As we are all aware Google Reader disabled sharing other than on Google+ in it’s new version. This obviously upset me immensely because I used my share feed for my blog. After trying out numerous suggestions, this is what worked:

1. Subscribe to your original shared feed
2. Pray to God you had created a public tag prior to the switch-over to the new reader and despite whatever you named it, use it! Newly created tags are by default private and there is no means of making them public at the moment.
3. Using the old tag, create a bundle. There should be drop-down to the right of the tag name in the left pane.
4. Also add/drag the subscribed shared feed into the bundle.
5. Change all your blog widgets using the original Shared feed RSS to the RSS feed for this new bundle.

I tried using Chrome extensions to display the original shared icon but that has a number of issues:
- The extensions stopped working for me soon after
- My email got hacked into around the time I got the extensions. It could have been because of insecure scripts
- Google is going to eventually remove the original sharing from its API so might as well stick with something they’re not going to scrap soon. Or one would hope so.

Hope this helps some fellow frustrated soul.

Context: Household survey in rural Tanzania

Task: Combine data from XML files and display in an Excel File

Challenges:

• Nested loop within survey which required questions to be repeated so survey and questions were not one-to-one
• Number of fields for survey exceeded 255
• Each survey was in a separate file
• >350 submission files so need mass combination and conversion

Data Provided:

• Survey in XML format for ODK Collect
• Submissions in XML format using ODK Collect. Naming of submission files based on survey name, data and time collected.

The following methods were attempted in extracting data. Some successful, some not, with clear reasons as to why not.

Method 1: Use Excel

Excel’s XML to CSV or XLS function is very easy to use but issues were:

• Each XML file is saved to a separate CSV file so does not aggregate data.
• Does not take into account nested XML and will only add in columns for the primary level in XML

Method 2: Use MS Access

The idea was to first import into Access and then to CSV. Importing to Access worked exceptionally well. It automatically creates related tables for nested XML tags. However issues were:

• The size of the survey itself was too big to store in an Access table. It would have taken far too long to change data types one by one. In addition if the table was broken up, the automatic feature for import would not work. There is probably a way to do all this in Visual Basic but again time constraints.

Method 3: Install ODK Aggregate and use inbuilt stable version of ODK Briefcase:

ODK Briefcase is the companion tool for ODK Aggregate to import and export data from ODK generated files. However the inbuilt version could only:

• Import one file at a time
• ODK Aggregate is a little complicated to install. You can either install it on Google App Engine or locally but the installation procedure is a tad confusing.

Method 4: KoBo Post Processor

KoBo Post Processor is a third party tool to aggregate data from XML files. However the issues with this were:

• Could not read the nested XML data
• Had it’s own algorithm for displaying columns and did not follow the survey format

Method 5: Stand Alone Beta Version of ODK Briefcase

Using ODK Briefcase v1.0 Beta 2.jar is the method which worked but since there wasn’t much documentation on this, it took awhile to figure out and find. There are only a couple of threads on the ODK Developers Google Group which mention this. There were obviously a ton of issues considering it’s in Beta mode but after a number of tweaks and re-positioning data it worked. Issues faced during this process and remedies:

• ODK Briefcase requires it reads the data from a very specific directory structure. It needs to be the exact same as that created by ODK Aggregate for forms. Example of the directory structure in the ODK Briefcase folder:

  Forms

  Tanzanian Survey

  Instances

  TanzanianSurvey-11032011-1203

  submission.xml

• It is important that the XML data file be named submission.xml which is only possible if each submission is in a different folder. Unfortunately our data was not named submission.xml so I used Bulk Rename Utility. There are other ways to bulk rename in Windows but the search and replace using F2 method adds a number in parenthesis which would not work.
• Regarding the nested XML, since there were only 37 files where this was the case, we went through each file and flattened it to one level. However Windows doesn’t let you search within XML files so you’d probably need to download some software like XML Search

Ideally all of this could have been done by writing a simple script and writing to the same CSV file. However I was aiming to find something which could have been replicable by a non-tech individual. Looking forward to the next version of ODK Briefcase.

[Warning: Exaggeration happens. Sometimes. And other times life is just THAT funny.]

The Kindle Chronicles:

First week into Tanzania, Kindle dies. Or well freezes. All I could make out is half an advertisement of some exotic beach locale with a drink with an umbrella in it. I don’t want a drink with an umbrella in it! I want to be able to read about the epic adventures of Sigma Force in some totally ridiculous escapade in the heart of the Arctic! (*rant partially over*). Amazon gets called. They’re quite willing to send a replacement yet considering there are quite a few shipments to the UNDP which have been in transit for months, I decide to be safe and am now having it shipped to another chap who is coming to Tabora at the end of the month. The fact that the customer representative thought I lived in a country called Tetnus did not help alleviate my fears. The icing on the cake is the email I received last night which informed me that I must sent them the damaged kindle within 30 days to not incur charges for the replacement. No clue yet how I will achieve this but am being cheerfully optimistic today. I was not cheerfully optimistic when I received the email yesterday. (In case you were wondering)

Bus Mayhem at Ubungu Bus Station:

We, being the starving college students that we are, decided to take a bus to Tabora. Our taxi driver graciously offered to take us to the station to buy tickets since we would be ripped off otherwise. Lo and behold we got ripped off irrespective. Got sold tickets for a bus which doesn’t even go to Tabora AND got overcharged to boot. Miraculously our Swaheli teacher managed to get our money back after threatening police involvement and we managed to get the correct NBS tickets. Other than the leaking fuel tank, the drivers misconception that he was on an ATV and the five hour moonlit (which was possibly the most beautiful sky I have ever seen) drive on a dirt road, the trip was fairly uneventful.

Escape from the Dar Town Centre with a Exotic Driver to Paradise VER 2.0:

I can’t come up with a word to describe the driver. Just one word. Exotic was the closest I could manage. He was a native of Zanzibar, late 50s I think, wearing tinted pince-nez and according to Hannah, probably couldn’t see out of one eye. I got to be the lucky passenger seat driver and witnessed firsthand how it would feel to sit in the Knight bus from Harry Potter. Laura has a much more detailed post on this over at Teksi! We ended up at Hotel Meditteraneo which was … as mentioned…. paradise version 2 in the middle of nowhere.

Jan Rambo Snake Killa! (this will be completely lost on anyone who did not grow up in Pakistan):

Of late, we do a lot of zooming along dirt tracks in SUVs complete with punctured tires, dust and rattled bones. Recently the driver suddenly stopped and proceeded to attempt to reverse over a silver, lightening fast snake. When that did not work, all men in vehicle exited and proceeded to take turns tossing massive rocks at the snake until they were fairly sure it had been annihilated to the point that even reincarnation seemed doubtful. Plenty of fatal snake bite stories in this part of the world so every time I get off my bed, that’s the first thing I check for. Awesome way to wake up no?

A Day Sniffing Tobacco. Literally:

http://racooncode.com/2011/06/21/the-tobacco-industry-in-tabora

What the Hell Am I Doing Here?

Work-wise overloaded with eHealth, mapping, internet connectivity and electricity issues and will attempt to update the blog as much as I can to give you an idea of what’s happening on the ground.

¹ Amazonian monopoly of epic proportions on the world of ebook readers and all consequent associated monopolistic disadvantages. No page numbers. I’m serious. You can’t navigate to a page number. I’m guessing the programmer working on this doesn’t read much. Or get out much. Or have a girlfriend, who reads.
² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pince-nez
³ http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Ernie_Prang