It has been a tradition of the IEEE-CS students club to sponsor a spring picnic every year. The picnic offers a chance for engineering students and faculties to eat, hang out, talk and enjoy some entertainments.[Read More]
Blog on Sun Opensource, etc. Cheng Thao's Blog
Wednesday May 20, 2009
Tuesday Apr 14, 2009
At the College of Engineering & Applied Science (CEAS) open house, IEEECS demoed the SunSPOT for playing the Echoes video game from binaryzoo.com. It got a lot of attention from prospect students and a professor who is interested in using the SunSPOT for his work. One professor jokingly said that our table got the most students attention. We also gave out a few OpenSolaris CDs. Here's the videos and pictures from the open house.
Find more videos like this on Open Source University Meetup
Find more videos like this on Open Source University Meetup
Jonathan trying to set up the laptop for playing Echoes. You can get the game and source code here:
http://binaryzoo.com/games/echoes/index.htm
http://blogs.sun.com/chengthao/resource/EchoesSpotController.zip
http://blogs.sun.com/chengthao/resource/EchoesSpotHost.zip
Find more videos like this on Open Source University Meetup
Find more videos like this on Open Source University Meetup
Jonathan trying to set up the laptop for playing Echoes. You can get the game and source code here:
http://binaryzoo.com/games/echoes/index.htm
http://blogs.sun.com/chengthao/resource/EchoesSpotController.zip
http://blogs.sun.com/chengthao/resource/EchoesSpotHost.zip
Tuesday Dec 09, 2008
I went to Thailand with my mother, my uncle, and his wife to visit families. My mother has a older brother living in a 200 families village in the Chiangrai province. We have not seen him for 20 years. [Read More]
Thursday Sep 25, 2008
Photos from our welcome back party and Software Freedom Day.
Software Freedom Day was a bit too soon for us to organize a big event. Classes just started and the student organization hadn't yet to have their first meeting. There was also the welcome back party sponsored by the school of engineering. We simply combined Software Freedom Day with the party. Our plan was to have some freebies from SUN to give out to students. My Software Freedom Day kit didn't get to me in time. We ended up distributing some of the older Netbeans and Solaris CDs left over from last year. We also distributed some Ubuntu CDs the club made.
The IEEECS have bought a SunSPOT kit from last year. One of their goal was to develop a wireless game controller. Here, we are letting students play the game Echoes from Binary Zoo. We had wanted to created a controller for a first person shooter game, but decided it was perhaps easier to go with the game Echoes. Jeremy brought his own projector and a white board to be used as the screen. Jason Koranda also brought his 32 inches HD TV to show SunSPOT and open source videos. Unfortunatelly, the computer had no wifi card. Jonathan helped set up the game and the SunSPOT.
Playing game with SunSPOT controller.
Jonathon (left), Jason (Right).
Software Freedom Day was a bit too soon for us to organize a big event. Classes just started and the student organization hadn't yet to have their first meeting. There was also the welcome back party sponsored by the school of engineering. We simply combined Software Freedom Day with the party. Our plan was to have some freebies from SUN to give out to students. My Software Freedom Day kit didn't get to me in time. We ended up distributing some of the older Netbeans and Solaris CDs left over from last year. We also distributed some Ubuntu CDs the club made.
The IEEECS have bought a SunSPOT kit from last year. One of their goal was to develop a wireless game controller. Here, we are letting students play the game Echoes from Binary Zoo. We had wanted to created a controller for a first person shooter game, but decided it was perhaps easier to go with the game Echoes. Jeremy brought his own projector and a white board to be used as the screen. Jason Koranda also brought his 32 inches HD TV to show SunSPOT and open source videos. Unfortunatelly, the computer had no wifi card. Jonathan helped set up the game and the SunSPOT.
Playing game with SunSPOT controller.
Jonathon (left), Jason (Right).
Saturday May 17, 2008
First, install a Java JDK.
Next, run the SunSPOT installer from the CD. I have the Orange SDK. You may have a different one. Accept all default setting.
Last, you need to specify the port. This step is important.
Now try install AirText demo on one of the spot.
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
The following steps assume you are in your home directory. If not,
simply:
cd
Next, run the SunSPOT installer from the CD. I have the Orange SDK. You may have a different one. Accept all default setting.
java -jar /media/cdrom/sunspotsdkinstaller.jar
Last, you need to specify the port. This step is important.
echo "port=/dev/ttyACM0" >> .sunspot.properties
Now try install AirText demo on one of the spot.
cd SunSPOT/Demos$ cd AirText/
ant deploy
Tuesday May 06, 2008
OpenSolaris 2008.05 is a Live CD, allowing users to experience OpenSolaris immediately, without the need to install it to their systems. When ready, installation is a single click away with a new improved easy-to-use installer. This release also introduces IPS, a new network based package management system, allowing users to install additional software from the network. ZFS is also the default root file-system, allowing unique snapshot and rollback features, especially useful during system upgrade. OpenSolaris 2008.05 has a significantly improved user environment, in particular for those familiar with other Linux distributions.
Get it here: http://www.opensolaris.com/get/
If you do not have sound, you may get a driver from http://www.opensound.com/
Check out screen shot here
Saturday May 03, 2008
I gave a talk on Sun SPOT today (May 3rd, 2008). We had ten students. Most are members of the IEECS. It's probably due to the rain, and the fact that it is nearing final exams. The IEECS brought their set of Sun SPOTs. After the talk, we tried getting three or more Sun SPOTS to play with the bouncing ball. It seems 3 are OK. Adding the fourth one didn't seem to work.
Some of the youtube videos I played during the talk were very interesting. The links to the videos are here:
Mike's Flying Bike demonstrate how Mike use Sun SPOTS and a bicycle to fly around in google flight simulation.
SPOTkin Project shows Sun SPOT gives a Halloween pumpkin personality.
Sun SPOT telerobotics shows the use of Sun SPOT to control a robot arm.
Sun SPOT and LEGO Mindstorms NXT: A Sun SPOT controller for a toy car.
Sun SPOT game controller for first person shooter: In this video, they demonstrate the use of two Sun SPOTs: one to control the gun, and the second to control the player's movement.
Some of the youtube videos I played during the talk were very interesting. The links to the videos are here:
Mike's Flying Bike demonstrate how Mike use Sun SPOTS and a bicycle to fly around in google flight simulation.
SPOTkin Project shows Sun SPOT gives a Halloween pumpkin personality.
Sun SPOT telerobotics shows the use of Sun SPOT to control a robot arm.
Sun SPOT and LEGO Mindstorms NXT: A Sun SPOT controller for a toy car.
Sun SPOT game controller for first person shooter: In this video, they demonstrate the use of two Sun SPOTs: one to control the gun, and the second to control the player's movement.
Wednesday Apr 30, 2008
YOU'RE INVITED!
Sun Microsystems, Inc. Presents: "SunDay: UW-Milwaukee, WI"
DATE: Friday, May 9, 2008
LOCATION: Milwuakee
VENUE: Lubar Hall--Room N120 (first floor) at the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business
2200 E.Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee, WI 53201
TIME: 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Sun does Windows, Linux and Solaris!
Please Join Sun Microsystems and Laurus Technologies for a Technology Update where you will learn that Sun does more than Solaris! Sun also has interoperability with Windows and Linux.
This seminar is complimentary. Lunch will be provided.
VIEW PRESENTATION DETAILS AND REGISTER AT:
Register
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AGENDA: 11:00 AM To 11:15 AM Welcome and Introductions
11:15 AM To 12:30 PM Sun's x64 Platform Overview
12:30 PM To 1:30 PM Sun's Virtualization Strategy with VMware
1:30 PM To 2:30 PM Multi-threaded SPARC Servers Update
2:30 PM To 2:55 PM Matching Grant Program Overview
2:55 PM To 3:00 PM Q&A, Raffle
VIEW PRESENTATION DETAILS AND REGISTER AT: http://www.suneventreg.com/cgi-bin/pup_registration.pl?EventID=2236
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We look forward to seeing you in Milwuakee and helping you on your way to a much simpler, less costly, technology infrastructure!
Sincerely,
Sun Microsystems
and
Laurus Technologies
Sun Microsystems, Inc. Presents: "SunDay: UW-Milwaukee, WI"
DATE: Friday, May 9, 2008
LOCATION: Milwuakee
VENUE: Lubar Hall--Room N120 (first floor) at the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business
2200 E.Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee, WI 53201
TIME: 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Sun does Windows, Linux and Solaris!
Please Join Sun Microsystems and Laurus Technologies for a Technology Update where you will learn that Sun does more than Solaris! Sun also has interoperability with Windows and Linux.
This seminar is complimentary. Lunch will be provided.
VIEW PRESENTATION DETAILS AND REGISTER AT:
Register
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AGENDA: 11:00 AM To 11:15 AM Welcome and Introductions
11:15 AM To 12:30 PM Sun's x64 Platform Overview
12:30 PM To 1:30 PM Sun's Virtualization Strategy with VMware
1:30 PM To 2:30 PM Multi-threaded SPARC Servers Update
2:30 PM To 2:55 PM Matching Grant Program Overview
2:55 PM To 3:00 PM Q&A, Raffle
VIEW PRESENTATION DETAILS AND REGISTER AT: http://www.suneventreg.com/cgi-bin/pup_registration.pl?EventID=2236
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We look forward to seeing you in Milwuakee and helping you on your way to a much simpler, less costly, technology infrastructure!
Sincerely,
Sun Microsystems
and
Laurus Technologies
Netbeans 6.1 final is available for download.
Friday Apr 25, 2008
Every spring, the IEEECS (IEEE Computer Society) Student Organization at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a cook out picnic for the campus. They serve brats, burgers, chips, and vegetable to an estimate of 500 students and faculties. This year the IEEECS club lacks the funding to provide the picnic. Sun was able to provide some funding to the picnic.
At the picnic, the IEEECS distributed many Netbeans and OpenSolaris CDs. The members are proud to be part of the Sun opensource community.
Jason Koranda(IEEECS president), me (Cheng Thao), Dave Brixius(IEEECS vice president).
Jason Koranda(IEEECS president), me (Cheng Thao), Dave Brixius(IEEECS vice president).
I did a seminar on Netbeans 6 on March 1st. I had not put up the photos.
During the seminar, I described what Netbeans is, and gave several demos of using Netbeans. I showed some of the new great features of the Netbeans 6 Java editor. I showed how to build a user interface quickly using Netbeans UI editor and how to bind UI component to actions, and to database tables. One of the nice features of Netbeans 6 is the collaboration module which allows the sharing and working of Netbeans projects with people remotely. Last, I showed how the profiler can be used to help improve code.
I had almost 30 students attending. They liked Netbeans. The problem is that this university does not teach Java in any of their required courses. To many of the students, Java is new. This makes it a little hard to adopt Netbeans. But I wanted them to know that Netbeans can also be used for the C/C++ class.
Some of the students had questions other than Netbeans 6. They were interested in JDBC and database connection. Overall, the talk went very well.
Some of the students had questions other than Netbeans 6. They were interested in JDBC and database connection. Overall, the talk went very well.