OK, that is just what this past Friday felt like to me. First of all, we had the party for Dr. Tevis. (It is indeed sad to see him go.) Then we had an ACM meeting, but overlapping with the end of that we had a programming competition. In the meeting, the seniors were given time to talk about fun projects they had done in their years here at LeTourneau. Scott Geigel talked briefly on his work with neural networks. (I would not be surprised to see more experiments with them even after he leaves. There seemed to be a fair amount of interest!) The programming teams then had to leave, so I have no more live coverage to give. The rest would be hearsay, and as such it is not admissible in a court of law. Good news, though: the LeTU Oncelers got first in the competition!
EVERYTHING, ALL AT ONCE! Leave a comment
Ludum Jam Done Leave a comment
Perhaps you are wondering why my last post on last Friday’s meeting was so late. Or, perhaps you are wondering why I think you even check the dates that these posts were written! The explanation to the first of these questions is simple, and will be given in a short while. The explanation to the second is too long and too large for the Internet, perhaps we will have to write a book to explain it.
This weekend, the ACM Student Chapter at LeTourneau had two teams that participated in the Ludum Jam, and I was a part of it! The specific theme was “tiny world”, and the first team made a fitting randomly-generated RPG called MiniQuest. The entry can be found here. My team made a gravitational slingshotting game called GraviPlay which can be found here. (Updated versions can be found in this directory.)
StarCo on Software Patents Leave a comment
This past Friday, Tom Coverstone of StarCo presented on the US patent system. He covered the patent system in general and then showed us some of the controversy surrounding software patents and some of the influential cases. It was really great to learn more about patents from someone so experienced in them! StarCo, a local Longview company that works with high-tech research and development, has extensive experience in the area of patents. Even better, Tom had worked as a patent lawyer before founding StarCo, and was involved in some of the most influential software patent cases, such as the Amazon One-Click case.
Thanks, Tom, for the great presentation!
Linux from Boot Up Leave a comment
On Friday, March 30, Micah Shennum, our local world-class Linux guru, gave an in-detail presentation on the boot process of Linux. We began with the mysteries of GRUB and then moved into the init process. To show the modularity of the Linux operating system, Micah demonstrated how one could run bash instead of the usual init. Even better, though, was when Micah booted his own custom init that he had written, showing exactly how easy it is to get into a Linux system and tweak (AKA improve or mess it up, depending on what type of person you are) it to your preferences. Thanks for the great talk, Micah!
Campus Bullet by Dustin Masters Leave a comment
Today, Dustin Masters presented about the Campus Bullet (http://campusbullet.net/) – from its initial vision to its current state. The Campus Bullet is written in PHP using the Kohana framework, and he gave us a tour on how the MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern was used in the project. He will be transferring maintenance of the Campus Bullet over to ACM@LETU when he graduates in May. Hopefully we can really bless the LETU community with this project and learn a lot too! Thanks for the presentation today Dustin and we wish you well!
Dr. Jay Tevis Leave a comment
This past meeting, Dr. Jay Tevis of our own LeTourneau University gave us a presentation on his past experience with developing software for ICBMs. Dr. Tevis helped with the Minuteman 3 missiles that are still in active use and can hit targets over 5,000 miles away! He also showed us some software that many of us look forward to. It is a replacement for the paleolithic electromagnetic fields simulator used in Physics 2! Sadly, Dr. Tevis will be leaving LeTourneau next semester, though he will still teach some online courses. He will indeed be missed…
Mercurial Madness! 1 comment
This ACM meeting, Nicholas Capo showed us the wonders of version control using Mercurial. He generously set up a space on his home server and allowed public access to the repository, which I hope he does not regret. At one point, we had seven different heads competing with each other, until Joseph Wallace took it upon himself to merge all changes. Well done, Nick, and we wish your server a speedy recovery from being DDOSed by Mercurial clients!
I have a small confession to make… I was the one who attempted to rickroll everyone in the repository with dontreadthis.txt. Yes, yes… I did use the username brony, much to my current regret, for I am definitely not one. See, this is what anonymity on the Internet allows people to do! (Completely weird and fun things!)
JavaScript Canvas Leave a comment
Yesterday, our very own Joseph Wallace (Yes Sir, Mr. President, Sir!) gave a presentation on the usage of the HTML 5 JavaScript Canvas tag. Besides being super enlightening, it had <superspiffyfont> Spirographs! </superspiffyfont> We also had a presentation of the progress that was made at the Ludum Jam practice the previous weekend, which included killer nectarine ships and dragonflies so terrifying they crashed the ganme! (No, not THE game.)
Here is the coolest thing I made from his demo, though Joseph made a recursively generated rotating Tri-Force logo in a Spirograph:
The Karlinator Leave a comment
Today, Joseph Wallace and I presented on the basics of making a game. Joseph gave a great primer for what the general pattern is for making a game, covering initialization and the game loop, and the many details implied therein. I then covered a basic example of a game made specifically for this presentation in Java. In the demonstration plenty of entertainment was gained by adjusting gravity constants, messing with physics callbacks, and so on, and the code is being attached so that you can continue to do so! Feel free to develop your own game using this code!
Here is the game code and art: karl.zip, as well as a zipped jar file if you just want to play: karl.jar.zip
LightSys – IT and Missions Leave a comment
This week, Greg and Dorinda Beeley of LightSys (http://lightsys.org/) presented on how God can use technology to forward His Kingdom, and how we can get involved! We were reminded that whether we are trapped in a lion’s den or upgrading an email server, we still need God’s direction, since the final product is not simply getting out of the lion’s den or getting the email server fixed; the final product is forwarding His Kingdom. Finally, they showed us their Centrallix application platform and the Kardia software that runs on it that is being used to benefit missions groups by providing an affordable finance tracking system!
Thanks to LightSys for a great presentation this week! God bless!