Project Progres

I believe that I am making moderate progress with the project.

I have written psuedo code so far on how I imagine the site will look like and making server to website connections.

What I have so far is the html mock up of what my website will look like.  I have 4 pages in my site.  A home page, add vacation page, edit vacation page, and remove vacation page.

Simple input sections for date of vacation creation, name of person, and vacation start and end dates on the add vacation date page. Same format for the edit vacation and remove vacation page.

After creating the date, it will display the information on the main page. Showing who has the next upcoming vacation date.

I realized that to the company I am working for, simplicity seems to work best.  Especially since they only look up this information about once a month.

Previously I had wanted to do so much on this Project that I forgot that the user in the end didn't really expect a lot of functionality with this to begin.  What I originally had in mind would require cool features that require JQuery (a completely different, yet cool beast).

Well Since this is might be the last post you guys read, I would like to say thank you to all those that have read my post and left comments.

Solutions to email reminders

2 Solutions for Vacation Calender App

So the problem I am facing is how to implement what I think is one of a few tasks required to make my vacation calender app.  The one I am focusing on now is the automated e-mail.  Sending an e-mail in php is fairly moderate in terms of difficulty but since this is ruby I am now sure how to implement it.  To my luck however I found a small starting point in understanding how to do it in ruby thanks to overflow stack.

Here is the link:  Automated e-mails in Ruby

Now the code here is great if you want to send e-mails by typing, but I'm looking for a way where the users don't have to do anything, while a program that is running behind the scenes automatically sends an e-mail for you to the users necessary (employee and managers).

This site is another great starting point to understanding how e-mail works on ruby and how it processes them in the language.

Here is the link: Sending e-mails through Ruby

After these two helpful sites I have a general idea of how to make this process automatic without the user doing a thing (although I know exactly what to do if my app requires a button that will send the e-mails to both managers and employee separately).

 Now another problem I have is figuring out how to put an entire calender onto html.  What I mean by that for example is when you go to a site like Hawaiian Airlines or United Airlines.  When you want to book a flight you can chose to type in the date or pick a date on what looks like a digital calender sheet.  I need to figure out how to pop up the digital calender sheet in HTML or whatever it is in.  Basically I want to add a calender to a date field in HTML.

Searching for this is quite challenging especially because I know what I'm talking about but I doubt you my viewers know what I'm trying to say let alone google.  What's funny is I know that you can use PHP to solve this and thats what all the articles tell you to do but I would like to know how to do it in ruby.

This is a great start: Get a feel for the calender code

The above site is not what I'm looking for but a nice starting point.
Now that I have a feel for the code in PHP, now lets move it to something I might be able to use by searching a calender view that can be used in ruby.

This is a step forward: Didn't know Ruby had a library for this

Now I honostly didn't know ruby had a "gem install calendar_date_select" command for it.  I'm not surprised as Ruby has many.  Of course you have to download it and install it into ruby but its all on the site.  But as I looked further I found this

Here is the link: Calender date picker

Now if you look at this link, it shows you what it looks like and its what I have been looking for.

Now the last 2 sites give it the same name "calendar_date_select".  But one site says its made from Tim Harper, the other says Tim Charper.  They might be the same, not sure have to inspect the code carfully.


The solutions I am looking for are out there I just have to find them.  Thankfully the community for Ruby is strong.

Thank you.

Re do of Late Assignment

4 Screen Shots

So this is the first screen shot of the built in rottenpotatoes running

Here it is. Running.  The video showed us how to set up the VM on our machine.
I got further in understanding Ruby and by far I'm liking it so far.  It reminds me of php but I like how ruby makes it easier to put data in the database than using mysql syntax (which php makes you do to talk to the server).

2.2.1 Cookies:

So it seems that the cookie expires until the end of sessions.


2.3.1 HTML : 

So the page source shows you all the html code from rotten potatoes.  If you look at it further you can see that it also uses jquery and javascript.

2.4.1 CSS:

Here is the css div #main.  The padding and margin have been defined here.
I could only see parts of the css from sections and not a collection of it used in an entire web page.

The dropbox links should be the same as the ones I posted, if not here they are.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/140409885/pic1.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/140409885/pic2.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/140409885/pic3.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/140409885/pic4.png

Thank You.

Lifehacker Blog Review

So I chose the lifehacker blog (http://lifehacker.com/) to talk about.  At first glance I picked this blog site because of the title.  To be honest, I thought before clicking on this link that the site would talk about actual hacking, like security hacks.  I was very disappointing to find out that it doesn't have anything about network exploitation.  However I found this site interesting.  Everything is in the middle.  I mean everything is aligned to the center of the web page.  With an ad at the top and allows you to sign in.  The site talks about many useful things to help improve your life, like linking email accounts or ways to save up money with useful tips and products.

Now I read his posts about syncing 2 gmail accounts.  Click here to read the blog.  I find it interesting but I have my own reasons on why syncing email accounts is a bad thing.  If you don't mind it then you should read this because the blogger really explains how to do this, it makes it simple to do.

Blog Screenshots of 4 Videos

2.2.1 Getting started:

So in this video we learn about how to set up our VM on our computer. I found it very helpful.

2.2.1 Cookies:

Cookies are amazing, to bad you can manipulate them with javascript.  I also find it very helpful to use wireshark if you want to see a better version of a packet header, also shows which art is the cookie to.

2.3.1 HTML :

The hierarchy of html is fascinating, well to me at least.  I personally enjoy using css, since pure html is just so very static. Yes html was built to be static.  Luckily the next video introduces us to that.

2.4.1 CSS:

I really like CSS because of what you can do to create really nice layouts for websites, such as 3 column websites.

Stakeholders for Tennis Program

I'm not sure what my project will be yet but I have decided between the tennis program or an undecided program for a company (for-profit).

For the Tennis the stakeholders would be the coaches and the players. Players benefit as they would have statistics to show them how they're progressing and coaches benefit for the same reasons.  The school indirectly benefits if the program helps improve team performance.

Response to Comments

I did watch the video after making the blog, I however created the blog first.  I'm very new to creating and making blogs. When blogger asked me to make a name for the blog I thought it was only for my eyes only on my side and not the actual title.  I honestly gave up trying to fix it after 30 minutes last week trying to figure it out.I thought there would be an html interface builder like wix.com so I could create the title and posts.

Project Idea 3

Vacation Organizer System

Problem Description:

The company i work for organizes employee vacation time on paper and calender.  I propose my idea to help them out is to create a program that runs on the internet and helps provide staff with a tool to easily set up vacation dates and reminders.  Problem with paper is if you lose it, then you lose the dates.  If you set it up on a program on the internet than you never lose info since its on the cloud.

System Capabilities:

- Program should store and retrieve vacation date info

- Displays built in Calender

- Sends e-mail to individual and owner of reminders of upcoming vacation dates.

Business Benefits:

- Ease of mind

- Improves vacation cordination

- Maintain correct info of data

Project Idea 2

Animal Humane Society

Problem Descritption:

With the internet now, it is possible to help people who want to adopt animals know and understand what kinds of animals the humane society has, the problems the animal has, and other info such as age, height, etc.

System Capabilities:

- Should work on the internet

- Stores and retrieves info on animals

Business Benefits:

- Humane society reaches towards people far from there center

- Improve chances of people adopting animals

Project Idea 1

College Mens Tennis Statistic System

Problem Description:
There are many sports in college.  Football and basketball are among the few that schools follow individual players to tally and record statistics relevant to there sport.  Professional tennis players have statistics that they themselves live by to help themselves understand there game and improve based on it.  However in college tennis, following statistics for individual players (even with the help of fellow teammates) is hard if not impossible.  I recommend my first idea to be a program that fellow tennis teammates can use to follow statistics of there other teammates.  The program would then do the math that would be tedious with possible errors on paper.  The system should be internet based and easy to use on cellphones (the most common device among college athletes that travel to there matches).

System Capabilities:
- Collecting and storing information about individual players
- View profile picture of player
- Individual players can view wholesome data on themselves (such as statistics based on individual games and sets)
- Players can view only basic data on other players (statistics based on entire game)

Business Benefits:
Program is free and on the cloud (remote server) money flow comes from ads
- Helps individual school asses players better based on performance throughout the year
- Help individual players zoom in on statistical weaknesses of there games (if a player won all there serve games, but had a 40% serve ratio, it could mean that player gave up a lot of first serves, player could work to improve serve ratio and see an improvement in the serve game)
- Players and coaches can view info anywhere with internet connection, which helps using this on away games

Week 1 Assignment

Boring Default option:

I am taking this class for two reasons. The first reason is that this class is mandatory for all csci majors at HPU.  Just beacuase a class is mandatory does not mean i would not like to get the most out of it.  The second reason is that with ruby i would like to know another language in terms of server communication other than php.