Aug 21

Friday Post: Start of Semester

Hey All,

Sorry for not posting last weekend.  I needed a break.  I have been super swamped these past two weeks.  Fall semester begins on Monday, and for some reason, this feels like a weird one.  Something is in the air.  My team is launching a new app for teachers and students.  It’s coming out of pilot phase after a year.  I’m so excited and nervous!

Of course things didn’t roll out as they were supposed to.  Network errors, department ticket freezes, ubuntu issues…everything but the software has been blowing up around me.  Though this means on Monday, everything will work A-Ok!.  If everything went smoothly, I would really be worried 😀

Next week, once I hopefully have some time to breathe, I will have some big things to post about.

Have a great weekend, and a great start of classes to my fellow friends in Academia!

-Shea

Oct 04

Friday Post: EDUCAUSE

Hey All,

This week I was at the EDUCAUSE educational conference which took place locally in Orlando.  I was speaking on my work with the LTI standard and the applications I have created for UCF.  My first talk was amazing.  It went as perfect as a presentation could go.  My second talk though….it was my first time doing a moderated panel session.  It was awesome.  I loved it….until the fire alarm went off mid sentence and the entire convention center started to evacuate!

I also got some coverage on the IMS Global blog (they are the ones who created the LTI standard): http://www.imsglobal.org/blog/?p=372

All in all, its been a great week, but I haven’t been this exhausted since PyCon.

On the PiPlay side, we are getting some bug reports in, and working on squashing a bunch of them.  The updater has been re-factored to now take into account version numbers, so you shouldn’t have to wait as long for updates.

The latest version of Raspbian with the new Epiphany browser is amazing.  It makes using the web on a Pi a decent experience, and not a chore like before.

You should try it out.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

 

Feb 28

Friday Post: PiMAME 0.8 coming this weekend!

Update 3: PiMAME 0.8 Beta 1 now uploaded! Download Here!

Update 2: Apparently 4 other people have reported issues this weekend with SourceForge and uploaded files not appearing.  I’m starting a new upload to a different host now.

Update: PiMAME 0.8 has been uploaded, but I’m still waiting for SourceForge to finish mirroring it before they turn on the download link. 🙁

 

Hey All!

Very happy to announce that PiMAME 0.8 Beta is going to be released this weekend.  I’m building the SD card image now and will be uploading it.

I’m very happy with this release.  I know it still has some bugs and issues to work out, but I’m confident that this will be the best evolution of PiMAME yet.

On another note, the presentation I gave at the Information Fluency conference went well.  I have a lot of different colleges and universities interested in the applications I developed for UCF.  Hopefully I can open source them soon.

I’ve started to receive the parts for my SmartRap 3D Printer build.  This is the first time I’m building something this complex without any instructions, so hopefully it all goes well.

Have a good weekend, and I’ll update this post with the image file when it’s finished uploading.

-Shea

Feb 21

Friday Post: Gear

Hey all,

Wooo it’s Friday! Next week I’m speaking at UCF’s Information Fluency conference.  I’m very excited.  Presenting an application I wrote that helps with Online Learning.

Time to get to work on PiMAME.  Making great progress.  Can’t wait to release it 😀  One of the issues I ran into was that I didn’t realize git sub-modules don’t update to the latest code, they stay at the commit they were committed in.  Anyone who has been using the installer for 0.8 has been running on older code, which explains why the bug fixes weren’t being seen.  It was a silly mistake on my part and will be fixed soon.

Misumi

Misumi is offering a free $150 credit for new customers placing an order via credit card.  In the reddit thread advertising this promotion, a few people have put together a build list with part numbers for making your own 3D Printer.  This will greatly decrease the price of building your own RepRap.  I’m going to try and build a Smartrap Mini.

UUGear

I got an email today about a new hardware company that’s making items for the Raspberry Pi.  They are called UUGear, and they are making some pretty good looking sensors and add-ons.  I haven’t yet had a chance to test their products, but the online store should be opening soon.

USBHUB_01 USBHUB_02

 Titanfall

I was playing the Titanfall beta over the weekend, and I can’t remember ever being this excited over a game.  Mechs, freerunning, jet packs!  It’s like my inner 12 year old was asked to make a video game and he delivered.  Sorry for the terrible quality video.  Here is a couple minutes of my Titanfall gameplay:

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Nov 08

Friday Post: Things to come!

Hey All,

Happy Friday!

I just got back from our second tech time conference that I coordinated.  It was awesome.  Exhausting, but so darn worth it.

Anyways,  a coworker and I are working on a new PiMAME menu system, and I thought you all should see a sneak peek of the design work!

Screen Shot 2013-11-06 at 5.25.35 PM

 

I’m really excited!

Stay tuned!

-Shea