One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treadle.

Over the last few weeks I haven't been able to write blog entries because it has been interfering with the RCOS website.  The page spawned 180 copies of my "Icons and Users and Roles, oh my!" post (I suspect because it had a special character in the title). It also started using a copy of the post as my blog. Both of these issues have yet to be resolved.  Most of what I've been doing is cleaning up views and adding Formtasticto my forms to automatically handle form selectors

Icons and Users and Roles, oh my

This week I started finishing up icon support.  I say started because it also lead to me working on authorization and authentication.  Authentication will be handled by devise, and authorization will be through cancan.

A Trip Down Console Lane: Mapping Troy Properties

Last Thursday, Professor Moorthy asked me if I could map the foreclosed property listings in Troy, NY.  This seemed like the perfect kind of data to be displayed on a map, so it works well for an application like Flagship Safety.  The problem is that I haven't deployed it yet, and don't really want to host it on my development server.  So I decided to make it a project in Community Mapping, which is also powered by Flagship Geo.

RCOS Presentation

On Friday I gave a presentation to RCOS about Flagship Safety.  I gave an overview of what we're trying to accomplish, and outlined some of the things I want to do over the next two months  You can find the presentation bellow.

RCOS Timeline

We're entering week four of the Summer session here at RPI, and I realize I should probably schedule out  the tings I want to do.  I've spent the first three weeks working on improving the display of emergency poles, and I can now display multiple layers on one main map.

Rails Console (or not)

Between testing my CSV import function and testing layer views,  I've imported the call boxes spreadsheet about a dozen times.  So I decided to use the rails console to clear my <code>call_box</code> and <code>import_tables</code models and re-import things.  Since the rails guides don't say much about the console, I had to look elsewhere.  After ten minutes of nor finding an answer, I decided that I could just rebuild my app without too much fuss.  So I deleted my app and checked-out my repo again.

RCOS

I've decided to continue work on Flagship Safety over the summer by turning it into an RCOS project.  RCOS is the Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software.  They support the development of open source projects and contributions to open source projects.  It has been around since 2007 and in the summer it meets weekly from 12-1 in Lally 104.

returning data efficiently

Like any good web framework, you can use the JSON format to send data to your application. The JSON data I was building in my layers controller was returning a 500 error, which was because the :include parameter is expecting attributes from multiple models, and fails if it doesn't find them. Once I removed :include, the JSON flowed freely.

Sanity (the data's, that is)

This having been GM Week here at RPI, I wasn't able to do much on my project.  I did work a little bit on sanitizing the data that I'm inputing, mostly the crime alert information, but also the emergency pole data.  I found tool, http://choonchernlim.com/kmlcsv/, thats written in Java and, that seems handy in converting KML to CSV files, and vice versa.  I say seems because while I've been able to convert CSV files to KML, the tool was unable to process the KML file I tried to give it.

Data, Part 2

The other information that I want to display on my map is the crime alerts that come from Public Safety.  A start on this is the work my friend Brian and I did with some other members of the Web Tech Group, when FFA wanted to analyse the locations of crime alerts.  Now that Flagship Geo has been created, I'd like to include this information in my map, as a separate layer.

Data

This whole project started out as a better way to visualize data, and as such I have a few data sources to ingrate. One of them is a CSV file with data in it. I've been working on an import function to add CSV-formatted information into my Rails application, based off the blog entry by Roy Ratcliffe at Pioneering Software in the UK.

Data Entry

One of my goals for FSS is to be able to enter test information through the mobile web.  This will allow for multiple people to enter data at the same time using nothing more than their smart-phone.  To make a version for the web requires serving different layouts for different devices.  Using the browser agent field, one can detect iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys, Androids, etc.  The rails plugin Mobile Fu does a nice job of detecting mobile devices and serving up .mobile.erb layouts.

The Vision

Flagship Safety's goals are twofold, education and collection.  One goal is to allow the student population to be able to access and visualize information about emergency poles and crime alerts.  The other is to allow for a more streamlined collection of data.  Currently, information is collected using pencil and paper, and is then entered into a master spreadsheet later.  Being able to directly enter data would speed up the process and allow for multiple people to input data.

Starting Out

The Idea for my app came from work that I do on the RPI's Student Senate.  The Finance, Facilities, and Advancement Subcommittee (FFA) collects data on emergency poles on campus.  We collect info on what state they're in and how well they work.  We also work with Public Safety on other issues, such as things to do with crime alerts (I'm also in the Web Tech Group, so this mainly relates to Concerto).  We wanted a way to display this information to the student population that was more visual than our tabular data.  We also wanted to be able to relate crime alerts that occur throughout a semester.

The foundation of Flagship Safety is Flagship Geo (FSG), a basic RoR mapping app which my friend Brian Michalski developed last summer.  From there I have scaffolded models, controllers, and views for emergency poles and crime alerts.  They are replacing the concept of points that existed in FSG.