Yan Can Cook or More fun with PVT

I've been a great fan of Martin Yan since 1985 or 86 when I was lucky enough to get a chance to visit the U.S. and watched his TV program "Yan Can Cook". Then there was a lapse for a decade or so when I returned home. After that I was again able to watch him at Marshall Islands in the Pacific for a year or two. Now, I am not sure if I have watched his old or new programs on this side of the new millennium. Anyway, not so long ago I was suddenly nudged by this curiosity to know if the familiar Yan accent is for real or not. I looked that up on the Web. Well, for now I'll leave it to you to find out what I found, or to guess it. That's up to you.

                                              

In one of Yan's program, I was really amazed watching him separate meat from bone and cut up a whole chicken in a snap, just with his big chopper. In another one he showed how to slice onions really fast with this big chopper again. Anyone would have been scared stiff with the idea of slicing onions with a big, heavy, and razor sharp chopper, but in reality the big broad blade itself is the key to superfast slicing while keeping your fingers safe!

Then, after watching so much of Yan, did I learn to cook or slice vegetables with a chopper like him? No, simply because there is someone with me all the time to handle genuine Myanmar day-to-day cuisine really well, or not so. Anyway, if I try to emulate Yan would I do well? Honestly, I don't think so. Yet, I did pick up Yan's philosophy for good: If Yan can cook, so can you.

With these words of Yan's encouragement I tried recently to start learning about creating data collection applications with mobile phones. Among the different software options available, I picked CSEntry because I know a bit of CSPro the mother software of which CSEntry is the data entry module. With CSPro you could develop data entry application for Windows platform or for Android.

The idea is to develop and test the CAPI (computer assisted personal interviewing) application with CSPro software that is running on a Windows computer. For Android phone data collection you need to develop the CSEntry application with the CSPro software version 6.1. Then you would do most of the testing on the Windows machine and finalize the application going back and forth between your desktop and the phone.

After that you compile the data entry application on the Windows machine to get the pen file (say xxx.pen). When you test runs the pen file on the Windows machine, you will get a pff file (say xxx.pff). These two files are all you need to run a data collection application on your Android phone or tablet. Of course you need have the CSEntry program for Android installed on the phone or tablet in the first place.

□       The required CSPro 6.1 software and manuals could be downloaded from the U.S. Bureau of Census website here.

□       CSEntry for Android could be downloaded to your phone from the Google Play Store.

□       Visit the CSPro Users website for goodies on CSPro and CSEntry for Android.

This is how I worked. To make head or tail out of a CAPI application, I played with the "simpleCAPI" application that comes with CSEntry for Android. After graduating from it, I worked through data entry application in the "Examples\CAPI" folder installed with the CSPro 6.1 program on my PC (I was lucky to have some experience working on regular data entry applications on the PC). Then I tried developing a PVT CAPI data entry application for Android on my own. Here, as I have already been posting about parallel vote tabulation on my Bayanathi blog, I felt that a PVT data collection application would not be too hard to do.

As the idea for the exercise is to get a working model for PVT mobile data collection and not much more, I based my application content almost entirely on the PVT sample observer forms given in pages 89 – 90 of the handbook for quick count/PVT by NDI (The Quick Count and Election Observation: An NDI Handbook for Civic Organizations and Political Parties, Estock, Nevitte, and Cowan, 2002).

Here are some screen shots of my PVT_1 application on Android phone.

Working on an Android CSEntry application gives you some refreshing experience you don't get with the desktop application. The checkbox for inputting multiple answers to a single question as in the screen shots above is a beautiful example. Below you can see how it worked the same as using paper questionnaires, but greatly more convenient because it could give you instantly the data you have previously entered that you want to look up.

In the first screen on the left of the screen shots above, the question was "Which parties contested the vote counting results?" For an earlier question, the list of political parties present at vote counting has already been entered. The program performed a check on answers to these two questions and returned the message shown in the middle screen shot. Now tapping the CSEntry logo on top-left corner of the screen brings up the list of all questions and answers entered (known as the Case Tree) and there you can find the previous answer. Then you can correct either or both of the answers as necessary.                                                                     

If you want to try out my application follow these steps:

1. Install CSEntry on your Android phone/tablet.
2. By doing so you will also get the application "Simple CAPI" installed in the folder "csentry" on the SD card.
3. Download pen file from this link: PVT_capi.pen.
4. Download pff file from this link: PVT_capi.pff.
5. If you've opened my blog post with your Android phone/tablet, both files will normally be stored in the "Download" folder. Cut and paste them into your "csentry" folder on your Android phone/tablet. Now, if you run CSEntry on your phone/tablet you will see my application "PVT_1". Tap on it and you are on your way to Start New Case and enter data.

I have created this application for fun (and may be some use).

I don't know if it works perfectly or not. I simply don't have the expertise to guarantee anything. Learn CSPro and try to do things on your own, or pick the software of your choice from among other free/open source software available for mobile data-collection application development.

Now it's my turn to say: If Bayanathi can do it, so can you.