Week 14 (4/27/2012) Spring Semester

Week 14 (4/27/2012) Spring Semester

Week 14 (4/27/2012) Spring Semester

Thanks to Asheesh of open-hatch we had a successful hackathon last Sunday. Patches were made to Django, Firefox and Sunshine by the group working on Sunday. Friday was the penultimate week of the Spring Semester. Students (and I too!) have been working hard.

This Friday we had the following presentations:

1) Peter Hajas, Jeff Hui - Genesis  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/genesis/

2) Dan Berkowitz, Brian Stauffer - Enstall http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/enstall/ 

3) Beth Werbaneth, Justin Renga, Griffin Milsap, Colin Neville - ReRoot  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/reroot/

4)Zach Clapper - Touch of Maths  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/touch-of-mathematics/ 

Peter and Jeff probably gave their "last" RCOS talk. As usual they had an excellent presentation which I could emulate. Thee have progressed well with Geneis - IPhone  software update. Jeff designed and implemented the back end server mediation and Peter designed and implemented the front end.

Dan and Brian talked about Enstall  They have also divided into parts - one is working on the client side and another on the web front. They demoed a simple installation of a package. They have plans to complete the project for Fall Semester

Griffin, Justin, Colin  (Beth) talked about current status of ReRoot. They have a preliminary (first leve;) implementation. Some of their design choices led to problems in implementation. That made them to doa redesign and implement afresh. Griffin plans to do a second i implementation during th e coming summer. Justin and Griffin also discussed another project where clever use of threads are exploited.

Zach Clapper implemented history features in Touch Of Math. Work remains to make it stable, document and comment the code. Zach has also been working on two other projects, one with  driver display of RPI's auto racing team and to make the car change a gear using a switch.

Many students are involved a lot of projects beaside the RCOS projects. In a way it shows the diversity. On the other hand RCOS projects sometime take a back seat. If one takes education as a primary goal, one has to admire the students' diversity and tenacity to take on many projects and make many of them successful. even when their project do not succeed they learn a  valuable lesson