[Rumor] Coke won the bid
The rumor running around campus is that coca cola has won the bid to exclusive soda rights on campus here at the University of Rhode Island. I have heard from a reliable source that at the very minimum coke has control over the Memorial Union, however they didn’t know the extent of the deal, like how long the contact is, or whether it affects the whole camps. This is a major change, because Pepsi has been in control of the campus for longer than I can remember (this being my fifth year at URI). The contract takes affect on January 1st, so when we all get back from break, we will see what happened. The one thing I would love to see is for coca cola to bring their freestyle machines to the dining halls. I will certainly be keeping an eye out for the changes over break as I will be working on campus for a bunch of it.
400 level classes: you’re doing it wrong
This is kind of a spur of the moment post done using my phone so there may be some minor errors, and I apologies for that. It seems like the 400 level classes I am in currently are being done wrong, ELE 470 had us doing a hello world iPhone app as the first program. In CSC 402 I am basically able to write the programs that are due for homework using the notes. I feel like these courses are being taught wrong because so far they are not really challenging us to think at all. Hopefully the professors step it up so I actually have to think in these classes and not just tweak the notes to hand in my assignments.
How To: Deploy Awesome New Tab Page
As part of my job, I had to figure out a way to automate deploying the chrome plugin Awesome New Tab Page to computers we sold. Now although this seems like a straightforward task, it really is not, at the time of writing this, there is no way to export your settings as far as how the layout and what each tile has. However after much pain and suffering (and a few expletives) I was able to find a way to do it which works quite well, and I was able to write a quick script to do it. However here are the steps I took to solve the problem (I will let you write a script on your own as mine is very system dependent). Read more
Finals are over
Another successful semester has finished, and I’m finally off for summer break, well besides my final project due in a week. If my summer goes as planned I will be releasing a few minor programs that I have bouncing around in my head. However among those programs I plan on writing, I also plan on doing some arduino work as well, for example I am going to be making a theremin based off some information I saw online, which will be a neat experiment to see what kind of improvements can be made. I also plan on making some sort of early warning system for griefers on minecraft servers, however these are all in the planning stages, for now it’s time to relax and maybe have a drink. A toast to another successful semester, and to the class of 2012.
Quarentine at URI: Major Rager Part 2
Reporting from the heart of the den, the University of Rhode Island has started locking down their library in preparation for a party which is planned to be thrown by the students. This same occurrence happened last may, however the police have gotten here early in preparation. In what seems to be an annual finals week occurrence (the last day of reading days, throw a party in the library), the students have organized another “rager” in the library, which have prompted staff to lock the library doors as well as lock the people in the 24 hour room. Updates will be posted as stuff happens, however the party is set to kick off in 15 minutes, I however was lucky enough to get in here right before the locked the main doors. Read more
Advanced Garage Door Controls Part 2
So this is part 2 for my advanced garage door controls. In this part I am making it so that the garage door can autoclose, there were some minor changes to the design when it comes to the features as well as the implementation. First off I had to change over to an arduino mega because there was not quite enough space on the arduinio uno to hold the program data (I was about 5kb off from fitting). As a reminder here are the features that it will include. Read more
Advanced Garage Door Controls
As part of my ELE 206 class at the University of Rhode Island I am required to do a final project, so I decided to expand the control I have over my older garage door so that it has similar functionality to the Craftsman AssureLink garage door. Below is a list of the main functionality I am adding using the Arduino.
- DONE: A status indicator inside the house to indicate if the garage door is open or closed.
- The ability to remotely check if the garage door is open or closed, see if the safety laser beam is blocked, and remotely open or close it.
- The ability to make the garage door automatically close after being open for so long.
- The ability to have the garage door automatically close if the garage gets too cold.
This may seem like a very hard task, however most of this is quite straightforward, and over a series of posts I will be walking you through the development process (which is not yet complete). The first part I chose to tackle was being able to detect if the garage door is open, and indicate that in the house. See how after the jump
Sorry for the lack of posts lately
I’m sorry about the lack of posts lately, I have been pretty sick with a stomach bug which has been slowing me down. However soon I will be posting the first part to my final project for my ELE 206 project, which will be a multipart series about using the arduino for home automation (specifically in my case involving the garage).
State of the Site
So this is just a general checkup and notice about the state of the site. Currently being a full time student I am quite busy, however I do love running this site, so I will be trying to make some time for it. With the beta’s for bukkit 1.2 I have been busy working on my plugins instead of working on more programming tutorials, but those will begin again soon. I also will be starting my final project for my artificial intelligence class soon (waiting on the proposal to be approved while writing this), which I plan to document on here along the way. It will be my first delve into single player minecraft mods, but that is all I will go into about it currently. I also have begun working on my micro-controllers final project which will be documented here. I will be rigging up an arduino in order to control a garage door remotely as well as get the status of the door itself. I plan on documenting that along the way here as well as hopefully doing some arduino stuff over the summer, but only time will tell. Finally I would like to thank YellowAPI for inviting me to join their site, this has been a great opportunity, and the increased attention on the site is giving me more motivation to do more stuff for the site. Thank you for following my site or stumbling upon it by accident.
URI Memes
Although this is not my usual post, I felt that this was worth posting. Two days ago two members of the University of Rhode Island decided to start a new page on Facebook, URI Memes. As any self respecting geek/nerd I of course had to go through them and like the page, in fact, the members of the university seem to like it, in less than 48 hours since the page was posted, the page has over 3000 likes, and countless photos (over 400 lat I heard, probably close to 600 by the time this gets posted). Now although not all these memes are right, they are still entertaining. One interesting fact I noticed was that I only found 1 specifically computer science meme, whereas I would expect that the computer science students would make more memes. The next logical step would seem to get their own website, however I do not think that would be as successful, because the success hinges on how easy it is to add these memes to the facebook page, which is as easy as posting them on their facebook wall, but only time will tell. See some of the memes after the jump