GlitchHound

So, Thursday was my first completely missed post (and Friday my second). Not even a stub of a post to say that I wasn’t posting. I didn’t explode, nor did the blog go to hell. So, I suppose I can stop making such useless posts, at least on occasion. Also, I can rest easy on Monday when I fly across the great pond known as the Atlantic Ocean.

That said, I actually did make progress on MATLAB on Friday. I made a LocalAtmosphere class. When instantiated with a no-arg constructor, it creates an object storing all of the default values for an International Standard Atmosphere day. When instantiated with 4 arguments (I don’t have to hand which order, but I’m pretty sure it’s sea-level temperature, sea-level pressure, tropopause-level temperature, and tropopause height) it will create an atmosphere matching the conditions for your day. This will make it easier to calculate the output values required, which rely on comparisons between both simply due to the nature of the instrumentation in an aircraft.

Slight annoyance moving from Java to MATLAB, constructors can’t be overloaded. Where in Java you can simply define MyConstructor() to do one thing and MyConstructor(arg1,arg2,…,argN) to do another and it will pick which one to use based on the input arguments, in MATLAB you have to do this manually by defining the constructor as MyConstructor(arg1,arg2,…,argN) and checking within the code how many arguments were given. Really, again, it’s a pretty small concern, but for organization purposes I greatly prefer Java’s method of handling the situation.

Don’t expect any progress for the next couple of days, and I’m not sure what progress will be like when I’m home. But, well, you’ll hear if anything happens.

What’s that?

Yes, that’s right, this is actually going to be a decent post. I made some more progress on my MATLAB code. The aircraft code is pretty much finished, and I’ve also tested it finally. Annoying MATLAB note number something-more-than-one, when you want to edit a value (known as a property) in a MATLAB object, your method needs to return an object which must be passed to it as an argument. No simple object.setThis call, no, it has to be setThis(value, object) and it has to be defined as returning that same object.

In the end it’s not really a huge deal though. And my code is working. I haven’t tested parsing a string to an aircraft object (should be quick to do so), but it is properly producing the intended string for saving to a text file. It’s also creating the object just as intended, including initializing the calculated values. I haven’t tested my error checking (which is kind of clunky), which allows a user to override the default calculations, but asks if the numbers don’t match the expected values. It’s clunky because there are three numbers. The first dialog allows you to select yes to import all of the conflicting values, but there’s no option to say no to all. There are a maximum of three options (yes, no, yes for all) on the dialog, and yes, technically, I could add a no for all on the second prompt, but it only saves one click. In hindsight, though, I /should/ make the yes to all option saved in the properties of the aircraft.

Anyway, that’s done except, maybe, for some fine-tuning. Next up is probably an Atmosphere class, to store the constants used for atmospheric calculations given your specific (rather than ISA) values. And then I think, integration to a GUI!

Woo-hoo?

Well, that said, I’m off for now. Let’s see if I make any progress tomorrow.

Well, I got some stuff done. My aircraft class is more well-defined than before and essentially ready for integration to my (still nonexistent) main program. I also finished all of the assignments I hoped to have ready for tomorrow (take that, procrastination!).

That said, very little time today for much else. Expect some more progress tomorrow and hopefully a longer blog post explaining it.

So I added a listing of all of the books I’ve used in my studies, with a little description of my opinion on them. There should be more than enough information to try to track down a copy in your library or off the web. You’ll of course find this information to the right hand side of the page, where it says “Pages,” underneath that thing you’ll never check called “About.” Yes, it’s the link labeled “Books” and it’s not so bad, really. Deep down, under that never-changing exterior, is a bubbly mush of happiness.

Speaking of bubbly mushes, that’s roughly the stage my MATLAB code is currently in. It’s not capable of much of anything except taking an indistinct form. It’ll get there, I promise. At the very least, I have some time specifically set aside for it tomorrow. Yay, programming progress!

I expect to add links to some of the tools I use (IDEs, mostly) on yet another page. I’m not sure if Blogspot allowed pages, but WordPress makes them obvious and I like the concept, so expect a couple more before I’m fully done adding content.

Aside from that, well, I’ve got nothing of use. I’ll post tomorrow and I swear it’ll be back to ranting about compile-time errors or some such.

The blog is essentially finalized. I may be getting a different, darker theme, because I’m cool like that and prefer my blacks and dark grays.

I went through and manually updated all of my posts, changing their categories to tags and then removing the categories. Then I cleared out the empty categories. Then I saw the link, under the categories box, saying “Use our automated Category to Tag tool!” and slapped myself on the forehead.

After that I set up a new category hierarchy and updated all of the categories. It should be pretty easy to navigate all of my posts with the category listing. Oh, and, for the record, except for my couple of day off/procrastination posts, they are indeed all listed as Technology/Computers/Programming (something or other) so yes, all of those include all of my posts.

No real coding done today. I was a bit busy watching my girlfriend play FFXIII… again. I thought about MATLAB, mostly the organization of it into classes, but nothing set in stone.

Tomorrow. I swear. I’ll have something useful done tomorrow. And interesting to boot.

Okay, useful at least.

This blog is officially under construction for the next day or two. I’ve moved everything over from Blogger to the new blogs.scienceforums.net, and while it all worked nicely on the visible end, there’s a bit I want to edit under-the-hood to get this working the way I’d like it to. Mostly, changing what was imported as categories to tags, maybe doing some formatting, and definitely setting up a couple more pages. I also need to attempt to track down all of my links and update them to the new address, which isn’t nicer than the old, but I have more of an attachment to the host.

Maybe I’ll attract a little bit more of an audience here, too.

As practically a side note, I did manage to get an aircraft class set up in the MATLAB code, which will hold the user-input values for my next assignment, and which will also serve as the class to be exported if I have the time to set that up.

So, this coming week is the last week of classes before Easter break, and also the only week standing between me and US soil for a little time at home.

That means that this week is the final week for a lot of projects. Pro/E was one of them, but that’s done. I have one assignment due Wednesday, and technically two due Friday (one of those being MATLAB, which will probably be pushed back). Incidentally, I have a friend coming to visit on Wednesday.

So that puts me in a predicament. I’d like to not be doing any sort of (boring) work while my friend’s here, so I need to get at least the second project which is due on Friday done by Wednesday. Obviously the other assignment needs to be done by Wednesday. MATLAB, therefore, is technically my last priority. Expect to see that reflected in this weekend’s turnout. I want to get at least a bare minimum done each day, with an arbitrary goal being something like one class/object per day. But the main priority is other work. And that means, little news on this front.

See you tomorrow.

What’s that? No MATLAB code today? Who’s surprised by that? *Looks out over the crowd* I’m not seeing any hands. Oh, I’m not seeing any crowd, either.

Regardless, I’m still posting. Aren’t I a trooper? Today I did absolutely nothing. Not even gonna talk about some decision I made. I have not discussed any code aside from talking about the idiocy of MATLAB’s ridiculously expensive compiler.

I /did/ play a good game of L4D2 versus. I /did/ get a hell of a lot done with CAD in school today. But nothing code-related. And that means that this post, while short, is done.

Considering the average number of days in a month (in a non-leap year), rounded to the nearest integer (just truncated in a leap year. Yes, I did the math on this) is 30, I’m considering myself one full month of daily blog posts into this. For me, that’s pretty impressive, as I’m usually the kind of guy who commits himself to something and then gets bored of it.

That said, I have literally accomplished NOTHING else today. Programming-wise, at least. I did get a new best answer for actual Java-related help on Y! A, but otherwise, nada. Zippo. Zilch. Get the picture? And here I thought I’d have time to do something today.

I did make one decision. In order to practice my object-oriented programming in this upcoming MATLAB assignment, I’m going to strive to achieve well-isolated code. I intend to program the essential workings first, getting the calculations encapsulated and finished, and then work on integrating them into the GUI and everything else. With Java, this is how I program already. With MATLAB, I programmed everything last time top-down. I built the GUI, then made the callbacks, then made the functions. It was actually ridiculous, in hindsight.

Doing things this way will give me the two-fold advantage of having the opportunity to play around with different arrangements and also allowing me to throw together a basic version if I find the optional stuff is taking too long.

And… that’s all I’ve done today. Well, better than nothing. And still, a milestone! I’m happy.

Did some thinking on MATLAB today. Not content with just doing a GUI, I figure I’m going to implement a simple sort of file I/O system whereby when a user enters constant values it can save them, and then reload them on a later start of the program. The inputs required include some that will be different on each logon, but things like the wingspan, chord length, and (empty) mass (and weight) will always be the same. As a result, it would save time in the long run, assuming, of course, that this program is usable beyond the marks it earns me, to be able to save an aircraft configuration to reference by name at a later point. It should also save time.

I looked over the functions today and, while not simple, they certainly look possible. Since my Java program has yet to actually produce output, and that output is going to be database-oriented, I figured it’d be a good idea to learn the basic .txt input/output procedures. MATLAB is object-oriented, so I should be able to manage stretching the assignment into a learning experience for Java, even if it isn’t exact.

Depending on how much time we have (the lecturer suggested he may be pushing the deadline back on account of the actually massive workload we have between his assigning the project and the due date, including this being a solid week of CAD training), I was considering doing a bit more optimization work on the first assignment and packaging both assignments together into an “Aerospace Tools” package, with a central launcher accessing both. But that’s entirely optional and will only happen if I do have an extra three weeks (given the holidays starting the day after the current due date, this is possible).

I’m still reading through Yahoo! Answers, having a good time of it. I actually got chosen as a best answer, and the best part of it is that it was the only question I answered half-heartedly. It was someone asking for a good free place to make a blog, and I simply recommended blogspot // blogger here. I like to think I’ve helped some people out with their code, but I know I won’t get some best answers simply because I refuse to actually do people’s homework for them, instead choosing to try to explain how they can do it.

That’s all for today, though. Tomorrow’s the only short day we have this week, so maybe I’ll get some coding done.