Week 4 Summer 2014 (6/10/2014)

Weeks are passing by under a cool/warm summer breeze. Students are working hard. The blogs are getting posted and the codes are getting updated - All of them are good signs. Hope this trend continues.

This week we had four talks.
1)  Jonathan Bergman, Jake Lowey, and Erik Vink-Lainas - 3D HCI http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/3d-hci/
2)  Alex white - Why functional programming?
3) Jorel Lalicki - Hackodex http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/hackodex/
4) Daniel Baek and Sunil Kumar - OpenIRT http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/openirt/  and Sodexo Menu Parser - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sodexo-menu-parser/



Jonathan, Jake and Erik talked about a 3D HCI meant for Lazy people to watch and change channels in TV and veg out - ideal for many/most people in the world! They are using ardunio and handgoves to get sensor input and have the desired effect. They have a very basic program running. They have ardunio and they are using golf gloves for sensors. Looks like a very nice project with lots of potentials for use (including for handicapped people) Robert Rouhani made some helpful suggestions.

Alex talked about Functional Programming - its advantages and feature. Alex did not like much os Apple's  swife http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/apple-releases-new-programming-language-swift/  He gave other pure functional language, how they are thread safe, programs are succinct. Alex based on his talk stemming from his OCaml implementation for Natural languae parsing for his project. There were a number of interesting questions.

Jorel talked about Hackodex which provides project starters and head hunters about the capabilities of various persons and projects using a simple search. What I liked about his presentation was the number of releases (each incorporating some features). He is doing in Python and Django. For the first release, he is planning to use GitHub API. Then the will create a data base for the next release. The third release will have complex queries (those fields are not present in the API )

Daniel and Sunil talked about their joint  project on OpenIRT - Creating libraries for Infra Red sensors This will be on going project into next semester. By the end of this semester, they hope to have some open source libraries for IR sensors. They have the hardware ready.Moorthy suggested looking at this project (RFID) http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rensselaer-phrequency-identification/ and Jorel also had suggestions. Daniel is also working on Sodexco Menu Scrapper. he is cleaning up the code to be used in RPIMobile project. Daniel seems to be very enthusiastic and prompt. I hope some good things come out of this project.

As usual I am impressed with  very nice presentations and students' participations. The talks are uploaded in RCOS youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/rcosrpi1 (The last talk seems to be not loaded)   My major complaint is the students have not posted their presentation slides to every one nor posted them in their blog (I have to keep repeating/nagging like a nasty person :( )