FOSSASIA – Page 172 – blog.fossasia.org

Introduction of the 2016 GSoC projects with AYAB

Post author:Kirstin Heidler
Post published:May 18, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

Hi, we are Kirstin and Nicco and for the next couple of months we will be working on the AYAB project. AYAB is an abbreviation for All Yarns Are Beautiful and the project works on the Software that interfaces with the knitting machine and directs in in what to knit. Zou can read more about the existing software in the recent blogposts.
We want to implement two new features and expand on the functionality of the software that replaces the original firmware of the knitting machine.

We want to work on an exchangeable format that stores all information necessary for knitting e.g. a sweatshirt. It should contain the sewing pattern, the color pattern(s) defined for the different parts of the knit piece and the stitch pattern, also defined for the different parts of the knit piece.

This new information that we will have through the format will allow us to create directions for the user in case the machine cannot switch yarn colors on its own or add or remove stitches, but the user can. We want the software to have on screen instructions for the user, telling the user what to do before they knit the next row. This will make knitting with more than two yarn colors possible and make it easier for users to knit shapes where they need to add and remove stitches. This is very much needed when knitting clothes.

Our next steps are to make user studies to find out about how people use the knitting machines, what is necessary and important. If you like to lend us a hand, please contact us. Also we are doing weekly hangouts in the evening, Tuesday 21:00 (Berlin, GMT+2).

Google Summer of Code: A new beginning

Post author:Siddhant Gupta
Post published:May 15, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

I am working on sTeam under FOSSASIA for GSoC 2016. sTeam is collaboration platform. It allows users to form groups and share various kinds of documents. It provides a virtual knowledge space where users can meet and interact. These spaces are called rooms, these can contain various containers to store documents in an organized manner. The rooms are connected by gates to allow the movement of users and documents from one room to another. The most interesting thing about the project is that it is in pike programming language. This is not very commonly used and I will get to learn new things and myriad of experiences.

Now moving into the technical details of my project I will be talking about the first step in my project that is implementing TLS (Transfer Layer Security) Protocol, also known as SSL. Currently all the communication between the server and the command line client is over COAL protocol. COAL is a home grown protocol developed by the original developers of sTeam. Currently COAL does not use any kind of encryption. My first task will be to integrate SSL into COAL, so just like http becomes https COAL will become COALS. After this I will be working on the improving the client interface, which I will talk about in the coming weeks.

For now in the community bonding period I have been actively participating in the discussions on the IRC and working on stash, discovering bugs in the project and getting used to the interface and the code. Recently we received the guidelines for the summer from our mentors Martin and Trilok. The guidelines include clearly mentioned milestones and the tasks we need to complete. We will also be having a team meeting everyday discussing our day’s work and issues.

I would like to thank FOSSASIA for giving me this wonderful oppurtunity to show my skills. All the discussion during this period is just making me feel more professional and getting me excited for the summers. In programmers term

printf(“let the fun begin !”);

Vote for Open Event in Google Impact Challenge

Post author:Hong Phuc
Post published:February 15, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA Open Event

Please vote for Open Event in the Google Impact Challenge: https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/deutschland/charity/lxde

The idea of Open Event is to give organizers and participants a tool to plan events and distribute information to attendees. We are working on an organizers server and mobile apps (https://github.com/fossasia/open-event).

Your vote for Open Event will support the development of the project. Thank you!

FOSSASIA and Openclipart Launch Internet of Things T-shirt Design Contest

Post author:Hong Phuc
Post published:February 11, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA Open Event

Special prizes await international designers, students and artists who join the competition and create T-shirt designs for Asia’s premier Open Technology event taking place from March 18-20 at the Science Centre Singapore.

FOSSASIA and Openclipart are launching a contest for International students, artists and designers to design a T-shirt graphic representing “The Internet of Things for Me.” 1st place winner of the contest will win a FiftyThree Pencil and final design placement on the official FOSSASIA 2016 T-shirt. Second and third place winners’ graphics will be used as design elements at the conference main party on the second day of the event.

“FOSSASIA 2016’s theme is about the Internet of Things for Me,” said chair of FOSSASIA, Hong Phuc Dang. “What better way to represent this idea visually than to unleash local Singaporean and international designers, artists, professionals and students to make artwork representing their ‘things’ and expression about this topic.”

FOSSASIA 2016 challenges all participants to join the contest at Openclipart, the world’s largest collection of original and free to use clipart. The contest begins February 11, 2016 and runs for two weeks until February 24, 2016 where three judges will select the top three compositions. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will be selected, awarded, and announced publicly.

“Since 2004, Openclipart has been a dynamic creative community of artists and designers producing more than 89,000 clipart by more than 4,900 artists,” stated Openclipart founder, Jon Phillips. “This competition is to bring creativity to the conference, and use the powerness of Open to create image composition of what the Internet of Things is all about. Even better, all the artwork made in the competition will be released into the public domain using Creative Commons Zero 1.0 license so that anyone may use the images for any reason, even commercially.”

Judges for the competition will be Singapore-based artist and designer Gloria Chiang, chair of FOSSASIA Hong Phuc Dang and technologist and co-organizer Mario Behling. After the two-week competition ends on February 24, 2016, results will be announced March 2, 2016.

“Singapore is a hub of software and cultural innovation,” said Singapore-based artist, Gloria Chiang. “FOSSASIA 2016 is a brilliant place to showcase international innovation trends and work with local artists, designers and students to illustrate these concepts.”

“FOSSASIA 2016 T-shirt design competition participants artwork will be showcased not only on T-shirts and publicly on the web, it will also be used to create an atmosphere for the 2nd night of the FOSSASIA 2016 conference,” said organizer Hong Phuc Dang. “All participants of the FOSSASIA 2016 conference are invited to attend this special event and share the works found at our party with the hashtag #FOSSASIA. With lots of surprises, you will not want to miss FOSSASIA 2016.”

Join the competition at: http://openclipart.org/fossasia2016

Participate in FOSSASIA Summit 2016 in Science Center Singapore, March 18th-20th

Post author:Hong Phuc
Post published:January 12, 2016
Post category:Event FOSSASIA

Please join us at FOSSASIA 2016 in Singapore, the premier Open Technology event in Asia.

The event will take place from March 18-20 at the Singapore Science Center and already on 17th March the pgDay Asia conference is part of the pre-event activities.

The FOSSASIA weekend from Friday to Sunday is dedicated to the “Internet of Things and Me” covering open technologies and software that make todays connected devices run. In workshops kids can start learning with the Pocket Science Lab. In the Science Hack track attendees will learn how to participate in the Citizen Science community. Please:

get your FOSSASIA Summit Ticket
become a Volunteer
or submit your talk until February 2 at Speaker Registration.

More than 120 speakers from Asia and around the world will join the event from communities and companies such as Google, RedHat, and Github. There will be talks and hands on workshops on topics including:

Open Hardware, Makers, Internet of Things
Open Source Software, Data and Free Knowledge
DevOps, Docker, Programming languages, Python, Go, and more
Science Hacks and Open Design
Tech and Science for Kids

Info on the FOSSASIA Summit 2016 at the Event Website

Read the Call for Speakers here.

Join the FOSSASIA Meetup Group in Singapore and reserve your spot in workshops as soon as they are announced.

Follow us on Twitter.

Check out the photos from last year on Flickr.

Being a mentor ! #GoogleCodeIn

Post author:Jigyasa Grover
Post published:January 11, 2016
Post category:FOSSASIA

Google Code-In 2015/2016 just concluded and it was an enriching experience to be a prime segment of this cool initiative.

It feels great to have worked as a Mentor for Google Code-In 2015/2016 under FOSSASIA organization 🙂 gci-vertical-1142x994dp

I strongly believe that helping people steer their careers in the right direction is a key element in developing. The esteemed task of mentoring is an essential leadership skill. In addition to managing and motivating people, it’s also important that one can help others learn, grow and become more effective in their lives.

My experience with mentoring Google Code-In tells me that mentoring is a rewarding experience, both personally and professionally. It not only aids in improving communication skills but also brings about a a great sense of personal satisfaction. One gains a new perspective of thinking and gets to advance technical skills by learning together with the mentee.

The mentor-ship experience was a surreal one. I never knew my answers and feedback to simple questions could be the cause of someone’s high spirits. It made me realize the impact one’s guidance could have on a budding developer. My feeling of immense contentment was augmented by the innocent tweets and blog posts of the mentees expressing their gratitude and happiness. (refer a few screenshots attached 😀 )

CZaBPEnUAAA5zOP (1)

Screenshot from 2016-01-08 22:12:40

Screenshot from 2016-02-12 00:18:58
The journey in this field will urge to shed all inhibitions, keep pride aside and dive into this worthy mission of building a powerful community. The small interesting conversations and tasks will sometimes leave a deep impact on the mentor as a person, after-all not everyday one comes across a student submitting “Peace Pledge: No ! To war and distrust” to his/her mentor where both belong to two countries supposedly at ‘cold war’ 😉

I am also of the view that by being a mentor to a newbie, we pay our regards to the entire computing sphere and its fraternity.

Helping the mentee have a smooth transition into the tech world helps make long lasting associations and ensure a better future.

A season of mentoring gone by, excited for another already !

FOSSASIA Hack Trip to 32C3 Chaos Communication Congress

Post author:Mario Behling
Post published:December 30, 2015
Post category:FOSSASIA loklak

From December 27-30 the 32C3 Chaos Communication Congress took place in Hamburg, Germany. Members of the FOSSASIA community met at the event to learn about the latest OpenTech hacks. We used the opportunity to work with mentors on our coding program for kids. See photos from our gathering here.

Get together at 32C3 Hamburg

Mitch Altman at Chaos Communication Congress 32C3 with Hong Phuc Dang from FOSSASIA Hong Phuc Dang meeting Mitch Altman (Twitter)

FOSSASIA Mentors Michael Christen (Yacy), Jan Suhr (Nitrokey), Hong Phuc Dang Meetup with FOSSASIA mentors and supporters from Europe Michael Christen (Yacy.net/loklak), Jan Suhr (Nitrokey), Hong Phuc Dang (FOSSASIA), Anna (Mozilla)

Kids Coding with FOSSASIA and Google Code-In

Post author:Mario Behling
Post published:November 29, 2015
Post category:FOSSASIA

After the successful Google Summer of Code we are very happy and honored to participate for the second year in Google Code-In. The contest introduces pre-university students (ages 13-17) to open source software development and runs from December 7 2015 until January 25, 2016. Learn more here.

Because Google Code-in is often the first experience many students have with open source, the contest is designed to make it easy for students to jump right in. Open source organizations chosen by Google provide a list of tasks for students to work on during the seven week contest period. A unique part of the contest is that each task has mentors from the organization assigned should students have questions or need help along the way.

Updates on FOSSASIA Activities – GSoC, Science Hack and Meshcon

Post author:Shaojing
Post published:September 26, 2015
Post category:FOSSASIA loklak Open Event
Post comments:0 Comments

FOSSASIA Participation in Google Summer of Code

An exciting summer is behind us, where we had lots of students coding on summer of code projects. Check out some of the outcome on our project repositories. For example the Open Event project, our twitter harvester and search engine loklak.net [repo] or the activities at our FashionTec knitapps project with lots of interesting blog articles.

FOSSASIA Science Hack

What else happened? FOSSASIA’s Hong Phuc is working on organizing Science Hack events across Asia in cooperation with Science Hack Day. She is now an official Ambassador. Congratulations! You can meet her in the US at the San Francisco Science Hack Day on October 24-25, 2015 at GitHub HQ.

FOSSASIA Participants Present at Meshcon @Maker Faire Berlin + Free Tickets

FOSSASIA participants are present at Meshcon@Maker Faire Berlin on Saturday, October 3rd. Meshcon brings together Mozilla’s Firefox Open Web makers, IoT experts, industry representatives, fashion designers, local producers, knitters, textile manipulators, software developers and DIY hardware makers. We will have a stand in the club area. So if you are there, please come over and talk to us.

And, if you are in Berlin and still need a ticket, we might be able to help you out. FOSSASIA is an official partner and we got free tickets. Please go to http://meshcon.net, choose your ticket and enter the code FLDUXH on the next page.

The event starts at 10am (until 6pm) on Sat. 3rd Oct. 2015 at Postbahnhof Club at Berlin Ostbahnhof. On top of topics around Fashion and technology, we are coding, doing usability tests and hack for refugees. The schedule of talks is available here: http://meshcon.net/schedule.pdf

130 projects will showcase their work at the Maker Faire. Workshops include FOSSASIA’s machine knitting project, 3D printing, and Arduino tinkering:

* http://www.meetup.com/FashionTec-Meetup-Berlin/

* http://www.meetup.com/OpenXLab/

* http://www.meetup.com/opentechschool-berlin/events/225532149/

Additional Info: http://meshcon.net | http://makerfaire.berlin

Location: Postbahnhof, Strasse der Pariser Kommune 8, 10243 Berlin

searchQuick Apprise: EIGHT #GoogleSummerOfCode #FOSSASIA

Post author:Jigyasa Grover
Post published:August 29, 2015
Post category:FOSSASIA

The intended “searchQuick” (sQuick) is an application to enable a user to search a set of books or texts, like an encyclopedia, or some other topical book collection offline built in the open source platform Pharo 4.0.

Bringing up to the rear of the summers, the project was brought to a penultimate stage by achieving the following tasks:

Handling empty string searches by raising error pop ups.

searchButtonClicked
searchBar accept .
(myString isEmptyOrNil  ) 
ifTrue: [self errorPopUp ] 
ifFalse: [ 
     myString := searchBar getText asString .
          self printSearchResults
               ] .

Adding Help, About and Feedback sections to give an authentic application look and required details to an interested developer.

Inserting ScrollPane for BrowseFile list menu

browseScroll := ScrollPane new.
browseScroll scroller addMorph: browse.

Truncating BrowseFile list menu file titles to have their extent within the #MenuMorph: boundary
```
title := anObject truncateWithElipsisTo: 25. 
```

Removal of OK/CANCEL buttons from the Search results accordion widget
```
dialog buttons: {}.
```

Implementation of a Search Bar for searching via Search results accordion widget.

Categorizing methods as: accessing, initialization, submorphs–add/remove etc.

Removal of unwanted/redundant/commented code lines i.e. scrubbing dead-code.

UPCOMING: Wrap Up.