Week 10 (4/2/2013) Spring 2013

Week 10 (4/2/2013)  Spring 2013

We have been progressing along and we are already on tenth week of the spring semester. It has also been very hectic - with the undergraduate symposium on Wednesday 4/3/2013. (we had 4 talks and 4 poster presentations from RCOS). 

We had two guest presentations and four students presentations.

1) Prof. Jason Kuruzovich (Guest speaker)

2)  Corey Leveen (Guest Speaker)

3) David Vorrick, Forest Trimble, Luke Champine, Sean Moran and Wyler McAninch-Ruenzi  Mkvsynth http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/mkvsynth/

4) Colin Rice - Bit Toll  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/bittoll/

5) Colin Kuebler - Koala http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koala/

6) Tor Hagemann - libalexandria http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/libalexandria/

Jason talked about collaboration of RCOS and Servino center. Already many RCOS students participate with Servino center and the students.   He also encouraged RCOS students to participate in hackathon in Syracuse (NY) this Saturday. Also he was instrumental in adapting Observatory (dashboard software developed by former RCOS members Nate Stedman, Colin Sullivan and Tim Horton) for Foundry (Servino center). David Goldschmidt is on top of this collaborative effort.

Corey talked about his start up MuchMunch and pitched a CTO position for RCOS students.
You can see details about munch munch here  and its website is here

David, Forest, Luke, Sean and Wyler talked about their progress on video editor for linux operating systems. David has made progress on the back end.  The script end is going on well. The gui is also progressing well - They have almost demoed their system.

Colin R gave a scintillating practice talk (practice talk) for his UGRS presentation. Colin has progressed greatly and he gave a fantastic presentation. Colin R has used Haskell for implementation. He has almost completed his project.

Colin K has been working on web chat for programmers using Javascipt (and node.js) - He demoed his system. Colin will eventually integrate this in his Koala system. This will enable easier co-operation among novice/inexperienced programmers.

Tor talked about his libAlexandria project. Tor has more or less completed his libraries. Currently he has been hoping others will use his library for machine learning tasks.

As usual we had a fascinating session with lots of interesting participation/questions/suggestions from students. As usual I learned a lot.

Week 4 (2/12/2013) and (2/15/2013) Spring 2013

Week 4 (2/12/2013) and (2/15/2013) Spring 2013

The weeks are rolling by too quickly. We had two meetings this week. On Tuesday, we had talks by

1) Prof. Fran Berman  - Big Data Government Intiative

2) Asher Glick and Matt Zanchelli - pascode http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ios-passcode/ and othe pass code 

3) Tor Hagerman libAlexandria 

4) Colin Kuebler Koala  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koala/

5) Ryan Maxfield IPhone app

Prof. Berman talked about the international efforts in having an infrastructure set up for sharing data. She is leading US efforts. She mentioned that this effort may be similar to the internet initiative taken during 70's and 80's. Lots of interesting things need to be resolved (a lot of social and technological problems) - She encourages students to  contact her.

Asher and Matt talked about their combined efforts to making an easy pass code application that works in browsers for various domains (freeing the users of remembering the passwords). They showed a demo of their system. There were lots of interesting questions and suggestions (including to have an API)

Tor talked about his system level design for his machine learning library (like library of Alexandria) it is a library of libraries).  Tor follows a data flow model for his library - He has done a lot of commits to the repository. He is planning to build an end to end system,

Colin Kuebler presented his Koala System. He has been working on this for three semesters. He hopes to release of his software, get feedback of his system. He is planning to develop a community website.

Ryan talked about finding crab buoy application for IPhones. He outlined the importance of finding crab buoys. He is using customized GPS hardware in the buoys. There were a number of suggestions.

On 2/152013, we had two talk by RCOS alumni

1) Peter Hajas '12

2) Tim Horton '11

Peter talked about the importance of contributing to RCOS projects. Sharing and contributing enables one to be more visible in the community (as well as making RPI and RCOS more visible).

Tim talked a very large open source project webkit http://www.webkit.org/ and how he has been contributing to it. He encouraged every one to make contribution to some (large)open source project (may be webkit too)

I will also recommend reading these two blog posts (by Tim Horton)

http://www.hortont.com/blog/on-rcos-and-getting-a-job/

http://www.hortont.com/blog/on-rcos-or-open-software-at-rensselaer/

 

All in all, it was a fantastic week.

Week 14 (12/4/2012) Fall 2012

Week 14 (12/4/2012) Fall 2012

This is the last week of presentation for Fall Semester. Not every one presented their second round of talks. The fall semester also rushed by too fast with so many activities.We had six presentations this week..

1) Dan Vegeto, Chris Higley. Rebecca Nordhauser and jesse Freitas, Collective Co                            ngress http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/collective-congress/

2) Rachel Redner, Nick Timakondu, and Asher Glick Zadatak
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/zadatak-scheduler-app/

3) Mike Agnew  ReserveMe  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/reserveme/

4) Brian Barnes and Joshua Mackinen RQ http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rq/

5) Sheena McNeil koob kooc - Reverse Cookbook
http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koobkooc-a-reverse-cookbook/

6) Colin Kuebler Koala http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koala/

Dan Vegeto tried to give a demo of the current version of his system. It seems to have a nice feature - But could not appreciate the full feature because of an email glitch.

Rachel, Nick and Asher presented Zadatak - Unfortunately could not appreciate their contribution because of the lack of a cable.

Mike Presented his current status - he is currently formatting the various forms to be submitted.

Brian and Joshua could not proceed much with the project because of understanding javascript details.

Sheena presented Reverse Cookbook - she has implemented many of the features - could not appreciate because of a server crash just before the presentation.

Colin presented his Koala project and his recent accomplishments. He showed a demo and he has many more features including a community website up his sleeve.

Students worked very hard - unfortunately they were unable to show off their accomplishments for reasons beyond their control. Asher gave a wise advise to maintain a weekly schedule and what if scenarios to those  students who plan to finish much of the work during the winter break.

Good Luck and Happy New Year and Holidays to all of you -