news button links to the news page
about button links to the about page
people button links to the people page
paper button links to the papers page
random button links to the random page about random things I am doing outside of work
links button links to the links page that host the links to interesting website I have visited

progrss bars for project status
Weeks  Project
             status
08/02/2007 - Week Ten                                                    
        Well it has been an interesting summer. I met some interesting people and had some interesting experiences. Speaking of people, John Keyser is such a fantastic mentor with a KICK ASS[and by that I mean cool...] personality. He made my entire summer so confortable and enjoyable. I will miss Jaerock, he is one of the student in our lab, we had endless conversations there...Moreover, we used to play racket ball everymorning at 7:30am at the recreation center. !!!!Extreme Style!!!! . I met Gabriel Dos Reis, and he blew my mind. He has an amazing career track...David, my graduate mentor...Aaron..., I will miss you guys.....and thanks to John Keyser again, my summer will end with a spicy touch: SIGGRAPHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Thus I completed my summer by:
  • Documenting all my work( Final Paper, Presentation, and Poster).
  • Giving a 30 minutes presentation to John Keyser and his graduate students. (this is something I had to do as a part of the Graphics and Geometry  Group)
  • Preparing for the poster session
  • Cleaning and documenting my code
  • Finalizing this website
I want to take this opportunity to thank the DMP people for the opportunity. I truly appreciate it and intend to honor it.

07/29/2007 - Week Nine                                                   
        This week was the most painful week of the entire summer. I had a lot of things to complete. But with a smile and an understanding mentor, things are coming together quite nicely. Thus,
  • I worked on my final presentation, and my final paper. The presentation has been completed but not the paper. There is just one section missing that I will finish tomorrow. 
  • I implemented an extension to ESOLID to help the viewer highlight the patches of the geometric solid with different colors. I wrote a random color generator to accomplish this. Some examples are posted on the random page. Now, it is easy to see where all the patches and how the solid is partioned

07/22/2007 - Week Eight                                                  
       So I finally talked to Pr Keyser about changing the goals of our project and he agreed with my suggestion. One thing to notice first is that the title of this site has changed to reflect more what I have done and been doing. The progress bar has changed and is more accurate now.  The "About" page elaborate on the new focus of the research too.  I have also updated the the table on the "random" page too. Beside updating this website, I
  • have completed the Option User Interface(as a matter of fact, I am adding more features to it since I want to smoothe the user experience). Using this interface, I was able to produce complex models easily(not very, but better than  before). I will post an image of it on the "random" page. When I was running another test, I ran into a bug in ESOLID. Pr Keyser and I are going to look at it on Monday when he comes back since the bug is buried deep inside ESOLID.  If I understood that code well I could I have fixed it. As a matter of fact, I gave it a try but I ended up crashing the entire system all the time.
  • wrote the abstract to my final paper. It is posted on the "paper" page
  • implemented a routine that can perform a list of boolean operations given a list of solids. I have set a file format that define the order of operations with the name of each solid(you can think of it as a file format that defines a sum. The content would look like "1 + 4 + 4 - 6". In my case, the numbers are the solids and the signs are the boolean operators(Union, Difference...) ). In this case, I have used xml again. Here is an example. A nice feature that I added is the backup file. Let us say ESOLID crashes while performing a list of operations(due to degeneracies), and you fix the problem. You do not have to restart your experiment from scratch, you can actually pick it up from where it crashed by just running the backup file. This feature really comes in handy when modeling complicated items.

07/15/2007 - Week Seven                                                 
       One thing I really enjoyed this week is sleep. For the first time since I have been here, I was able to sleep well. I woke up fully rested, ready to grap the devil by the tail, take on the entire universe...but mostly ready to crush the bugs in my code.
  • I am almost done with debugging(I fixed a lot of my bugs and my module is more stable now) and I am doing major testings. However, things are getting very complicated. I mean that when I get an error, I do not know if it is my code that is faulty or if it is my test case that is faulty since it is difficult to visualize the input. But I am working on a solution.
  • I am also working(almost done) on a test driver module to facilitate the assessment of more complex datasets. This module is just an environment(option user interface) that maintains(reads solid from a file, write solid to a file, import a list of solids, remove a solid from the list, etc...) a list of solids in a directory. 
  • Another thing I have been working on during my free time is a Graphical User Interface that will wrap around ESOLID, smoothing the user experience.
  • I also want to mention that the goals of this project changed. We are focusing more on getting the this input-output module working instead of the visualization of an exact output. I shall talk about it with Pr Keyser this week and once we clear redefined our new goals, this website will dress differently.
  • Attended seminars and I went to Harry Potter, Transformers(The Linux Action Show guys were right, Megatron is definitely running Linux and the Decepticons are running OSX...and the tiny unstable little decepticon is running Windows Vista...LOL)  

07/9/2007 - Week Six                                                       
        Wow, I cannot believe this is my seventh week here. I love College Station and I would not mind coming here for graduate school...The people are quite welcoming, the weather is queerly unstable, it is like winter inside every building and most important, the professors and the mentors are amazingly chill-axed...This makes a gargantuan difference especially if you are immersed in this jungle attempting to dig your way to your utopia...I still have not heard from the people at the Hollistic Garden...I think it is time to give them a call again...Hmm...let me see...July 4th I was here at work, I went to see Transformers[robots in disguise]...the weekend was cool, I stayed in Saturday to read and play games...Sunday I came to face my pointers and ESOLID issues...In the mean time,
  • I finally found the right XML library for me. It has been written by a belgian(Yahh Belgium) guy. Anyway, it is very fast, freaking small(2 small files) and most important very very easy to use. I love it because it has been very intuitive. I easily integrated it into my project files. 
  • Getting the XML parser to work seamlessly with my project files was just the beginning of my problems. For five days, I have been fixing memory and pointers problem in my code and in E-SOLID code. The annoying thing has been that E-SOLID is heavy(about 45 000 lines of code) and I maintain it alone(since the last person who was working on it graduated. Pr Keyser wrote E-SOLID almost 7 years ago, it is difficult for him to help). Also, it takes forever to pinpoint errors in my code since I do not have a nice debugger. For some reasons, Netbeans, does not do that very well...and that is substancially irritating...[but I still love that IDE...it is very cool and it has some very promising features] Hopefully, things are progressing(slowly but nicely...at least my mentor seems to like which is always a ++ )
  • Went to the GRE class
  • update this website



07/2/2007 - Week Five                                                     
          Hmmm...this weekend was the first one I did not come to work...I stayed in to watch TV and play some old games. That felt good after the kind of annoying week I had. So I
  • finally finished implementing my module(C++ class) that will generate the new E-SOLID output format into a file. Due to the complexity of the geometry's representation in E-SOLID, the output file becomes really big( the one I am working with is 2.4MB). Luckily that did not mean anything to Dr Keyser, he loved the format design. He told me to keep that format no matter what. That was nice.
  • started the implementation of the input module. But I ran into some serious and annoying issues. The library I am using(tinyXML) cannot parse my output file. It tells me there is an error where there is not. I think it is a bug in the library. I spent days  trying find out what was wrong I did have any answer. I am trying a new library right now. If I hope this one will be smart enough to point me where error is. If not, I would redesign a new output format and write my own parser.
  • attended the GRE class
  • worked on this website


06/24/2007 - Week Four                                                     
         The week has been quite dry. Well I am also supposed to have fun(like doing something outside of computing) but I cannot seem to find something that suits me at this moment. Our appartment is an island in an ocean of bars and clubs...naaaah!!!that is not my type...I rather drink with friends at my place while playing videogames. hmmm I am actually thinking of buying a controller at BestBuy in order to play Super Mario Bros on ZSNES...The truth is I have not made enough efforts to enjoy myself. Luckily I have met Kathy Flores, one of the most wonderful people on Earth. She opened the door and show me the way to Funtopia...hmmm...hmmm...I mean to some entertaining activities. The one that I think I will enjoy the most is: The Holistic Garden. I do not know yet what it is, but it looks like heaven based on the images I have seen. I will try and go there next weekend and so that I can talk about it next time...Thus what did I accomplish this week?
  • Defined the format of my new output. The goal here was to choose a format that will easily allow I/O of the geometry.  I have chosen an XML format. The reason is that I do not need to do my own parsing. There are already libraries out there that will complete that task. The question now is: which one? I was looking for something small and light so that I can easily modify it if the need arises. The popular library I found was "libxml++". The problem I had with this one is that I could not make it work. The GCC compiler could not see it. I spent an entire day trying to figure it out....I gave up later that day...It was horrible...Thus after hours of scavenging the entire world wide web, I found tinyXML...It was love at first sight...it was so tiny...I just needed to include 6 files into my code to use it...It did not have all the functionalities I wanted but it was easy to implement them.
  • Set up a project file. I use the Netbeans IDE for coding...It is not VS.NET(and it should not be ) but it does all the things I need to do quite well. It makes it easy to compile the "gi-normous" amount of code I have...It also compile only the updated files(this is great so that I do not have to wait 5min everytime I want to recompile). With Netbeans, it was easy to set up my code in a separate directory(which makes debugging quite easy).
  • Worked on a module that will create and write my new output to a file. I learned a valuable lesson when the entire software crashed and I could not find the error. !!!Always back_up your code everytime you have a solid workable version!!!   I finally found out what the error was
  • Went the GRE class...
  • update this website
06/16/2007 - Week Three                                                   
        Pr Keyser finally came back from his trip. 99% of the confusion cloud has cleared up. There are still some residues left but I can see now. Indeed, I can see the direction I shall take, the final destination and all the check points on my path. Thus, it has been an interesting week, I have:
  • met with Pr Keyser and talked about the project and my role in it. We have clearly defined the goals, tasks and deliverables. check here for more details about this(it is at the bottom). I have also posted a time table of deliverables here.
  • We've also went over the papers I have read.
  • done some OpenGL tutorials. This time I focused more on Bezier Curves and surfaces since they are relevant to my project.
  • played around with ESOLID in order to understand its input format and its output format. I was able to create new inputs and generate new outputs. The main frustration I have had with inputs is that they are specified in a text file. In other words one cannot see how and where the solids stand in 3D space so that input errors could be easily spotted and fixed. One of my goal is to write a simple program to visualize the input or even a little GUI that wraps around ESOLID. For the output files, they were too long to easily to get the hang of it. So a little meeting with Pr Keyser helped me tremendously.
  • gone to another GRE class and....
  • attended a PhD dissertation defense. It was cool and cruel. hmmm...I do not know what to make of it yet...but when I do, I will post it here. It was an interesting topic. It was about  Open Source Software Maturity Model based on Linear Regression and Bayesian Analysis. I was surprised that I understood almost everything painlessly... 
  • updated this website. The progress bars on the left represents the status of the project. The first one(left) is the amount of time I have spent here in College station(with respect to the 10 weeks I have to complete the project). The second one(right) depicts how much of the project has been completed(with respect to the deliverables). One can check the time table to find out which tasks have been complete.
Man I need to go to watch a solid movie...I miss the movies and the Fairly OddParents...

06/09/2007 - Week Two                                                   
       Time is flying by so quickly...I cannot believe this is the second week I have been here in College Station...it always seems like I got here yesterday...May be it is because I have not accomplished something big yet...I am still in the warm up phase...This week I have:
  • read three papers which can be found on the 'papers' page. They were not heavy readings but they were quite challenging. The biggest problem I had was terminology. I usually understood the main idea but the details were too confusing. I even tried looking for some of them online but I did not find concrete examples and explanations. Pr Keyser is coming back Monday and I hope next week, things would be clearer.
  • done some openGL coding in order to be better at it. I have been wrong, I am finding it quite difficult to get use to it...But that will pass with more practice
  • attended a GRE practice exam session and I shall say it was not fun but informative. We just took a test for two hours.
  • looked at the ESOLID source code in order to understand it. That has been very difficult and confusing since I do not know which part of the code to focus on. Hopefully everything will be clear next week.
  • worked on this website 
So, I am still floating in a cloud of confusions, and hopefully, the return of Pr Keyser will blow those clouds away and make my horizon brighter.

06/03/2007 - Week One                                                        
       I am finally in Texas, and the first thing I have learned at the airport was not to mess with Texas. It is not as hot[yet] as people told me it would be. As the matter of fact, they made it feel like I was coming close to hell...It is actually nice in the morning and at night which are the two times of the day I usually come out... Anyway, the Texas A&M Campus is very nice and has a lot of scary and big building. Our apartment is shiznet cool and the other students are even shiznet cooler. So my mentor, John Keyser,  is not here and will not be back til the week after next. Thus, I am just having a good time, drinking beer, watching and chasing the girls in our building....Naaah I wish that was the case[ or may be not...]. The following is an outline of what I have done this week:
  • Set up my office, with my computer[Thank you, David for the huge a** monitor]. I have installed Ubuntu Linux 7.04(Feisty which is quite unstable right now)
  • Downloaded the sources code of (E-SOLID) the tool I would be extending and ran sample programs
  • Played around with OpenGL since it is the language tool I would be using to implement my extension to ESOLID
  • Started reading the paper ESOLID: A system for Exact Boundary Evaluation 
  • Worked on this website
I think that is about...Oh yeah....I also ate a lot of mexican food...