Bob Breznak: Ramblings from the mind of Bob

A few days ago Sun announced that it is going to start paying developers on open source projects. Total awards will be about $1 million a year for working on open source projects such as Glass Fish, OpenOffice.org, Netbeans and more! This is an amazing step forward for open source. It could be profitable for developers to start giving to everyone. Check out the article at JDJ (http://java.sys-con.com/read/472223.htm) If you're just interested in open source and what it is, check out this free online book (also available in real book form) called Innovation Happens Elsewhere at http://dreamsongs.com/IHE/

If you're in the New England area at the moment and haven't looked outside because of finals, midterms, or being a geek, you might wanna check it out. Its snowing pretty nicely and is going to make some great sledding for later.

Here at WPI classes were canceled from 1:00PM on! The best part, today was the last day of the term, so a lot of professors are making auxiliary plans for final assessments. The software engineering class that I am a SA for (think TA but paid less and are much cooler) had nearly 100% attendance for the last group's presentation, which I must add, included the song "Danger Zone" from Top Gun. The fact that so many people showed up for a class shows the power of a good professor and a great class.

I digress, I wish everyone fresh powder and fun slopes

Bob

Its working! To get a better understanding of the SunSPOTs I decided to build a little mobile platform for use with the SPOTs. I'll add some pictures and the basic schematic for getting the HBridge working. Right now I can control the mobile platform remotely via my MacBook with an application that I've made.

The application and SPOT communication is handled using a framework that I've built that is based on the Telemetry demo from http://sunspotworld.com

At the moment I have a gyro from http://sparkfun.com that I am looking to integrate into the little bot.

- Bob