November 29 Robocup meeting Alex was missing Deadline is November 7th 12:00 pm EST Chani's final grammar check deadline is Sunday evening which has to be compiled by Ioana ... basically try and get everything done before Sunday. No meeting next Sunday, if need be we can have one on Thursday, communicate using the newsgroup if anything comes up. Summary: - Code is once again runnable on cdf. - Code changes should be limited to minor tweaks to improve winning performance (no large changes) - Philip is willing to do a proof read if given the docs by noon Sunday. - Philip is going to lookup the format required for peer evals - Philip strongly suggests giving him an overview of the doc by the end of the week so he can give some basic feedback and point out if anything is missing. - Code comments are part of the marking scheme, make sure your code is reasonably commented. Docs: - Overview - Why we decided to pick the python code - Why we choose the tasks that we did - Description of the overall source structure (ex. file/class interactions) - Personal - Write about what you've accomplish over the term and what you couldn't accomplish (Tasks). - Team work - How we found working in a distributed team. (Pros / Cons / regrets?) Status: Yulia + Ioana: look into fixing coordinate system. Chani: Will put together a skeleton of the document Patrik: Will write up an overview of the source code by Tuesday Everybody: Contribute to the document and consider tweaks to improve performance TRANSCRIPT: 14:02 < philip___> OK, let's get started before my internet connection gives up again. 14:02 < yulia> it's just easier to make mirroring correct 14:02 -!- Irssi: #robocup: Total of 5 nicks [0 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 5 normal] 14:03 < philip___> So, we're heading into the last week. I guess you all know what you've got to do in that time?! :-) 14:03 < Chani> hmm, we don't have alex yet. oh well 14:03 < ioana> i agree, i think it's better to fix mirroring 14:03 < philip___> Is there much to report at this point? 14:03 < Chani> philip___: actually I'm not sure 14:04 < Chani> I've been focused on other projects and haven't done much this week... but I'm also not sure what it'd be best for me to work on 14:04 < pgornicz> well i think we really need to get started on the documents, what format are we going to use? txt, word, open office, latex? 14:04 < yulia> ok, how many people can run this stuff on cdf? 14:04 < philip___> Chani: What tasks do you still have outstanding? What part of the documentation can you write up? 14:04 < ioana> i think just the two of us 14:04 < Chani> oh right, documents... 14:05 < Chani> philip___: don't know 14:05 < pgornicz> i ran a few games against the original team, seems like 50/50 win chance 14:05 < philip___> Chani: Presumably you know which things you've worked on? I think you should be writing those parts of the document at least. 14:06 < Chani> according to our marking guide from october, I'm supposed to improve basic actions and add more complex actions... but the ones I added aren't being used because I couldn't get them to work well 14:06 < Chani> yes, I should write about what I have done 14:06 < pgornicz> the single thing that makes the biggest difference seem to be 'the team the kicks the ball (from the center) seems to lose a point' 14:06 < Chani> o.0 14:07 < yulia> Patrik, interception is really bad. once the player got a ball, there is little chance that it will be taken from him 14:07 < philip___> Have the crashes that I observed on Thursday been sorted out? 14:07 < yulia> Philip, yes 14:07 < yulia> it's runnable on cdf 14:07 < ioana> yulia, it's not disconnecting at all? 14:07 < yulia> nope 14:07 < philip___> But not performing very well? 14:07 < yulia> not very well 14:08 < yulia> i'm going to try and fix the mirroring with ioana and try again 14:08 < yulia> i think we should really spend the rest of the week by tweaking the client to make it win a little more 14:09 < philip___> Ioana said that she'd been seeing the new team winning consistently when running it on her machine, before the crash problem was discovered. 14:09 < yulia> for me it was like 70/30 14:09 < ioana> that was when they were all running around as a group :) 14:10 < pgornicz> full teams? 14:10 < yulia> Ioana, maybe we should leave it. establish a new style 14:10 < ioana> :) 14:10 < Chani> hehe 14:11 < pgornicz> i agree with the tweaking to try and improve winning, i had my goalie run down to the center of the field once ... i was like wtf, he scored and goal actually 14:11 < Chani> o.0 14:11 < philip___> At this point, I should think that tweaking is what you should be doing. Major changes are only likely to lead to bigger problems. 14:12 < Chani> true 14:13 < pgornicz> agreed 14:13 < philip___> Aside from the neural net stuff, I think you've had a go at the rest of the assigned tasks to some degree. Now getting the documents written, a demo posted, and a winning team are the things that will get you most marks. 14:13 < Chani> as for document format... are we all going to work on one document (on google docs or something), or write our own sections and have someone compile them? 14:14 < yulia> Chani, i think it's better to just agree on the format 14:14 < yulia> and then just have one person to assemble it into one document 14:14 < Chani> if one person is going to assemble it, I'd be happiest sending my part in plain text 14:15 < ioana> i can put it together 14:15 * Chani will do a final spelling/grammar check at the end, too 14:15 < yulia> now, plain text/latex/word anything? 14:15 < yulia> i'd go with either plain text or latex 14:15 < yulia> don't think we'll have a lot of drawings there 14:16 < pgornicz> does everyone know latex? 14:16 * Chani needs to relearn latex soon - haven't had to write an essay since 2006 14:16 < philip___> If you want me to give it a quick proof read before you submit the final version, I could do that. But make sure you get it to me by Sunday afternoon at the latest. 14:16 < yulia> i've been doing all my homeworks in latex since my first year 14:17 < yulia> i might need to relearn how to handwrite soon :) 14:17 < philip___> We used plain text files that were converted into RTF or something by some online utility. Looked reasonable and had the advantage of being easy to use under SVN. 14:17 < ioana> i don't know latex that well 14:18 < yulia> ok, then plain text is good 14:18 < yulia> i don't really care. latex outputs pretty pdfs, that's why i like it 14:18 < pgornicz> the basic latex we'll be using for this is practically plain text with a few odd commands, somebody that is comfortible with it simply needs to get it started 14:19 < philip___> As long as it's easy to read and looks at least semi-professional, I don't care how you create it. :-) 14:19 < yulia> or simply get yourself lyx not to bother with pure latex code 14:20 < philip___> OK, so is there anything else that needs discussing here? Not sure that I need to sit in on the pros and cons of different document production methods! :-) 14:21 < pgornicz> the only downside to latex over txt is that people would idly create a pdf before submitting it and that requires installing tools etc. 14:22 < yulia> so basically we need to a) write on personal tasks what was accomplished, what wasn't and why 14:22 < yulia> b) what needs to be done 14:22 < yulia> what else? 14:24 < philip___> There's got to be some overview-type stuff. Reasons for choosing the Python code, why choose the tasks you did, how it all hangs together (or not). 14:25 < philip___> Greg may be interested in how you found working together as a distributed team; the good points, the bad points, how you managed the difficulties. 14:25 < pgornicz> there's also a second document "Design Document" that was meant to discribe the overall structut of the source code 14:25 < yulia> aren't we going to have some peer evals? 14:26 * Chani could do a chunk of writing tonight or tomorrow 14:26 < philip___> Patrik: Yes, I guess you should split topics accordingly. I guess they could be two parts of the same doc, though. 14:26 < Chani> oh yeah, that too 14:27 < philip___> Yulia: Peer evals were part of the overall marking scheme. I will hunt down the form that they use for this and send you all a copy. Then you can send them back to me. 14:27 < yulia> ko 14:27 < yulia> ok 14:28 < philip___> I would strongly suggest that you at least send me an outline of what your final doc(s) will look like by the end of the week, so that I can give you some feedback on anything I think is missing. 14:29 < Chani> code comments are part of the marking scheme too - skim over your code and make sure you commented anything that's not clear 14:29 < Chani> ok 14:29 < philip___> Doesn't have to be complete sections - just heading and general outline, even. 14:29 < philip___> Chani: Good point - well commented code will certainly make it easier for me to give marks! :-) 14:30 < Chani> okay, so who's doing what this week? 14:31 < yulia> me and ioana are on fixing coordinates it seems 14:31 < ioana> yeah, and i'll see if this fixes my issues with the neckrotator 14:31 * Chani can put together a skeleton for the document, if ioana can deal with the putting-things-together and making it look pretty 14:31 < ioana> if it improves things, i'll check it in 14:32 < ioana> in not, i'll add the helper functions, but not hook it in 14:33 < Chani> I can do spelling and grammar and stuff like that, but dealing with headers and tables of contents just never goes well for me :) 14:33 < philip___> Patrik: What will you be working on this week? 14:33 < pgornicz> i'll start on the overall design part of the document ... did we deside to use latex? 14:34 < pgornicz> ie. describing the generall workings of the source code, perhaps things like what teamview is etc. 14:34 < Chani> pgornicz: well, if ioana is putting it together but she doesn't know latex... 14:35 < pgornicz> ah that's true 14:35 < philip___> Patrik: Sounds good. Don't think the decision on latex or other has been made. I'll leave that for all of you to decide after the meeting. 14:35 < Chani> also, everyone needs to write about their own tasks, and make sure their code is appropriately commented 14:35 < philip___> So, I think that's about all for now. 14:35 < Chani> as for code, well, is there anything that needs doing? 14:35 < philip___> Someone needs to do minutes and blog entry for this week. 14:36 < Chani> I will 14:36 < philip___> Thanks, Chani. 14:37 < philip___> It's mainly writing up for this week, with code tweaks where appropriate/necessary. Good luck! 14:37 < pgornicz> actually, can i do that, i can't remember when the last time i did it was .... 14:37 * Chani feels like actions could be improved still, but isn't sure *how*... 14:37 < philip___> Patrik: Fine by me. No objections, Chani? :-) 14:38 < philip___> And you're all aware of the deadline, right? 14:38 < Chani> ok... yeah, you haven't posted in november 14:38 < Chani> monday morning? 14:38 < Chani> oh, monday morning toronto time 14:38 < philip___> A week tomorrow at 9am, I think I said. 14:38 < Chani> which means sunday night for me, really 14:39 < philip___> We can make it noon Eastern, if that's useful. But no later, I think. 14:39 < Chani> ioana: if you could send me the compiled document by sunday I'll do a grammar check 14:40 < ioana> Chani, i'll try to send it by 5 pm sun your time, is that ok? 14:40 < Chani> sure :) 14:41 < philip___> OK, so that about wraps it up for today, I guess. 14:41 < Chani> ok 14:42 < philip___> And I think that this will be the last meeting. 14:42 < philip___> It's been a pleasure working with you all, and I wish you all the best with your future endeavours. 14:42 < Chani> yeah... anything else we need to discuss, we'll need to discuss before next sunday :) 14:43 < yulia> there's a mailing list 14:43 < yulia> and we can have another meeting on thursday if we *really* need it 14:43 < philip___> Email me with any concerns that come up during the week. And we can meet on Thursday if necessary. 14:44 < yulia> anyway, thanks to Philip for replacing the professor and thanks for everyone else for being a good team! 14:44 -!- patrik12345 [n=patrik@CPE00032f39283b-CM001cea375aa6.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com] has joined #robocup 14:44 < patrik12345> odd 14:45 < patrik12345> it's not letting me use pgornicz because it is in use ... hmm 14:45 < patrik12345> did i miss anything? 14:45 < yulia> patrik, pgornicz is still connected 14:45 < yulia> and irc requires unique names 14:45 < patrik12345> ya, it appears so, though it's not as i'm not running a client for it anymore 14:46 < philip___> Didn't even realise that you'd gone! 14:46 * Chani probably won't be able to meet on thursday, actually - presentation for another project 14:46 < patrik12345> it just randomly disconnected and now won't let me use it because it's still in use ... ugh 14:46 < Chani> patrik12345: wait for it to time out, or if your nick is registered you can kill hte ghost 14:47 < patrik12345> how would i kill it? 14:47 < philip___> Presumably it will time out eventually. 14:47 < Chani> patrik12345: /msg nickserv help ghost 14:47 < philip___> Anyway, I think it's time to go! 14:48 < patrik12345> anyways, sorry for the distraction, did i miss anything? the last thing i got was "[November 29, 2009] [05:38:50 pm] thx" 14:48 < philip___> Look forward to reading the final report! 14:48 < Chani> patrik12345: we never got that, what's the last thing someone else said? 14:48 < patrik12345> hmmm ... lol 14:49 < patrik12345> "[November 29, 2009] [05:38:31 pm] ok... yeah, you haven't posted in november" 14:49 < Chani> patrik12345: ok... so, there's no meeting on sunday and the final deadline for everything is noon eastern (but remember we need time to compile the document) 14:49 < Chani> er. noon monday 14:50 < patrik12345> k 14:51 -!- pgornicz [n=patrik@CPE00032f39283b-CM001cea375aa6.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com] has quit [Nick collision from services.] 14:51 < philip___> OK, now we're all up to the same point, I think we're done! 14:52 < philip___> Bye all!