ideas for university project ??

[Jon Hewer]

Hi

I'm about to start my third, and final, year in computer science at
cambridge uni, and i need to come up with an idea for a software
project, but i'm really struggling for ideas, and i was wondering
whether anyone here had any suggestions.

I'd say i'm probably most experienced in Java, but I have started
learning Python, and although i haven't got very far yet, I plan on
doing some more in the next few weeks.

Areas of interested include AI, distributed systems. Most of all i
want something that is interesting, and actually useful (thats
probably stating the obvious!)

Cheers
Jon

[Sybren Stuvel]

Re: ideas for university project ??

Jon Hewer enlightened us with:[color=blue]
> Areas of interested include AI, distributed systems. Most of all i
> want something that is interesting, and actually useful (thats
> probably stating the obvious!)[/color]

You could help developing Dynamite (contact Dick van Albada from the
University of Amsterdam for that), perhaps extend it to work with
Python. It's a system to do process migration from node to node in a
really nice way. Once a program is compiled with Dynamite, you can
send it a signal and it'll write it's current state into a new ELF
binary. You can then move that binary to another node in your
distributed system, and execute it as any other executable. The
program will continue to run from where it left off.

Sybren
--
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Frank Zappa

[Eddie Corns]

Re: ideas for university project ??

Jon Hewer <jonhewer@gmail .com> writes:
[color=blue]
>Hi[/color]
[color=blue]
>I'm about to start my third, and final, year in computer science at
>cambridge uni, and i need to come up with an idea for a software
>project, but i'm really struggling for ideas, and i was wondering
>whether anyone here had any suggestions.[/color]
[color=blue]
>I'd say i'm probably most experienced in Java, but I have started
>learning Python, and although i haven't got very far yet, I plan on
>doing some more in the next few weeks.[/color]
[color=blue]
>Areas of interested include AI, distributed systems. Most of all i
>want something that is interesting, and actually useful (thats
>probably stating the obvious!)[/color]

Well, there's a dearth of good software for network management especially for
medium to large networks. Traffic stats, configuration management, device
status etc. It would certainly be useful but whether it rocks your boat
interest wise ... Admittedly I personally would like to play with Erlang
rather than Python for this.

Eddie

[Thomas Guettler]

Re: ideas for university project ??

Am Fri, 26 Aug 2005 11:49:34 +0100 schrieb Jon Hewer:
[color=blue]
> Hi
>
> I'm about to start my third, and final, year in computer science at
> cambridge uni, and i need to come up with an idea for a software
> project, but i'm really struggling for ideas, and i was wondering
> whether anyone here had any suggestions.[/color]

Hi,

you could port Python to the WRT54.

The Linksys WRT54 is a WLAN-Router which runs Linux.

See http://openwrt.org/

I think it is a good project for a university. It is software
and hardware related.

Thomas

--
Thomas Güttler, http://www.thomas-guettler.de/

[Steve Holden]

Re: ideas for university project ??

Thomas Guettler wrote:[color=blue]
> Am Fri, 26 Aug 2005 11:49:34 +0100 schrieb Jon Hewer:
>
>[color=green]
>>Hi
>>
>>I'm about to start my third, and final, year in computer science at
>>cambridge uni, and i need to come up with an idea for a software
>>project, but i'm really struggling for ideas, and i was wondering
>>whether anyone here had any suggestions.[/color]
>
>
> Hi,
>
> you could port Python to the WRT54.
>
> The Linksys WRT54 is a WLAN-Router which runs Linux.
>
> See http://openwrt.org/
>
> I think it is a good project for a university. It is software
> and hardware related.
>
> Thomas
>[/color]
It would be a good final-year project, but you may want to try something
that hasn't already been done ... see

http://skreak.com/wrt54g/python.php

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/

[Ken Starks]

Re: ideas for university project ??

Jon Hewer wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi
>
> I'm about to start my third, and final, year in computer science at
> cambridge uni, and i need to come up with an idea for a software
> project, but i'm really struggling for ideas, and i was wondering
> whether anyone here had any suggestions.
>
> I'd say i'm probably most experienced in Java, but I have started
> learning Python, and although i haven't got very far yet, I plan on
> doing some more in the next few weeks.
>
> Areas of interested include AI, distributed systems. Most of all i
> want something that is interesting, and actually useful (thats
> probably stating the obvious!)
>
> Cheers
> Jon[/color]

I'd like you to write a Python-SOAP-based interface to data-loggers and
interface boxes used in the UK at school level. For example, those
produced by Phillip Harris, which are normally connected by way of a
serial cable.

The idea is to keep an old computer with the data-logger attached, and
the SOAP server installed, in the field or lab. Am I correct in saying
that Java is too security-bound for this role?

Personally, I would feed the resulting XML into Cocoon, which already has
SOAP input, and from there into dataframes in 'R' among other places. Once
it has entered a Cocoon pipeline, it is already in a very flexible form, and
Data analysis can be done anywhere that can reach the Cocoon server.

You may wish to develop that end of the pipeline either using your Java
skills, or by using XSLT to create Prolog facts or whatever.

[Thomas Guettler]

Re: ideas for university project ??

Am Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:21:36 -0400 schrieb Steve Holden:
[color=blue]
> Thomas Guettler wrote:[color=green]
>> Am Fri, 26 Aug 2005 11:49:34 +0100 schrieb Jon Hewer:[/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> you could port Python to the WRT54.
>> The Linksys WRT54 is a WLAN-Router which runs Linux.
>> See http://openwrt.org/
>> I think it is a good project for a university. It is software
>> and hardware related.
>>
>> Thomas
>>[/color]
> It would be a good final-year project, but you may want to try something
> that hasn't already been done ... see
>
> http://skreak.com/wrt54g/python.php[/color]

Hi,

I know this. This is NFS mounted. You could strip down python to get it
running standalone.

Thomas

--
Thomas Güttler, http://www.thomas-guettler.de/