Week 11 (4/17/2015) Spring 2015

Spring semester is racing to a fast finish. Students are exceling in Hackathons, Research Symposia reaping awards.

We had four talks this semester.

1)  Charlie Machalow, Austin Henandez, Alexander White - cDashboard
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/cdashboard/ (Mentor Robert Rouhani)

2) Shane Aston - Alien Spoilers
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/alien-spoilers/ (Menotr Emmet Hitz)

3)  Sam Yuan, Yunang  Chin- GoMueller, Yijang Li -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/gomuller/ (Mentor Sam Yuan)

4)  Jake Martin, Erin Quin, Satoshi Matsuura, Noah Goldman -
OverNight: http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/overnight/ (no mentor yet!) -
Finalists in HackUMass!

Charlie, Austen and Alexander gave an update of their progress on cDashboard. Charlie is fixing bugs (improved menustrip artifacts and auto updates) adding minor features. Alexander is working on the easier plugin systems using MEF which enable dynamic plugins. Austen is working on cMaps using google maps api. He showed a nice demo.  Their talk slides are here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ULtqhstfKuuvAWkI42V5118A6JW5M4qqRL4Kvu9mXcc/edit

Shane is working on a sytsem to prevent reading spoilers from reddit. He has a web application in which users can specify which reddit subgroups are not to be read. He showed a demo of his system and the technology used (Django, Python, SqLite and some other cool stuff) in the system. I hope  he posts his talk slides and updtae his blogs!

Sam Yunang and  Yijang gave a talk about their android app to help maintain a fixed exercise schedule. They showed a demo of their implementations done so far.  They plan to use qr code reader of the exercise machine which wil help in how to use the machine effectively. Their talk slides are found here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17dJjhARUR3sYUemW32Vk9R7EQmi2BLXUuHWxy_LEEgI/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.p4

Jake, Noah, erin and Satoshi talked about their Overnight hardware app which will charge the android phone witout overcharging. They showed how Android phones hasve to be charged. Sice the charging is done  overnight, they couple an alrm with charging. Intially Android is charged at 50 percentage and a couple of hours before waking the android is charged at 100 percent. They are planning to make thieir hardware more robust and use an app to charge.  They also showed a demo of their project.  Pleae see their work at HackUmass http://hackumass-ii.challengepost.com/submissions and http://challengepost.com/software/overnight

Again a well spent Friday evening!

Week 10 (4/10/2015) Spring Semester

Sparse Attendance on 4/10/2015! :(

There has been very few students in our 10th April meeting and it was disconcerting (could be due to anumber of exams in this week). Hopefully they will catch up with their RCOS projects soon.

We had three talks this week.

1) Samson Bonfante - Digital Manufacturing -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/tsense/  (Mentor Sebatian Sarbora)

2)  Toshi Piazza, Richard Lin, Kevin Zhang and  Alex Shin -Toy Engine
- http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/toy-engine/ (Mentor Robert Rouhani)

3)  John Behnke and Zach Minster - Swift and You

Samson talked about his Manufacturing project (about digital signatures, compression and webservices) with Step Tools on Manufacturing. Martin pitched in and gave an overview of digital manufacturing and the role of open source software in that. Sams slides may be found here https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T033VT1N8-F04C648HT/download/rcos2.pptx

Toshi, Richard, Kevin and Alex taked about their toy engine. They have built a skeleton of their core and they even showed a demo. All of them are freshmen and it is great to see their progress.

John and ach magnanimousy pitched in to give the thirs talk. They showed the power of Swift (apple's new programming language). They showed a demo of the coof features of that language. Their talk slides are here https://slack-files.com/files-pri-safe/T033VT1N8-F04C8SF1M/swift_and_you.pdf?c=1428843115-39623421b21a049582adae1c9e05cf2c41779bae

A few members of RCOS group is going to HackUMass Saturday 11th April. Afew of RCOS students heped with Accepted Students Day. It is very nice to have such supporting Students. I will be remiss if I did not mention that a good showig by RCOS students on UGRS on April 8th.

Week 9 (4/3/2015) Spring Semester 2015

Spring break is over. We are on the stretch run. With so many end of the year activities  stdents re hard pressed for time. Hope we will have some successful projects  Out of the thee talks, only one was pertaining to a RCOS project. On the other hand, Eric, Josh, Seve and Kiana won th ebest education award in the recently concluded Hackathon at Binghampton.


1)  Adam Siemiginowski - Code for America Troy, Brigade and Hack Nights
2) Blake Lingenau, Dylan Lingenau, Michael Macelletti, Patrick
Hesselbach - Eve Online Market Analysis Tool - Big Data
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/eve-online-market-analysis-tool/
3) Josh Goldberg - JavaScript Sprites - The Hard Way

Adam gae a passionate speech about Code for America - Troy Brigade. Group in Troy wants to be the 57th brigade in the nation. They are planning hacknights to get the group an deadership team going. His talk slides may be found here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tjVrp6kMQMBK_j5xem3a6kHWKZmVVC4bQpRemEWWOzM/edit#slide=id.p

Many students were interested in woking with Code for America and taked to Adam personlly.

Blake, Dylan , Michael and Patrick about Ec Market Analysis tool - in a Big data framework. Their backend will be in C++ and the front end will be in python. They are getting the data in JSON format. If and when the need arises they plan to use MongoDB and a query language. There were many interesting and probing questions from the students.

Josh talked about using Javascipt to reerseengineer sprites and bricks of game of yore (like Mario Brothers and Pokeman ). He talked about his sprite design, algorithms he used and compression techniques. His talk slides may be found in the slack https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T033VT1N8-F049CQT8X/download/javascript_sprites_the_hard_way.pptx  A write up about his work on Mario (his project before joining RCOS) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/17/this-college-kid-painstakingly-recreated-super-mario-brothers-for-the-web/

and http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/11/the-guy-behind-full-screen-mario-thinks-nintendos-mario-maker-looks-suspiciously-familiar/

Again a friday evening well spent listening and learning. I wish my ability to absorb new material and the detais quickly will improve than at the current moment,