Andrew Trusty

I started working with a new research group in the Cognitive Computing Lab under Ashwin Ram this semester. The project I am working on is concentrated on using Case Based Reasoning techniques to easily develop AI opponents in video games. We are using Wargus, an open-source mod which allows you to play Warcraft 2 using the open-source Stratagus game engine, as the platform for our CBR research.

My contribution to the project was to develop a map classification system for Warcraft 2 maps which would provide additional features for the CBR engine. The system is a joint project between my Pattern Recognition class professor Jim Rehg and the CCL researchers Santi Ontañón and Manish Mehta. It was also a good starter project for getting more familiar with the architecture of their system since I plan on continuing to work with the group for my senior research project.

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I wanted to provide an update on the web-based Risk game, NetRisk, that I developed during the summer of my freshmen year because a lot has been happening surrounding NetRisk recently. After I first released NetRisk I actually started getting some feedback from people who had downloaded it within a couple of months. A couple people submitted bug fixes, feature additions, and ideas and some people asked for help in setting up their own NetRisk installation. I managed to release two updated versions of NetRisk incorporating much of the feedback. It was very much a positive experience with the open source world but I never imagined it would come as far as it has in the last year. For my part, I haven’t touched the NetRisk code in a bit over a year as I have kept myself more than busy with school and other projects but a great group of guys has taken over the development of NetRisk.

Late in 2005, one of these guys contacted me and told me he was already working on some additions to NetRisk. Since he was doing more work on the project than I was I gave him my full support and made him an administrator on the NetRisk SourceForge project. Just two months ago he and his friends released NetRisk 1.9.5 and they have a very lively community around the project at the official NetRisk site, phprisk.org. They have managed to implement almost all of the features I had planned for after my initial release and are continuing to improve the game to fit the needs of the new community that has grown up around the game.

Every since I got a laptop I have felt the need for some synchronization tool to manage all my files and settings between my laptop and desktop. Though I have yet to find a good tool for synchronizing my files I did manage to find a near perfect bookmark synchronization tool. Rahul Jonna’s Firefox Google Bookmarks Menu extension is the tool that met almost all my needs. As an extension it is cross-platform and it is built into the browser. It works in a similar way to the default browser bookmarking system but it is always synchronized with a stable back-end server, Google Bookmarks, which provides a web interface for accessing the bookmarks in case you do not have the extension installed.

My only qualm with the extension was that it did not work exactly like the normal Firefox bookmarks whose functions I have come to depend on. So I decided to try my hand at extension writing and modify Jonna’s work to more closely imitate Firefox bookmarks. I ended up implementing additional keyboard shortcuts, Bookmark All Tabs, Open in Tabs and I fixed a bug or two I found with some of the existing functionality. The extension as I changed it works in exactly the same way as the Firefox bookmarks but with different shortcuts, slower execution when bookmarking many tabs and it has a separate menu labeled GBookmarks on the menubar. In using it I have found the separate menu to be useful as I still use the Firefox bookmarks for making temporary bookmarks I don’t want to synchronize.

Works with:

Firefox 1.5 – 2.0 ALL

Install my extension modification:
	Firefox Google Bookmarks Menu 0.2.1

For more details on the original extension by Rahul Jonna see the official Firefox Google Bookmarks Menu page on the Firefox Add-ons site.

My extension no longer works since the Google bookmarking interface has changed and I no longer use Google bookmarks. Please use Rahul Jonna’s updated extension at the link above.

But wait, now comes the funny part, about a week after I finished this little mod, Google, who hosts the back-end for the mod, released their own very comprehensive solution to browser synchronization as a whole called Google Browser Sync. Not only does it synchronize your Firefox bookmarks menu but also your history, cookies and passwords plus it can restore your browsing sessions effectively replacing the SessionSaver extension. Talk about being outdone… but personally I still use my modification as I don’t feel the need to synchronize my history or cookies and as far as I can tell there is no web interface for accessing the bookmarks Google Browser Sync stores so there is no way to access your bookmarks if you don’t have the extension installed.

While co-oping at Georgia-Pacific last summer I found myself quite bored after work. During my first two semesters at Georgia Tech I think I became accustomed to the grueling pace of classes and having it stop so suddenly with the arrival of summer left me feeling bored. My brain was itching to do interesting and new things but it was my first semester as a co-op so they didn’t give me very challenging work. So I did what every good programmer does when bored; I picked up an O’Reilly book to learn a new programming language. I chose PHP because I had heard a lot of buzz about it and I had seen some really cool online applications built on PHP. Since I had the whole summer to learn PHP I decided I might as well come up with a reasonably large project to cut my teeth on and really help me grasp this new language. I brainstormed some ideas with a friend of mine and we agreed that a web-based version of the Risk board game would be awesome. We always enjoyed playing it but had problems finding other people to play with us and finding the large blocks of time necessary to finish a game in one sitting. So why not use the internet to enable anyone to play Risk anytime they wanted?

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