Week 12 (8/12/2011) Summer 2011

Week 12 (8/12/2011) Summer 2011

This is our last week of our summer session. We had a good group of students (including quite a few new students) participate in RCOS and contribute to the open source software efforts. We had two guest speakers (Eric Ameres and Kanai Junichi) and one student (Nicholas Pachulski) presentation. (This time, like last Spring semester, each group gave two talks).

Our speakers are:

1) Eric Ameres - EMPAC

2) Dr Kanai Junichi - MDL

3)Nicholas Pachulski - Koala http://rcos.rpi​.edu/projects/k​oala/

Eric talked about how he joined EMPAC and about his previous experience at ON2 technology (acquired by google Please press here for details). Most of his talk centred around visualization (open source software). This software was devloped by Marc Downie (MIT Media Labs Ph D and Cambridge University Undergraduate). This osftwrae group have NSF funding along with EMPAC and Tetherless world. A lot of coll visualizations and cool new projects are waiting to be done (Future RCOSers please note!)

Eric's talk video may be found below.





Kanai gave a very good presentation on capstone projects for Engineering students at MDL. Most of these projects are sponsored by Companies. So they have to be carefulw hen students working on these projects want their code to be open source. Kanai also mentioned their bugtracking system, documentation and code maintenance. They have given a lot of thought to mentoring, how to break a large project into managebale portions and how to convertthis into a 3 credit course. Kanaki also emphasized the communication and co-operation among group members. Student groups have to submit a rapid protype in 7 or 8 weeks (to get feedback from the mentors) and then improve their design and code during the remianing seven weeks. They educate around 200 students per semester. His talk video is found here.






Finally Nicholas talke about his progress in the back end of Koala System. Nicholas has mastered Ruby on Rails and Git. He also showed a little demo of his system. Colin Kuebler who started Koala is very happy with Nick's back end and Colin plans to integrate his Javascript front end to Nicholas' back end. Nicholas's talk slides are here.

Rcos presentation

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Nicholas's talk video is here.




The summer session went off very well. The students did their work and I enjoyed listening to them as wel as to the guest speakers.

11th week (8/5/2011) Summer 2011

11th week (8/5/2011) Summer 2011

We (the students and instructors) had an excellent opportunity to listen to wonderful talks by distinguished guests. Two presentations by two student groups is also awesome.

Guest Speakers:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Dr. Derek Bruening - (Google) - DynamoRIO

Trishan.deLanerolle - (HFOSS) - Supply And Distribution using Android in Haiti

Dr. Jim Myers (CCNI) - Research Initiatives in CCNI

Student Speakers

Peter Wakefield, Anthony Onwuasoanya - Auto Scheduler http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/autoscheduler/

Dina Jacobsen - IdeaBank htttp://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/ideabank/


Derek(MIT Ph D and currently at Google) gave a Tour De Force on the conception and implementation of DynamoRIO - How he developed a fast software which will enable run time debugging - both for security and for debugging and performance/. Derek (currently at Google) has released his software as open source. He has many exciting projects for RCOS students. Please look at Derek's slides here:

Dynamorio rpioss-aug2011

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Video of his talk may be seen here.





Trishan (Trinty College and HFOSS Director) gave a scintillating talk on the HFOSS trip to Haiti to deploy their mobile software. Trishan discussed technical challenges, deployment challenges and Human factor Issues. His talk was an eye opener how dedicated
group of software developers can make an impact on social and humanitarian causes. Video of his talk may be found here.






Jim (CCNI and previously at Pacific North West Super Computing facility) gave an overview of the many new and exciting research activities at Rensselaer. He also talked about the recent NSF proposal. Jim has coordinated with a number of state of the art researchers and integrated into a coherent proposal. Video of his talk may be found here.



Peter and Anthony gave their update talk on Automatic Scheduler (a FireFox plugin). Their system consist of three parts: Data Base Backend, Scheduling and User Interface.
Peter and Anthony's slides may be found here. They have implemented a simple scheduling algorithm. Their demo of their software is pretty nice. Peter and Anthony are planning to modularize their system and implement an advanced scheduling algorithm before releasing their software. Peter's talk slides may be found here.

Auto scheduler presentation_2

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Peter's video may be found here:




Dina has learned a lot of programming skills to her design skills. She designed the over- all system and had a few iterations to improve. She has coded most of it. The data base and the user interface is complete The search also works Adding to data base and different visualizations have yet to be implemented.

Dina's talk slides may found here.

Second presentation idea_bank

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Video fo Dina's talk may be found here

Week 10 (7/29/2011) Summer 2011

Week 10 (7/29/2011) Summer 2011

As the summer semester is slowly winding down, RCOS students are busily trying to complete their projects. With humidity sapping the energy from every source, we (students, instructors) do our best to excel.

This week we had three speakers, the first two being guest speakers.


1) Prof. David Goldschmidt '94 '98' '05 on Advanced Web Sites Developments

2) Prof. Barbara Cutler on Spacial Augmented Reality (Graphics, Architcture and Games)

3) Thomas Chestna - Scrutiny http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/scrutiny/

David Talked about his use of open source software plugins (with firefox) taht help him develop websites cleanly, efficintly. David has been not only using Open Source SOftware tools, he has also devloped open source software during his graduate student days (as an example Java GraphBase - from Knuth's Stanford GraphBase!)

Video of his talk may be found here.




Barb gave a fanatstic tour de force talk on Spacial Augmented Reality (Graphics, Architecture and Games). She and her group have done phenomenal amount of interesting research work. The best thing is that she and her group have implemented most of their work and in the process of making them open source. She and her group have interacted with EMPAC and have done some eye popping demos!

Video of her talk can be seen here:





Finally Tom talked about his scrutiny project. Tom has been mentored by Rob Escriva '10 (and a RCOS alumni). Tom has completed most of the work he has set out to do. The only remaining task to be done is testing and comparing his/their system with MOSS and other plagiarism detecion software.

Tom's talk slides may be found here:

Scrutiny 2

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The video of his talk may be found here:



What a glorious way to end the week. I was glad that a few visitors (both from RPI and RIT) attended our meeting an shared the enjoyment.

Week 9 (7/22/2011) Summer 2011

Week 9 (7/22/2011) Summer 2011

Saratoga Racing Season has started on Friday despite the hot and humid temperature in Troy, NY. If racing could start, RCOS can certainly go in full swing. That is whhat we did. Our day was full. We had a HFOSS presentationhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif (by tele-presence) at Wesleyan University. Zach Rowe talked about his project Flagship safety (slides given below). Lee Sharma and Reily Hamilton talked about Nexus - community based website (slides given below). Once they have finished talking, regular meeting of RCOS started. We had four speakers.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Geoffrey Wright - RPI Planner - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-planner

Sean Austin - RCOSUIR http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/user-interface-research-app/

Zach Rowe - Flagship Safety - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flagship-safety/


Lee Sharma & Reilly Hamilton - Nexus - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/community-based-project-management-system/

Geoffrey has implemented adding/removing semesters. He is also in the process of adding more majors, double majors and minors. Geoffrey hopes to scrape the catalog of courses. He hopes to have a working version before the end of summer. His talk slides may be found here.

Rpi planner geoffrey_wright_7-22-2011

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Video of his talk may be found here:




Sean has been reading books and papers to consolidate user interface research. He is on his way of showing his understanding with a prototype of Android weather application. He has implemented a preliminary version and he is planning to release the next version. His talk slides may be found here.

Sean austin uir-2

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Video of Sean's talk may be found here:



Zach presented his accomplishments with his project on Flagship safety. Zach has added more icons (with an example of Troy's foreclosure property). His talk slides may be found here.

Flagship safety, hfoss-7-22-2011

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Video of Zach's talk may be found here:



Finally Lee and Reily talked about their progress on Nexus. With their design in good shape they are well onto their implementation. They are also looking with their prospective customers and seeking the help of an interface designer (RPI alumni)

Nexus2 7-22-1011

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Video of their presentation is here:



As usual the students asked many intelligent questions. A wonderful way to end a week!

Week 8 (7/15/2011) Summer 2011

Week 8 (7/15/2011) Summer 2011

A day after France celebrated Bastille Day, RCOS celebrated in its own way of liberte egalite fraternite by having wonderful talks.

We had talks by

1) Kirk Jalbert (Science Technology Studies Graduate Student) - Guest Speaker

2) Ben Shippee and Jeff Farrell - Observatory http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/observatory/

3) Asher Glick and Gabe Malveaux - Olympus http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/olympus/

4) Don Gillespie Mobile Studio for Linux http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/mobile-studio-for-linux/

Kirk Jalbert talked about his experiences with community sensor project - His interactions with MDL and how building a hardware to measure air quality, cO₂ level led to some misunderstanding. Kirk also stressed the need to understand various open source licensing issues by all center directors and administrators. Kirk was citing the example of MIT media lab director Joichi Ito (who is also on the board of creative commons) and their business model from open source software efforts (Please read the New York Times article about him. Quotation from New York Times article: That makes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s decision to name a 44-year old Japanese venture capitalist (Joichi Ito) who attended, but did not graduate, from two American colleges as the director of one of the world’s top computing science laboratories an unusual choice. ... He was also an early participant in the open-source software movement and is a board member of the Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the development of the Firefox Web browse, as well as being the co-founder and chairman of Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that has sought to create a middle ground to promote the sharing of digital information.)

Two videos of Kirk's talks can be found here:

Part 1:



Part 2:



2) Ben talked about his improvements and modification to Observatory. Ben has set up the password recovery feature. Ben has also created about past projects (projects being currently active or not), past members (members being not currently active or not), improved the fetching repositories. Ben has also taken steps to prevent spam users. Ben's next plan is to correct the timing issues, introduce global task lists. Ben's contribution has been very valuable to RCOS this semester. Ben's talk slides may be found here.

Observatory 7 15-11

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Video of Ben's talk may be found here:



3) Asher and Gabe talked about their progress on Olympus, server management program. They have finished substantial portion of their project. Gabe is working on the front end while Asher is working on the back end. Both of them have worked quite well and their system looks impressive. They still have the task of cleaning up front end and to promote their software and make people want to use it. Their talk slides may be found here.

Olympus pesentation2

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Video of Asher and Gabe's talk may be found here:



4) Don has been making a steady progress making Mobile Studio portable to linux (free bsd, mac). Don has completed handling the analog input case, completed digital input, but needs debugging. Don has also created an extensive test suite for unit tests and regression tests. Don has also been advised to use the same naming conventions of variables (by the person in charge of Mobile Studio) - It is a good news for Don as his code will be used in the future. Don has to finish the driver (Don's code base uses open source usb library Libsub 1.12) and to interface with LabVIEW. Cihan (past RCOS member) has been helping Don develop test suites. A true sense of co-operation! Don's talk slides may be found here.

Copy of Mobile Studio Desktop for Linux, part II on Prezi

Video of Don's talk may be found here:



All in all, very nice talks and as usual I learned a lot.

Week 7 (7/8/2011) Summer 2011

Week 7 (7/8/2011) Summer 2011 - July 4th Week

With a short week, we had fireworks on Monday (7/4) and excellent talks (virtual fireworks) on Friday (7/8). We had a guest speaker Gary Schwartz of dotCIO office and chief architect of Open Source Software Calendering System Bedework. We had two student speakers Kenley Cheung and Matthew McMullen, Jorel Lalick and Mike Heise,

Speakers include

1) Gray Schwartz (dotCIO office) - Open Source Software efforts at Rensselaer

2) Kenley Cheung - Concerto Con Moto http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/concerto-motion/

3) Matthew McMullen, Jorel Lalicki and Mike Heise http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/adaptive-game-math-library

Gary talked about the history of Open Source efforts at Rensselaer and problems faced by the open source developers in terms of licensing and distribution. Gary also talked about various success stories with the open source development at Rensselaer (including some of RCOS projects). Gary has pointed out good links, also gave excellent ideas how to get involved and make lasting contributions to Open Source Software. At his request Riley did not videotape Gary's talk.

Kenley's project involves using kinect to control Concerto (digital signage systems). He calls his system Concerto Con Moto (In Italian con moto means with motion). Kenley has contributed code to open source code DepthJS (developed originally at MIT media labs). Kenly is debugging his system (with improved gesture recognition, his system will be fully functional). Kenley even showed a demo. His talk slides may be found here. Kenley answered with satisfaction a number of interesting and probing questions.

Concerto conmoto

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Here is a video of Kenley' talk



Matthew, Jorel and Mike Heise presented their progress with adaptive math game library. Their system chooses the appropriate libraries in an adaptive manner. They have made a lot of progress. They have also developed an excellent testing framework and a performance tool. Each of the three persons presented and was able to describe what his contribution was. It was refreshing to see a
good co-operation among them. Their talks may be found here.

8.7.2011 agml

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Here is a video of Matthew, Jorel and Mike's talk:



All three talks were excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Week 6 (7/1/2011) Summer 2011

Week 6 (7/1/2011) Summer 2011

We had a couple of distinguished visitors today. Prof. George Nagy (ECSE at RPI) and Prof. Steffano Ferrilli (Bari, Italy). We had two talks by students and we watched two TED videos Dr. Hans Rossling.

Student talks are by

1) Tom Chestna - Scrutiny http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/scrutiny/

2) Nick Pachulski - Koala http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/koala/

We have all of our talk videos on line (thanks to Riley Hamilton) http://www.youtube.com/rcosrpi1

Tom is working on Scrutiny, a project to check plagiarism. This project was started by RCOS alumni Rob Escriva and Rob is mentoring Tom. This is a beautiful partnership of two smart heads working together. Tom showed his contribution and he gave a very fine talk. His talk attracted a lot of interesting and probing questions from students, visitors. Tom
defended the questions. Tom hopes to deploy the software before the end of Summer. His talk slides may be found here.

Scrutiny 07-01-2011.pdf

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Video of Tom's talk may be found here:




Nick had some problems with power point slides and with adapter to his mac book. Colin (mentor for Nick) came to rescue and gave a short introduction. Nick is a bit inexperienced and as an adviser I should take the blame of not prepping him for the talk. Considering all this, Nick gave his talk (albeit short) and Nick has contributed code and to blog. Nick (from his latest blog post) looks like he is getting a hang of Git. His talk slides may be found here.

Koala pres1

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Nick's talk video may be found here.



Since we had two talks we decided to watch two TED videos on visualization by Hans Rossling (http://gapmider.org ) - who has done seminal work on visualization.

First talk is about aids in the world


Second talk is about Asian economic ascendancy and problems Asian country
faces.



Hope our future talks will continue to evolve and show the progress made.