Cipher cracking 2010 weekly progress

Weekly progress and questions

This is where you record your progress and ask questions. Make sure you update this every week. The deadline is every Friday evening. However, if you sometimes slip a little into the weekend (so long as you don't do it too often) we won't be too hard on your marks.

Please remember that we make use of this progress section to give you your project mark. Your mark will suffer if you don't complete this section.

Semester 1 Week 1

Kevin

This Week

1. . Had initial group meeting.
2. . Researched background of the case using Wikipedia and looking at the work from last years project.

Michael

This Week

1. . Had introduction meeting with project coordinators and Kevin.
2. . Researched basic case background and ciphers.

Semester 1 Week 2

Kevin

This Week

1. . Looked into different web crawlers that we could use for our project.
2. . Started working on Proposal Seminar.
3. . Bought Secrets of Codes book to help with Proposal Seminar.

Michael

This Week

1. . Developed a rough project breakdown structure.
2. . Began compiling information on some available web crawling devices.
3. . Constructed a basic outline for the proposal seminar.

Semester 1 Week 3

Kevin

This Week

1. . Had our Proposal Seminar presentation.
2. . Started to verify the past years results. Started to carefully look at the java code from the previous project group.

Next Week Plan

1. . Survey several people while drunk/not drunk for random letters.
2. . Finish or almost finish verifying past year results. Check if we come to the same conclusions.
3. . Brush up on java writing skills.

Michael

This Week

1. . Converted the work breakdown structured into a Gantt Chart.
2. . Completed the Proposal Seminar and presented it on Wednesday.
3. . Drew up a survey sheet for recording 45 random letters to be taken from a variety of subjects.
4. . Started collecting random letter samples to explore the theory that the code is just a sequence of random letters.

Next Week Plan

1. . Complete the collection of random letter samples (intoxicated samples will most likely have to wait until the following weekend :D)
2. . Draw up an outline for the stage 1 design document.
3. . Continue researching available web crawlers and hopefully come to a conclusion on one that will be most useful for the project.

Semester 1 Week 4

Kevin

This Week

1. . Started writing up my sections of the Stage 1 Design Document.
2. . Got a few random letter surveys done. Not really sure if they were that intoxicated though ;(.
3. . Looked through the java code from last year's project. Fairly certain the code is working correctly and we get the same outputs.
4. . Drew up an initial flow chart of what we think the web crawler code should do.

Next Week Plan

1. . Finish the Stage 1 Design Document.
2. . Finishing touches on confirming last year's results if needed.
3. . Possibly start initial coding of the Web Crawler if time permits.

Michael

This Week

1. . Gathered quite a few more random letter samples which should be a sufficient amount. Haven't had the opportunity to get intoxicated samples yet however the upcoming holidays should provide them.
2. . Began compiling our Stage 1 Design Document. Acquired specific guidelines for the contents of the document that are relevant to project.

Next Week Plan

1. . Main focus is to complete the Stage 1 Design Document. In doing so the project will also progress significantly in terms of knowledge on available web crawlers and specific hypotheses that should be tested for the project.

Semester 1 Week 5

Kevin

This Week

1. . Focused mainly on finishing Stage 1 Design Document.

Next 2 Weeks Plan

1. . Start coding basic search algorithm.
2. . Finish verifying previous year's project results.
3. . Read up on how web crawlers work. Come to an conclusion on which web crawler is best for us to modify.

Michael

This Week

1. . Worked on and complete stage 1 design document
2. . Downloaded and experimented breifly with Arachnid and Jspider web crawlers

Next 2 Weeks Plan

1. . Finalise collection of random letter samples and compile results
2. . continue researching and experiementing with pre existing web crawlers
3. . brush up on java coding

Semester 1 Mid-Semester Break

Kevin

Last 2 Weeks

1. Finished verifying previous year's code. From my best understanding of the commenting/java code, I agree with the results.
2. Looked at the user guides/manuals of several different web crawlers. Still not sure which one we're going to use though.
3. Started to code a basic java file to parse through text.

Next Week Plan

1. Complete the Peer Review.
2. Continue coding basic java code.
3. Hopefully decide on which web crawler we want to use.

Michael

Last 2 Weeks

1. Completed collection of random letters
2. read into web crawler fundamentals to get more of an understanding of their general structure

Next Week Plan

1. main focus will be to get the peer review written up
2. compile random letter samples into graphs and compare with last years results
3. spend some time continuing with crawler fundamentals

Semester 1 Week 6

Kevin

This Week

1. Started doing the Peer Review.
2. Spent most of this week doing other assignments and catching up on other courses.

Next Week Plan

1. Finish the Peer Review
2. Continue working on basic pattern finding java code.

Michael

This Week

1. Began and completed Peer Review
2. Started running small tests and playing with the Arachnid crawler. Appears to be quite slow and inconsistent.

Next Week Plan

1. Keep experimenting with Arachnid.
2. Try running at least 1 other crawler.

Semester 1 Week 7

Kevin

This Week

1. Finished the Peer Review Report.
2. Continued to work on text parsing java code. It still has quite a few errors that need to be ironed out.

Next Week Plan

1. Continue modifying text parsing code and hopefully finish it.
2. Play around with some of the webcrawlers to get a better understanding of how it works and how to modify the code.

Michael

This Week

1. Ran some more tests with the supplied arachnid code
2. read up on the J-spider crawler

Next Week Plan

1. try editing arachnid to manipulate results of tests
2. test and assignment for other courses next week so they will take up most of my time

Semester 1 Week 8

Kevin

This Week

1. Was busy with tests and assignments in other subjects and wasn't really able to get much done :(.

Next Week Plan

1. Fix and finish up basic text matching code.
2. Otherwise, same goals as last week as I wasn't able to complete them.

Michael

This Week

1. Spent most of my time completing assignments and studying for tests.
2. Ran a few more tests with arachnid.

Next Week Plan

1. Meeting with Derek and Matt to hopefully get some more guidance
2. Read further into J-spider to see where that may take us