Jeroens blog

I’ve finally made up my mind about whether I’m going to learn Python or Ruby. I’ve been looking at both for nearly 2 months now, and could not really find a strong reason to use the one or the other. So I’ve simply decided to learn both.

Both Ruby and Python have several good IDE’s. At Arrrr Camp 2009, I got recommended using Aptana RadRails for Ruby (on Rails) development. This IDE is based on Eclipse, so prompted an immediate download For Python, I’ve chosen PyDev, which is a plug-in for Eclipse or Aptana Studio.

I’ve put both IDE’s on my dev usb, and will start messing around with the languages as soon as I got some spare time.

Today I’ve stealthed New Divide, the latest single of Linking Park, on Audiosurf. What makes this so special is that although the song has a pretty low traffic (average block density), is that when you use the as-bankcam option, like I’ve done, it does bank – a lot. At some points the road tilts more then 90 degrees, making it very hard to evade blocks at the more dense and fast parts of the song.

I’ve also done a re-run after this, in which I only missed very few colours, but ended up having a lower score, cause I didn’t get the 11-combination bonus. Sometimes missing a block can be to your advantage

This weekend I’ve started working on the last big todo for the 0.4 release of Maps: adding an OSM optimized OpenLayers service. Since this version will see quite some changes for the use of the parser functions, I’m going to elaborate on this.

The main change is that Maps is now able to detect if a given value is a coordinate or not (in which case it’ll be treated like an address). This allowed for letting the display_point function handle both it’s old role, and the one of display_address. Display_point will now auto detect if the default parameter is a coordinate or not, and in case it isn’t, do an attempt to geocode. This behaviour can be ‘overridden’ by using the parameter name coordinate= or address=. The auto detection will also happen when multiple points are passed in display_points, allowing you to pass both addresses and coordinates. The display_address(es) will remain synonymous to display_point(s) for a while, as backward compatibility, but will eventually be removed.

Since this auto detection can also be used for other coordinate/address values, the centre parameter of display_point(s) now also accepts an address instead of only coordinate pairs.

Maps 0.4 will also introduce a new parser function: display_map. This function only accepts one coordinate/address, which will be the map’s centre. Obviously, the same auto detection method is used here.

I’ve created a new version of an unique C&C Generals map that introduces the player to a totally new experience in the game.

In essence, the map, called [extreme] buggy survival, is a so called ‘AoD map’. AoD stands for ‘Art of Defence’, and is a type of map where you need to hold out against a bot (computer controlled player), that’s specially programmed in most instances. Prior to this map, there where two kind of AoD’s: the ones where you simply need to defend against lot’s of enemy units, and the one where you need to kill waves of units before they reach the end of a road (like my AoD’s SE4 and Lagarto). Extreme buggy survival adds a new sort to this list.

The player is given 12 GLA rocket buggies (fast, long range units), and 4 Jarmen kells (snipers), which he needs to use to defeat 8 or 10 waves of units (depending on the difficulty). If al waves have been destroyed, you win, if you lose all your buggies, you lose. The map supports up to 4 human players, to play as a team. The buggies and Jarmens will be divided amongst the players.

This map was originally created by a good map maker, but IMHO bad scripter. A few months ago I re-did it, and released versions 2, 3 and 4. Version 4 has become quite popular on Generals online, which led me to the creation of this new version.

The underneath vid is a recording of a game on RC1 of version 5. As you can see, the buggies where not yet correctly allocated here.

I’ve not released v5 yet, due to a lack of time, but will do this soon.

I’m just back from Arrrrcamp Gent 2009. Arrrr stands for “About Ruby, Rails, Radiant and Rum”, and is obviously about the programming language Ruby and 2 of it’s most popular web frameworks. This years edition took place right in front of my door, in the Zebrastraat, Gent. I followed 2 of the main presentations, and 4 visitor presentations, in essence similar to lightning talks.

The most interesting talk for me was about JRuby, an implementation of Ruby I’m considering to learn and use. I also gained a lot more insights in how Rails works, and into the more general Ruby community. Some other very interesting things I wasn’t really aware of, like GIT, the real-time web and push technology where also mentioned in the talks.

Today I’ve wrote a small change to Semantic MediaWiki that adds aliasing supports to it’s result formats. I’ve been working (mainly theorizing) on this for quite a while, and came up with some rather complex solutions, that where not feasible since they required PHP 5.3. The implementation I ended up with is ridiculously easy, and works with an $smwgResultAliases array. This array holds result formats as the keys, and the aliases as (array) value. A simple example of adding aliases using this array is:

$smwgResultAliases['googlemaps'] = array(‘googlemap’, ‘gmap’, ‘google’);

Here googlemap, gmap and google will do the same as googlemaps, which is the actual result format. To hold into account these aliases, I only needed to add some simple code to the getResultFormat function in SMWQueryProcessor. This is the code:

This implementation is fully working with Semantic Maps, and has fixed an issue this extension had with the display of it’s result formats on the special:ask page (see screenshot).

Anyway, my first direct contribution to SMW – yay

Since the 0.3.4 release of both Maps and Semantic Maps, I’ve been putting the little free time I have to use by working on the to-do’s for the next release. Originally this would have been 0.3.5, but I’ve added several things to it, that made me decide to make it 0.4 recently, since it involved some relatively big changes for the users. Here are a few of the most noteworthy changes that are planned for 0.4. Some of them are already completed, while still have to start on the others. For a list of changes I’ve made since 0.3.4, view revisions 57704, 57585 and 56614 (newest first).

New Features

• A new display_map parser function. This will enable you to simply display a map without any coordinates indicated on it. Since none of the marker related code will be used, this will be a more efficient and clean way of displaying maps. The main reason I’m implementing this is cause it’s a requirement for getting Maps suitable for Wikimedia Foundation usage.
• An OSM mapping service, which uses OL, but only allows OSM layers and is optimized for OSM. This is an other to-do that got prioritized by the WF usage requirements.
• Parsing of marker-specific title and label values. I actually marked the lack of this feature a bug a while ago, which I changed at the point where I remembered I simply did not add such a thing yet, and only map-wide title and label value’s got parsed.

Refactoring

• A new hook system for the parser functions, allowing the adding or removing of additional parser function support. Each mapping service will now have one class for handling on specific parser function.
• Change the geocoding functionality into a true feature hook element, so it can be easily removed. This is not easy to do, since the geocoding functionality is currently used at various points by the parser functions. So before I can start making it a feature hook element, the parser function code will have to be restructured.
• Create service hook for the geocoding feature – separate from the mapping services hook. This will allow adding and removing support for a specific geocoding service.
• Restructure parser functions: change display_point(s) and display_address(es) to display_point(s), with auto detect to see if the provided value are coordinates or addresses. Retain display_address(es) for backward compatibility, but remove from docs.

Bug Fixes

• Fix a major bug in the initialization method causing hook code to get executed at a probably wrong moment. This bug can be the cause of some weird problems that surfaced since 0.3.3.
• Fix a rather annoying issue with size of popups in Google Maps. They did not stretch far enough vertically for large contents. I’m happy I got this fixed now, since I’ve been aware of it for quite a while now, but simply could not find a solution. Yaron pointed me to a helpful blog where a certain post set me on the right track. The solution was ridiculously simple, and one line (in the JS code) long.

After the actual release, I’ll post a complete list of changes. In any case, these changes will force me to make a heap of changes to the docs, and also to the powerpoint’s of the presentations related to Maps and SM I’m giving.

Today I held a presentation about my 2 MediaWiki extension, Maps and Semantic Maps, titled Semantic Mapping with MediaWiki at the Zebrastraat in Gent. Although quite a few of the people that registered to attend didn’t show up, the presentation went well, and I’m confident I won’t have any problems with the one I’ll be giving at SMW Camp 2009. The presentation lasted for about an hour. You can get the used powerpoint presentation (.pptx) here.

Some photo’s from the presentation:

Yay! I finally got my Google Summer of Code T-shirt!

With my T-shirt, I also got my GSoC 2009 certificate, which marks the end of any involvement with GSoC for me (see original post). That is, until next year. When I reflect back to what I learned and achieved during GSoC, I’m more then happy with it. I’m planning to do another (awesome) Wikimedia Foundation project next year, if I manage to get accepted again. This (awesome) project will be more focused on changes to MW’s core, and so provide me with an (awesome) opportunity to learn more about the inner working of MW, which I’m currently still unfamiliar with. I’m not going to make my exact plans public yet, cause it’s possible the things I want to improve will already be taken care off, and I don’t want everyone to go rip-off my idea I’ve already put my name on the (awesome) participants list for MW, and was FIRST (awesome!) since I created the (awesome) page.

A very high traffic (377) song. Although it’s very short, it’s not easy to stealth, and definitely not easy to get (almost) all colours.