I had initially planned to just talk about OpenSolaris Zones today, but I decided to squeeze in some VirtualBox goodness too since they're two different approaches to the same problem. As a result, today's talk was a pretty decent introduction to virtualisation in general, so that's the subject of this week's demo clips:
Next week should be entertaining on the video front, as there is some potential for mass destruction when Michael comes visiting. Watch this space for more details...
Another week, another Sun tech demo at Strathclyde. This week, I was talking about ZFS, the revolutionary filesystem that comes as standard with the OpenSolaris distribution. It's pretty cool technology, so I've been looking forward to doing this talk.
As I've done before, I recorded some video clips at the demo. Below you can watch the first twenty minutes or so of the talk. It has to be said that this only scratches the surface of what ZFS can do - I discussed a lot more in the talk (ZFS properties like quotas and reservations, transparent compression, snapshotting, and so on), and even then there is a whole load of other funky stuff that ZFS does which I didn't have time to cover...
We're now four weeks into my programme of weekly events at Strathclyde, and I'm not letting up. Next week I'll be talking about Zones, another OpenSolaris technology, and I should hopefully be welcoming Michael Clarke to Strathclyde the following week for an entertaining introduction to device driver development using NetBeans (I'm waiting for absolute confirmation on that, so watch this space!).
After accidentally leaving it in university over the weekend, I've now retrieved my camera and pulled off some clips from last Friday's Sun@Strathclyde tech demo, which was all about OpenSolaris. I've had to split the clips up a bit since YouTube doesn't like videos longer than ten minutes in length, but thankfully there's a custom player option which allows me to combine them into one:
The next two demos I'll be running are also going to have an OpenSolaris theme, so if you're interested in hearing more about ZFS and Zones, make sure you remember to come along!
Today saw the second Sun@Strathclyde OSUM tech demo of 2009, this time about Sun SPOTs. We had a lower turnout than last time around, which is a shame, because those who did come along seemed to enjoy the demo. It was certainly fun getting some audience members up to throw a SunSPOT around between each other while I graphed the accelerometer data on my laptop (and I think they enjoyed the free t-shirts too!).
Sadly, the videos I took today haven't turned out well; I had hoped to be able to share them online, but my camera decided it didn't want to play ball. The fact that Jason wasn't around to play cameraman didn't help (he was away seeing a lawyer about sorting his US taxes out or something - can't see how that's more important than helping out at my demos, but there you go :-D ).
There seemed to be a fair bit of interest in the tech from the CES students who arrived in the room for a tutorial afterwards, so if there are more people who'd like to see this talk given again, I'd be happy to oblige. Just get in touch - preferably through the OSUM website ;-) - and I'll see what can be done!
My next demo is an introduction to OpenSolaris - Sun's free-to-download open-source operating system. As always, it's next Friday at 1pm in room M4.09 (the James Weir Building). See you there!
Here's another short clip from the Sun@Strathclyde OSUM Kickoff event last Friday - this one's an introduction to SAI, Sun's program offering students and academics free access to online training resources (plus deeply-discounted certifications!).
Unlike the previous video, there's no walkthrough showing how to sign up. This is because you need a special code and program ID to sign up to SAI (this is so we can make sure that only students and academics are actually signing up). If you're interested in getting access to SAI (and why wouldn't you be?!), give me a shout and I can provide you with a card which has detailed instructions on how to sign up.
I've now ploughed through all the feedback forms from last Friday and worked out what I'm going to be talking about in my weekly tech demos over the course of this semester. It was a surprisingly close-run thing in places, but the areas of interest were mostly as I expected. I'll have to see about getting in a guest presenter for one or two of the events, but that hopefully won't be a problem :-)
Here's the list of topics and dates. Unless otherwise specified on the OSUM website, all my tech demos will be held on Fridays at 1pm in room M4.09 (that's the James Weir Building). You can click the links below for more details and to register for events, just so long as you've got an osum.sun.com account (and if you don't, see my previous post for a run-through of how to sign up!).
In addition to the above events, I've got some other stuff in the pipeline to sort out, including an organised tour of Sun's Linlithgow campus. I'll probably do that one during the Easter break, so we don't interfere with anyone's class schedules, so I'll talk about that more once I've made some arrangements - as always, watch this space!
It's been a pretty hectic weekend for me - immediately after finishing my first tech demo of the year on Friday, I hopped straight onto a train to go visit a friend for the weekend. Then, with it being my mum's birthday today, I had to high-tail it back home to join my parents for dinner at The Bay Tree (a very nice wee restaurant on Great Western Road, highly recommended). I was going to finalise my demo programme tonight but my brain's not working so I guess it'll have to wait till tomorrow :-p
The kickoff event on Friday went fairly well - we got 46 students along, which is not too bad for the first event of the year. Hopefully word-of-mouth and the continued allure of free stuff will keep people coming along. Below you can see a short clip from the talk in which I describe Sun's open-source strategy and how the OSUM programme fits into it. There's also a run-through of how to sign up to the website and join my group (hint, hint) :-D
So that's one down and ten to go - we've got ten weeks left before the end of the semester and I'm hoping to fit ten demos in, one per week. Watch this space for news of what I'll be covering!
It's been a while since I've posted any updates here. Despite appearances, I haven't actually disappeared off the face of the Earth (I've actually been sequestered in my room working away on my final-year project for approximately the last four months) and I've now sorted out the schedule for the Sun@Strathclyde OSUM tech demos in 2009.
What's an OSUM? Well, it's kind of like an on-campus club; it stands for Open-Source University Meetup and is, somewhat embarrasingly, pronounced "awesome" (the person who thought that one up is an American, obviously!). There's a whole social networking site devoted to all the OSUMs around the world at osum.sun.com and the Sun@Strathclyde group is here.
So when's the first tech demo? The answer is next Friday (that's the 6th of February) in room M4.09 at 1pm till 2pm. We'll be covering: a general intro to the OSUM program, instructions on how to access free online training resources through the Sun Academic Initiative, and attendees will have the chance to vote for the topics and technologies they want to see covered at the subsequent weekly demos. That's right, this is a weekly thing - same time, same place, every week.
For more info or to get involved, please feel free to join the Sun@Strathclyde OSUM group. I'll see you on there!
Today saw the second Sun@Strathclyde tech demo, this time a talk about the innovative Sun SPOT wireless sensor technology. There's a fair bit of interest in using these at the university, especially within the EEE department, but sadly since that department still hasn't gotten back to me about arrangements to promote my events I wasn't able to get anyone from EEE along.
That, combined with the fact that it's the end of term, meant I only welcomed along 12 CS students and lecturers to the demo today - not a great turnout given last week's attendance, but those who did come seemed to be quite interested in using the technology - not to mention earning themselves some Sun T-shirts by getting involved (thanks guys!).
Below you can see a short video clip from one of the live demo sections. Sadly the 'Air text' effect doesn't show up very well on video (it works by 'tricking' the naked eye), but you can get a decent idea of what it looks like here.
Since tomorrow's the last day of term, that pretty much wraps up the tech demos for this semester, but I'm still going to be watching the forums and checking my email, so if any readers need to know anything about Sun@Strathclyde, please just give me a shout!
One thing I think Sun is really getting right with its 'Campus Ambassador' program is the way they've cottoned on to the fact that students love free stuff. Giving things away is a really good way to get people aware of and interested in Sun technology, which is the whole aim of the scheme.
One really good example of this is the training offer which I've been pushing lately while I wait for the university to get back to me about participating in the more comprehensive SAI program. The offer is basically this: for every 10 Strathclyde students who complete a short online training course about Solaris, the university gets a free SunSPOT kit. It's one of these situations where everybody wins:
Today saw the presentation of my first tech demo as part of the Sun@Strathclyde program :-)
The demo was based around the various open-source technologies that Sun produces, in particular the Solaris operating system and the NetBeans IDE. We got a really good turnout, 51 people - that's a fair bit more than I expected, so many thanks to everyone who came along!
I was pleased to welcome along Rod McAllister from Sun, who came to introduce the Sun@Strathclyde program, and there seems to be a fair bit of genuine interest from attendees about using some of the technology presented during the talk. That, of course, is what Sun@Strathclyde is all about - raising awareness of the cool and powerful technologies that Sun gives away for free.
Speaking of giving stuff away for free, the post-talk freebies proved very popular:
Note to self: don't lay out freebies on a table in front of a horde of students, as trampling may ensue and your stock of freebies will be exhausted very quickly (guess I'll just have to strategically hand out t-shirts at the next demo, thankfully I kept those back!).
So, once again, many thanks to everyone who attended and I look forward to seeing everyone again at the next Sun@Strathclyde presentation, which will be next week - same time, same day, same place. We'll be showcasing SunSPOTs, Sun's Java-enabled wireless sensor technology - pretty cool stuff.
For more info about Sun@Strathclyde and what it can do for you, please check out the website at http://cis.strath.ac.uk/~lmcbrien.
Well, it's been a long time coming, but today I was able to officially confirm the dates for my first two tech demos in this program :-D. After several months of waiting for meetings and emails, the next two weeks are going to be pretty busy!
Because there's not much time left in the semester, I'm only going to have time for two demos. Because of that, my first talk will be a very broad-ranging one, taking in all sorts of aspects of Sun open-source tech. Hopefully I'll get some good attendance (helped by the fact that there will be plenty of free swag on offer), but with only two days until the event, I'm not sure.
My second talk next week will be on the topic of SunSPOTs, which are versatile wireless sensor devices with all sorts of interesting applications. I'm hoping to get some help from the EEE department on this one as they're quite interested in using them. They'll be glad to know that they can also score some free SunSPOT kits if they can get some students to do a bit of online Solaris training!
Today I've spent a fair bit of time fleshing out the informational website I've made for the Sun@Strathclyde program, which can be found here. Hopefully this will be a good starting point for students who are wondering what on earth I'm going on about!
