This week I got settled
into my new environment...getting accounts set up, getting an
ID card and meeting everybody in the lab. I met with Marie and
Blazej to figure out our project goals for the week and to discuss
the overall project. Our main task was research on the different
disciplines involved in the project and to research and choose
a programming package for graph visualization.
I spent about half the
time researching clustering, machine learning, graph theory and
artificial intelligence. The other half was taken up by my research
of different graphing packages. Until you try to find them, you
don't realize how many there are! Like most software, a majority
of them were not open source, so I could narrow down
the field significantly.
I really wanted to use
a graphing package written in C++, but alas, it was not to be.
The Java packages offered much, much more than the C ones, which
does make sense if you think about it. Java is designed for an
interactive setup, C isn't; interactivity was added on as an afterthought.
We decided
on JUNG as the package when we met with Marie on Friday, and set
out our goals for the next week. I spent the rest of the day looking
at JUNG code, documentation, and GraphML formats. I had never
actually looked into XML before, oddly enough, and I had to read
up on that before looking at GraphML formats since they are based
on XML (hence GraphML).
Saturday I
moved into a new apartment and mainly worked on this website,
of which I am rather proud. I don't like flashy websites, and
this is simple yet asthetically pleasing (if you don't think so,
tell me!).
In Other News:
Had some housing
and ID difficulties. About housing, suffice it to say that the
other people in the apartment and I were not compatible, so Nataliya
and I moved out and into our own place. Everyone, now, is very
helpful. About the ID card, after about three or four attempts,
we finally got it straightened out. Apparently my sixes look a
lot like zeros, so they got my ID number wrong. Now solved and
I can get into the lab just fine. I'm hoping to get to the grocery
store sometime so that I can start cooking!!!
