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Meetup 1 Redux: Interlock

*This post got lost in the tumbler drafts here is a remake*

Downtown Rochester can be a scary place, but not at Interlock full of friendly hackers.

Upon arriving at Interlock we were given a friendly tour, the most exciting part of which was the wood shop/hacking something room. This room had lots of debris/evidence of past projects. One of which, that was still running, was what I believe was explained to us as a lightning rod. It was part of a neural net of sorts that was using this data to track storms and predict them in the Northeast. It was a metal cross draped in technicolor wires.

After the tour we sat down to talk about projects. The one I remember most vividly was a 3D prosthetic limb being made here at RIT by an ID major. He mentioned that it was open source and he was using Leap Motions to capture gestures from users and map them to the limb. I hope I get to see it at Imagine RIT one day.

Weekly Foss: CSS games

*Most of you don’t really care, but CSS3 has some sweet stuff*

What do you know about CSS? Probably that it’s a little annoying and surprisingly turing complete(I’m serious).

Well recently I found this sweet little game that can teach you all about the new Flexbox feature. I will spare you the details on Flexbox, but it allows for a much simpler way to organize your page with very little CSS.

Anyway, here is the link http://flexboxfroggy.com/, it’s quite fun from my perspective. There are 24 levels, and more coming, so if you like frogs and CSS keep a lookout.

Weekly Foss: DIY Holograms

*Not quite software*

Do you like holograms? The answer is yes, holograms are cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWTtCsvgvg

This video will show you how to demolish a CD case and turn it into a silly little hologram box, but it’s good fun.

I actually tried this last weekend, but the results were less than successful. The idea behind this is that you can make holograms appear from your phone, but because of this I was unable to snag a picture. You will also need to turn off all of the lights and cover your windows to see anything.

My errors weren’t with the instructions, but with my own construction. The whole thing was a little askew. Then fell apart. Time to upgrade to glue.

Go free and ditch your 3D glasses!

Weekly Foss: Vimperator

*I have fallen far behind on these, but better late than never*

For those of us who browse the internet we tend to want an easier interaction with websites than our mouse allows. Enter the beauty that is Vimperator.

Vimperator attempts to turn your Firefox browser into the text editor Vim, and it does a fair job of it. It uses the classic h, j, k, l to substitute scrolling. It also has an insert mode for typing things on the page, and if you press SHIFT-ESC you trigger ignore all keys mode.

Commands I use are t(open url in new tab), and f(click links). The way clicking links works is that when you press the f key a bunch of red boxes appear on screen with little white numbers in them. Each of these boxes is tied to a clickable element. To click you simply type the numbers.

Enjoy your mouse-less browsing!!

Meetup 2: Mini Maker Fair

*I think my meetup one got deleted accidentally*

Ahh, the mini-maker fair, something I had no idea what to expect upon entry. It turned out to be a cornucopia of DIY everything, the only thing that disappointed me was the lack of things to buy.

I really should have taken pictures...

My first stop was in the student projects area, there I found my friends, one of them is Ryan from this class, running a table about their new mobile game Adventure Guild(shameless plug). Unfortunately it is not open source, but they did work very hard on it. Ryan actually made the back-end structure open source but the repo location escapes me.

There was also a giant booth of colorful soap that had so many things to smell. My favorite soap that we found smelled like the beach, but with out that bad fishy smell.

Another cool area of the fair had a cage with a bunch of electronics in disrepair scattered about. Among the electronics I saw a full age range from about 7or8 on up. They were going right at the hardware with screwdrivers or just their bare hands; in retrospect I wish I had stopped by there instead of strolling through the rest of the fair.

While I saw many other things at the fair, I’m going to end with another plug for something I discovered there, www.adaspace.org. Adaspace has the goal of increasing the diversity withing the hacker community by trying to create a space for women to grow and learn. They even partner with Interlock!

#foss

Team Proposal: Grapes of Math

*It’s been far too long*

Members: - Peter Gyory - Ryan Rule-Hoffman

Project Grapes of Math

A level based real time game that focuses on geometry. Grapes will fall from the top of the screen, and the player must catch the correct grapes in a bucket at the bottom of the screen.

Roles: Peter - Programmer Ryan - Programmer

Repo: https://github.com/ry60003333/grapes-of-math

Quiz 2?

I had no idea

1. Expand these topics! 1. IRC = Internet Relay Chat 2. FOSS = Free and Open Source Software 3. OLPC = One Laptop Per Child 4. DVCS = Distributed Version Control System 5. FSF = Free Software Foundation 6. PR = Pull Request

2. OLPC computer name? XO

3. OLPC interface name? Sugar

4. OLPC game grade target? 4th grade

5. Define these instructional theories! 1. didactic = Sets a baseline of what students need to learn and how they should learn it. In this method all students are taught in the same way. 2. dialectic = A method of teaching/thinking that encourages questioning and open dialogue about the topic being learned. 3. constructivist = Focuses on self guided learning where the learner sets the goals of what they desire knowledge of.

6. Match the creative commons licenses 1. NC - C(Work may not be used for commercial purposes) 2. SA - A(Same license must be used when redistributing) 3. ND - D(You may not make changes to original work and redistribute) 4. BY - B(Attribution must be given to original creator)

7. Which license makes it not free according to FSF? ND(you may not make changes)

8. Which license element is copyleft? SA(Requires the same license on derivatives)

9. Two non software free culture data? Wikipedia: a repository of information maintained by the public for the public available for download or through a web-browser OpenStreetMap: a map created using free data about the geometry of the earth also maintained by the public

10. Four r’s of freedom 1. Run 2. Review 3. Rework 4. Redistribute

Bonus 1. True 2. False 3. True 4. When it is created and published

#foss #quiz

Daily Floss: npm init

I hope you have a terminal handy

This is it, get ready, we are making this beast from scratch. Who knows where it will take us, but I have a few tools you need to acquire: Nodejs, npm(should come bundled with node), a terminal, some sort of editor, and an open mind.

Let’s dig in!

Make a directory, anywhere and name it something nice, mine is called foss_blog, but you can name yours super_fun_node_time_ultra. If you aren’t already in a terminal at this point pop one open and cd into your shiny new directory. Once you get there type the command npm init, you will be given a series of questions that you may answer how you like, including giving a license. Don’t worry, these are not final answers. The output of this command is a file called package.json, which you can edit at any time.

Here is what mine looks like

{ "name": "foss_blog", "version": "0.0.1", "description": "A blog engine built for HFOSS", "main": "server.js", "scripts": { "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1" }, "keywords": [ "blog" ], "author": "Peter Gyory", "license": "MIT", }

You now have the beginnings of a Node project using npm! If you haven’t used npm before, it is quite similar to pip or gem, except it’s for Node. Many of the commands are the same, and the npm website has more libraries available than you could dream of.

Now before we wrap this up and I init the git repo, let’s take a second and install something I know we will need. Type in your terminal npm install --save express. This will install the express framework that will be the basis for our blog. If you look again at the package.json file you will notice that there is this little addition.

"dependencies": { "express": "^4.13.3" }

This wonderful file also keeps track of all of the libraries you have installed, so all you need to do when you download the code is run npm install and you will have a fully set up environment.

Before the repo get’s posted I’m gonna finish filling out the base dev-ops stuff then go over it breifly in my next post. For the most part you wont have to know the nitty gritty details, but it may be nice to have a good understanding of what you are using.

#nodejs express

Daily Floss: Let’s make a Blog

these are daily now... deal with it

So after much soul searching I have discovered the project we will be working on together, a blog website. Now, I know what you are thinking “but you already have a Tumblr” or “if you don’t like Tumblr use another free site.” I thought the same way, then I decided this is a learning opportunity for all of us I don’t want to pass up. So, if you just want to watch and keep your old blog, that’s perfectly fine, but I will be enjoying leaving the Tumblr life behind. Let’s not tarry any longer.

Let’s start with the first question, how do you make a blog? Well, it turns out that there is this wonderful Node.js library/framework for just this sort of thing called Ghost(their home page is a little obnoxious, so let’s not look passed GitHub). Of course we are Developers so let’s go directly to the dev install instructions, make sure you have Node.js installed.

WOW, that was a little too easy.

For those of you just reading here is a screenshot of it running locally.

Hmmmm, I sort of wanted to build the thing myself, not run a couple commands and have a free website.

NEW DIRECTION. I am gonna get my hands a little dirtier and begin from scratch, then share it with all of you. First, I’ll start with dev-ops stuff and go from there. Maybe we will use Gulp this time instead of Grunt.

Before you go though, let me tell you a little more about Ghost. Even though we won’t be using it, it is a very nice tool made by some nice people.

Ghost offers a “pro” service which, given a monthly fee, will manage a blog page on a Digital Ocean server. It also has a free version of a similar service. The Ghost team put together an nmp module to be used as well if you don’t feel like cloning their repo and building it yourself. Behind the scenes Ghost is built using Express(I’ll tackle this when we build our own blog) and Ember.js(an MVC framework). All this awesomeness is wrapped up in a freeing MIT license so you may do what you want with it.

Sorry I did not go more in depth into Ghost itself, I really just wanted to set the stage for our future blog engine. I do recommend checking it out if you are interested in Node.js projects.

Next time, I’ll have the beginnings of a repo for you all to fork.

#nodejs ghostjs blog

Weekly Floss: I should have started with Node

catching up quick

If you haven’t realized by now, I like JavaScript. More specifically, I like Node.js, which for some of you may not be common knowledge. I apologize for this and if you stick with me through this blog you will be caught up on the wonders of Node.

As mentioned in my NodeOS post, Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on top of the Chrome V8 Engine. The V8 engine is written primarily in C++, so Node follows suit with a nice mix of C and C++. The main event loop library is actually written in C, libuv. This library was actually build for use with Node.js, but obviously the best feature of this library is that it’s icon is a majestic Tyrannosaurus Rex Unicorn!

T-rex-icorn aside, Node.js runs on an event system. This means that Node is is completely(mostly) asynchronous in it’s execution. Node will sit and wait for requests, then queue them up and execute one at a time. So that when you are programming in Node you will need to think asynchronously, this can be hard for some, but great for JS lovers like me.

Whats that you say? You wanna make a hello world server? Ok, why don’t you just go to the Node.js about page and checkout their code example. Don’t forget to download it first.

Now we should be more caught up on Node. I have had some ideas for a demo project I might do in tandem with this blog. I want to become a Node.js master so why don’t you join me, and if you find JavaScript frustrating, the entire first season of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross is now on youtube to calm you down.

#node.js #javascript #bob ross

Weekly Floss: Socket.io

I’m working my way back up

This is something I know a bit about. Socket.io is a Node.js library that enables real time communication through the magic that is WebSockets.

WebSockets is a TCP protocol that allows for faster transmission than with plain ol HTTP. Now I don’t know much about the actual HTML5 WebSockets API itself, but I due know it is becoming an exciting new standard for browsers.

Back to Socket.io! The API for this library is incredibly simple to use and there are a couple of tutorials on the Socket.io homepage(they must have paid a fortune to get that domain). I will give you a small sample of some Node code(if you are not familiar with Node or JS in general, this might not be too helpful).

var io = require('socket.io')(); io.on('connection', function(socket){ socket.emit('an event', { some: 'data' }); });

So the first line of code is simple, it is including and initializing the library. Then the resulting io variable is set up to receive a ‘connection’ event from a client or another server. Using classic JS callbacks a lambda function is then used to set up the event. The ‘socket’ variable passed in is a socket object which is the client that enables communication with the connected parties. Finally the emit function emits an event with the name given in the first param, with the data passed in as a JSON object as a second param.

In short this code sends an event to any sockets that establish a connection with the server that is named ‘an event’ and sends the data: { some: ‘data’ }.

The Socket.io tutorials available go into much more detail, but using this framework it is fairly easy to set up a node application that has real(ish) time data transfer. This is great for chat apps, or even games. In the past I worked on a game using this library that used a phone as a controller for a game on a desktop instance of the browser. Socket.io also has fallbacks, I believe it uses flash if the browser does not support HTML 5.

If you want to take a look at that game go here.

#node.js #socket.io

Weekly Floss: NodeOS

*These will be daily until I’m caught up*

Since my knowledge mostly rests in JavaScript related things I tend to get very excited when I see things related to Node.js. Low and behold the NodeOS appears before me: https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS

Let’s get everyone up to speed first. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built using the V8 engine built by Google. Its package manager, npm, is one of the largest repositories of packages in the world, and is fairly easy to use. Node is commonly used for application servers but usually is coupled with a load balancer. I have done a few projects using Node and find it simple to use and easy to understand. A plus for Node.js is that it is partnered with the Linux foundation.

Now on to NodeOS. Its tagline is “the first operating system powered by npm,” which is exciting given the breadth of projects on npm, but what does this mean? It means that any library you are currently using with Node on top of your current OS will be natively compatible and accessible.

What about the kernel? Simple, NodeOS currently is build on the Linux Kernel, but instead of running bash, Node is the replacement.

Currently NodeOS is in no position to be used as a main OS, but that is the end goal. As I linked above, the project is hosted on github with instructions on how to get a build running with docker. I have yet to test this out, but I’m thinking that would be an excellent idea for a future blog.

The most exciting part about NodeOS is that once it gets to the point where it stably runs npm, anyone can create an environment for it by simply adding a package to npm.

Hopefully I will be able to follow of this post in the coming weekend with a working build of NodeOS.

#node.js npm NodeOS

Gruntjs: Automation for All

Dig Deeper

I. #grunt on irc.freenode.net

II. https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt

III. N/A

IV. http://gruntjs.com/getting-started

V. N/A

VI. http://gruntjs.com/

A. Grunt is a JavaScript task runner designed to make all those build tasks you have to roll up into one simple command. There are many community built extensions that enhance the reach of of the program. It is built on top of Node.js so that must be installed for it to run.

B. The project was started on September 21st 2011, with a commit that stated it was a "work in progress". "Cowboy" made this first commit, and doesn't seem to state anywhere why he started the project(probably he got fed up with typing so many commands). The latest commit was by "shama", and it was on May 28th.

C. In total, eleven people appear to have access to accept patches to the repository. This team consists of Ben Alman, Tyler Kellen, Kyle Robinson Young, Vlad Filippov, Sindre Sorhus, Isaac Durazo, Jarrod Overson, Tim Branyen, Jörn Zaefferer, James Smith, and Dave Geddes

D. The same people who approves patches are the ones who have commit access. This would mean that there eleven people total. Although on the main project it Cowboy does most of the approval, and the side projects are where the other ten thrive.

E. Cowboy is by far the most influential member of this team with over 1,100 of the 1,300 commits to the repo.

F. The project's Calloway Coefficient of Fail is 15. This means that the project is probably doing okay, but it could be doing better. It lost points for not having a mailing list.

G. There hasn't been any turnover in the Core Team. Cowboy is the one who mainly runs the project and is in of himself the main Core Team, and it has been this way since the project started.

H. Yes, the project has Benevolent Dictator for Life. His name is Cowboy, or Ben Alman.

I. Yes, since is there is no front end for the project, the developers are the same.

J. It doesn't appear that Grunt has run into any major bugs, problems, or issues during development. Aside from the usual small bugs, issues, and feature requests, it does't seem like any major architectural problems have occurred. In addition, it seems as if Cowboy is also be responsible for quality control and bug repair. The grunt-contrib library on the other-hand went through a major change recently and has been split into many smaller plugins.

K. The project's participation seems to follow a certain pattern. The majority of the work is done by Cowboy with a few sporadic commits by other developers, mainly the ones that are detailed on the project's website. In addition, it seems that occasionally code from other people may make its way into the repository from forks. There are many contributors listed on Github that only have one commit, and it appears that they may have submitted a single feature or bug fix that they required and then moved on.

L. This project would fail the raptor test. While there may be others with the same skill level as Cowboy, that is not show in the project’s history. If Cowboy were to leave the project, Gulp would take over the JS automation world.

M. If buses are larger raptors than the results for this test would be the same. A hungry bus eating the top 20% would leave the project lifeless.

N. On the website there is a getting started section for people using the program and a contributors guide for those who want to help out. These sections are very small though, and don’t offer too much onboarding.

O. The project has a ton of documentation available. The documentation is all available on the main Grunt website, and is extremely extensive and helpful. The website includes some basic examples on how to use Grunt on basic projects, and provides resources documenting the various features to help new users get started quickly. In addition, it provides resources for developers who wish to write plugins for Grunt.

P. If I needed help with this project I would make a beeline for Cowboy. I would post an issue on github then head to the IRC channel and see who could help me out. A lot of people use this project so I would hope that a response wouldn’t be far away.

Q. The power in this project is all in the hands of Cowboy. There isn’t too much of his personality I can pick up from the website, but the sheer number of commits with his face on them lead me to believe he has final say.

R. This project would be scary for me to work on personally since it rests mostly on one person’s shoulders. I don’t know how authoritative Cowboy is, but I would certainly not want to disagree with him.

Commarch Proposal

Members

Ryan Rule Hoffman - [email protected] Peter Gyory - [email protected]

Project

Report on Gruntjs - Src: https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt

Description

Do a Community report on the Gruntjs project and create a presentation about the results.

Mentors

Ben Alman(cowboy) - [email protected] Kyle Young(shama) D. Joe Anderson(deejoe) - [email protected]

Communication

Git issues, Email, IRC, Textual message

Roles

research and reporting? presenting?(we both do all?)

Easy Parts

Git by a bus - Plugging the repo into this should be quick Gathering History - The documentation on Grunt is fantastic Putting together slides - There will be more than enough info to fill slides

Hard

Upstream Communication - Cowboy is very busy and could be not responsive Coefficient of fail - It might just take a while to calculate all of the results Making the slides pretty - It could take a while before I like the animations

Plan

Follow the steps to control the flow and don’t worry to much about making the presentation pretty.

Bugfix

*Fixin’ bugs and givin` hugs*

This is my bug: https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js/issues/792

This is my pr: https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js/pull/798

Recently I found a very cool little MVC library called Mithril.js. It is only 7KB minified and it has some nice templating. I really wanted to learn this library since many web developers are now switching to the smaller frameworks from behemoths like Angular or React, so I decided to fix a bug with it.

I scoured their bug list for something more involved, but it appears as though there almost no bugs in the v0.2.0 of Mithril. In the end I settle on a simple README error where the file size was listed incorrectly.

Something I found interesting about this framework though is that it has a very clear direction and purpose, be small and do few things incredibly well. The best part of Mithril is how fast it is, it far outclasses many of the most popular frameworks in speed simply because of its size. There are also many feature requests that are denied in the issues list because they don’t align with keeping the framework small and targeted.

Some happy news though, shortly after I made the pull request it had already been merged. I am now an open source contributor!

Smoke

*SPOILER everything worked fine*

Ahhh the Xo, at least that’s what the shapes on the lovely little box spell out so it shall be dubbed as such. The shapes on my little bundle of hope and plastic are teal and more teal, perhaps it really spells oX.

Before I even looked at the smoke test’s list of demands, I decided to explore my Xo’s features on my own. Upon man button presses and mouse hovering I discover that my Xo has been named Sarah. Now, you may not know this about me, but I have a sister named Sarah, and this computer with a handle reminds bears no resemblance to her. So before I even begin the test I must discover it’s name.

Judging by the previous name for the Xo I assume that it identifies as a female and will used that as a starting point for the new name. During this process I come across a friend who is in a chipper mood. I invite their input in my quest to name my newly adopted Xo. What I can only imagine is divine inspiration gives them a magical name that shall forever be my Xo, JaZZmyn (no typos).

JaZZmyn, is a lovely lady, while not as young as many of the affordable computers floating around, and certainly not as fashionable, she still has heart. She also probably wouldn’t be at the top of her class because she is SLOW.

Don’t worry I did the smoke test shortly after, although I still have to set up a play-date with another little Xo, JaZZmyn passed with colors grounded in expectations. She even showed me an alternative environment to Sugar I will be using from now on.

All in all JaZZmyn is a little bundle of joy, and I can’t wait to spend more time with her.

I give JaZZmyn 7/7 Crank powered flashlights

#one laptop per child hfoss

Quiz 1

*for your reading pleasure please read all the question numbers in a dramatic voice*

QUESTION 1

Our version control is done with git, but there is also mercurial and svn to name a couple.

QUESTION 2

Our primary forge is Github

QUESTION 3

A) Andrew Tannenbaum a) Minix B) Linus Torvalds b) Linux C) Richard Stallman c) Free Software Foundation/Gnu Project D) Brian Behlendorf d) Apache E) Larry Wall e) Perl F) Bruce Perens f) Debian Free Software Guidelines

QUESTION 4

Trademarks and Patents -Trademarks are a recognizable symbol that is tied to a entity’s product and a patent is something that makes a product exclusive to one entity

QUESTION 5

1. Review 2. Redistribute 3. Run 4. Rework

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