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OpenDirective / brian

Easy communication and media access for people with cognitive access requirements
http://opendirective.github.io/brian
MIT License
8 stars 3 forks source link

Support features required for a HTML version of CIRCA #21

Closed SteveALee closed 8 years ago

SteveALee commented 8 years ago

Brian's features are very close to those of the CIRCA project and only requires the ability to randomly select media from a subset defined by topics.

@OpenDirective/brian-collaborators

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - no, no progress yesterday, not even a response to my emails. While I'm waiting I'll try to upload more media to the system - it will take longer than writing the code, I think!

@SteveALee - thanks for the offer: let's see whether anything happens today, and if not then we can discuss alternative hosting plans. (By the way, I saw your Skype replies only last night - no, there was nothing in particular I wanted to discuss, thanks, I just thought I would join in if the meeting was going ahead.)

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - Hi Stephen! I hope you saw my email earlier - great work on the web version! It looks excellent! I have tried to localise some content and it seems to work very good!

I got a question from Anna regarding our local film content - do you want us to provide YouTube clips in Swedish? How will it work if the user runs the app - is WiFi connection then required to run the videos, or is the content somehow downloaded locally?

I found this site - what do you think of it? I have to run it by the experts regarding content, but if they find it useful, would it be possible for you to use the content technically? http://www.filmarkivet.se/sv/English/

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - Hi, yes, I've seen your email - thanks for your feedback.

At the moment there are two choices for film content - you can supply a YouTube reference or you can upload a movie file. I'm not really sure which is best: links to YouTube videos from official channels would seem to avoid copyright issues, but come with advertisements, and at the end suggest related videos (which may not be a bad thing, although the suggestions are not controlled by us). On the other hand, movie file formats are often only supported by particular platforms/browsers, but if you have specific movies that you know that you're going to use with a specific device (and can test things in advance), then this might be a better choice (assuming that there are no copyright issues, of course).

As for WiFi connection - yes, this is necessary, not only for videos but for all media items, since they are now stored centrally on the server here. This is both a strength and a weakness of web-CIRCA: a strength because there is a single place where we can add (and remove) items and by doing so make them instantly available to all users; and a weakness because (unlike old-CIRCA) the system is not self-contained, and does require a 'good' internet connection.

The content on the Filmarkivet site looks as though it might be useful, but it doesn't seem like they facilitate or encourage the embedding of videos in external sites (unlike YouTube, which encourages this), in which case all that we can do is link to the relevant web-page, which means leaving the CIRCA site. But that might be acceptable if it means that we have access to appropriate content.

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - Hi Stephen! I've been working tonight with adding media items in CIRCA, and I have two questions:

Otherwise, it looks really great - the images this large are very good! - and it's easy to work with!

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder :

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - Oh, yes, the reset function is working very well :) My vgregion mail program had some issues on Wednesday, so I wasn't sure I would be able to retrieve my reset password, and that's why I created another profile on my gmail address. I don't need it - you can remove it so there is no confusion!

I talked to Anna yesterday and she explained about the authorization of the media files, that's fine! I will go in and check later if I can see my new items when running the program!

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - does that mean that you're still having to reset your password every time? That's not very friendly! Do you have any 'unusual' characters in your password (e.g., Swedish non-English characters?) I might have made a mistake with the database encoding.

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - Yes, that's right, resetting every time :) I have a password with lowercase and uppercase letters and numbers, but no non-English ones, so there shouldn't be the issue.

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - Stephen, something else I discovered when I added items yesterday, was that the field for "time" was mandatory. How are you planning to use it? Some of the picture I just don't the timestamp for, but could perhaps look up - but there will probably be some more generic pictures that doesn't really belong to a specific time, Would it be possible to not have this field mandatory?

I also discovered that there seems to be a size limit (or this is my interpretation of what happened), because I got error when uploading some files. Is there a limit? Could it be increased, or should we follow that, and make our images smaller?

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - the time period field is something that I added because I feel it may be useful to help filter material for different populations (it wasn't something that was in the original CIRCA). I made it mandatory because these things are only useful if you have reasonably complete values, but at the moment it isn't being used at all, so I can relax that restriction.

The maximum size for file uploads is (or should be) currently set to 10M - how big were your files?

And I'm still thinking about your password problem...

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - It must have been some other kind of issue, because I tried again now and had success with all of the pictures that didn't work yesterday. So the size limits seems to be okay after all! :)

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - ah, good, that's at least one problem solved without me having to do anything!

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter - I solved the issue with the password. It's regrettably enough totally a case of "if everything fails, read the instructions...". Turns out I was supposed to fill in my user name, and not my email address at login... But to look at it from the bright side - another problem solved without you having to do anything! :)

My colleauge Margret Buchholz have also now registred as a user. She's about to show the system tomorrow at a "open lecture day" we have here at our center, so she would very much like access. Could we also ask you not to mess around too much with the system between 4pm and 6 pm (our time), and also Thursday between 10pm and 12 pm? That's when we'll show it to potential users.

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - Ah, that explains the password problem! I hadn't forgotten about it, I simply couldn't think why you would be having problems when nobody else seemed to, and your entry in the user table of the database looks much the same as everyone else's. Maybe if I just wait long enough, all problems eventually solve themselves... :-)

I've now authorised Margret's account, so she should be able to log in to the system now. It would be useful if she familiarises herself with the interface (both the 'original' and 'simplified' versions) before giving the demo. I'll do all I can to make sure that the system is up and stable during those times. She is currently just a 'user' - does she need 'media administrator' access to show the media management features as well?

And does "messing around" with the system = "agile software development"? :-)

sancarder commented 8 years ago

Thank you @stephenpotter! Margret has tried the system and been able to login successfully, and has navigated the system. She does not need any administrator access, so everything's just fine!

... and yes, I would think that the messing and the agile development absolutely corresponds! :) Just a fancier name!

SteveALee commented 8 years ago

... and yes, I would think that the messing and the agile development absolutely corresponds! :) Just a fancier name!

@sancarder - I think you have put your finger on it there! Meanwhile I'm messing around with little useful impact :(

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@SteveALee - Glad to be of help! :) How's it going...?

@stephenpotter - I've been adding a lot to CIRCA tonight, also localised some of your content and tried the simplified version. It looks really great! I saw that Anna had made some comments, I will chip in a little more tomorrow in that thread so that everyone can join in!

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - wow, a lot of content added (and now all authorised for viewing) - that must have taken you some time to collect and upload (and I assume that you have copyright clearance for all items, right? :-) Now I feel that I know more about Swedish culture than just Abba, Bjorn Borg and Ingmar Bergman films!

sancarder commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter – Luckily, I’m not in charge of collecting the stuff, I’m just uploading! So Anna and Christina did all the hard work. I think the pics are almost all from Wikimedia or other free sources. Yes, now you have the possibility to delve into our rich Swedish culture – just enjoy! ☺

Sandra Derbring Datalingvist, IT-tekniker Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset DART – Kommunikations- och dataresurscenter för personer med funktionsnedsättning Kruthusgatan 17, 411 04 Göteborg sandra.derbring@vgregion.semailto:sandra.derbring@vgregion.se www.dart-gbg.orghttp://www.dart-gbg.org/

Från: stephenpotter [mailto:notifications@github.com] Skickat: den 23 mars 2016 10:38 Till: OpenDirective/brian Kopia: sancarder Ämne: Re: [brian] Support features required for a HTML version of CIRCA (#21)

@sancarderhttps://github.com/sancarder - wow, a lot of content added (and now all authorised for viewing) - that must have taken you some time to collect and upload (and I assume that you have copyright clearance for all items, right? :-) Now I feel that I know more about Swedish culture than just Abba, Bjorn Borg and Ingmar Bergman films!

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/OpenDirective/brian/issues/21#issuecomment-200270013

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@sancarder - yes, it's interesting: life in Sweden looks the same as life in Britain, but different...!

SteveALee commented 8 years ago

@stephenpotter @sancarder Congratulation on the progress with CIRCA! Given the problems and delays I've experienced it's good you have a solution

As it looks like plan B of Brian support for CIRCA are no longer needed I'm closing this issue and any related. But please feel free to add more. I'm very happy for you to use this space and gitter for CIRCA discussions if that is useful as there features are very close to Brian's

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

@SteveALee - sorry, we do seem to have hijacked this thread somewhat! And yes, progress with CIRCA has gone better than expected. Unfortunately, in concentrating on CIRCA I haven't really been paying attention to developments with Brian, but it sounds like your progress has been less smooth. Can I help with anything, bearing in mind my limited skill set? (I had a brief lunch-time chat with Peter the other day who mentioned that there was another project here that was interested in using Maavis/Brian, but I haven't had the follow-up conversation yet, so I don't know too much more about it. Watch this space.)

SteveALee commented 8 years ago

Not a problem at all :)

I'll keep you in mind. I feel like I have finally turned a corner.

I think you mean the Cloudcast project? It would be good if you you make contact and see how we can work together.

stephenpotter commented 8 years ago

No, it's not the Cloudcast project (I am aware of Cloudcast but I didn't know that they had plans to use Maavis/Brian - Jochen, the technical guy on that project, seems to know his stuff, and I can help if any liaison is required). No, I'm not sure which project I'm talking about (!), nor even if it has a name yet...