Meeting Notes for 23 July 2008 IT job Priorities for LIGO and CMS e-Labs Report from Notre Dame Documentation of Calibration Steps Shower Study Test at Notre Dame The CMS group Google Maps Report from LIGO Saving plots from Bluestone into the LIGO e-Lab Subversion access Displaying Wiki content in e-Labs: Posters

Meeting Notes for 23 July 2008

Present: Mihael, Eric, Tom L. Liz
Absent: Dan K, Mike W., Randy, Kris, Joao, Tom J., Bob

IT job

We discussed strategies for finding more candidates for our ELabs IT job. Liz encouraged people to send out messages to anyone or any listservs that people think might draw suitable candidates to our job. She asked if we should interview the top two of the eight we have so far. There was no conclusion.

Mihael showed us the Daily WTF and HiddenNetwork. An ad there would cost about $299. Eric suggested Craig’s list, but Mihael did not think that was appropriate because it might draw all sorts of people we do not want. Liz said she would talk some more with Jeff Artel in HR about the job description. Later in the day Liz talked with Mike Wilde who said he thought the Fermilab job description was boring. He also suggested calling all the CS/Physics Dept. of the top universities in the Chicago area and ask them to post the job or send out information. He suggested maybe we could have an alternate page or flyer for them to put up.

Priorities for LIGO and CMS e-Labs

We spent the past week trying to make sure that these e-Labs looked presentable and had the correct learning outcomes and rubrics that Marge was putting in the Response to the Proposal. We agreed that we should have e-Lab specific posters for the sample posters.

Action Item: Tom L. will look into which posters to show.
Action item: Dale and Tom will try to do more testing.
Action Item: Mihael is going to try to get the poster content and images from Tibi's old e-Lab.

Report from Notre Dame

Documentation of Calibration Steps

Tom L. reported that staff at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Site were working on writing a richer set of instructions for calibrating the detectors.

Shower Study Test at Notre Dame

They have five DAQ boards (four hooked up to a pulser). These come from two generations of DAQ boards. That ought to produce similated shower and show up as coinciences when they do shower studies, but they don't. Jeff Chorney and colleague are looking at the code (Perl, etc.) We pointed out to Tom that he can get access to the code through the web without having an account at UChicago.

The CMS group

CMS is making good headway...

Google Maps

Presents the detector on a map. Links to a place on wiki. Resources. Current Cosmic e-Lab; Last known positions of the detectors. Wiki vs. database. Use contact information associated. Invite them all in to add information. Should be hosted on i2u2 servers instead of wiki spaces. (Eric and Tom). Eric argues for it to be on i2u2 servers. CMS’s map could be a prototype. We can combine what Tom has done and allow it to be used in Google Maps or Google Earth. We would probably want a mashup eventually. Issues of authentication may also be an issue. OpenID to implement to allow access Wiki Spaces. Eric argues again for confederating resources that are out there.

Report from LIGO

Saving plots from Bluestone into the LIGO e-Lab

Eric just got the authentication part working. He wants to emulate the file upload form that is used in the upload image. Liz pointed out that he should be looking at the code to save plots from analyses because they include a form on the same page as the analysis that has all the relevant fields filled in so that when the student saves the plot, all the metadata is sent in the form.

Eric suggested the upload image form in the e-Labs could include more places for input – where students can add metadata about how they did this. Maybe we can record what data they downloaded. Eric wants to encourage use of desktop tools. Liz mentioned the tension between using the tools inside the e-Lab where you can easily access the data and recreate the same analysis from the plots vs. outside the e-Lab where that is often not possible. It maybe that we can provide a way for students to download data and keep a record of it so other students will be able to access the same data.

Subversion access

Eric now has SVN write access, so he will be able to check in changes to the LIGO e-Lab pages (the JSP stuff in SVN).

Displaying Wiki content in e-Labs:

Showing content from the wiki within the e-Lab. Eric showed us a proof of showing a glossary item. This has broad applicability to other aspects of the e-Lab. Two demonstrations:

• http://www13.i2u2.org/elab/ligo/library/resources2.jsp (a test using an iframe. The body comes from a wiki)
• http://www13.i2u2.org/tla_dev - click on highlighted words like "workflow" to get a pop up glossary definition from a wiki

Posters

We had a general discussion of poster implementation and Eric is going to make a draft of the considerations involved in the wiki for others to comment on.

Action Item: Eric will start a page about posters in the CI developers wiki.

-- Main.LizQuigg - 25 Jul 2008
-- Main.EricMyers - 28 Jul 2008