PhET Progress Report

Sam Reid

Dec. 4, 2008

This report covers 11/20/2008-12/4/2008. I took several days off in this period.

An online version of this report is available here.

Here’s a pie chart representation of the time distribution.

Sim Updates

· Fixed permissions on log file

· Fixed bug #992: tracking caused web start sims to crash

· Separated tracking/updates tabs in preferences dialog, so it's possible to have one without the other

· Ran tracking feasibility test on tigercat:

Here is a brief overview of unique information we obtained between 1:57pm-7:10pm:

preferences-file-creation-time_milliseconds (17 unique)
session-id (24 unique)
user_timezone (8 unique):

[America/Vancouver, America/Los_Angeles, Europe/Paris,

America/Chicago, America/New_York, America/Sao_Paulo,

Europe/London, America/Denver]
locale-language (3 unique):

[pt, en, da]
os_name (3 unique):

[Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP]
java_version (9 unique):

[1.6.0_01, 1.5.0_16, 1.6.0_10, 1.5.0_09, 1.6.0_07, 1.5.0_06, 1.4.2_10, 1.6.0_05, 1.6.0_02]

In this same period of time, there were downloads from 33 different IP addresses (some with several downloads). 

Possible explanations for 24/33 discrepancy:
(a) Someone (or a bot) downloaded but did not run a sim, or the sim failed to launch properly
(b) Someone downloaded a sim, then disconnected their internet connection and launched a sim.
(c) Our tracking system failed for that user when they launched the sim.

(d) Client's IP changed between downloads.

3D

· Discussed golem prototype and related issues

Sim Updates

· Fixes for temporarily locked Jar #949

· Bugfixes for server-based updater code

Build Process

· Made the new build process copy to dev/ when deploying to tigercat.

· Discussed flavor+language JAR generation

· Added confirmation dialog to deploy-to-tigercat task

Misc

· Produced license reports

1. Revisit Creative Commons licenses?

1. Revisit software licenses?

· Discussed new motion suite design and timeline.

1. Any other changes for Ramp sim?

2. Should these be rewritten from scratch?

3. Should Chris help on any/all of the new motion sims?

· Discussed hosting website; we'll upgrade the email+backup server first, then decide later where to put phet-dev

· Discussed Mac exit detection & logging with Chris

· Tested Jonathan's ASwing prototype

Upcoming Work

· Language+Flavor Jar generation

· Getting Tracking+Updates ready for deploy

· Upgrading to Java 1.5

1. Adding an in-sim message that says 1.5 is required

2. 1.4 bootstrap code

· Motion series suite.

· For full details, See ticket report "Sam R: Report" here