6 Feb 2007 – hanging out
This week was more social.
Alex, Graham, Zach, Puyan, Mark, Martin and Lauryn and Emily Case, briefly.
Also, G had a rehearsal with L for their Javaology gig.
Special guest was KelleY BoleN, video jammer and animator from Canada!
30 Jan 2007 – post sonic generator
We met Jeremy, completing his PhD thesis in computational chemistry.
Mark, Graham, Alex, Martin, and Lauryn went to Sonic Generator II.
The comic book improvisational piece delighted us all.
Alex- thinking about typo detection- will hack up Google maps.
Tried to speak to a girl who looks like Jenn but is not Jenn.
Zach not coming, its too late.
Mark- getting a new copy of IntelliJ (closed source Eclipse). TextMate instead.
Going to implement Paolo Soleri in js livecoding environment.
Graham- turning in first MIR assignment on classifying tabla strokes.
investigating embedding chuck into openGL program.
23 Jan 2007 – tuesday nights
First Tuesday night ever (we think).
New progress on organizing the colo.
Mark nominated as treasurer, Luke as head admin.
tonight:
Erik- working on a standalone programmable blogging engine
that will serve as the home for his other projects:
wIDE, scheduled events and triggers on posts
Wants to get posts, comments, users working in a RESTful manner tonight.
done- got authentication system, got rudimentary posting done
Mark- fixing a problem with contractIDs.
Would like to send a udp message to python udp-server.
Graham- compile firefox. find out where it’s crashing.
Make ‘chuck –status’ work in firefox plugin. (has since fixed it with AddRef).
Alex- drinking coffee and watching. Researching GMaps for runners problem.
18 Jan 2007 – octane x mstreet
Tonight, Alex and I met at Octane. DJs were funky, not too loud, louder.
Mark called us up to his place at MStreet, college people and Jason were there.
What we worked on:
Alex- Proposed a problem as a potential GMaps hack (more below).
Graham- Adding VM status functionality to ChucK firefox plugin (XPCOM).
Mark- Porting OpenSoundControl to Mozilla via XPCOM.
Jason- Adding new features to his Q&A site startup, Qaboom. (smileys in chat, etc)
gmaps-
Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and n-3 other computer scientists are in a running club. They need an application to determine the most fair meeting point (similar to the centroid for street distance), so that they all run an equitable amount to reach the meeting place. Alan is a stronger runner than Charles, so we can expect him to be able to run farther by some scalar, like 2. Our algorithm should take this into account.
xpcom-
Both Mark and Graham were having binary build problems with XPCOM. First, we both had an issue with xpcom_Glue. G solved it only linking xpcomglue_s.lib (instead of that and xpcomglue.lib) into his binary. M solved it by building his project with more recent Makefile as a starting point. Sometimes one wishes the C++ compiler could be a little less literal.
XPCOM is in general a neat toolkit for making cross-platform software, it is not without its pitfalls. Several great resources are informative but contain out of date elements (book, component tutorial) with nods to the changes only in web accessible mailing lists. Since this is open source, some of the burden falls on us to update the materials. (Maybe M and I can do that after we finish our components.)
An application or applet has many components end-to-end, in different languages and systems. Possibly you will have binaries in C++ XPCOM, scripts in javascript, chrome configuration in RDF, and UI specification in XUL. Starting a project and debugging is therefore an extra-long chain of getting little things wrong until you start getting them right, and tutorials are long and laborious. On the other hand, splitting the effort between subsystems seems more flexible. It would feel wrong to put the config or UI stuff in procedural code, or the scripting stuff in binary. Startup time vs. flexibility, probably a reasonable tradeoff.
I’m currently busy in Colorado, but I haven’t forgotten about the ATL. I just found some new Atlanta startup oriented resources:
This brings up something which has been eating at my brain for a while now… why is Georgia Tech not more involved in startups? Is it a lack of faith in their people? Are they not aware of the possibilities? Have there been a lot of failures in the past? Maybe its the lack of substantial venture capital in the southeast. Even from Colorado, I can see that Atlanta is more up-and-coming than most people realize… its time for Tech to get involved.
5 Oct 2006 – loud music and smells of cheese from the art opening
Tonight Alex and I worked on SWIMM,
Alex studied for his AdvOS midterms,
Martin told us about his plan to port chuck to pd, VST, and C++ (a library interface).
Kim was here, Richard said hi.
3 August 2006 – new members!
music – a playlist with ample Mates of State
Mike Tria (meta-code.com) – getthere -> code generation startup MetaJ (applied frequently to VoiceXML) -> wrote a clickstream tracking application -> compucredit -> Unisys (open source architect). Will be presenting an overview of migrations (Sun -> Linux, Mainframe->Linux, application migrations) at LinuxWorld.
Writing a video game in Java. The Philosopher (like a Link to the Past) – it’s a game for programmers. Tuned heap and garbage collector. Custom interface using SWT with openGL functionality.
Wants to stay technical (an architect position), wants to start a software shop in Atlanta.
His company is looking for J2EE or .NET architects, and ready to hire.
(Mike suggests Graham read latest Comm-ACM on audio processing)
Mike will send his ideas doc for consumption of all.
Robin – hates the CompE department at Tech. Hard to get jobs without a graduate degree. Programs cable boxes in C for Nagra. Wants to learn Java.
Since Last Week:
Vinny- published source code for SwixUL (sf.net/projects/swixul)
Graham- modified Mused analysis code to work with later version of Bass.NET
Mike- modifying blojsom to use his clickstream tracking
This Week:
Mike- looking at rules-engines (JBoss-rules) for work. making an interface layer from JBoss rules to arbitrary webservices. (got his slipstream rules to work, will be gone for 3 weeks)
Graham- going to parse XML data about songs.
Vinny- mess around with pygame to do mouse tracking and gesture recognition
Robin- writing a bash script to copy a file tree with inclusion / exclusion (something like rsync)
Discussions:
license discovery tool –
mp3.com fire sale
Google ATL moving to Tech Square?
13 July 2006 – boulderhack or bust
Since Last Week:
Vinny -signed on to a mapping startup in Denver! He will be leaving us and moving onwards and upwards. 🙁
Graham -design prototype for collaborative chuck website.
This Week:
Vinny has recommended Prototype (docs quick guide api style doc) and Scriptaculous for basic AJAX-style js.
22 June 2006 – embroidery social night
Since Last Week:
Vinny -work for his 3rd startup.
Luke -shorted out his MythTV system, then fixed it.
Alex -teaching high school teachers to teach CS.
Martin -needs to work on ChucK networking!
Kate -passed her physics test!
Emily -she has a class schedule and a parking space.
This week:
Graham -basic pitch following synth in SC.
Peter and Mia came to visit!
Met Will Fisher, who does Psych-out show at WREK!
25 May 2006 – hacker social
Luke- wrote an application to annotate sync points in DVD movies.
currently reading Valis – PKDs "pink light" theory.
Alex- learning wxPython so he can make his paper organizer.
Martin- working for a CMS company in Buckhead.
FileIO in ChucK is done, need to finish networking.
Vinny- published sql code for different airline codes.
Erik- finding a way to simplify dynamic queries for homefinders.
Andrew- here for the enlightened discourse.
Graham- SWIMM and checking out of Mac clients.