Back from CodeMash 2018

Last week I attended CodeMash 2018.  I learned a lot and learned there is much more to learn.

I spent the morning writing up my notes.  These are just the sessions I attended.

January 9, 2018

CodeMash

Morning precompiler

I attended a FPV drone session. FPV is first person view. The idea is to race them using a set of goggles and flying the drone through obstacles. They covered the components and safety concerns. We set up in teams and worked together to assemble a kit they put together.

Afternoon precompiler.

I attended a make an Alexa skill session. I learned what it takes to get started creating a skill. It looks like my is working but I will need to test it with the Echo when I get home. I should also start my own skill so I don’t forget. But at least I have an idea of where to start.

January 10, 2018

CodeMash

Morning precompiler

Build an Arduino.

The idea here was for each person to build an Arduino but they vastly under estimated the turnout. We divided into groups and built them together. Each one of us put in components and checked the work of the others. It was interesting to see the system come together from parts.

Afternoon precompiler.

Blender 3D for Makers and Game developers.

I had attended a session in a previous year by the same speaker. Since I had been messing around with Blender for a few weeks now, I went to this mainly as a refresher. He showed some techniques and covered what it would take to use Blender for 3D printing as well as for games.

January 11, 2018

Fast Neural Networks … a no brainer

This was an interesting concept. Instead of using traditional nodes in a neural network he used what he called agents with messages. This would allow for concurrent processing. This would speed up the overall calculations.

How to get started with robotics and IoT at home

The basics of getting started in simple robotics using legos and other kits. She spoke about helping out with schools and their robotic competitions.

Imposter Syndrome

This speaker talked about what is like to feel like you are going to be found out.

Press Start: Game Development for the Uninitiated

The speaker talked about using programming games as a way to improve your overall programming skills for your day to day work. He spoke about taking advantage of game jams.
Ludam Dare
www.indiegamejams.com

Fantasy Consoles
– Pico-8
– tic-80
– pixelVision8

Non-Linear Story telling
www.twinery.org

Javascript game development
https://phaser.io/

Recommended the book “Play” by Stuart Brown

Start a UX Revolution at Your Workplace

The speaker was Rhonda Grimm. She went over what they started at her workplace to improve the User Experience. They get people involved early in the design of usability. She recommended books by Steve Krug including “Don’t Make Me Think”

Do More with Less: A Kotlin Primer

Kotlin is a statically type language that compiles to JVM. It is capable of direct linking to existing Java libraries. It has built in safe guards to prevent null pointer exceptions and reduces the amount of code to get things done like setting up simple POGOs.
Google has supported Kotlin in Android Studio.
https://github.com/jckeyes/kotlin-introduction

Plug and Play JavaScript Component with Riot.js

Riot.js is another framework. But is small and allows creation of reusable components in JavaScript.
http://riotjs.com/

January 12, 2018

Building Java Apps with Intelligence.

Brian Sherwin, Microsoft Azure and the Cognitive Services.
This used Java as the language but really it was about using
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/
The vision service is pretty cool. You can send it a photo and it will identify faces. You can send a photo of a persion and determin the emotions. It can detect and describe the contents of a photo. There is a free level for Azure which you can use to tinker with. This looks like what cloud computing should be about

Let’s Augment Reality in Unreal Engine

This was a demonstration of using the ARCkit, Unreal Engine and IOS on a phone. The speaker covered the steps necessary to create a simple app that would let you put a black cube on a horizontal surface.

Using Neural Networks to Generate “Game of Thrones” Scripts

Jennifer Marsman
This presentation covered what it takes to use a neural network and feed it data to train it and then use it generate output.

The wonderful world of recursion

This presentation covered recursion, I would say briefly and then proceeded to do tail recursion in about forty different languages. It took me more time to figure out the syntax of languages, that by the time I got jist of the syntax, he moved the next. The main thing I got out of the was to use tail recursion to eliminate stack overflows. That is if the language allows it.

Megahertz, Gigahertz, Registers and Instructions: How does a CPU actually work?

This was an entertaining deep dive into the CPU. It covered what it takes for something to be a CPU and what happens during the processing.

A Year of Rust

About a year ago this guy started programming in Rust. Rust is a relatively new language from Mozilla. It is meant for systems level programming.
https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/