Week 1 ( 5/27/2011) Summer 2011

Week 1 ( 5/27/2011) Summer 2011



Summer session started soon after our spring classes ended without any actual break. That does not deter the enthusiastic level of students working at RCOS. Despite being the start of a memorial day week end, we had a decent attendance. We had talks by

1) Nate Stedman '11 - Observatory and how to succeed at RCOS
2) Tim Horton '11 and Rob Carr '11- Things to watch out when selecting and doing project at RCOS
3) Moorthy - Welcome and pointers

Nate gave a fantastic presentation with pictures, photos and even a little demo. Nate talked about Observatory, Ease and how people communicate and collaborate. Nate gave pointers how to succeed and how to write productive code. Nate stressed about pushing the code.

Tim and Robb used notes from an IPad 2 to describe how to choose a project (what are some of the common pitfalls), how to proceed and how to contribute. They advised about choosing to work on an existing project and start contributing.


I gave various pointers and links. Recommended joining the internet chatroom #rcos under irc.freenode.net . My talk slides may be found here.

Rcos summer 2011_first_talk

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On Saturday, RPI had his commencement ceremonies. Rob Carr, Tim Horton, Matt Arsenault, Colin Sullican, Adam Georgiou and Nate Stedman all graduated with a BS. Trishan de Lanerolle (http://hfoss.org ) got his Masters in Management from RPI Trishan works closely with RCOS in getting HFOSS efforts implemented. Brain Michalski got Mueller prize (An annual prize established to honor Glenn Martin Mueller, Rensselaer Trustee and graduate, Class 1964. A leading venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, Glenn was a champion of the entrepreneur, funding many successful start-up companies. An annual prize established to honor Glenn Martin Mueller, Rensselaer Trustee and graduate, Class 1964. A leading venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, Glenn was a champion of the entrepreneur, funding many successful start-up companies. This prize is given to a computer science major who is deemed to be the most entrepreneurial.) in Computer Science department.

Below is a photo of Nate, Trishan, Matt, Robb and Tim i front of Lally after the commencement ceremonies.

Week 15 (5/10/2011) Spring 2011

Week 15 (5/10/2011) Spring Semester

We had a guest speaker this week on a special day Tuesday - the last day of classes.
The speaker was Prof. Ralph Morelli from Trinity College, Hartford, Ct. He has been the co-principal investigator for NSF supported Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (http://hfoss.org ) We have been working with them for the last two years and it has been a learning experience as well as a productive experience. Ralph talked about their new project to get GK-12 students and teachers interested in computer science. He and his group has been working with app inventor for Android (It is based on scratch at MIT and app inventor was also developed jointly by MIT and Google). Their group won an award from White House last summer for developing an application for healthy living (developed by GK 12 teachers)

Ralph developed a few cool applications during his talk to show the versatility as well as power of App Inventor. To incite further interests, he raffled off prizes as a part of his applications demo.

His talk as well his presentations are something We (I) can emulate.

His talk signaled the end of Spring Semester 2011. What a great way to end the semester!

Week 14 (5/6/2011) RCOS Talk Videos - Spring 2011

Week 14 (5/6/2011) Talk Videos

Thanks to Tim Horton and Nate Stedman, We have all the four talk videos.

Talk by Dan Nichols on Hash Functions based on Hamiltonian Cycles. Here is his talk video.



Talk by Tom Buttner on La Forge



Talk by Deon Robinson on Gaming Engine Android Gaming Tutorials.


http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Talk by Jon Skurka on Pychess



Their talk slides can be found in http://rcosblogbymsk.blogspot.com/2011/05/week-14-562011-spring-semester-2011.html

Week 14 (5/6/2011) Spring Semester 2011

Week 14 (5/6/2011) Spring Semester

This week was the last week of students' presentations. We have the following four student presentations.

1) Dan Nichols -on Graph-Based Cryptographic Hash Functions (Dan (BS
in Math class of 2011) wrote a bachelor's paper/thesis with me durig
Fall 2010)

2) Tom Buttner- LaForge http:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif//rcos.rpi.edu/projects/laforge/


3)Deon Robinson - Android Gaming Project
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/android-gaming-project/

4)Jon Skurka- PyChess Learning Module
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/anywhere-sync/


Dan Nichols (Math) gave a fine talk on the inadequacy of using Hamiltonian Cycles as Hash functions (by using permutations and adding random edges). He showed how Hamiltonian Cycles can easily (he used an implementation which could detect such cycles using the ideas of Bollabas and Frieze and implementation of Nivasch)

His talk slides may be found here

Graph based cryptographic hash functions

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Next, we had a talk by Tom Buttner. His automatic playlists extraction for Radio stations (and operators) is almost working (He has some difficulties with the library he is using and the requirements of those libraries are a bit hard to come by).

Tom's talk slides may be found here:

La forge pres_2

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Deon Robinson has been creating tutorials (documentations and sample games) for Android Game Engine Deon's documentations and tutorials have already been used by a number of people. His games also provide a good tutorial on the various features of Android Game Engine. Deon's next tutorial game utilizes physics features of the gaming engine. Deon's talk slides may be found in his blog.

Final talk is by Jon Skurka on his modules for pyChess. He changed his project midway through the semester and he is the lone student working on this project. As a result, he is slowly catching up. His plans are to make tutorial module and a puzzle module. (pyChess program itself is undergoing some structural changes) Jon's talk slides may be found here:

Py chess learning-module

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Reflecting on the whole semester, I may have done more than my share of mistakes. As RCOS expands and matures more problems arise. I have not been successful in meeting one of the goals of RCOS (to make the center self sustaining.) I feel like a failure and I do not want to pass on my failures to RCOS.

Agile Programming Workshop

Kitware Inc. and Vicarious Visions would like to invite you to a lunch and learn seminar titled “Agile Programming Practices for High-Quality Software Development."

Date and time: May 17, 2011 from 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: The Comfort Suites, 7 Northside Drive Clifton Park NY 12065

Bill Hoffman, VP and CTO of Kitware Inc., and Jason V. Schroeder and Nicholas Ruepp, Producers at Vicarious Visions, will discuss the importance and use of agile programming. Mr. Hoffman will highlight how these techniques enable high-quality software development at Kitware. Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Ruepp will summarize agile project management techniques used at Vicarious Visions, an Activision|Blizzard company. The presentation will be 40 minutes followed by an interactive question and answer discussion.

Bill Hoffman has more than 18 years of experience with large C++ systems and leads the development of the Kitware Quality Software Process.

Jason Schroeder is a Certified Scrum Master who has been practicing agile development techniques since 2007.

Nicholas Ruepp has a variety of management experience and has been adapting agile practices to both large and small game development teams since 2008.

We will be providing lunch, however space is limited, so we kindly request that you register by May 12, 2011.

RSVP: To RSVP to this free seminar, please email kitware@kitware.com with your name, contact information and any dietary restrictions you may have. If you have a colleague who would be interested in attending, you are welcome to forward us their contact information as well.

Talk on May 6th

App Inventor for Android and CS Education


Time and Place: May 10,2011 4:00 -5:00 pm , Lally 102

Speaker: Prof. Ralph Morelli


Abstract: App Inventor is a visual, web-based programming environment that makes it possible for non-programmers to develop apps for their mobile phones. The talk will describe the App Inventor language and how it can be used at the introductory level to teach CS concepts and principles. Sample apps and projects from a college-level CS0 course will be used as examples. The implications for CS education at various levels in the K-14 pipeline will be discussed.

Bio: Ralph Morelli is a Professor of Computer Science at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where he has been teaching CS since 1985. He currently serves as one of the Principal Investigators of the NSF-funded Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Project (HFOSS), an attempt to help revitalize undergraduate computing education by getting students engaged in building software that benefits society. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and an M.S. in Information and Computer Science from the University of Hawaii. In addition to HFOSS, his research interests include artificial intelligence and computer science education.

Sponsored by Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software

Week 13 (4/29/2011) Spring 2011

Week 13 (4/29/2011) Spring 2011

It was a glorious spring Friday, a picture perfect day at Troy as shown by the above photo. It was also the royal wedding day (I had to decline my invitation so that I have to attend more important event - to attend RCOS meeting!)

It was also a pay day to boot. With this introduction, we had a wonderful set of talks.

1) Prof. Jason Kuruzovich talked about his project of contributing to Open Source Learning Management Systems. Prof. Jason K has a grand vision of incorporating syllabus sharing and LMS. He has already started a small group and he is looking for more participation from students (RCOS or otherwise). It is a great boon for RCOS to be involved. Please contact him if you are interested. His talk slides may be found here. There was a very good feedback.

Canvas

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2) Next we had the talk by Brendon, Alex, Austin and Umesh on their mobile shuttle tracker project. They had a lot of feedback after posting in reddit, and accepted days event. Their IPhone and Android applications are also getting downloaded. They have incorporated a lot of improvements Students have many comments too. Their talk slides may be found here.

Mobile shuttle tracker final

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3) Jarret Cruger talked about his fit bot project. Jarret had designed data model. His calendering design received a lot of comments and suggestions for improvement. Jarret had a lot to learn about IPhone. So he plans to continue this over summer and get his software released in early fall. His talk slides may be found here.

Fit botpresentation2

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4) Evan Minto talked about his smart guitar project. He is implementing in C++ and Qt. He has made a very good progress and he is planning to release his software by the beginning of summer. There was again a number of very good suggestions (improvements) by the students. His talk slides may be found here,

Smart guitar chords (2)

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5) Finally Jeff Warren talked about his cervitar project (cervical cancer annotation tool). Jeff had made a number of improvements to make the annotation faster and more efficient. Jeff's slides may be found here.

Cervitor presentation v4

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It was indeed a glorious Spring Friday and it was worth every minute/second - Thank god I declined my invitation to attend royal wedding! :)