkedIn profile up there. I’d love some feedback about anything I might be missing or doing wrong.

Hoo boy

Alright, apparently the solution to the URLLoader problem is to start a new VM using 64-bit Ubuntu instead of 32-bit, re-installing BigBlueButton from scratch, setting up Samba, copying over my entire dev directory (which, apparently, will prevent me having to set up Git again), reinstalling the OS (just kidding, Fred), and mapping the new 64-bit VM to the same letter on my Windows machine that my current 32-bit VM is on so that I don’t have to change my FlashBuilder settings.

FUN!

Fusion, hah!

More Saturday posting? MADNESS! By which I mean, end-of-semester stress might be driving me a little bit crazy. But anyway, here I am merging the work I’ve done for poll accessibility into our master branch along with the upstream changes from the main BigBlueButton master. Apparently, there are supposed to be a plethora of problems involved with this thanks to a move from 32-bit to 64-bit? So far, I’ve only run into a handful of git conflicts that I’ve got to fix by hand, really. But we’ll see what happens when I recompile everything, I guess.

EDIT: Well, here’s a wrinkle. The Conference.AmIPresenter() method, commonly used in the client to check if (surprise) the current user is the Presenter, is suddenly giving me problems in the main Presentation window after all the merging is done. I’ve checked, and I’m still importing the Conference class and instantiating a variable of that class. And yet I’m still getting this error:

Error: Attempted access of inaccessible method amIPresenter through a reference with static type org.bigbluebutton.main.model.users:Conference.

EDIT: A-ha! There’s the problem. amIPresenter() was changed to a getter method, so now it has to be called without the () as if it were just a property. I’ll probably have to go through and change a dozen of these now, but at least I know what’s going on.

EDIT: Weird. The conflicts and Presenter checks are all fixed up, but now I’m getting errors in places I’ve never touched, such as src/org/core/managers/ConfigManager2.as, that seem to relate back to the URLLoader class. Whatever it is, it only happens when the client boots up, doesn’t get caught at compile-time, and crashes the whole shebang.

Bacterial blimps?

Off-topic musings this morning, folks. If you’re here for code, that’s coming this afternoon; right now, we’re talking about science and using the word “poop” about a half-dozen times. Keep in mind, I’m not a chemist or a biologist; after I finish summarizing the article, it’s all pie-in-the-sky layman speculating for my own amusement.

So I was reading this article, the gist of which is that scientists have managed to tweak a particular microbe until it essentially eats carbon dioxide and poops out another compound which can apparently be used in a wide range of industrial procedures. At the end of the article, they mention that future modifications could give us a version of the microbe that poops out carbon-neutral fuel instead. And that’s where the little cogs in my mind start to turn.

Let’s say they do get the fuel-pooping version working. It takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, right? What if we could build some sort of blimp or hot-air balloon, and coat the exterior of the balloon in some sort of growth medium for the microbe? We’d have an airborne air-scrubber, assuming the growth medium didn’t completely throw off the dirigible’s weight balance and cause a crash. Put a few of these balloons on tethers, hovering above industrial buildings, and we might be able to neutralize a good chunk of emissions right at the source. Come to think of it, this would work with the version they have now that poops industrial materials.

Of course, we’d need a way to collect the by-products of the microbes on the balloon. The article wasn’t clear on what state the microbes poop out their by-products in, but if it liquid then the balloon could be designed to taper to a point, allowing it to roll down and drip into some sort of collection pan. That would probably work for solid matter as well, though the pan might need to be wider than the balloon. And let’s say that the tethers keeping these balloons in place above the smokestacks and exhaust fans are actually just flexible chutes, leading down to some sort of collection box.

Now, there’s a business opportunity involved. A factory could set up their balloon and collection box, and sell the by-products or even just use it to reclaim their own emissions as material that they can re-use. A person could go into business just installing and maintaining these collection systems, in factories or even over high-traffic roads on contract to the government.

Hell, if you designed a blimp-like vehicle that automatically collected and ran on the fuel produced by it’s own microbes, and stored the excess, you could sell your services piloting it back and forth above areas with high air pollution. Remember, the article speculated that the fuel produced would be carbon-neutral, so as long as the blimp used less fuel than the microbes produced, it would get the job done. The question is, how efficiently would it do that.

Of course, we run into the problem of what to do with the stored carbon-neutral fuel; obviously if we use it, we’re right back to the same carbon situation. But I’ve got some more far-out places to take this idea, which I’ll flesh out in another post later. Now I’m a few minutes late for Database Administration.

A little weekend work

With school keeping me so busy, don’t be surprised to see more erratic posting like this Saturday update; I’m sliding into a situation of taking my CDOT hours when I can.

Anyway, last time I sorted out the oddities in the construction of the Poll Creation/Preview window (although as I’m typing this, it occurs to me that I may not have actually put the tab order back in yet; I should check that). Today, I’m starting to work on enforcing a strict policy of not allowing the Creation and Results windows on the screen at the same time. It wasn’t a problem before, when we first built the module, but now that we’re making everything accessible this formerly odd-but-harmless behaviour needs to be taken out. At a glance, it doesn’t seem like this will be too much work, but then that’s what I said about the Toolbar Button hotkey, so….

In other news, Doctor Who returns tonight. Geronimo!

Tinkering

Alright, here’s my plan of attack: I’m going to take a step back and look at the accessibility features currently in the Polling module, and see what (if anything) is still needed to make it functional, if not perfect. I’ll merge that into the CDOT master, send Fred a status update, and then create a new branch to deal with some minor issues I’ve noticed.

Those minor issues:

• Multiple “Create Poll” and “Poll Results” windows can be on the screen at once.
• Presenter-side and Viewer-side poll windows can be on the screen simultaneously if the Presentership changes hands in the middle of a poll.
• The Create Poll window is currently a tab-order nightmare, and needs restructuring.

Once those things are done, and screen-reader compatibility has been confirmed again, the Polling Module will (hopefully, finally) be accessible.

EDIT: Alright, fixing the Create Poll window was easier than I expected it would be. It’s not exactly pretty, but that’s just a matter of tweaking VBox widths and heights and alignments and other artsy stuff. The important part is that the controls for creating a poll are now separate from the controls for previewing how the poll will look to the Viewers, and that’s going to make all the difference for the tab order.

Ohhh, dear.

I may need to re-engineer how the Polling Instructions window works, for the sake of maintaining a consistent tab order. Currently, it’s a bit of a mess in there; a consequence of how we were occasionally throwing code at the wall to see what stuck when we were designing it. We’ll see what kind of time I have tomorrow to do that between classes, if one or both of them aren’t cancelled; otherwise, it’s a Wednesday project.