Talking Moose

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Moose.exe To Do List

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May 7, 2019. My current suggestion is to not run Updates immediately. Let 10 minutes pass before you Check for Updates or Install Updates. Letting everything become stable, before doing updates, might prevent errors.

New Build May 5, 2019. Now it seems OK to run Updates. Seems to be working, but earlier today, it wasn’t. This new build has code that might let more people with older PCs and older graphics chips, use the Moose without getting an error code. Please send email or facebook feedback to let me know if this update worked well or not. Login tokens fixed.

See also: Steve’s To-do list. and Previous Builds.

Last updated this to-do list below: May 9, 2019.

High Priority Fixes

  1. Error Messages reworded. Not just Error Code 1012 or Cannot load Framework Services. I’m serious. Show a custom MessageBox if you need to, instead of the common pathway for all the other errors.
  2. The previous zip (and seemingly the new one today) had old Steve Settings for Home, MakeTopic. And News and Feeds should have been off. UserInfo Settings were cleared too. But now, all those Settings files are back to normal, so ask Steve for a new user reset again, when you are ready for it. And Apparently any time you put new settings into a zip archive, it makes it impossible for existing users to use Updates ever again. That is just crazy. The zip is for new installs. The Updates are for existing users. One should not disrupt the other.
  3. One-button Installer, but make the msi be as minimal as possible, so that most updates don’t need a re-compile of the msi. And particularly the plugins and their updates should not need recompile, they should download by Moose.exe, not Setup.exe
  4. Strings.txt had button names accidentally deleted by Steve, and some other StringGroups were deleted, and should be put back, until an Event to the Errors plugin can be implemented instead. Problem: Error buttons are currently empty, and I worry that spoken internet errors are simply not happening right now.
  5. All IoT and WebRequests, in C# and plugins, need longer timeouts for international use.
  6. When a new plugin is added via Updates, and then the View is opened, it will crash, green error. Something that is initialized during startup is missing, and should be explicitly done after a new plugin comes from Updates.

Before Beta test.

  1. Get the 4 languages (in Strings.txt) working for the green New User Reset dialog.
    1. If it’s before plugins, use Device.GetLanguageCode.
    2. If it’s somehow after plugins, provide a C# function that will save the choice by the user in the Home menu.
  2. A C# function for the Size.html plugin, to find-out the monitor size, and grey-out the Largest size buttons, if the size would be >= 50%, unless the user toggles a button to enable the larger sizes.
    • A New-User-Detected reset of size, could set the Smallest size when the user is on a laptop.
  3. The Sign-in page of Microsoft Tennant, needs customizing to explain better, so users don’t get stuck there and not login. I want to say “Click on the Facebook button, don’t enter your email unless you are already registered.”
    1. Put into Moose.exe, the Azure AD tennant URL, with query string that makes it show it’s customizations and languages.
    2. Once I can see it working, then I can edit the 4 language versions.
  4. Right-click menu
    1. To save time, hide the options in yellow from the right click menu. Ivan says, Azure will allow it only for Me and Ivan.
    2. Later, functionality can be deleted from the codebase.
    3. “Home” and “Exit” will need 4 languages.
    4. Double-click on the systray icon should open Home.
  1. For Twitter plugin, for New User Detected, I think we need a C# function logout and forget the previous user.If one user gives a Moose copy to a friend, the friend shouldn’t automatically be using the original Twitter account.
    • Most of the Twitter code in abc/Scripts/02_Plugins.js can move into the Twitter plugin.Change Azure Translate API to use v3. (or is it already the latest in use)
  2. Remove a certain capability.
  3. A C# setting, with Get and Set for Javascript, turns on checking if a Settings.xml file has been modified unexpectedly by an external program like Dropbox. If found, the Moose would exit without saving anything. Or maybe it disables just the plugin. I’ll put this setting in the AutoStartup plugin.
  4. An alpha tester with troubles using WebHooks, having SSL errors TLS 1.2 related, perhaps. Ivan suggests to add SSL loggers into the next build. His IoT also has errors but recovers. The certificate is valid. Was no location info either.
  5. Check C# code for Weather. API.GetWeather(location, ReceiveOpenWeather, function (error) {}
    1. Check that using only zipcode is using the correct URL query parameters. See https://openweathermap.org/current
    2. Add another json field for language code, and use &lang query parameter, and default to ‘en’ if not available.
    3. I think we shall switch to AccuWeather next, it has more languages, and can do postal codes outside the US. Code for both, but don’t switch yet.

TalkingMoose.com

  • Hello World index.html
  • Secure webpage for Admin functions to be placed.
  • Page for download link of Zip
  • Page for Paypal buy button

Quick and Easy

  1. User.Latitude and all User.somethings should return empty string, not null, if there is no value.
  2. Resources.Settings.Remove() rename from .RemoveSetting()

Delete unused code.

  1. If C# function Moose.OpenStreamView(‘Minutes Channel’); is now obsolete, lets delete it.
  2. I think we don’t need User.FacebookId anymore.
  3. The Moose.ShowNotifyIcon() function is not neede. Delete it.
  4. Cloud.SendKillCommand() is available now in .js, but I think it’s now obsolete. Ivan made the older Moose quit automatically. So delete the javascript one.
  5. User.SaveChanges(); Ivan thinks it’s now redundant, but Ivan wants one plugin to still call it at Shutdown as a precaution.Still needed? I think not needed, and confusing to exist.
    • Steve commented this out of UserInfo.js on July 9, 2018.
      And not needed in August. OK, Delete this from the C# code, it’s no longer used.
  6. Remove the C# green window for “Said What”, available from the right-click systray menu.
    • It’s no longer needed. The Said plugin is better now.A few things don’t get into the Said plugin. For example, internet error messages. Please add the event Trigger to send internet error messages to the Said plugin.
  7. ThreadLock(), lock.enter(), lock.exit()
  8. Plugin.GetCloudSettings(), Plugin.SyncSettings()
  9. function GetValueById(), <AutoSave>False</AutoSave>,
  10. Delete 2 files in bottom of Plugins folder: easeInOutCubic.gif and Stream.html
  11. Ivan will delete MooseInstanceNotification StringGroup from Strings.txt

Ivan decided

to work on these. They weren’t on my to-do list, but will be awesome and ultimately necessary.

  1. Paid plugins and security.
    • Such as downloading code for .js and .html from cloud, and inserting it into Plugin.js and Plugin.html before use.
    • In a marketplace scenario, 3rd party plugin creators of paid plugins will want their code protected, so others can’t simply copy it.
    • Steve’s interested in this for protecting Persuasion.js
    • Hopefully files get onto a CDN, and mildly encrypted in transit.

High priority after Beta test starts

  1. After a windows crash, it Windows reboots and restarts apps using a RAM image that was saved to disk. It’s like unwanted auto-startup.
    1. I do not have a suggested solution to this problem. Asking Ivan to think about it.
  2. Some alpha testers have an OS that doesn’t default to webrequests 1.2, and their Webhooks and PrivateChat aren’t working, showing SSL error ” The underlying connection was closed. Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS channel.”.
    1. Ivan suggests that plugins use WebHook.Send(dataHere, successFunctionCallback, errorCalback); so he can control it manually.
    2. Apparently, our cloud Webhooks service uses TLS 1.2, which is only available in .NET 4.6 or higher, and perhaps some win10 users have not gotten updates to that level. Can we code a check for that situation? It could be a Javascript C# call that I do when opening PrivateChat anything else that sends directly to our WebHooks cloud.talkingmoose.org, and that would give me a place to display a message saying this feature can’t be used because your .NET version needs to be updated. Run windows updates please.
  3. When “new user detected”, put all the info from ipstack.com into the User info, including
    • Latitude, Longitude,Timezone, Country, CountryCode, etc
    • Need new creation of User.CountryCode, User.TimezoneSeconds, User.IsDaylightSavings from ipstack.com data.
  4. Add first features to secure Admin webpage. talkingmoose.ca
    • Enter an email or name, find and retrieve user_id and UserInfo for that registered user.
    • Ivan wants the upload changed plugin button.
    • A private post/page on wordpress talkingmoose.ca is secure enough for now for our admin needs.
  5. Code Updates.Install() to receive the string with comma-separated list of plugins to not-update. Rather than IDs to include.
  6. The internal URLs used for API calls to our cloud, should have features added, like query strings, to make it harder for probing brute force to figure out how our APIs work.
  7. In abc/Scripts/02_Plugins.js take new ActiveXObject out of the function and make it happen once per plugin.
  8. Adjust Critical Updates so that they can happen very early, before Moose3D crashes from graphics card troubles. There will always be someone trying crazy things, like linux running Mac running win10 on a rasberry pi, and they try to run the Moose.
  9. The start times for Streams: Morning, Afternoon, Evening. Most Moose users will never change these, so all users will be starting at exactly the same times, and that could cause Web fetching by thousands of Moose users at exactly the same moment.
    • If a hundred thousand or million Moose users were doing Weather once in the afternoon, it would be an instant DDoS attack.
    • I think we need to give some randomness to the start times of these 3 streams.
    • This is done once at Moose.exe startup, set a flag for that. Any other instances when the next stream time is calculated, should be exact, so users doing editing aren’t confused.
    • How about adding Random(0,300000) milliseconds to those stream starting times.
  10. A C# function that returns a list of all plugins found in the plugins folder
    • So that Home.html can show them in a menu
    • After removing the ones that are already in other pre-made menus.
    • Then we can remove the plugin list from the right-click systray menu.
  11. Store points on the cloud
    • And needs arithmetic logic to detect if a hacked absurd value is being stored.
  12. Add Paypal to our talkingmoose.com website,
    Or use an eCommerce platform: https://zapier.com/learn/ecommerce/best-ecommerce-shopping-cart-software/

The Rest

  1. Ivan had added logging which noticed that my main event loop could sometimes have 3 second delays, while his is 100ms.
    • This was trying to understand why Moose3D sometimes freezes until motion of mouse occurs.
    • Perhaps it’s time to remove that logging.
  2. The black window frame, make the horizontal bar do drag near the horns and resize near the corners.
  3. Change Moose.exe from speaking certain errors, using Strings.txt, and instead send Events, so that the Error.js plugin can do translations.
    1. For these <StringGroup>s: NoInternetErrors, DNSNameResolutionFailureErrors, RequestTimeoutErrors, RequestErrors, MooseInstanceNotification
    2. Events.TriggerEvent(“Error.js speaks message”,theType, theFriendlyName, theErrorMessage);
      • theType is those StringGroup names, above.
      • theFriendlyName is speakable name for service,
      • theErrorMessage, is whatever was returned from service, or empty string.
    3. Then remove those <StringGroup>s from Strings.txt
  4. In Moose3D.exe, if the moose size is very small, 300 width or less, do not show eyelashes, to avoid blocky moire patterns
  5. Pass clicks through Moose3D to windows below.
  6. A C# command to test if a JSON file exists in the local plugin folder.
  7. A C# command to load a file of JSON from the local plugin folder.
    • Will be used to load translation commands/data for plugins.
  8. Dialogflow v2 SDK into Azure,
    • For authentication tokens for the Chat.js plugin.
      https://dialogflow.com/docs/sdks
  9. Google Oauth API for google sheets.
    • For the Research plugin, maybe other stats.
  10. More admin options, on admin webpage.
    • Button that can fetch from the cloud, the location data needed for future Maps. Ie, prove that a list of locations can be fetched from the database. WON’T USE OFTEN.
      Ivan won’t do this until after all the APIs are created, like DialogFlow, Google Oauth for Sheets, etc.
      Ivan worries that when Azure SDK changes from Beta to Final, these URLs will change again.
      The urgency to get our own Beta test going, means we don’t wait for Microsoft.
  11. If a user deletes their email in the UserInfo plugin, User.Info becomes empty and presumably saved to the cloud.
    • Do we still have a record of their email somewhere, in case I want to send them reminders to return to using the Moose after some time away, or email other info?
  12. The app on app.talkingmoose.org, for Microphone from cellphone, sent via webhooks. Doesn’t work right now. Check if WebHooks URL needs updating.
  13. When Home and Office PCs both run the Moose, lets say Office is active, Home is idle, the Moose on Home will get a shutdown message.
    1. Can Hello plugin get an event with info about When, and IP address of whoever caused it. This will allow Home Moose to speak about it during the next startup.
    2. ( Maybe someone sneaked into my Office while I was actually at home)
    3. ( or maybe, Office has auto-startup set, and Windows rebooted the idle Office while I was actually Home.)
  14. C# function for sending an email. Home.html will get a clickable button to send the Last Said to a friend.
  15. This can wait till after a few people have tested the Moose. The Azure functions on the cloud can be improved with code added that limits them to using only the services they actually use, and not have access to every possible Azure thing. It’s protection against a successful hack into Azure, to limit damage.
  16. For Map display on admin website, Probably need Google Oath API first, unless Azure/Bing has a Maps API.
    • I don’t need a working Map before beta testing begins, but I do need a technology chosen, and the data format is understood, and we are at least collection the location data correctly.
    • Selectable: All users locations, or Currently active users locations.
    • Azure provides IP-based lookup of an address, for every sign-on, which stays available for 7 days, but does not refresh address for token refreshes.
    • Google Maps needs latitude and longitude, but maybe can accept address input too?
    • https://www.pubnub.com/tutorials/javascript/mapping-javascript-tracking/?utm_source=EmailBlasts&utm_medium=Content-Roundup&utm_campaign=CR-CY17-Q4-Content-Roundup-December-23
    • https://www.pubnub.com/tutorials/javascript/mapping-javascript-tracking/?utm_source=EmailBlasts&utm_medium=Content-Roundup&utm_campaign=CR-CY18-Q1-Demo-Email
    • I can’t begin Beta testing until I can KNOW who is using the Beta Moose.
  17. If Moose3D.exe doesn’t receive any movement commands via MMF at all, for 10 seconds or more, it should make the Moose disappear from view.
    • We need a setting to Enable/Disable this, for testing purposes. It can be disabled now and during early beta testing, but really does need this coding to be done.
    • We need some code that tries once or twice, to wake up Moose.exe, perhaps with forcing the mouse to move, and if that fails, relaunch Moose.exe
    • On Steve’s PC, it seems that Moose.exe can freeze up, (application not responding), but Moose3D.exe stays running. If that happens to other users, we SHOULD be hiding Moose3D.
    • This used to happen to me, but I not since sept 2018. I return to my PC from being somewhere else in the house for a while, and the motionless moose is visible. It goes away when I start moving the mouse. But some plugins are still running, eg, fetching from Reddit and sending to the Buffer is still working. Things were accumulating on the Say queue too, not being spoken until I moved the mouse.
  18. “Moose is loading” shown above SysTray when Moose starts.
  19. Ivan says a new WebView with .NET 3 core, is coming.
    • It might be possible to code WebView now.
    • The Webpages.js plugin, which renders offscreen, needs a browser supporting Javascript ES6, because most popular websites worthy of scraping, are probably using JS libraries that use ES6.
    • later, after gaining familiarity with WebView coding, convert all plugin Views to use WebView instead of older WebBrowser.
    • Or Maybe use Chromium Embedded Framework and forget about Microsoft for this one.
  20. Add ESNI, encrypted SNI, https://blog.cloudflare.com/esni/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/esni-privacy-protecting-upgrade-https so that users won’t be spied on by their ISP regarding what websites they fetch from. Also change TTR mode to 3, ( Trusted Recursive Resolver ) to stop DNS-level blocking and allow ESNI to work. https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2018/06/01/improving-dns-privacy-in-firefox/
  22. Activity functions for Calendar plugin and On-the-Hour plugin:
    • Problem: I’m out of the room, the Moose speaks a Calendar event, and I don’t hear it.
    • Function 1 Create a C# function that returns the time of the last activity results with mouse move or keypress or microphone audio burst or scrollwheel move
      • So the plugin can save the sentences until it is sure the user is nearby to hear it.
      • Calendar plugin .js can call this function periodically via Timers.setTimer(), but Ivan suggests using an event. I’d prefer a function, at the moment.
    • Function 2 Create a C# function that notices “inactivity” defined as no movement for 5 minutes or longer, sets IsInactivity true.
    • Function 3. A C# function notices when “activity” resumes after “inactivity” and sends an event to plugins.
    • Useful for:
      • Problem: Suppose its after bedtime, Quiet Hours is ON, but the user is staying up late, working on their PC.
      • The Moose can tell the user to Go to bed, at 1am, 2am, etc, but should only do it, if user activity is detected, like mouse movement or keyboard activity.
      • High priority can be used in Moose.Say()
      • So the activity function created above for the Calendar plugin, will be handy in the On-the-Hour plugin too.
  23. Moving all the editable animation parameters, into hard-coded Moose3D.exe, severely reducing or eliminating Scene.xml.
  24. Cloud-save settings. Anything not completed yet regarding Cloud credentials for APIs? I’m’ not using it, and I should.
  25. Plugins need icons, for App store future.
  26. Ivan to create a AWS login for himself, with 2 factor verification,
    • and Steve needs to do the same and improve his password.
  27. Microphone for Ambient.     Don’t interrupt human speech
    • An On/Off that a plugin can change ambient microphone on/off. (different from speech recognition on/off). This is detect audio spikes
    • Need code that recognizes background sound volume, and recognizes volume spikes compared to previous.
    • Presence of volume spikes, means go ahead with save:activenear, useful for Webhooks and Calendar
    • Presence of volume spikes, means don’t Speak from Say queue, allow 3 secs of silence first.
    • Presence of volume spikes, turns on local microsoft speech recognition.
    • 4 minutes without volume spikes, turns off local microsoft speech recognition.
    • I think audio-spike detection is as simple as summing the Absolute Values ABS() of each data point in the audio soundwave. and comparing to a threshold.
  28. Microphone for chat.
    • For Chatbot, will need audio sentences to send to a Speech-to-Text API.
    • Will need an On/Off, for ALL speech recognition. that the Chat plugin can change.
    • When ON, the local microsoft speech recognition is not yet actually running. Lets make it actually turn on when a burst of audio, of any kind, is detected on the microphone. And lets turn it off automatically after 4 minutes without audio bursts.
    • When local microsoft speech recognition is ON and running, we can have it listen for a specific phrase like “Hey Moose”. ( plus a few others like “Thank-you Moose”.)
    • When “Hey Moose” is recognized by local microsoft speech recognition, it automatically switches to using Azure speech recognition.
    • We can let a plugin configure whether to use Azure, or Google, or a few other providers, but coded in C#.
    • We’ll turn off Azure speech recognition, if there’s 3 minutes of lack-of-speech happening.
    • Text received from speech-recognition is sent to the Chat plugin.
    • Code the flag in Moose.exe Settings.txt
    • Add tests of the flag around all places in C# that use cloud.
      • And look at plugins: Translate, PrivateChat, Login, Chat, GeoLocation, Research results storage,
    • Code Moose.exe to receive a message from cloud to disable the flag.
      • A hard-to-hack message so hackers can’t be sending “disable” messages to my user base.
  29. A flag created in Settings.txt, that can turn off all calls to our Azure and AWS cloud. If we detect someone abusing our cloud, we send a message to their Moose, turning off it’s cloud usage.
  30. <meta name=”MooseUI” content=”AllScripts AllStyles”/>
  31. Twitter API limits, the C# calls to twitter must count calls in 15-minute windows,
    • and block excess, so we don’t get banned by Twitter.
    • The plugin’s Shutdown function also tries to reset timing of 1 minute or less, to longer values.
  32. Streams with only 2 plugins set, should use my Alternate12(), and with 3 plugins set, should use Alternate123() instead of Random(1,2) or Random(1,3).
    • I found that I prefer the predictable evenness, over the sometimes occurrence of getting the same plugin 3 times in a row.
    • It will solve a problem, of wanting to hear 2 “evening” plugins, once each.
    • Alternate1234, maybe even Alternate12345
    • But I and Beta users would lose access to making video captures.
    • Ivan, why is this necessary? Isn’t hiding almost as good?
  33. Remove access to Moose Studio, for the version to go out for beta testing.
  34. Moose.SetVideoRenderBackgroundImage( theURL );
    • I need the ability to change the background image for video captures, automated within Plugins.
      • To eliminate the clumsy visit into Moose Studio to change the image, and normal users won’t get access to Moose Studio.
      • So a plugin can automatically use a random different image each time, or slide to choose a desired image.
    • Able to use background image from local, or from a URL. 2 functions?
    • (below, are not urgent priorities right now. they are future ideas.
    • This might be useful to the Meme Maker code, if it can set the background image to be fully transparent.
    • It would be great to have code that automatically responds to facebook mentions of the Moose, by creating Meme-like static pictures, OR, rendered videos, with automatically generated text,
      and posting them to facebook. Would be good for marketing. Could make Happy birthday videos for all my registered users.
    • In the further future, ability to render onto a background video
    • Moose.Record(‘these words’) will be needed too.
  35. Chat in my-custom-functions.php improvements.
    • GreenSock + Scrollmagic for sliding animations of chats
    • Hover popup over moose saying ‘click’ for joke
    • Circle pictures to add box-shadow 50% radius
    • Circle pictures bounce animation when clicked, ie,
      • improve pulseClick and hopefully not have it disturb the position of anything else.
      • Mimic the bounce of Say Joke style of buttons in Home.html
    • Circle pictures to show cursor:pointer
    • Ad footer code
      • update Facebook to 2.11 version
      • serve the .js from moosefile instead of halls.md
      • Add some animation to text in the ad
  36. Hotkey for Moose3D.exe to capture a Moose image (in big size, high resolution) and save it into a PNG format with alpha transparency shadow. To be subsequently used for creating sellable Moose products on zazzle.
    • Probably need several sizes, big and small, because eyelashes look bad after downscaling.
    • I don’t know the sizes needed yet, so an editable setting for sizes, would be nice.
    • (I tried using WebMoose output in Photoshop, but couldn’t figure out how to use it to create the transparent background PNGs that I need.)
    • for Meme Maker and for creating Products for sale
  37. It would be cool to have a live count of Moose users.
    • For myself to know,
    • Maybe Home.html shows the total too, it might encourage people to share the Moose more.
  38. Allow a plugin to have no javascript, ie, an empty <source>
  39. Fix to automatically use the email address obtained from Facebook.
  40. subject used if source also present, for email subject.
  41. Forwarding to Email and IFTTT, if the Moose can’t speak a message.
  42. {“andIFTTT”:”eventname”}. ( {“orIFTTT”:”eventname”} ). (for WebHooks API)
    • Later add {“andZapier”:”triggerURL”} or {“orZapier”:”triggerURL”} because Zapier is very awesome.
  43. For Toast style notifications
    • Ability to toggle the windowframe from our standard, to slim ( Although, the frame with 3D text shadows is starting to look good, so this is lower priority.
    • Commands to position the window offscreen, to various corners. ( But bouncing to land above the taskbar is probably going to be good, so this is lower priority)
  44. Ivan’s mouse gestures apparently don’t work
    • They don’t match the example in “About the Moose”
    • Waiting for help with chatbot coding. It should be a dedicated max effort, not dabbling.
  45. Chat.js Azure refresh token, should keep track of last time something was chatted, and stop refreshing the token if > 20 minutes has passed. Clear instead.
  46. Periodic task run on Azure to find users who stopped using Moose for a while, and send them an email to remind or get feedback.
  47. At Shutdown, Moose says goodbye, the green points window gets frozen.
    • So, disable the green points display for the final goodbye speaking.
  48. For Toast style notifications
    • Ivan suggested using Moose3D to do the sliding motions of the window.
    • Hiding choppy animation, perhaps add slight delay from signal to motion.
    • A command to interrupt a Notification.Hide(), so it reverses back to fully shown. ( Notification.Hide(‘reverse’); ???
    • The Notification.Show() to add parameters for height and width, in pixels,
      that fit whatever the HTML believes are pixels.
    • For Notification.Show(), can the $(window).load function determine the actual height of internal content, and then adjust the window height to fit, and adjust the bounce onto top of taskbar accordingly. Is C# able to handle that, or must the <script> call a C# function to adjust the window height and bounce?
    • At the office PC, mysteriously, font sizes seem Zoomed, and manual un-zooming doesn’t persist across sessions. Causes problem, fonts are too big and they don’t fit the available window space.
  49. When an HTML view is window Minimized, Restored, adjust the JS code in abc/Scripts/12_Pastels.js to halt gradient changing.
    • A minimize from a taskbar click doesn’t succeed, so the Deactivate event is untrue and needs to be double-checked before telling plugins incorrect info.
  50. Periodic checking if monitors are added or unplugged.
  51. Allow moose recordings with Moose Location X and Moose Location Y to have negative number offsets.
  52. When opening “Open View” windows for plugins, add code that forces them to be smaller than the monitor they are on. I get problems, because my monitor #1 at home is landscape, my monitor #1 at the office is portrait mode. Sometimes, I Open View at home, and I can’t see the top or bottom window frame bars, which makes it very tricky to re-size them to be usable. I also discovered, that if I resize an “Open View” window for a plugin, then Close it, it will only save it’s new dimensions, if it was resized on monitor #1. It ignores my re-sizing on monitors #2 and #3.<- that seems weird behavior that will confuse users. We might have Beta testers who can’t close html views, because I saved them too large on my PC.
  53. ScrollWheel UpDownUp gesture. Scrollwheel coding
  54. When Plugin.SetStream(null) is used, and it falls-back to using Scheduler Intervals, make sure it restarts a waiting timer and doesn’t generate a Run after 0 milliseconds. It needs to be a proper wait Interval before Run.
  55. Logs cleanup.
    • For example, this error is just logging something.
    • Ivan also added logs for diagnosing why Feeds using XmlHttpRequest were not receiving a callback to the timeout function. Remove these debugging logging code if no longer needed.
  56. When Voice is male, switch texture map of face and eyelashes to be the male version.
  57. If I’m working on Moose, testing phrases in plugins, and if it’s after midnight, then Quiet Hours happens, and makes it seem like the plugin isn’t working.
    • We should give some visual feedback, flashing the plugin taskbar icon, perhaps with something like a symbol of audio being off. I can supply an audio-if-off symbol to flash, when you are ready.
  58. For all Streams (Minutes Channel, Hours, etc)
    • (I’m having second thoughts about this one.. maybe not needed right now). to have a setting to allow 1 or 2 things spoken each time. Therefore, I need a setting to specify “intervals/once(1)/once(2)/twice(1)/twice(2). “Once(1) would mean afternoon would only speak once, just one plugin. Once(2) would mean afternoon would speak once, but sentences from 2 plugins one-after-another. Twice(1) would mean speak once then wait for the interval to pass then speak one more time, a sentence from one plugin. Twice(2) would be speak two sentences from two plugins each time, for a total of 4 in the afternoon.
    • (I’m having second thoughts about this one.. maybe not needed right now)the Duration, if null, currently means it’s a 24-hour-a-day channel. I need a separate setting meaning Duration24hourAdayOnOff, to put into a toggle button. This will allow a numeric Duration value (non-null) to not get lost if the user toggles 24-hour-a-day on and off.
  59. (Ivan wanted to wait on security bulletproofing. I hope my good ideas about setting limits and length-checking parameters isn’t forgotten.)
    • Idea to add deliberate slowdown to cloud functions involving user_ids or secret tokens, to thwart brute forcing.
    • Idea to check IP address stored with user_ID, and email or alert if new IP addresses suddenly appear.
  60. Need a way to store pronounciation errors. Perhaps in a filter plugin? I’ve remembered that /abc/VoiceRules.js gets called before the Moose generates animation. Maybe something similar can be implemented for pronouncication.. Ie, some Voice companies might allow embedded pronounciation, others might need different methods.
  61. Fix “quite a few items to fix with recording on Moose.exe”.
    • Shh’ing and Cancelling recording, would cause errors. Need to fix this.
    • Moose can send Visemes while recording, which would put Show/Hide Moose commands out of order.
    • Stop recording button ignores part of the recording process and sends MMF messages directly to Moose3D without calling Speech or Animation services.
    • A brief flash of the Moose, after recording ends.
  62. If a plugin has an error, you currently disable it, until the next restart of the Moose. That’s OK for active developers, but for normal users, I think we should show a one-time message on the next restart, saying it was disabled and would you like to re-enable it?
  63. If a plugin causes Moose.exe to CRASH or EXIT silently, we should show a one-time message on the next restart, saying the plugin was disabled, and would you like to re-enable it.
  64. The javascript error dialogs, I can’t change the size of the window frame. I’d like to be able to play with that.
  65. Need new webmoose code, so it works also on mobile browsers. For my websites
  67. In a plugins .html file, if I use <form>…</form> it causes an error after clicking a button. Maybe it’s trying to do an ‘action’ like ‘get’ or ‘put’.
    • I think there are forms in the Streams.html. I should check if they error.
  68. The Green windows, for the X, -, and wrench buttons, they need to have hover and click effects.
  69. Shh’ing twice. The VB6 moose had a feature, if you SHH’ed 2 things in a row, then it would keep the Moose silent for 30 minutes. If the user SHH’es the first thing spoken after 30 minutes, then it won’t speak again for 2 hours.
  70. Watching a Movie, Playing a game, YES, I’ve always intended to have a feature, a list of processes, such that if that process is running, the Moose will keep silent. We’d supply a decent list, and be able to update it remotely, and learn what other users are adding to their custom lists.
  71. Stimulus sound, Probably later, a feedback method: a Right-Left gesture after hearing the stimulus sound, could be a way of teaching the Moose, that the stimulus interval was annoying and needs to be lengthened longer than 10 minutes, and maybe we automatically increase it to 15 minutes.
  72. Earning badges. Float up a little symbol of a badge earned, and store it someplace where people can look at them later. ( this is an idea for later. Don’t code badges now. I just don’t want to forget it.)
  73. Quiet Hours improvement. Ideas.
    • Quiet doesn’t start until there is about 5 minutes of inactivity of keyboard and mouse movement.
    • It can wake-up during the Quiet hours, if keyboard happens, or if mouse moves more than 20 pixels in 1 sec (ie, not slow gradual drift).
  74. Moose.Quiet.temporarilyTalkingBecauseOfActivity.
    • Quiet Hours is supposed to be suspended, when there is computer activity, typing or mouse movement. it should audibly talk. But I think it rarely works, maybe never.
    • When it does get working again, I’d like to show some feedback about this status, in the Quiet Hours plugin.
    • This will be important feedback so users will understand WHY the moose is still talking after they just turned Quiet mode ON.
  75. I’d like to reward Button clicks inside plugins, with random bonus game points. Like, clicking “Say anti-anxiety”, or “Say weight-loss” buttons. But how?, I don’t want a public function visible inside Javascript that could be run in a loop. Maybe we can automate it. If an HTML plugin page has a button that calls Moose.Run, then the Run() gets Plugin.RunType == “Action”. Perhaps we can do a Bonus points if Run() calls Moose.Say(), maybe show those points even before the speech queue starts talking. It will probably need some time limits, or maybe it won’t become active again until after a moose Say is completed.
  76. I’m wondering if the Green window for game points, if it should be javascript on HTML. Then I could use GreenSock for moving things, animating SVGs, clipping it so the sys tray shows.. But what would happen to the beautiful fonts?
  77. Try seeing +48 Bonus Points float up as soon as the gesture succeeds, instead of waiting till the end of speaking.
    • It would probably be more encouraging that way.
  78. When making a recording, sometimes the Moose tries to speak something that just happens through normal timing, and it messes up the end of the recording, so a huge recording of idle motions happens, which then chokes the file system.
    • We need a flag to disable regular talking until recording is fully over.
    • We need a flag to disable recording until regular talking is over.
    • (This is similar to disabling talking until auto-saving is over.
  79. Settings_0a0c573
    1. Lets eliminate storing window Top,Left offsets? That seems obsolete, since just about everything is a plugin now. We can fall back to just using the center of monitor 1.)
  80. Plugin HTML view windows are supposed to toggle between minimize and show, when you click on their taskbar name. It opens correctly, but doesn’t minimize correctly when the taskbar is clicked again.
    • Ivan says it’s because our View .html windows are actually 2 windows superimposed, one for the frame, the other for the web browser content. To fix this, would require some low level OS hooks and messing with OS messages.

Ivan’s servers

Ivan says: I do have bunch of space on my servers now that we can use. Got stable 1Gb line as well, all battery protected; internet, servers, networks etc…

Servers can do everything we want. But I was thinking more like for extra features, database proxy kinda deal for external IPs like IP Lookup, to save money. And some features just don’t work nicely on the Cloud, money wise, for example if we want to proxy WebRequests we need tons of storage and big chunks to store in database (web page caching), which will cost a lot on the Cloud.

And just in general if (when) we grow Cloud cost will be huge, it’s $1/m per user account just for authentication (first 10k are free), oh actually no it was on AWS, it’s just $ 0.0011 per user per month and $0.0028 per authentication per month (not quite sure what it actually mean, looks like it’s per authentication request but why “per month”). Anyhow cost can go nuts and I like to have a backup plan.

All Azure code I wrote is directly portable to on-premises servers (by design) and we can do hybrids – some stuff runs on Azure and some on our own servers.

Stale Ideas

  • Ivan says it’s difficult for detecting if Moose.IsInternetAvailable, so I’ll have to just accept that plugins will show the not-logged-in warning, if there’s no internet.
  • Making recordings. I’m using Bandicam now, so I don’t think built-in recording is a needed feature anymore.
  • Home.html doesn’t show up if I start Moose with my VPN running, until a 5-minute timeout elapses. Can you shorten that to 15 seconds?
  • Not working, need fix: this.getResponseHeader(“Last-Modified”); and this.getAllResponseHeaders(); But I’m unlikely to use it in my WebRequest plugin.
  • Does Translate API on cloud have any Throttling, or overuse protection? We need something, perhaps count uses per minute.Ivan says Azure only gives a daily limit. I was thinking our own code on Azure would count on a per-user basis, to a max per minute.
  • Moose.SendWebHook(theJSON) might be better than plain XmlHttpRequestFor improving PrivateChat.js function SendPrivateChat
  • WebMoose, for BMI results, give thought for a way to speak different sentences for BMI of 29.1, 29.3 etc..Perhaps a webhook to a plugin that creates mp4 recordings, and sends them back.
    I should write down the sub-steps to make this happen. But not code it yet.
  • Twitter real-time Streaming.For a new tab in the Twitter.html options bar.
    It would show scrolling text results of the incoming stream, (not using Buffer), used for reading it, not Moose speaking it.
    https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/filter-realtime/overview
    https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/filter-realtime/guides/connecting
  • Ivan wants to avoid Lip Sync delay on the first “Hello” for a new user on a slow computer. My idea was to have Home.html send an event, when it’s finished loading. I think this can wait until after we give it to our trusted friends to try it.
  • Back button, for plugin windows.If the plugin designer chooses to place a link to a webpage, and that webpage is displayed in our green window, we need BACK navigation, somehow.
    We don’t have a visible button on the frame, Can we add one?
    At least we should act upon the keyboard press for going back, which is? ESC, or ALT-Left-arrow?
  • Need a checkbox option for Moose startup, to not show Home.html in the taskbar at all.Ie, have it only accessible through the right-click systray.
    This would be an advanced-user option.
    I guess it needs a Get and Set function available in javascript and html
  • Optional, I’ve never had confidence to use the “RELOAD” feature, but maybe creating a C# function for Plugin.ReloadJS(), it could be put on a button in the Plugin.html, for testing things.
  • Code Moose.exe to receive a command code from cloud, to report back it’s version and maybe checksums.This could grow into a generic command for Moose.exe to send back all sorts of info upon request.
    Not needed for beta test, but could be useful later.
  • Code Moose.exe to receive a command code from cloud, to cause this Moose to retire. When a Moose version is too old, no longer supported, maybe failing to auto-update, it needs to be “retired”, with a sweet message of regret, and advice to get new version.
    My retirement funds are at risk. I am at legal risk. If some unforeseen lawsuit told me to shut it all down, I need a way.
  • More APIs, slightly less priority, may not get into Beta testThen Zazzle, (according to their API, my associate ID is 238195250472598764When I sign on with Facebook, my associate id is 238195250472598764
    Then SendTxt plugin uses Nexmo API. (ApiKey and ApiSecret)
    Then YouTube API, currently visible in YouTube.js line 403
    For Zazzle API, “Something to keep me busy for a while”, the C# function for using Template links:The documentation.
    Because javascript can’t read the zazzle RSS feed, due to CORS block, need a PHP or Lambda task on AWS that fetches the RSS feeds, converts it into JSON files.
    My Associate ID should be in the C# function. It is 238195250472598764
    Maybe my associate ID is stored on the cloud, not hard-coded into Moose.exe, in case I ever need to create a new company or bank account for this zazzle stuff, without needing to do a Moose.exe update.
    So the protected part of the C# URL is “https://www.zazzle.com/api/create/at-238195250472598764?rf=238195250472598764
    And everything else is a query parameter that Javascript can create and pass as a single string parameter.
    The Images of the Moose, to be put on Mugs and Shirts, need to be on a specific domain or subdomain, like images.moosefile.com
    We also need a C# function for using “RealView Template links. They are for <img src=…> and the src URL needs to contain my associate ID.Maybe we need a C# function that simply returns my associate ID. Then Javascript can create the rest of the src URL in a string.
    But plugin views are difficult at showing made-by-javascript image sources, at least for local files. There were tricks needed with @file: to set theElement.src = theURL. Maybe it’s not a problem for external URLs.
  • Ivan suggested to move the TTS for audible speech, into Moose3D.exe, but keep TTS in C# for the silent run that preceeds it.Hoping to eliminate lip-sync problems.
  • Microphone for arbitrary lip-sync.need multiple arrays filled with data, raw and from FFT, lots of sums, 256,128,64,32,16,8,4. and at at least 8 different time windows, probably more. Combining enough to get average of 20ms, 40ms and 80ms worth of speech.
    The FFT size, 512 size.
    Microphone notes.ReasonsUser talks into microphone, Moose mimics the correct mouth shapes, a “fun mode”, lets people record the Moose singing, or speaking sounding sad or mad or excited.
    Steve will need a way to visualize the spectrograms, at various summated amounts, at various time-averaged amounts, and compare 2 sounds.We will need to build a visualization tool, in order to efficiently analyze a few thousand different sound samples, while coding the logic.
    Steves examples of Formant code: aescripts.com auto-lip-sync or Talking Head by Ryan Cashman, both for Adobe AfterEffects, A Mathworks module: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/45315-formant-estimation, http://geoff-morrison.net/ has a matlab source code for formants, near bottom of page.
  • Microsoft Azure, I can find the Verbs using https://westus.dev.cognitive.microsoft.com/docs/services/56ea598f778daf01942505ff/operations/56ea5a1cca73071fd4b102bb
  • mail.halls.md added to certificate.Install to all places, halls.md breast-cancer.ca, Azure, etc
    But look into why your visestech is rejecting my emails as spam. Maybe I shouldn’t get deeply serious about mail.halls.md if some people will be blocked from receiving my emails.
    Defer this item, until I eventually learn which SpamHaus-like service is actually blocking me. Maybe outlook?

Notes about Notifications

Because notifications on the Windows 10 desktop are not very useful, and could be enhanced by having the Moose speak them sometimes.

Regarding hooking into Notifications in win10, according to a freelancer yassineAzxmani, using ApiMonitor, this graphic shows that Notifications are located in ntdll.dll, and use a thread with CSRSS. And that suggests it may not be possible to inject into that.

Here’s an alternate hook library. It’s very unlikely the Moose will ever hook things directly, because I want a perfect reputation. But add-on products with their own DLLs could still be possible.PolyHook Hook library