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COMP2720 — Lab 5 — Week 9 (18th and 19th September 2008)
Processing Web text data, and shifting between media
IMPORTANT
If you are unfamiliar (or need a refresher)
with HTML then you should read section 11.1 (five pages) in the text
book before you come into lab 5, otherwise you will waste your time
when doing part 1 of the lab!
Objectives
Learn how to process Web text data which is stored in a file, and
learn that sounds, pictures, text etc. are all just encodings of
bits and bytes.
Marks and submission
- You will get one mark if you attend this lab, and another mark
when you show and demonstrate your working to your tutor.
- Note that we will not give you an attendance mark if you only
come to the lab for a short while (e.g. to show us your lab 4
workings)!
- The mark for your lab workings will only be awarded in the lab. You
can show your workings in this lab as well as the following lab
6 in week 10. You will not receive a mark for this lab if you show
it to your tutor after the lab in week 10, unless you have a medical
certificate (or similar document) stating that you were unable to
attend the normal labs.
- Please do NOT e-mail your lab workings to your tutor — we will
NOT mark e-mailed lab workings. You can only get the mark for
workings in the labs.
- Note also that lab 6 in week 10 will be the LAST OPPORTUNITY for
you to show (and get marks for) any lab workings. We will not consider
any lab workings after lab 6 (unless you have a medical certificate
(or similar document) stating that you were unable to attend the
normal labs). So if you are one lab behind you better start catching
up!
Preliminaries
- Once logged onto a computer, create a sub-folder called
lab5 in your folder comp2720.
- Download the lab-template.txt
and save it in your lab5 folder under the name
lab-5-diary.txt.
Please only save your lab diary as simple text file, not in RTF
or DOC format (as you will have to include your lab diaries into
your portfolio, and we will not be looking at RTF or DOC files
when assessing your
portfolio).
- Open this file lab-5-diary.txt with a text editor, and
complete the header with your details. Keep this file open and
continue writing down your workings and paste your programs
into it.
- Now copy the following files into your lab5 folder:
Part 1: Processing Web text data
You should spend around 50 minutes on this part of the lab.
- Open the program getWeather.py into the JES editor, read
through it and try to understand it, then run it. This program
reads in a file bomInternationalObs.htm, a Web page
downloaded from the Australian
Bureau of Meteorology from the URL:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDY03031.txt
You should download the latest version of this page and save it
under the name bomInternationalObs.htm, then re-run the
getWeather program.
- You should extend the getWeather so that it extracts and
prints the various weather observations for each city (or station)
in a nicer (more readable) way.
- Now think of a way (or ways) on how you could summarise
the global weather observations. For example, you could
- count and print the number of cities that had a sunny, rainy,
windy or snowy day,
- calculate and print the worldwide average temperature
observed,
- print the worldwide minimum and maximum temperatures (and at
which station they were measured),
- print how much rain fell in the last day,
- print the average (minimum and maximum) temperatures only for
the cities with a sunny, rainy or windy day.
Your program should print at least three (3) different summaries
of the worldwide weather observations.
- Now write a new function getWeatherIn(city) based on the
getWeather function which only prints the weather observations
of the given input city. For example,
getWeatherIn("Nandi") should only print the observations from
the station Nandi in Fiji.
Part 2: Shifting between media
You should spend around 40 minutes on this part of the lab.
- Open the program sinePictureSound.py into the JES editor,
read through it and try to understand it. Then run the program
in the JES command area (check what the
sinePictureSound() function returns, and call the function
appropriately). Play the sound, and show the picture returned by
the function. Also, visualise the sound in the MediaTools.
- Add comments to the program explaining in details what it does.
- When looking at the sound in the MediaTools, it is evident
that the program does not work correctly — i.e. it doesn't properly
create a sinus wave in the sound samples. Think about what the
problem could be, and try to correct the program.
- Last, modify the program so it produces a triangular shaped
sound wave and a corresponding picture (you might want to look at
the programs from lab 4). Call this new
function triangularPictureSound and save it into a program
triangularPictureSound.py.
Part 3: Show your workings to your tutor
You should spend around 10 minutes on this part of the lab.
- Explain and show to your tutor what you have done in parts 1 and
2 of the lab, and the programs you have developed.
- Please also show your tutor your lab diary.
Further programming ideas
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In each lab we will provide a last section that contains ideas
for people who want to dig deeper, who are hooked on
Python or media programming. This section is not part
of the assessable lab material, but rather provides some more
problems for students who love a programming 'challenge'.
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- In part 1 of this lab, text data is processed and textual output
(like summary weather observations) is produced. It would be nice
to have a new weather observation Web page with graphical output,
like little pictures for sunny, rainy, windy etc. weather
conditions, a
compass or
wind rose for the wind direction, etc. Extend the
getWeather.py program so that it writes a HTML file
weather.html that graphically displays weather
observations.
- For part 2 of the lab, write a program that creates a sound and
picture of a combination of wave forms (sine, square, saw-tooth,
triangle, etc.) in one function. Input parameters for such a
function could be a list with the frequencies and amplitudes of
the selected wave forms,
like:
createWavesList = ['sine',440, 16000],
['square',550, 8000],
['saw',1200,8000]]
picture, sound = wavesPictureSound(createWavesList)
Last modified: 4/08/2008, 23:48
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