This Saturday I got the chance to give back to the community a little and participate in San Marcos' Electronic Recycling. It was a good way to help out the environment and pretty entertaining to see all the junk people have been keeping stored away for 30 + years. The event recycled monitors, desktops, laptops, tv's and pretty much every other electronic. We unloaded about 250 cars most of them carrying several monitors and desktops - in some cases a trailer full.
I've been a little late in blogging about this event but Texas State Tech Day was a huge success. Tech Day 09 was an event with the purpose of bridging the gap of technology and students of all disciplines. The Texas State OSUM was able to get a wide range of speakers from Apple, Mantech, Guidance Software, University of Texas Center for Space Research, Texas State's Oleg Komogortsev and Sun Microsystems very own Conrad Geiger. Conrad kept the crowd on their feet covering a massive amount of Sun's identity in just under an hour. He really went the extra mile - bringing out hardware - giving the students a hands-on introduction to Sun. On top of it all we had the event partitioned so that on the side opposite of the speakers; booths were set up which included representatives from all of the above, plus Hitachi, Texas State Computer Science, Criminal Justice, Career Services, and D-pad.
We had a turnout of about 200 student/faculty visitors that day, and had about 20 students coordinate, and work the event. They were all rewarded with catering from Carinos. After hours the event turned into a sponsored gaming tournament with 20 students competing to take home 70$ of GameStop gift cards and some really cool Sun shirts. Please check out the pictures below!
This week I checked out a live-online demo of SAGE . Conrad Geiger sent out an invitation to this and I'm glad I took him up on it. What I gathered from this was a close experience to expensive/closed source products like Mathematica, Matlab, etc - yet it is free and open source.
From the SAGE website it explains it a little better than I could:
"Sage can be used to study general and advanced, pure and applied mathematics. This includes a huge range of mathematics, including algebra, calculus, elementary to very advanced number theory, cryptography, numerical computation, commutative algebra, group theory, combinatorics, graph theory, exact linear algebra and much more. It combines various software packages and seamlessly integrates their functionality into a common experience. It is well suited for education, studying and research."
The program was written in python and runs on a web browser which I like, and seems to have a lot of potential. During the demo it was mentioned that SAGE is working on support for both Windows, and Solaris (it already has binaries created for Mac and Linux Distros).
The download size is pretty big about 400 MB, but I'm installing this on my desktop (Ubuntu) and giving it a run.
We had a day out for the Texas State C.S. students to display their physical prowess. A game of Ultimate Frisbee in the hot Texas Sun get's you tired. Well, at least I was exhausted, but it was a great time and a nice break from studies.
Back to the natural state of things.
-Taylor Groves
Everyone really enjoyed themselves.
So, I'm back from a little under a month
in Cambodia and it was fantastic. The only problem is that I've been
immediately rushed back into school. Pictures are already up TaylorLGroves.com , but I
will post my journal entries slowly but surely as I get my bearings.
Thom excited to go to the water park :) Sorry if I misspelled somthing!
This entire school had only 1 computer, but what an amazing group of students and teachers.
I'm getting familiar with how much work it takes for a bowl of rice.
I believe this is me climbing up the Terrace of the Leper King.
Sunset at Kampot.
Killing Fields Memorial (outside of Phnom Penh)
Silk weaving on a loom, this is really a amazing art, the process can take a week.
Building a shelter near Kampot.
Well it's better than swimming (homestay at one of the floating villages on the Tonle Sap)
Additionally some more events are coming up for Sun Microsystems. That sound pretty interesting, including Project Blackbox. http://www.sun.com/emrkt/blackbox/index.jsp
Best of Luck - Updates to Come,
Taylor Groves
So finals are finally over for myself. I can finally catch up on all the games I've been missing out on for the X360. I've started playing Bioshock (old news) and have to say that the gameplay is amazing. It seems like a hundred different ways exist to complete a given task in the game. The plasmid abilities and weapons are awesome. You can't possibly overlook the art direction of this game. An entire Art Deco 50's world underwater, the voice acting is superb, and the suspense is chilling. It feels more like a movie with the realism of the shadows and the camera placement. Taking on your first Big Daddy is a one of a kind adrenaline rush.
Call of Duty 4 is another game I am looking forward to, having only played the multiplayer briefly I can't give a full opinion yet, but from what I've seen, it is another quality experience.
Additionally I just received my Sun SPOT (these things are so awesome). I have a thousand different project ideas for these guys, we'll have to see what Christmas break can fit in.
Solaris Dynamic Tracing - Next Generation Observability
speaker Angelo Rajadurai, Sun Microsystems
Presentation Abstract
Have you ever wondered why your Java application is running slowly? Solaris 10 introduced an innovative new technology called Dynamic Tracing (DTrace). This allow developers and system administrators to have unprecedented observability into a live running system. This talk will cover the basics of using the DTrace tool. An introduction to observing Java applications with DTrace will be presented. The presentation includes many demonstrations of the tool itself; plenty of time for Q&A will be provided.
Speaker
Angelo Rajadurai, Sun Microsystems
Angelo Rajadurai works in ISV engineering at Sun. He is on Sun's team that helps developers and ISVs adopt Sun technologies like DTrace. He has presented DTrace to developers in over 20 countries around the world and at many large events like JavaONE. He has been at Sun for over 14 years.
What Is New in NetBeans 6.0?
Presentation Abstract
The 6.0 release of the NetBeans IDE includes important new features along with significant improvements and bug fixes. This technotizer provides a quick review of the highlights (with demos!) and pointers to more information.
Speaker
Gregg Sporar - NetBeans Technology Evangelist, Sun Microsystems
Gregg Sporar has been a software developer for over twenty years, working on projects ranging from control software for a burglar alarm to 3D graphical user interfaces. He has been using Java since 1998 and his interests include user interfaces, development tools, and performance profiling. He works for Sun Microsystems as a Technical Evangelist on the NetBeans project.
Location & Time:
Meeting in the Cafeteria in Building 8 at the Sun campus, 5300 Riata Park Court (off 3600 W Parmer Lane), from 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm You can enter Building 8 through the door that is by the large flag pole.
Sponsorship
The Austin Java User's Group is always looking for sponsors to help keep this organization active by providing meeting locations, guest speakers and financial support. Please see our sponsors link for more info.
This blog copyright 2009 by Taylor Groves
