Mimir:Spring 2014 Sergiu Mihu Log


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"It has been raining all day on my elephant skull and also elsewhere." - Diary of a genius, Salvador Dali

Week Ending February 4th, 2014

 * Notes:

I did not post anything here, as we were waiting for information.
 * Comments:

Week Ending February 11, 2014

 * Notes:

I did not post anything here, as we were waiting for more details on the project.
 * Comments:

Week Ending February 18, 2014
We just had a first meeting after the class, discussing about issues that we might have during book writing. I created a google group, UNH COMP825 Grads, that should help us with discussing issues related to the Mimir project and share information. I posted pertinent information related to what we, the graduates, are supposed to do related to the Mimir project, to the best of my knowledge. Regarding the weekly meetings, my idea was to have one person for each meeting to take notes and post them on the corresponding page of the Mimir project. For the first meeting, Eric was the one assigned with the task. We decided that I should post an outline for the book. Based on the borrowed books from prof Jonas and the course syllabus I posted an outline by Friday, February 14, here: 
 * Notes:

On the same page, it seems Eric beat me to it, is a model for how a chapter should look like.

More a concern: I would like for everybody to stick with their assigned task, not to step on each others toes. It's a group project, not a simple 10 page document, and we should be careful not to take on the same problems and give different solutions in different places, as one group member does not know that another one is working on the same thing. We should be careful with the content of the book, also, not to discuss the same thing multiple times in multiple chapters.
 * Comments:

Week Ending February 25, 2014
I finally managed to get someone to apply the IP fix to the wiki, so we can access and work on it in a timely manner, according the 2014 communication speeds.
 * Notes:

As I was informed, it is recommended to have a look at my colleagues logs, and maybe respond to some of the issues.

Erol has an excellent idea on an issue register. A way of implementing this would be to simply have a page on wiki that can be edited by all of us, and contains the issues. Each of us could fill this page with relevant issues to the project, and can even update their status, or pull them off the page when/if they were solved. On the other hand, I believe Erol could read all weekly logs and select the issues everyone posts from there. I believe it's a very good idea to have the issues cataloged, this way we can keep track of them and their resolution.

Here's a link to a resource I found, might be relevant to someone (it is posted on the discussion group, everybody got this about a week ago, this post here is just for the "official" record): 


 * Comments:

Yes, I am worried, like other colleagues about the process, about issues we might encounter, about no content being written yet. I believe the end result will be ok, though.

Erol thought it is required for everybody to read everybody's log about the Mimir project, so he posted important information on his log, information that assumes everybody reads his log. I believe that important information for everybody should be communicated in a way that the sender should do his best for everybody to receive it: like sending an email, at least an email with the link to the page where this information is posted. We have the discussion group, every group post gets to each member as email.

I really hope we can meet this week. It doesn't have to be all of us present to the meeting. Partial meeting is better than not at all. It is difficult for all of us to be free at the same time, especially since most of my graduate colleagues are working.

Week Ending March 4, 2014

 * Notes:

We had a nice meeting this week, figuring out where to add two new chapters to the book. We just didn't inform prof Jonas about it, so the pages for the new two chapters are not created.

Anyways, this seems to be going well. I just asked for an update on Mimir pages, to include the two new chapters.


 * Comments:

Joshua did a good job on the notes section for our first chapter, but in order to fill in the book content with relevant information I will have to do a little bit more research - the notes content is not enough for a book.

I was just looking on pubpages for the homework file, and I saw a tweet request about a poster draft. It seems it's due tonight. I really wish we were informed verbally about it, and of course, sooner. Anyways, it seems Daniel and Casey have done a poster before and they would probably be a good choice to write the abstract, and then we can all jump in and work on the final outcome.


 * Feedback:

Week Ending March 18, 2014

 * Notes:

This was the spring break week. On the other hand, work never ends.

I am working on integrating the variables section (my team's work) in the content of the book. We have to discuss about splitting the book content. At this point I am worried that my contribution will be only a part of the "Overview" chapter, so I will probably need to take on the entire chapter. It's going to be a bit more difficult to come up with the content for this chapter than for one related to a paradigm - my opinion.

From another point of view the "Overview" chapter could be extended as a "Part I" of the book, comprising description and details on: categories, usability, paradigms, other details (like variables) - as chapters. I don't know at this point if this chapter will have enough content to be extended to the "part" rank, but I believe if it happens, it will only benefit to the flow of the book: Introduction - Overview - Paradigms (with details) - Application. I still believe the Overview should/could be raised to "part" rank - I have to discuss this further with the other graduates and dr. Jonas.
 * Good thing the Wiki saves page history, this way I could go back and see the initial structure of the content.


 * Comments:

Week Ending March 25, 2014
There was not much activity from my part for the last week, as I was busy with two homeworks and one mid-term. Anyways, I am thinking about bringing the subject of who will work on which chapter, as it seems right now it is a bit unclear and that doesn't help with the project advance.
 * Notes:

I believe Erol's one step away of falling into a programming languages mirage. I would say at this point, with the variety of resources he studies, he's getting an actual philosophical view over the entire matter. I am curious where that will lead.--Sgm10 (talk) 04:29, 22 March 2014 (PDT)
 * Comments:

Week Ending April 1, 2014
We just had a meeting on Wednesday. It's great that we discussed about making clear chapter assignments to each of us. I will take care of the Overview chapter. We still need to determine who's going to do the introduction.
 * Notes:

The Overview chapter should contain language generations, variables and grammar - not in depth, but a few references. Variables will be treated in more detail in each language chapter; grammar will be treated extensively in a later chapter.

I started filling in the content of the Overview chapter.


 * Comments:

Week Ending April 8, 2014
I continued filling the content of the Overview chapter. I only had the subtitles filled in last week for chapter sections.
 * Notes:

I used the content from the lecture notes page for the Paradigms and Variables sections. I have to fill in the Language Generations section and figure out what content to select for the Grammar section.


 * Comments:

Week Ending April 15, 2014
Not too much time to work on the Mimir project this week due to other projects deadlines. The Mimir poster was one of these projects and I've been working on it. It's due on 4/16.
 * Notes:

I have to finish the Paradigms section.


 * Comments:

Week Ending April 22, 2014
We finished and turned in the Mimir poster. Thanks to helping team members (pretty much all of them). Need to write the outline for the note taking process for the Regular Expressions lecture. I did write the outline of the lecture, Forrest should be good to go on filling in the rest.
 * Notes:


 * Comments:

Week Ending April 29, 2014
After the weekly meeting, I will take a shot at the book introduction section.
 * Notes:

On the lecture notes: having troubles with Forrest focusing on filling in the content. In the other hand, I was informed that since we are a team, I should pitch in if one of my team members does not have time to do his job. Well, rules always change, right? I just hope I'll be able to motivate Forrest to fill in some content...


 * Comments:

Week Ending May 6, 2014
After two weeks, I finally got some lecture notes from Forrest on regular expressions. It seems getting people to communicate, for some reason, must be really difficult. I asked him multiple times if he needs help with adding content, if he's busy with other things, as we are a team; every time he says he's fine, but I see little or no updates on the content. I will have to take care of this, too.
 * Notes:

Looking forward to the coming exam on Wednesday. I really hope I we'll have until the 16th of May to fill in the Mimir content.


 * Comments:

These are notes for later than week ending on May 6:

- I could not focus on the notes due to personal issues, but I am reviewing them right now - Time to finish up the Mimir content that was assigned to me - send lecture notes for review to prof Jonas, wait for feedback and update if necessary

5/20: - updated the Mimir Overview chapter - updated the structure on the Mimir book - helped Casey - so chapter structure is consistent throughout the book.

- still working on finishing flex/bison project. I really need to do this, it is very challenging and I have to finish it!

5/21: - really wish I had more details about what was the purpose of implementing a parser in Bison (like use ASTs or not). Using ASTs makes one to take a different approach starting from the beginning of the project. Too late for that now... I will focus on finishing the Java parser and that's it. It is very frustrating to work 6 days on something just to realize you did the wrong thing, and in order to complete your task you would need to start all over again. I would not care about this if I did not have a deadline tomorrow... or today. It is very frustrating not to know all the facts before starting to work. I guess that's what research is all about (?).