Carl's Notes

"How early are you?!"

I'm so early, I'm in charge of the most assured project that's going to be on display at the next campus open house.

I'd started asking questions about a month ago on what's going to be happening with this year's open house event, as it's usually held sometime in late March, early April, usually in the middle of the week, and in the evening.

So far I found out that it's on May 28th, a Saturday, from 11am to 4pm, and it's been delayed so we can show off the new space we've acquired.

I've been volunteering on open house duty for at least four years, maybe even all six or seven years I've been here, and have recently been in charge of the iRobot Creates that the Computing Science department has.
Mostly, this has entailed setting them up to run autonomously somewhere in the CS area to spark interest.
(unfortunately, the department doesn't have anything in their curriculum that uses them, so it hasn't been quite as interesting as it could have been if we were actually teaching with these robots)

This year's project is much more involved than last-year's was.
A simulator for the iRobot Create, and an integrated development environment that's simple enough for students to use.

The intent is for the university to use them to teach first-year students programming on a physical device, but that would penalize students who don't have as much time on-campus to work with the physical robots.
Hence the idea of using a simulator to allow students to work with a simulated robot in the same (or at least a similar) manner as they'd work with the physical robots.

A very ambitious project.

So far, I have a primitive editing window and little else.

However, it is a step in the right direction.
I've started having a look at another project's source code to see how they tackle certain aspects, and am going to see if I can adopt similar methodologies.
(they do make sense, after all)

So far, my deadline is about seven weeks away, which means I should get cracking.

Also, since they're expecting over three thousand visitors, I better make sure I take plenty to drink so I don't get hoarse.
(I mentioned this to the person in charge, and she thought it an excellent idea, so is going to pass that suggestion along to the other people who are going to be at the CS booths)