Judebert.com

We've already covered the 10-foot plasma-guided rocket and aerodynamic farings for two bicycles. What else did we see at the SDS?

Well, how about this life-size remote control and model car?

I've wanted to do this sort of thing with a model airplane forever. Shouldn't be too hard, I figured: just add a wireless camera, and build a cockpit-shaped box with big joysticks for the controls. Voila! Real flying action!

These guys went a step farther. They put some accelerometers on their car, then hooked the whole thing to a custom-made motion base!

Melissa tries the trike (full)

Let's see more pictures from the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science Annual Senior Design Symposium on Renewable and Sustainable Energy -- which is so difficult to type that I shall call it the SDS from now on. Check out the 10-foot rocket from part 1!

Today, we've got two groups of seniors with aerodynamic farings for human-powered vehicles.

Melissa by the 10-foot tall rocket (full)

A week or so ago, I went to the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science Annual Senior Design Symposium on Renewable and Sustainable Energy (say that ten times fast!). As it was held just before my daughter's birthday, I offered to take her with me. She was excited to go, and so we both played hooky for the day.

This wasn't the first time for either of us: I've attended all four years, and she went with me last year. We both enjoy talking with the engineers and looking at the projects, so we skipped the lectures this year and just checked out the presentations.

And took pictures!

There are too many pictures for a single post, so I'll split them up a little. (This has nothing whatsoever to do with me trying to provide more content for my webpage, no, not at all. What a crass suggestion.)

First up: a ten-foot tall plasma-guided rocket!

I'm porting some old C++ code to Java. How old? So old that it doesn't just assume a long is 32 bits, it actually checks to make sure and bails if not. That's 1997 or so, by my guess.

I can already hear the programmers in the audience asking, "Why not just interface with the library using JNI?" We decided to port the code because we must support Unix and 64-bit environments, and the library specifically fails on all our Unix machines. We do have the source, so we could modify it... but then we'd be forced to deliver and maintain it, which carries its own set of headaches. So I'm working on 20,000 SLOC.

(Anybody wondered why the site has been so quiet for so long? It's because I'm porting 20,000 SLOC of OLD C++ to Java.)

Most of the code has been pretty straightforward. There have been the usual problems with C++ unsigned types, which don't have any corresponding Java type, as well as a bit of pointer arithmetic confusion. When I get confused, I just write a quick test program and make sure the C++ does what I expect.

The thing that blew my mind today was the weird use of the "magic number" 0x80000000.