Ever have one of those days when things just aren't in your favor? Where you are just trying to get through the small things and nothing is going your way? Well in the computing world the prime example of this problem is in the bug, these tiny little issues can cause big big problems for not just the programmer but the user, preventing things from functioning as they should to even taking down your computer.
The worst thing that can happen to you while you are working on a program is getting trap in a series of bugs, one wrong thing after another chained in such a way that you feel like the dieties that rule the computer world are trying to stop your progress. Today feels like one of those days.
The Bio Heat Map idea that we talked about last time(http://kendylld.blogspot.com/2010/03/visualization-shopping-exploring.html) is now a key exploration point for me and Ed as we try to work out a system that will work with our concept power
consumption competition. This is also our first time working with programming gadgets which puts us at a disadvantage when it come to whether or not the bugs are our fault or googles. Thankfully Ed was not having the same connection issues I was having and his version of the code worked while the one I was working on was having issues. (you can see the code here but it won't be downloadable just yet as we need to check some issues. http://code.google.com/p/wattdepot-ui-googlegadgets/svn/trunk/BioHeatMap/test-bio-heat-map.xml)
The problem being at several points it seems like internet wasn't working properly or that something was taking too long to connect for the visualization. It made me aware that the more data points we use the more time it will take. Already this is my second time writing up this report because the blog didn't save last time.
After Ed's program worked better than mine I tried constructing data tables to simulate the goal we were aiming for, putting a day of data to compare floors or dorms incompetition. But my original attempted with a table resulted in an error. I continued to shrink it down from 3 floor for 24 hours till I got to 3 floors for 2 hours and still could not get what Ed had gotten to work smoothly. Ed expressed concerns over how disorienting having so many data points could have on this map, and while I agree with the potential danger, the concern might be pointless if one cannot complete the request.
Still conceptually I could see the problem. If this was happening at this stage what would happen if WattDepot were attached to this gadget? It just wouldn't work. We need to take the time to find an optimal amount of data to be displayed for a competition while still being quick enough not to time out.
I also thought of color concerns but will have to take it under advising later. Right now my hope is that Google will be functioning well enough to save my post and allow me to share it with everyone.
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