Summer 2016 Week 10 ( 8/2/2016)

This is the penultimate meeting for the summer semester 2016.

We had five excellent student presntations


1) Graigon (Full Screen Pokemon
https://rcos.io/projects/JoshuaKGoldberg/FullScreenPokemon/profile ) slides may be found here
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3AxVWEWY1u0dHJFZFFJamVLUDQ  He even showed a small demo of the game

2) Jason Lee (Tally https://rcos.io/projects/jzblee/tally/profile)  slides may be found here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ThBViLgfEHoJbozJMslKXeG8ea7IROwP3KuLKF2IiRE/edit?usp=sharing

3) Sida and Kevin  (Module Game Engine https://rcos.io/projects/AaronPerl/Module/profile) gave a presentation illustrating their contribution = Link to their slides https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3AxVWEWY1u0X2w0ZkRETHY0VjA

4) Haoxin and Ruiqi (YACS https://rcos.io/projects/yacs-rcos/yacs/profile) presented their contribution https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1szyQVGbUPrrZbXKquOmxPaUWk3OrSUE759Io3HJTvEc/edit?usp=drive_web and they showed a demo of their work (showing the conflicts)

Overall it was a very nice meeting with good presentations

Summer 2016 Week 9 (7/26/2016)

Final Student presentations have started. We just had one project presentation - RPI Tours https://rcos.io/projects/wtg/RPI_Tours_iOS/profile . Brain and Jacob talked about what they did (starting from any place), bug fixes - The project has still some tweaks to be done before its release.

Their presentation slides are here https://goo.gl/FyquNI and a video is https://goo.gl/KmHI9r here

Students were enthusiastic and asked many interesting questions. Looking forward to other presentations on Week 10 (8/2/2016)

Summer 2016 Week 8 (7/19/2016)

Even with Pizzas we are unable to attract students to come and attend our weekly meeting. C'est la vie!

Avi ( Servo Group https://rcos.io/projects/servo/servo/profile)  talked about the progress (close to PR)

Haoxin and Ruiqi (YACS https://rcos.io/projects/yacs-rcos/yacs/profile) are making good progress. Haoxin has pushed his first changes.

Graigon (Full Screen Pokemon
https://rcos.io/projects/JoshuaKGoldberg/FullScreenPokemon/profile ) is progressing along.

Brain and Jacob (RPI Tours https://rcos.io/projects/wtg/RPI_Tours_iOS/profile) is making a steady progress fixing bugs - on schedule to be released this Fall.

Kevin (Module Game Engine https://rcos.io/projects/AaronPerl/Module/profile) is working on command line interface to the project.

Jason Lee (Tally https://rcos.io/projects/jzblee/tally/profile) is progressing along.


Students are learning - I think I am learning more than what the students are learning.

Summer 2016 Week 7 ( 7/12/2016)

We had a better turn out than last week. I have decided to contribute Pizza to serve as an enticement.

Rowan and Avi ( Servo Group https://rcos.io/projects/servo/servo/profile) talked about their progress. It is going as planned.  Rowan is learning a lot of new things.

Sida (Module Game Engine https://rcos.io/projects/AaronPerl/Module/profile) is working on command line interface to the project.

Wyatt (yIotTester https://rcos.io/projects/wyattkroemer/yiottester/profile) has created a rcos page. He plans to blog about what he has learned so far.

Haoxin (YACS https://rcos.io/projects/yacs-rcos/yacs/profile) is pushing his shortened description of courses.

Ruiqi(Liquidity https://rcos.io/projects/kenma95/liquidity/profile) is  back on track - knows which javascript visualization libraries to use,

Graigon (Full Screen Pokemon https://rcos.io/projects/JoshuaKGoldberg/FullScreenPokemon/profile ) is resolving some of the issues in the github page.


Brain and Jacob (RPI Tours https://rcos.io/projects/wtg/RPI_Tours_iOS/profile) is making a steady progress fixing bugs - on schedule to be rleased this Fall.


Good Progress is achieved by the by the students. A few  students tried to explain to me the nuances of Pokemon-Go which is taking the world by storm. Pokemon Go uses Unity as  a game engine which many of RCOS students (and GSAS students) use at RPI http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/technology/unity-technologies-maker-of-pokemon-go-engine-swells-in-value.html

Summer 2016 Week 6 (5th July 2016)

I am attending my first meeting of RCOS for this summer. It is hard to believe that already 6 weeks are gone (past the half way point). Because of the holiday weekend and the beginning of Summer C, attendance was a bit thin.

yacs https://rcos.io/projects/yacs-rcos/yacs/profile group was attended by Haoxin Luo - He is making progress meeting up with yacs group over the slack channel (Ruyou was not present and not in the Observatory )

Modular Game Engine https://rcos.io/projects/AaronPerl/Module/profile is represented by Sida Chen - He wants to test his code running in BulletPhysics extension - He is able to contact Aaron

yIoTTester project involving Raspberry Pi work is done by Wyatt Kroemer - He has developed some libraries - He is trying to use some of the prior developed libraries. This project is not in Observatory.

Fullscreen Pokemon project https://rcos.io/projects/JoshuaKGoldberg/FullScreenPokemon/profile  is done by Graigor. He is writing unit tests. Josh is doing a great job of mentoring him.

Mozilla Servo project https://rcos.io/projects/servo/servo/profile is being done steadily by Avi 

RPI Tours project  https://rcos.io/projects/wtg/RPI_Tours_iOS/profile  is being done by Jacob and Brian - They are making a steady progress. They are contacting th admissions office for feedback. One of the feautures they are trying to introduce is to start the tour any where.

I learned a lot more than what you could teach. Time well spent.

Week 12 (8/11/2015) SUmmer Semester

Summer Semester came to an end.  We had usual turnout (barring two singleton groups). Most of the groups  have contributed to the projects as much as possible. Avi pathched X11 code and he had submitted his patch. Congratulations Avi. Congratulations to every one who have made sincere effort to learn and work on their projects.

Off to Fall Semester!

Week 11 (8/4/2015) Summer Semester 2015

Summer semester is slowly coming to an end. Students have learnt a lot - both what to do and what not to do.  The students are working on their projects.  As I am struggling to learn new things, I understand the difficulties faced by the students.

I am looking forward to hearing thir final contributions next week.

week 10 (7/28/2015) Summer Semester 2015

The projects are coming along. wStudents are definitely learning. The outcome may not reflect what they have learnt. They are presenting their weekly updates in meeting.

With ony two weeks left, students have to finish their summer part of the projects. I sincerey that many students will accomplish what they set out to do.

Week 9 (7/21/2015) Summer 2015

Summer session is slowly coming to an end. The projects are proceeding along -
The students are working on their projects. All but one group had their presentations.
They are also anxious to bring their projects to completion.
 I suspect that we will get  at least (our usual) 30% success rate .

I hope the students learnt about working on open source projects this summer. Loking forward to thir "completed" projects soon.

Week 8(7/14/2015) Summer 2015

Summer Hackathon July 17, 2015 (with Princess)

Our meeting on 14th July(T - 10 on the pluto flyby and bastilles day) went off smoothly. We had people giving presentations on the status of their projects (sharpnav,tabletome, studybuddy, modular done, priorityQ, Eve Market Analysis, Memory Mason, Mozilla Servo). All the projects are plodding along (some  gallantly, some slowly) - All of them are making efforts - Hopefully we will have good projects to show by the end of this summer (in three weeks time! :( :) )

On Friday (7/17/2015) we had a hackathon in AE 214. Almost all the students showed up and worked on their projects. They were able to clear their doubts  from fellow RCOS-members. I made use of this time to prepare for my class. I think it was a great success. Having food was helpful.

I am looking forward to how their projects are going.

Week 7 (7/7/2015) Summer 2015

RCOS is progressing along well. Thanks to Robert Rouhani who is also helping with mentoring and generally helping  students.  He posted his last weeks talk http://slides.com/robertrouhani/dll-distribution#/

I briefly talked about the nine prisoners problem and how I modified Sudoku backtracking code to solve this problem. https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150609-a-design-dilemma-solved-minus-designs/  My comment appears toward the end (and my code is here https://www.dropbox.com/s/evlaru8lseif2hn/nineprisoner.c?dl=0 )

We are continuing in the style of small meeting format.

Jon gave an update of his Table Tome Project. He has been making a steady progress. He was working on authentication and login system. His slides may be found here. http://slides.com/jonathanwrona/table-tome-update

Avi talked about his servo project. He is implementing cut-and paste functionality. He is testing with a small sample code.

Michael talked about his drone project. The parts he has ordered have come. He explained the parts and the work he has got to do. His slides may be found here

https://rcos.slack.com/files/michaelgardner/F079TM0UB/presentation.pdf

Study Buddy Group gave the next presentation. They are progressing well as a team https://rcos.slack.com/files/m.kim.espinoza/F079V1FRR/study_buddy_week_6.pptx

Eve Online Market Analysis has a decent website working. They are planning to implement the backend in node.js and javascript with a  mongo db connection.

Finally Samuel talked about his priorityQ project. It is progressing along. He has shown a few screen shots. His talk slides may be found here https://rcos.slack.com/files/samuelyuan/F07A6SRJ9/priorityq_7-7_update.pptx

All in all, the projects seem to go well.

Week 6 (6/30/2015) Summer Session

Summer 2015 RCOS Students

Thanks to Dr. Goldschmidt for holding the fort for three weeks when I was way in India. He also changed the format - with the group being small we could afford to do it. Essentially our group meeting is like a small, we asked each group to update on their projects.

To start of Rob Rouhani talked about his game playing software (DLL libraries) and how to make a systematic method of generating DLL libraries for various operating systems. His software is being used bya number of people.

Modular drone project is waiting for the parts. Meanwhile they have been progressing with their control software.

Avi talked about his project. Though he did not make progress, his previous patch has been accepted.

Eve on line market Analysis talked next. They showed a static web page. They are having trouble with PHP.  David G has volunteered to help. They are also thinking of moving to Javascript and node.js

Sam talked about Priority Queue. He is making progress slowly but steadily. His webpage is complete. His system uses social aspects to calculate the waiting time.

Study Buddy presentatin went off well. They are making progress both in the backend as well as at the front end (Android).  They had some problem with Git - Luckily Avi was able to help them out.

Memory Mason did not have much to report (Aleksyhas been busy with courses). He has to shape up if he wants to accomplish anything with this project.

Week 2 (6/2/2015) Summer 2015

Week 2 came soon after the graduation ceremonies at RPI. A few students came for the first time this week. This was prearranged - due to getting a new apartment etc.

We had two presentations.

Jon Wrona talked about his summer project on Table Tome.. Here is project presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xWeacB19U9Gus-67MMenb4ndFEALwdxSmUstlFIJdJ4/edit#slide=id.p  Main idea is to provide content of spell names using community based support.

Marina and Seema presented their project StudyBuddy an android application to motivate students to keep good study habits using a plant (as a  motivator).  They plan to use Java, XML and Unity (for plant animations).

I gave a brief talk on past projects and how motivation is an over riding factor in the success of RCOS projects

Week 1 Summer 2015 (5/26/2015)

Summer session started as soon as I have submitted my Spring semester grades. We have a low key summer with six or seven participants. Hopefully our funding situation will improve in future. As usual, we started the first week with proposed presentations.

Baek is working on an Arduino project involving DIY pressure sensors.
Hasselbach, Weiner and Hu are continuing with their EVE online Market Analysis tool. Their goal is to Multiplayer role playing game and predicting using the market data . They are also interested in making an educational tool for Management students. Samuel Yuan is working a website which will help users to choose a restaurant based on the waiting time. His plan is to include a social enabled website/app, Aleksey Klimchenko is continuing his work on Memory Mason. He wants to have the basic project completed to help with remembering disconnected objects.

Still in the learning mode!

Week 16 (5/12/2015) Tuesday Spring Semester

That is it. We had our last meeting on Tuesday - packed with talks - but not with audience :(

The following people/groups gave talks.

1) Ryan Trinkle '09 - Reflex: Practical Functional Reactive Programming

2) Leopold Joy, Lucien CD - FoosRPI-
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/foosrpi/ (mentor Seve)

3) Sebastian Sarbora, Jazmine Olinger, Brittany Walker, Elizabeth
Dinella -  Neptune - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/neptune/ (mentor
Jazmine)

4) Alan Schimmel, Michael Hosier -  Mini BMS
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/mini-high-power-battery-management-system/
(menotr Eric)

5) Chris Brenon,James Grippo,Kirk Smith,Richie Young - Ballotbox -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ballotbox/ (mentor Jim)

6) Joseph Monroe, Diego Cepeda, Vincent Cerati - Fitpet-
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/fitpet/ (mentor Jazmine)

7)  Connor Foody, Jon Patsenker - Studyr
-http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/studyr/ (mentor Jim)

8)  - Yufan Lou, Xuan Liu, Nick Smith - YACS++CourseMap
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/coursemap-yacs-catalog/ (mentor Nick)

9) Ming Luo, Seve Ibarluzea, Zaran Lalvani, Forest Crossman and Matthew Vitting, Sia-UI  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sia-ui/ (mentor Kiana)

Highlights: 
Ryan gave a very nice and easy to understand talk on Reactive Programming using Haskell (web programming , streaming application).  He talked about his library Reflex which makes  this possible,

Leopold and Lucien have completed their FoosBall hardware software interface and had a youtube video of their project. They had used arduino, raspbery Pi , twilio, python for their system.

Much has been accomplished in Neptune - including simulation, hardware and interface. It is still some ways to go - 

MiniBatteryManagement System have fabricated an alpha version. They are refining their design. This project is coming along well.

BallotBox has made a very good progress. They have most of the basic operations working.

FitPet is an IPhone app that monitors the fitness activities using an incentive of pet living well.

Studyr is a project aimed at providing videos lecture notes, problem, past exams among students taking similar courses. The project is yet to mature.

Coursemap is coming along - they show a display of different courses according to the level credits and other filters - Right now it is just a circular display

Sia_UI is coming along very well with Seve leading the group. They have done a sizable portion of the UI implemented. There is also a simulation working. All in all, this project has achieved its goal (assuming the original Sia developers agree).

It is a glorious way to end the semester.

Week 15 (5/8/2015) Spring Semester

We are racing to the finish line. Mentors are playing a great role this semester. The small grop meetings really make a difference and get the groups going. They also help with the technology stack  that the students need.

We had these ten presentations on Friday:

 1) Theo Browne, Greg Bartell - inSquare
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/insquare/ (mentor Theo Browne)
2)  Shinya Hirata, Amartya Chakraborty, Aaron Cheng, Sensen Chen
-rClubs -  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-tradebook/ (mentor Jorel
Lalicki)
3) Mike Dewey , Mitch Mellone - Bluedash -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/blue-dash/ (mentor Eric Oswald)
4) David Wang, Tommy Fang, Aman Zargarpur, Austin Gulati - Pokemon RPI
 http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/pokemon-rpi/ (mentor Samuel Yuan) - No
blog update
5)  Robert Rouhani, Shanye Jiang -SharpNav -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sharpnav/ (mentor Robert Rouhani)
6)  Derek Meer - OpenWSN - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/openwsn/
(mentor eric Oswald)
7) David Chen, David Ivey, Joseph Shvedsky - Share-It:
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/share-it/ (mentor Brian Kelley)
8)  Sida Chen, Liyu Pan, Yitong Wu, Yuan Feng - Multi-Link -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/multi-link/ (mentor Brendon Clark)
9)  Ruben Madera, Cameron Root - Pentadactyl -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/pentadactyl/ (mentor Theo Browne)

Some highlights:
inSquare has been downloaded a few hundred times - different clock faces (UI Design) for pebble watch. Programming is harder wth limited memory. Pebble has only two colors.
rClb showed a demo - They have done what they could. They showed fast/approximate search (search with spelling mistakes)
Blue Dash showed a demo. They have progressed well. This is for the formula SASE car. They created a custom dashboard with ardunio nano and blue tooth. It may have more general applications.
Pokeman RPI showed a demo. They have created all the basic block, They want to custom create the scenes with RPI background.
SharpNav has a number of contributors and users. So this project (finding paths) has matured .
ShareIt allows one to share the contacts, They use Ruby on Rails on the bakend and have Android and ios on the front end. Their slides are here http://slides.com/robertrouhani/sharpnav-8#/
OpenWSN group has designed a hardware chip and firmware for wireless sensor network. This project is working with UCB project on internet of things. Their slides are here http://slides.com/derekmeer/openwsn2015#/
Multi link allows one to get the status o various devies in one console. They started with peer to peer - settled on Client Server. They stil have some ways to go.
Pendactyl is a firefox plug in to have editor command to interact with a browser. They have done a good job of bringing this project to fruition. This group thanked their mentors.

Because we had a large number of presentation, we did not get as many questions as normaly we would. There were sufficient probing questions that heped the presenter as well as me.

I am happy with the way that the semester has progressed and ending!

Week 14 (5/1/2015) Spring Semester 2015

We have just two weeks left. We had a plateful of talks this week (like last week). Our room;s HDMI refused to unctiona nd people had difficulty using their mac.

1)  Gabe Perez - Shuttle Tracking
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/shuttle-tracking/ (mentor ?)
2) Dimitar Dimitrov, Eric Oswald - Autoroute
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/autoroute/ (mentor Dimitar Dimitrov)
3) Aleksey Klimchenko, Caroline Sullivan - Memory Mason -
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/memory-mason/ (mentor Theo Browne)
4)  J Parker Hamren, James S. Miller - Image Comparison Library
-http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/high-level-image-comparison-library/
(mentor Robert Rouhani)
5)  Jon Wrona, Dan Lowe, Avi Singh Table Tome
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/tom/ (mentor Josh Goldberg)

All the presenters posted their slides before their talks in slack.
Gabe slides are her
 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1j0-JavdaYvoUV_QqLsB8a6pi6MblgUh5iA9QJRHU5PU/edit Backend is done in MongoDB, Go and front end with Anguar. Gbe also worked in adapting RIT's opensource project Petitions for Students Union.

Dimiatr and Eric gave a nice talk on AutoRoute. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CKSJRbaJ53JkFLDlC4k0xI9255QGBADwldV9pcei_WY/edit#slide=id.p They have built the library. They are in the process of building binaries.

Aleksy and Caroline talked about their memory mason project (to enhance memory power) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PYXm-B6LrYvsv4VlvUgm0VBQGJj3qv2c3CTZOODsQtM/edit They could not show the demo because of some technical glitch. They used Unity to build the GUI.

Parker and James talked about Image Comparison Library. They have developed some applications of OpenCV. Many features of OpenCV  have been used in their Java Package. They wil make an API once they complete Theor talk slides are found her https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gtgTRTQ541fo0oNY9XWyahWQQiHYQ8B56cMm-Z9w6CQ/edit

Jon,, Dan and Avi talked about their TableTome project to create a toolbox for Dungeons and Dragons. They showed a nice demo oftheir project. They used MEAN stack. Their talk is posted here.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fowKCl0C46bGfGQO_RqyiV6ng7l6pZKhLrDNa2Vb5T0/edit

There were many interesting questions. All good signs  we are making progress.

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,