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 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,