More thoughts

So here's a visual of the optimum way of doing this, simplified (the values radiating from the center of each fire would really be something like 15, 14.9, 14.8, 14.7... to zero)



One way to go at this is from the other direction. When a fire is placed, there's no way I can pre-fill every possible coordinate that the fire could heat. But maybe if I simplify it...

Look at the world as several layers of grids. The largest would have few cells (12x12?). The smallest would have a huge number, and get down to very local info. Have limited number of layers (5?10?)

When a fire is placed, is would be sized to the largest possible layer (maybe if it contains a % of that layer. If no %, then go the smallest). It would ONLY be placed on one grid at a time.

When a temperature calc is requested, the system would find which grid the user is on for each layer, and sum the temps in those grids (so 5 layers would return a max of 5 cells to calc - for example: world wide, regional, state, city, and local. If no value had been placed in the local cell, then it wouldn't get a value for that cell (or it would be zero).

So ANY fire placed, no matter how large or small, would have a calc on a small set of cells. In the DB, only those cells that had been effected would actually have a value (so in the above, layer 1 would have 12 cells populated, layer 2 would have 121, and layer 3 would have 63.

Fires would normally be placed rarely, while requests for temps would be done requested very often - so this might work. The down side is that there's not a easy way to decrease the temp of a single fire over time (which I was planning on doing). Might be able to force a periodic refresh, but that would be annoying.

Above is for biggest fire, which would be world wide - The center is in on two of those big cells, so effect is highest there. Surrounding would be less.


Above is for a smaller fire - it's on a mid-level layer.




The last is on a small-level layer, with only a very local effect.

Didn't show it here, but I think as it goes down, it would effect more of the (smaller) cells.

Spin-off

Working on a spin off, kind of. Based on a idea I had when first doing AE the time, plus some MMORPG I've been mucking with since then.

Trying to brainstorm some ideas (thanks Mike!)

I'm doing something new, and am at a bit of loss on how to implement. Or even design it. I want to do something that swaps Great Circle around.

I want to have any number of points, and have those points have a radius of effect. Then, given a point (A), I want to find all other points whose radius of effect encompasses A.

So you can think of it as a bunch of fires that give off a certain amount of heat (the radius of effect). So given A, I need to find all fires around A that have some kind of effect on A – and in this analogy, what I really want to do is find out the temperature at point A. Some of the fires would have no effect (too far away), yet ones VERY far away may have an effect, if they are really big fires. So a small fire 500 feet away would have no effect. A small one 1 feet away would have a big effect. A really really massive one in Seattle would have a small effect on someone in Columbia.

And I need to do this on a sphere, be able to handle “fires” anywhere on the sphere, handle a large set of fires (many millions), and need to be able to do it fast in the DB.

I’m not sure even sure if I’m thinking about it correctly – maybe it should be some kind of heat map that’s laid on top of a sphere, and the map is changed when a fire starts, so given A I can just get that areas temp from the heat map. But on the other end of it, I can’t pre-calc every possible point on the sphere that the new fire effects.

AE mothballed

So it's really been mothballed since 2003. I think the idea was cool, but the hardware wasn't there. Kinda wish I had worked more on it, as I would have been waaaaay ahead of the location-aware pack that's now around.

The site was moved a while ago to the new dedicated server, and the SQL wasn't working. Spent some time tonight to get it going again, with a note the site is basically a archive.

SR vs AE

Have not written in this journal for a long time. StationRipper started making some money as of 2.0 (released start of this year), so I'm kind chasing after that (getting the word out, improving it, etc.). No idea when I'll get back to AE, as there really hasn't been a lot of movement on getting the average person walking around with GPS's and always-on internet.

Break

So I've got the basics pretty much working. Just need to add apps. The prob is, PocketPC is just kinda sucking. And even if I get some of the apps I've been thinking about going, I don't see a lot of users having always-on internet AND a GPS connection. At least any time soon. I've got to believe at some point this is going to happen, I just don't know when. I'd guess at least three years, but who knows.


I think I'm gonna go take a break for a while - been using streamripper32 for a while now. Like it, but it really sucks, so am thinkin about doing something about that.

Columbia

I've gone downtown Columbia a couple of times with the laptop - annotated around the state house, USC, and downtown. When I walked back around those locations, it popped up the info and a pic (like, what statue on the state grounds I was standing next to). VERY VERY COOL!!!! Only downside was no wireless, so the laptop had the web server running in it. Guards gave me some funny looks, but didn't bother me.

Working

Just saw the Matrix: Reloaded, again. Very cool movie. Picked up a lot of stuff the second time around. I’ll be very interested in seeing what the next is like (and what’s REALLY going on, hehehe). I’m betting on the whole “Matrix in a Matrix” thing.

I haven’t been writing in this much, or working on AE as much as I’d like, but I HAVE been making progress. I actually put the first PocketPC version of LocationAlert up on SourceForge this afternoon. It doesn’t remember stuff (login, selected group, settings) and you can’t Annotate a location yet – but it works fully beyond that. I ended up writing a very neat Worker Thread that does the actually requests to the Web Service. Basically you post a message to the thread; it does its thing, and then posts a message back to you. Works VERY nice. It’s a huge improvement over the VB one, as the interface doesn’t generally loc up (only exception to that is the settings page, which I may nor may not deal with)

I’ve actually created a generic library, which that threading is part of, which I’m going to release as a separate project. It could be the basis for any MFC program to interact with AE. I then may write a COM wrapper, so it can be used from any program, which would be even nicer. It’s on PPC right now, but as far as I know I should be able to move it straight to Windows

I plan on finishing up LocationAlertCE now (all I really have left is to remember stuff, and be able to annotate a location). Then an installer and it should be set. I’ll probably then move to working on the off-line version (which may or may not be the same program). It will only be able to Annotate right now, but that’s OK, as I really NEED something like that to Annotated the area, at least where I can’t get a wireless network. Later on I MIGHT let it download and work offline (but I have a feeling memory on the PPC will rear its ugly head if I do that)

After that, I think I’m going to do “GeoNotes”, which will be a much more bare-bones program. Show the closest location on a single page, be able to flip through pages (closest to farthest), and Annotated (“note”) a location. This will be the first non-techie AE-enabled program that I’ve done. The LocationAlert programs are what I really consider to be the reference software. That is, the thing that tests all the basic features of AE, and shows how to do everything. GeoNotes will be the first attempt at a more mass-appeal application of the technology.

On another note, I’ve continued to think of ways to make money at this. It occurred to me that getting “Complete” PocketPC (or Pilot) hardware together will be a bit complex. The ultimate system would have a WiFi card, GPS, AND a Camera. The software would use all three to Annotated locations (so basically press a button, add a note and upload the lat/long, note, and pic to the main site). REALLY nice, if I can get to that point.

Sooo… If that’s even possible to do, I could sell custom (for now) built PocketPC that have all of that. And maybe the software will be JUST for custom PC’s (or the first that I sell, if you buy it alone). Order all the stuff, put it together, ship it out, make a hundred (???) or so on each. Not something I want to do full-time, but maybe a way to make cash to cover my ever rising experiences, and something I might be able to spin off into a company later on.

Speaking of companies, one of the big things I’ve got left to do is incorporating. Not something I’m looking forward to, as I’ll have to deal with the accounting/tax/etc.

But, I am coming out of the base development now (Wahoo!). It’s just about time to start handling more the business side (form the company, try to find partners, maybe get more serious about finding an investor). My primary concern is how much more it’s going to cost. I’ve already been pumping my spare (and not so spare, sometimes) money into this. I wish I had a pile of it to do all the things that need to get done (like… hire people, hah). I think I’ll have enough money next month to finance the incorporation, at least.