Blog@Case Topics: Computing

Photo Challenge

2007-08-30T04:00:22Z

While I was taking pictures today—at the 2007 Annual Fall Convocation + Investiture Ceremony for president Barbara R. Snyder— Lev Gonick joked that he wanted to see the pictures up on my blog by the time the event was done.

Naturally that wasn't possible, I can't upload and shoot at the same time. In fact having taken over 400 photos I only have half of them up on Flickr now and will have to finish the rest on Thursday. (At which point I'll post the link.)

But the suggestion got me thinking; what tools would I have needed to make that possible? To that end I've got up with a list of requirements, most of which could probably be created by a team from our own campus.

Bluetooth (or similar) enabled camera that could download images while I am still shooting new ones.
Laptop, or preferably a smaller wireless device that could run a program to access the camera, grab the images, store them in some logical manner, then trigger another program to
Pick out a small selection of the most interesting or aesthetically pleasing images, upload them to the blog server and include them in a new entry.

Some of this is already possible. The sticking points are:

That it all has to happen while I am still taking additional pictures. Thus I would want to be able to push a button or start a program via a few simple commands then stick the device back in my pocket to be ignored while I keep taking pictures. (I could set parameters such as number of photos to blog, size, etc. in advance.) Conversely the process could be built into the camera which would access the wireless network and upload them all to be stored on Flickr (or the Blog server or somewhere else online) then trigger the rest of the process to happen on the server.
Developing a program that could objectively choose the most interesting photos. Given that such choices are often subjective rather than objective I think this would be the most challenging part. But if we had an interdisciplinary team including programmers engineers and faculty/students from Cognitive Science and Art they might be able to create something that could get it right most of the time. It would certainly be interesting to see which shots a program would choose in comparison to which shots were most often chosen by people.

What do you think Lev? (And of course everyone else.)

Obligatory Post on the iPhone

2007-06-25T14:00:00Z

First off, congratulations to Apple and Steve Jobs for creating such a frenzy over a device that only few have actually seen being operated. There are few companies in the world that can generate this much anticipation for a product. Hats off to you. Because I live in Silicon Valley, everything tech is amplified about 100x compared to most parts of the country/world. And, since Apple's headquarters are only a few miles away (I think it is less than 3 miles from my apartment), the iPhone hype here has been almost untolerable. Everywhere you look, iPhone this, iPhone that. Every blog. iPhone. iPhone. iPhone. June 29 is almost here. Cingular (I guess it is the "new AT&T" now), is preparing for people to be camping out overnight to be the first to get their hands on the devices. It is sheer madness. All of this excitement over a portable electronic device! Fortunately for my sanity, I've managed to remain calm about the iPhone. The reason is I don't want one. Well, technically, I'd like one, but I won't be buying one. My reasons are plentiful. Here are the top three:

The iPhone doesn't have a detachable battery -- Seriously, WTF? It is one thing for my iPod to run out of battery (which it does very often since I have almost exhausted the usable life out of the battery), it is another to run out of battery on my phone. Even if the battery life is great (I'm a little skeptic about the advertised battery life), I still want the ability to change the battery. When the battery eventually loses its charge capacity, I want the freedom to replace it without replacing the whole device.
No 3G -- The non-WIFI network speed of the non-3G iPhone will be pathetic. Currently, most of AT&T's EDGE network averages about 40kbps -- slower than a 56k dial-up modem! AT&T has been upgrading their network lately to try to boost performance to 80kbps -- slightly faster than a 56k modem. Even if they max out, they can only get max performance at about 4x 56k speeds. The WIFI connection is a different story. It will probably be able to go over 1Mbps (5x faster than max EDGE speed). Of course, when you are in the store doing all the cool online activities with the iPhone, it will be going over WIFI. I picture many customers walking out of the store and saying, "why is the network so slow now?". They will find out that they have to use WIFI for a better browsing experience. Of course, WIFI will drain your battery like nothing else. So, you will either get great network performance or longer battery life. I don't want to make that decision! It will be interesting to see how many initial buyers complain about the EDGE network speed. With Google Maps on EDGE now, I find it barely usable. Will it be the same on iPhone? Time will tell.
It is the first model -- If I've learned anything about Apple products, it is to wait for the second model. There will be so many software refinements and hardware improvements, that you will be glad you waited. I wouldn't be surprised if a second generation was available by February 2008.

In summary, being an early adopted of this product is just too risky or foolish for me. I commend Apple at designing an amazing product and building anticipation, but I just can't buy one just yet. Once the dust settles and iPhone survives the test of time (and adds a few more features, like 3G), I will probably be in the market for an iPhone, or any of the numerous competitors that are quickly entering the market. Finally, I wish the early adopters good luck. You will drop and good chunk of change on the device and service plan. I hope you get a great return on your investment.

Obligatory Post on the iPhone

2007-06-25T14:00:00Z

The iPhone doesn't have a detachable battery -- Seriously, WTF? It is one thing for my iPod to run out of battery (which it does very often since I have almost exhausted the usable life out of the battery), it is another to run out of battery on my phone. Even if the battery life is great (I'm a little skeptic about the advertised battery life), I still want the ability to change the battery. When the battery eventually loses its charge capacity, I want the freedom to replace it without replacing the whole device.
No 3G -- The non-WIFI network speed of the non-3G iPhone will be pathetic. Currently, most of AT&T's EDGE network averages about 40kbps -- slower than a 56k dial-up modem! AT&T has been upgrading their network lately to try to boost performance to 80kbps -- slightly faster than a 56k modem. Even if they max out, they can only get max performance at about 4x 56k speeds. The WIFI connection is a different story. It will probably be able to go over 1Mbps (5x faster than max EDGE speed). Of course, when you are in the store doing all the cool online activities with the iPhone, it will be going over WIFI. I picture many customers walking out of the store and saying, "why is the network so slow now?". They will find out that they have to use WIFI for a better browsing experience. Of course, WIFI will drain your battery like nothing else. So, you will either get great network performance or longer battery life. I don't want to make that decision! It will be interesting to see how many initial buyers complain about the EDGE network speed. With Google Maps on EDGE now, I find it barely usable. Will it be the same on iPhone? Time will tell.
It is the first model -- If I've learned anything about Apple products, it is to wait for the second model. There will be so many software refinements and hardware improvements, that you will be glad you waited. I wouldn't be surprised if a second generation was available by February 2008.

Songbird Media Player

2006-10-16T00:02:36Z

I just discovered Songbird, a cross-playform (Windows, Mac, Linux) media player/iTunes clone. It is still in pre-release, but it looks very promising. I was disappointed to see it doesn't read Musepack files, but it is light years ahead of anything on Linux in terms of the UI. My only other complaint is it seems a bit bloated. Time will tell. I am eager to wait for it to develop and see what extensions people make.

KeyServer Strikes Again

2006-04-05T19:56:24Z

Dear Software Center, All I wanted to do was some simple data analysis in Matlab on the data I spent seven hours collecting on Saturday. Is that so much to ask? According to your website, Matlab users need only have a network connection to use the program. My laptop is currently hardwired into the Case network, and, yet, I am getting nasty error messages from KeyServer, which isn't supposed to have anything to do with Matlab anyway. Do you want me to download a newer version? Is that it? I'm supposed to spend my afternoon downloading a 1.18 GB file and reinstalling one of the largest programs on my computer, am I? I'm a busy person, Software Center, and this is not at all funny. It still won't be funny tomorrow morning when I have to go tell my advisor that I don't have results for him because Matlab refuses to load. So do you think we can possibly move things along? This doesn't have to be difficult or painful. Thanks! Nicole Sharp ETA: The KeyServer server hiccuped and Matlab blew up on me. The new installation involved infinite loops. I had to go into safe mode to fix things. But all is now well because Matlab works again.

Why I Love KDE

2006-01-12T19:10:13Z

After a long hard day of working on house improvement and computer projects yesterday, I decided to poke around KDE a bit. You always hear about Windows and OS X as the two competing desktops. After using KDE as my primary desktop for about six months now, considering the work I do, I wouldn't trade it in for anything. KDE has every feature that a programmer or well-organized person could want. As a programmer, it increases my productivity. There is no question why I prefer to work from home and use my KDE desktop environment. What I love best about KDE

Built-in protocol handlers (e.g. sftp:// ftp:// http:// samba:// webdav://). These protocols can be used in ANY KDE application to open and save files. Do you know how easy it is to work with remote files this way!! No more manual FTP commands after every save!
It comes with an application to do everything. The best part about it, everything works together. For example, the time-tracking application, KArm integrates with KOrganizer, which can be set up to integrate with 3rd party groupware utilities, such as eGroupware, Kolab, SLOX, or Novel Groupwise.

I'm writing this entry during a period of euphoria, as I just discovered more cool applications that KDE ships with. Next time someone tells me how cool Vista or OS X looks, I'll just laugh to myself. KDE is more productive than anything. Period. Now let's see who is laughing when I can get more work done and earn more $$$.

Research computing - High performance?

2006-01-02T20:00:00Z

One of the things that I am interested in, primarily because it helps me do my research better, is high-performance computing. I have only been here at Case a few years, but issues of research computing have been around here a while I gather... The primary issue is often: is there enough ? It isn't always clear what enough means. What is enough for my research group might be overkill for another researcher, or not even scratch the surface of the needs of yet another. High-performance may mean fast CPU's to me, but super-fast networks, incredibly high-speed access to enormous datasets, or screaming 3-D visualization tools to others. So what? Well, a lot of great research comes from being at the edge of what is possible... but computational resources are expensive - especially at the edge and primarily because they become obsolete so quickly. It is not like buying lab supplies that could work for a decade or more if properly maintained, etc - optimistically, 3 years and a computer is toast. So, is there potentially an economy of scale that could allow more researchers to be closer to the cutting-edge and really expand research opportunities? Research units working together to share computational resources could be a good thing. But what would make it good for researchers with few (no) ties other than that they use computers throwing in their resources together? I think there are three aspects to an answer to this question: (1) Can we do better, more cutting-edge research? (2) Can the workloads, related to computational infrastructure, of individual researchers or research groups be reduced? (3) Is it financially sustainable? All important questions, but the one that interests me most right now is (1). What research could you pursue (that you can't do now) if there were significantly more resources available to you on campus than a single department (or researcher) might garner by themselves? Nice to think far forward like that. The ACRC is thinking about this question too... anyone else?

GRE Practice Test Frustrations

2005-11-05T15:31:29Z

I purposefully got up early this morning (for a college student, at least) so that I would have time to take one of the full length computer-based practice tests they have on the GRE website. I download the software, install, and open it, only to discover that it's worthless to me. Their PowerPrep software requires that the moniter be set to 640 x 480 pixels, and the lowest resolution my laptop's moniter is capable of is 800 x 600. This means that, when I, say, open the practice test, I can see the first half a line of both of the writing questions, but I can't get the gist of either of them, nor can I see any way to navigate so that I can answer the question or escape the test I'm not capable of answering. This is entirely too frustrating. I'm going to have to go do something like install this program in Nord and sit there for four hours just to take a practice exam and get an idea of what my scores are likely to be. Not that I have five hours laying around to just go do that...

Squirrelmail

2005-10-28T03:46:19Z

I have set up a SquirrelMail installation for Case users at https://opensource.case.edu/squirrelmail/. Enjoy the highly customizable webmail interface. IMO, it is much better than what we have now. Yay for IMAP standards.

Squirrelmail

2005-10-28T03:46:19Z

It's Time to Emancipate Computer Help Documentation

2005-10-27T22:13:31Z

This post is spurred by the latest sigmac-talk mailing list thread about printing to Wade. For months now, Apple users at Case have griped about not being able to print to Wade using OS X 10.4 Tiger. The issue was first raised with optimism. The thread chronicles guarantees of the posting of the updated instructions on help.case.edu. However, those instructions were never posted and people are still having trouble. The solution to the problem: The Case Wiki (see printing for our developing solution for this particular problem). 95% of help.case.edu is instructions and reference material. Although the material is well laid-out and easy-to-follow, there is one major problem: accessibility. As our chronicles with printing to Wade from Tiger have shown us, the site is not frequently updated and it is difficult to push through updates. The information published at help.case.edu is ripe for wikification. It makes perfect sense to convert ALL of the reference information located there to the Case Wiki. When ITS changes something, why should they have to go through a middleman to make changes to the (un)official instructions at help.case.edu? Shouldn't they have access to the documentation for their own projects and services? Shouldn't they be able to change the instructions at the exact same time a change in a service is made? By publishing this material on a wiki, we would also open up a conduit of communication between system operators and end-users. End-users could comment on the instructions, express issues using the instructions, and, of course, modify the instructions to make them easier to follow. Converting content over to the wiki is no small task. There are countless pages of content and numerous images. However, the end result is worth the trouble, as it is for the benefit of the end-user, which is, after all, the pillar on which customer support and the Help Desk rest.

Google Blog Search Makes Searching Public Opinion Easy

2005-09-26T21:13:11Z

Google released Blog Search a few weeks ago. In short, it is a search performed on syndicated feeds on the internet. These feeds are often associated with blogs, but they are also heavily used on informational sites. The feeds themselves can be used to convey a wide range of information. There are two things I really love about Google Blog Search:

The content being indexed by Google is highly dynamic and Google updates it frequently. Unlike the regular Google search that indexes results by relevance, the blog search can index results by date retrieved. Not only do you find recent changes, but you can find obscure sources of information.
Search results are available in RSS and ATOM. This just rocks

For an institution such as the university that is always cognizant of its public portrayal, Google Blog Search is an invaluable tool. If you are one of these people, you might be interested in the Google Blog Search results for 'Case Western'. Drop the feed of this search result in your favorite aggregator, and you are subscribed to a public opinion pole/news site about Case. It was quite interesting when I saw this article this morning. I am quickly finding Google Blog Search an asset for keeping track of countless forms of information. I am subscribed to search results for Case, all results coming from case.edu, my name, and miscellaneous topics in which I have a keen interest. What I find is very interesting and takes very little effort. I applaud Google for yet another stellar service.

Google Blog Search Makes Searching Public Opinion Easy

2005-09-26T21:13:11Z

The content being indexed by Google is highly dynamic and Google updates it frequently. Unlike the regular Google search that indexes results by relevance, the blog search can index results by date retrieved. Not only do you find recent changes, but you can find obscure sources of information.
Search results are available in RSS and ATOM. This just rocks

Running a LAMPS Server

2005-09-22T18:10:09Z

If anyone out there is interested in an easy way to bring up a LAMPS server that is already optimized for the Case environment, check out my Case LAMPS project on opensource.case.edu. The project first began when I built the LAMPS server for USG. Later, I used the same script to build the server for the Blogs@Case and Case Wiki system. Both run very fast and have zero problems with stability.

Case Needs Course Data in LDAP

2005-09-15T21:37:24Z

Have you ever stopped to think about what could happen if Case's course offerings and course enrollment information were stored in its LDAP server? Here is a short list:

The list of offered courses would be easily available to all
- Anybody could write a course search tool
- Services could automatically provision resources for each course. For example, the Case Wiki could automatically create course pages for every course. The Case Blog system could create group blogs for every course. Oracle Calendar could create groups for each course. The list goes on and on.
- Applications needing this information would only need to access LDAP, not worry about parsing ISIS output. Which is easier? Likewise, if someone needed this information, it is much easier to query LDAP than to parse ISIS output.
Your course enrollment would be easily accessible to services
- Your Oracle Calendar would automatically subscribe to group calendars of courses to which you are enrolled
- You will be automatically subscribed to a group blog for your course
- An online course evaluation system could easily see what courses you should be able to review
- Services can limit availability to persons enrolled in a specific course. E.g. discussion boards, wikis, software downloads, etc
Editing your course enrollment would be much simpler. An application that interfaces with LDAP is much easier to write than one that interfaces with ISIS. Change the course registration procedure so that changes to your course enrollment are stored in LDAP and picked up by ISIS, not the other way around. Once this is done, SOLAR becomes obsolete. The student body rejoices.
Access to course information wouldn't be limited to a very select few and thus would eliminate many bottlenecks when obtaining the information. The list of courses offered by Case isn't a secret. Why then can't we publish this list in a format that is easily readable by computers? For those who need course enrollment information, going through the LDAP is much easier than going through the Registrar and parsing whatever awful format in which the information they return is in.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of potential uses. Feel free to add a comment to my post and list your ideas.

Are Wiki Engines the Future of Content Management?

2005-09-14T20:09:53Z

Wiki software such as MediaWiki, the package that powers WikiPedia and the Case Wiki, is very robust and has potential beyond operating wikis. Imagine MediaWiki modified to have granular permissions with adjustable scope. You now have the perfect content management system. The software contains numerous enterprise-class features, such as multi-tier caching and load-balancing. Editing pages is very simple, using an easy-to-learn markup. Also, by using a wiki engine, you would get a full page history and a recent changes list. The differences between wiki software and content management software is very small. With MediaWiki, the only real difference is the lack of a robust permission system and the inability to create infinite levels of structure. If MediaWiki were modified to include these, it would instantly become a free and viable enterprise-class content management system. Anyone looking at shelling out lots of $$$ for a commercial content management system should look at modifying MediaWiki for a fraction of the cost. The results won't be disappointing.

Google Sitemaps Significantly Help Spidering

2005-08-15T19:10:23Z

A week ago, I registered the Case Wiki with Google Sitemaps ( 1). Today, I looked at the Case Wiki statistics and was surprised at the difference it makes. Just compare the Case Wiki robot stats to the Blog@Case robot stats. Even though the Case blog system has more traffic and many more pages, the Google Sitemaps support allowed every single page in the Case Wiki to be indexed overnight. Since the Google Sitemaps XML files also contain metadata about the pages, including their last update time, this means more efficient robot spidering and better search results. With the search engine friendliness of the Case Wiki, I wonder how long it is before articles like Department of History are higher in the search results than the actual site.

Evaluating Single Sign-On Alternatives

2005-08-09T16:09:56Z

In a previous post, I raised the need for a replacement single sign-on service for the university and investigated the usage of Oracle's single sign-on product as a viable replacement. The results were discouraging. Therefore, a separate single sign-on product is desired. The first product to grab our attention was CAS. What really got our attention was the list of CAS clients as well as the list of CAS deployers. Let's evaluate CAS:

It is widely used. This means support for the product should be easily available.
It is built using standards. CAS actions are performed using simple HTTP GET and POST requests.
We know what CAS does and can modify it accordingly because the product is open source.
It has plugins for almost every desired usage. The Apache module (for both version 1 and 2) easily install. The modules even work with mod_auth_ldap (I did have to change 4 lines in the source code for this feature, however). If a user doesn't have access to the Apache config, Perl and PHP modules exist to easily integrate your application. For languages without a client yet, designing one is very simple because CAS is built upon standards.
Using CAS requires you to just know the URL of the login server. There is no need for anyone in ITS to configure CAS to allow you to use it.

So CAS wins big points for being built on standards, easy to use, and easy for ITS to maintain. However, what about the other applications. How do we get the Oracle applications to use CAS? The good news here is that Oracle Single Sign-On can be integrated with CAS. We could deploy CAS as our primary single sign-on service and Oracle's single sign-on would use CAS to authenticate. In addition, other universities have successfully used CAS as the authentication method for PeopleSoft implementations (our ERP system). Webmail could also be modified to use it. Looking at the big picture, we have two requirements:

We must be running Oracle Single Sign-On for the portal
We want to maintain a single sign-on service that is easy for clients to use

If Oracle Single Sign-On was the only SSO service, #2 would not be true. The requirement of #2 therefore dictates that we operate a separate and primary single sign-on service. CAS seems to fit that requirement perfectly. The only problem left is integrating Oracle Single Sign-On to work with CAS. Until that solution is put in place, users must settle for separately logging into Oracle products; not a big deal considering this is already the case. The advantages of using CAS as our central authentication service are great. The usage barrier for CASifying web sites is so low, that system administrators can easily adopt this solution. Deploying CAS requires a one-time effort by ITS. No intervention is required for new applications to use the service. The solution appears clear. When can we make it official?

Evaluating Oracle Single Sign-On

2005-08-09T15:46:59Z

Many of you know about login.case.edu. It makes your lives much easier because now you only have to enter your password once for numerous web services. However, there is a problem with the service: it is too complicated. It is not too complicated for the average user, but for the people who implement it. Just look at the hoops you have to jump through to get it working on your own server. What's more is that it relies on a web server module (not everybody has access to the web server config files) and requires somebody in ITS to manually do work every time a new client wishes to use it. What is needed is an alternative. Well, we are already running an Oracle Single Sign-On product, so let's use that! OK, let's evaluate the Oracle product.

We are using it because it is required by the portal.
It requires manual intervention every time a new client wishes to use it. Isn't this a reason why we are investigating alternative?
The Oracle products easily integrate with it. Hooray! No more separate logins for the portal and the calendar.
Writing external programs to authenticate against it requires the use of a C or Java SDK. (I can hear the screams of agony now).
The module mod_osso appears to only be available for Oracle's Application Server. Does it work with IIS? No. Does it work with your standalone Apache? I don't know either. Judging from a Google search, I'd say it isn't promising. Most importantly, does it work with mod_auth_ldap? Well, we don't know. If it doesn't, there is nothing we can do because the module is closed source.

In summary, we are being forced to use Oracle Single Sign-On, but it works well with the Oracle Applications. No matter what we decide to do, we will have to use this product. If we decide to make it the only SSO service for the university, a significant amount of effort would be required for every new application deployed to use it. Would system administrators make this effort to configure it, or would they take the easy way out and just resort to the tried and true LDAP authentication? Also, any department that uses IIS to host web applications would be unable to use the service. Do we really want to deploy a single sign-on service that only a subset of the university can use? In my next post, I will explore alternatives to Oracle Single Sign-On and how they could integrate with the Oracle applications.

Java is Not a Web Application Language

2005-08-05T14:48:54Z

It seems that everyone is on the Java bandwagon nowadays. Along with XML, it is something that every project coordinator wants to use in his product, no matter what the product may be. Some applications should NOT be written in Java. Web applications are one class where this holds true. After writing a web application in C++, I said there is no worse popular programming language for a web application. When Java arrived and was herralded as the language to end all languages, I never thought it would challenge C++ for this honor. Well, it has. After spending the whole day yesterday bringing up a Tomcat installation and attempting to install CAS, an alternate single sign-on to possibly replace our current Pubcookie implementation, I am sold. Java is great for multi-platform portability, but for web applications, I'll stick to my runtime interpretted languages such as PHP, Python, and Perl. The benefits that Java offers for the average web application are few and far between. Why would I write a web application (something that is highly likely to require change in a production environment) in a compiled language? Runtime interpretted languages have the benefit of being instantly changed without recompiling and performance is barely slower. Their memory footprint is significantly less. What's more is that many of these languages are either designed specificially for web development or have easy-to-use modules for web development. Writing a web application in Java is just overengineering the solution. Java is great for many applications, don't get me wrong. But for the average web application (one that isn't your multi-million dollar corporate product), Java should be avoided at all cost. Stick to an interpretted language. The clients will thank you in the end.