I bought a VOIP service from BrainTel so that my folks could easily get in touch with me (and vice versa, but the BrainTel service is really crappy, and deserves another blog entry). I had specially bought a Nokia E51 which has builtin WiFi and a SIP phone as I was under the impression that it would be very easy to connect to the internet at Chalmers campus. Chalmers uses an online web based authentication system called NOMAD which is tied into its RADIUS/AAA servers, the problem is that this authentication is webpage based, ie one has to sign in on a webpage as a HTTP POST request. After some searching around I found a Win32 Application named NomadMonitor which does the same. Following is some code snippet for its HTTP request.
bool NomadWindow::DoWebLogin()
{
Lock lock(criticalSection);
HTTPRequest request("NomadMonitor","login.nomad.chalmers.se","/",HTTPRequest::HTTPS,HTTPRequest::POST);
HTTPRequest::cgivector variables;
variables.push_back(HTTPRequest::cgipair("action","Login"));
variables.push_back(HTTPRequest::cgipair("login",username));
variables.push_back(HTTPRequest::cgipair("password",password));
variables.push_back(HTTPRequest::cgipair("org","Radius"));
request.SetCGIVariables(&variables);
request.SendHTTPRequest();
std::string response = request.GetResponse();
if(response.find("You are logged in.") != -1)
{
return true;
}
else if(response.find("Login failed.") != -1)
{
return false;
}
else
{
throw new MyException("Unknown response from server");
}
}
I was actually thinking of making a small midlet following this simple code, but then I found out devicescape which is exactly what I needed. This software lets you manage your wifi access points through a single interface and will hopefully login me to Chalmers nomad automatically. It’s funny actually as I was searching for Nomad and Chalmers on the internet and I came across an entry in their forums where another student from chalmers was discussing some problmes in using devicescape with MacBook at Chalmers campus. So some times you find the best things when you are not looking for them 
Edit: I have successfully tested device scape on Symbian S60, but for some reason the latest version doesn’t let me use keypad to enter user info (or any thing else). So instead I am using an older version 2.0.6. Now I will never have to sign in for NOMAD on my phone again
Edit I later got the latest version of the devisecaspe’s program from devicescape forums, which is signed only for my mobile (using MEI number). And it is working perfectly for me now
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I have been working in a group of 8 student developers for my Agile Devlopment in teams course. Since this is a process course, the focus is on practice and not on results (one would hope). For second week of work session I volunteered to be the tracker. The main problem which I observed so far was that the documentation was all haphazard. I am not used to working with papers and a previous experience of mine with time tracking is also a big motivation (I really hate to pinpoint time tracking, but it is useful in some scenarios).
At the beginning of each iteration we have a bunch of user stories. Each user story has atleast a description and a set of acceptance tests. These acceptance tests have description and an expected result. Then each of these user stories have a priority for the current iteration. Each user story can be devided into tasks, but this is some thing best done by the programming team. Each User story has an estimate and so does each task. The estimate is usually in number of man hours but it can be less (and it is certainly in our case) In XP since every thing is done in pairs, therefore each task (and probably all with the same user story) go to a particular pair based on bidding (who so ever bids the least time gets the task).
After completion of a task/user story, some one from the team (probably the customer representitive) has to check each user story against it’s acceptance tests.
Each week any two personnel from the teams act as Customer representetive and Tracker for the project. The tracker is suppose to keep track of all the metrics involved in the project. The idea is to make a simple web/desktop based software which can do all of these simple things with no hassle. And since this course is all about agility this software should be up and running over the weekend.
I am thinking of using Ruby on Rails. This would finally be my chance to work with RoR. Perhaps all the facilities are readily provided by other open source software like Trac, but there are many features like time tracking (like in basecamp) which I would like to see in an Agile Devlopment Tracking software. This is just an idea for now , lets see if I am able to cook some thing nice
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I am posting this entry after first 1.5 week of classes. As of now I have already started working in group for my Agile Devlopment Course. The project is to apply Agile Devlopment and extreme programming practices while devloping a student project called Vivace. It’s a MIDI editor made in Java. Studying extreme programming and agile devlopment formally is new thing for me and I hope it would help me in better understanding of these topics becuase in practice we rarely get to do this right (we all brew in our own recepies which make the whole process so hetrogenous).
As for my other course of Algorithms, we have already skipped all the Mathematics and already gone on to discuss realworld algorithms. I have not yet bought the book though as I plan to read excrepts of it from Google books and probably borrow the book from library for missin pages.
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On Sep 1st 2008 I have started a new chapter in my life, Grad School. I look back and think that it took almost the double amount of time for me to get to this point. Many of my peers started Grad School back in Fall of 2004. I have had my ups and downs in life but this is definetly an up. My program was greeted by the faculty head and then by the program director. Later we were greeted by CEO of Chalmers University. It was truly reaffirming that Chalmers was a correct choice for all of us when she counted all the positive aspects of Chalmers. Here at Chalmers they take student input very seriously and change the workings of university based on that. The CEO especially mentioned that there would be absolutly no compromise on equality and every one would get the same level of attention which they truly deserve.
After all the talks it was time for me to get keys to my new room. Here are some pics which i snapped before moving in. It’s an OK sized room and I am glad that I got it on time. After this I completed my registration and all the related activities. As of now I have already attended atleast 2 lectures of both of the courses I have to take this study period (ie for next two months). One is Algorithms and other is Agile Devlopement Methodologies. The latter is more of a team/lab work than a course (so it would be just like working for a company).
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I came to Gothenburg on 25th only to attend some CIRC activities. CIRC is a volunteer organization here at Chalmers campus whose aim is to help international students adjust to Swedish/European culture. I have so far attended their Campus tour and Phadders evening (small silly fun and games with a senior student). I am planning to go to their city tour and to Leisberg park tour this weekend.
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I am posting this blog entry from Slottsskogens Youth Hostel, Gothenburg, Sweden. I departed from Lahore on a red eye Lufthansa flight and reached gothenburg in around 10 in the morning. By coincidence a friend of mine from GIKI who was also going back to Chalmers was also on the flight. We had a very short stay in Frankfurt where I got entered in the European immigration system. The immigration was painless compared to US where one has to go through a long list of things, including being fingerprinted. Once we reached Gothenburg I was surprised that there was no checking on the airport, we were absolutely on our own.
I got my self on a airport shuttle to central bus station and from there I bought a 310 SEK unlimited transit pass for Gothenburg. From there I got to my youth hostel. Here are some pics from this youth hostel.
Edit: (March 22, 2008) These are some of the books which I had to use for my program, most of the teachers don’t have a fixed reading list and one can get away with buying any books.
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In my Summer of code project I have to use already established DAOs (well some times adding a few tid bids) and using them to replace JDBC code. Testing DAOs with Hibernate tools made it alot easy to play with both HQL and criteria, but I was stuck when it came to injection. It seems that OpenNMS uses lots of technologies like JMX which I have never even touched before
attached is a log of a conversation which I had with a devel on #opennms. Based on this conversation I some how was able to bug the devel into writing all of this into a wiki page.
There was one small confusion though, I was working with Poller which was infact Pollerd, there being a naming inconsistency. Following this wiki page I should be now able to easily inject Dao’s to my required daeomons and other classes.
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My summer of code midterm review was done and I am some what content with it. Although I have not been able to achieve much tangibally but I have covered some ground. My project involves some very interesting things most of which I had not touched before in my previous encouter with Spring/Hibernate. For now I am focused on finishing the task.
I am behind schedule so I am thinking of following tweaks to schedule. As you probably already know that I would be moving to Sweden soon, I will be going to another city and get some shopping done so I wont be working on 22nd – 25th. so skipping these days and just barely meeting the review deadline of 1st Sep 2008 I have a good 25 days left with me. I will be finalizing some stuff in the last days of August which I admit would be tricky as I would be in a totally different place.
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Since my all time favorite tv show finished off in its 10th season I had been waiting for its Direct-to-DVD movies. Here in Pakistan we get all movies by hook or by crook since there is not much copyright protection or for that matter proper distribution of films going on any way. I had decided that once these movies come out I will surely buy them (to support guys like Robert C Cooper who spend so much time and money to bring this entertainment to us) but alas I have not been able to give back to the SG makers. However thanks to Bit torrent I was able to download Stargate : Ark of truth and later to my surprise buy a pirated copy of Stargate : Continuum from a local DVD shop.
I found both films to be amazing, although I liked the story of Ark of truth a bit more than Continuum. I really thought that Jack would have more part to play in Continuum, but it was not enough. Overall I think there is a good chance that if more SG movies are made, they would be hailed and the mythology will catch momentum like Star Trek.
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I have recieved my stamped residence permit today. I spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to trace it. By calling the Embassy, FedEx and even going to the Embassy. The lady who talked to me from the Swedish embassy was very bitchy. I in fact needed my passport for another journey late this month so I was concerned that Swedish embassy is sitting on it for a while. I an extremely bitchy tone she said that if you need your visa right now I can send it to you unstamped. I said no thank you as I didn’t want to risk delaying the process.
Today I got this on my FedEx status
So I went to FedEx office to pickup my visa. There was a very small queu of people recieving visas back. My visa has been granted from Aug 1 2008 till Oct 1 2009. After getting visa , accomodation and plane ticket now the only thing left is packing.
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