6 April 2011

I’ve been working on the new buttons and I’ve made a new design. Also, I have been trying to contribute some code. The new button looks like this:

11 April 2011

I’ve made some alternative buttons, wooden plank design.

(Same as the first button but darker)

(Light wood, edges can be worked out)

19 April 2011

I’ve made a gif text animation for the software. This is how it looks like:

The idea is to have an animated text, as if it’s just being written.

28 April 2011

I‘m trying to make sure that I contribute 10% of the code. I’m sticking to Jun’s kernel prototype version as the basis, it’s the most stable version of the software so far. I’m starting to work on the basic skills manual. There have been a few updates of the software uploaded and I’ll make it general enough because it’s not yet so clear which software version is going to prevail as they are all still in test stages.

5 May 2011

I’ve been trying to make an animation using the software, but it’s not working. Print screen doesn’t record the rope and the snapshots just record basic steps, which is “too fast” to make the text animation we desire.

9 May 2011

Tim sent me 3 wmv files that are to be merged into an animation. I’ll try to break them into individual stills and then merge them.

10 May 2011

Merging wmv files into a gif is a much bigger challenge than I thought. When opening the videos with Microsoft Movie Maker, the videos are not split into scenes as I had expected earlier. That complicates the matter a lot. I’ve downloaded a few freewares to convert wmv into gif, but they all leave a watermark. I asked Tim to help me get a still of the writing with rope and I could turn it into an animation by deleting the string from the end and creating new layers as I do that. Then I just have to set the time delay on each layer and it’s done.

 11 May 2011

Got the still image from Tim. The deleting doesn’t work when the rope comes to bends. We’d have to capture it properly, step-by-step. Resorting back to the wmv.

12 May 2011

I’ve used a free converter to turn the first wmv file into gif hoping that I’ll be able to remove the watermark. The file was layered nicely when I opened it and noticing that the watermark was only present in the first layer looked promising. However, it turned out that the text under the watermark was cut out making the gif completely useless. The only way to do the animation is to play the video and pause it every half a second or so while making screenshots each time. Those screenshot images would then be merged into a single image. Way too much hassle. I finalised my part of the user manual, leaving comments where the screenshots will be needed as the final version of the interface still has to be confirmed.

20 May 2011

For the last week I’ve been focusing on helping Tim with the documentation. I’ve worked with Tim on the website, mainly helping him with the graphics.

25 May 2011

The software is finalised and the installer has been made. I’ve downloaded the installer and tested it on Windows 7. Works perfectly. I was capturing the steps during my installation and I’ve added the screenshots to the user manual. I’ve expanded the Installation chapter of the User Manual based upon the installer. I’ve also done little cosmetic repairs on the User Manual.