If you look at most of my slides that I have created for my talks, you will find that whenever I have code, I always try to syntax highlight it.
It is very easy to comprehend code that is syntax highlighted and I always make it a point to do that, so that it is easy for my audience.
Recently a couple of people asked me how I do it and I thought of writing about it, so that you can also do it in your slides
No screenshots, please
I find that most people take the easy route and just put a screenshot of the code from an IDE. Please don’t do it. It defeats the entire purpose of posting code in the slide, since people can’t copy it. And also it becomes extremely difficult for you update it at a latter point.
So friends, don’t let friends do it
Rich Text Format (RTF)
Now that we have decided not to post screenshot, the next thing we need to do is to convert the code to RTF format.
Most IDE’s support copying the code in RTF format, so first check whether your favorite IDE supports it. If not there are many tools that are available that can do it.
If your editor is Vim
If you are like me and your favorite editor is Vim and you are using Mac, then you can use an addon called copy as rtf. This addon gives you a simple command :CopyRTF which will convert the entire buffer (or highlighted lines) to RTF, including the background and foreground color and copy it to buffer.
So, next time you show code in your slides, make sure you convert them to RTF, instead of placing a screenshot.
I was supposed give a tutorial about Hadoop and Pig today at SRII-India ICSEM 2012 conference today which is happening at Infosys campus in Mysore.
But unfortunately I was not able to attend it due a logistic nightmare created by the travel company used by the conference organizers.
I spent more than 10 hours to prepare the presentation with the demo code. I thought of sharing them here so that it will be useful for someone who wants to get started with Hadoop and Pig.
I just wrote a WordPress Plugin, that allows you to display the Foss.in badge on your WordPress based website.
If you just want a easy setup, then you can just use the sidebar widget that is available when you install the Plugin. If you want more control over the display, then you can the template function yourself. Details about the template function is available in the Plugin’s homepage.
I just came back from DroidCon 2012 by hasgeek, where I gave a talk about using WebSockets with Android to control Arduino based robots. I talked about WebSockets, how it can be used with Android and then gave a demo that I made using WebSockets, Android and the node.js server which I wrote for jsFoo. The demo allowed anyone from the audience to control an Arduino based robot which I placed in the stage.
I didn’t just talk about making Android and Arduino talk to each other, since I have already covered that in last year’s DroidCon.
I built the demo using WebSockets, Android and node.js which allowed anyone from the audience to control the Arduino robot that I placed in the stage. The user’s browser communicated with the node.js server using Socket.IO and the Android app received this information through socket.IO and controlled the Arduino using ADK. You can find the entire source code in my github account.
The demo was well received and it was good to know that many people liked it. You can checkout some of these tweets to know how much people liked it
@droidconin The session by @sudarmuthu showed us awesome 2-way communication, both robot-android and speaker-audience #droidcon
As I said before, I am conducting an Arduino workshop this weekend. The workshop consists of hands-on sessions, where you can learn about Arduino and then use that knowledge to build a fully autonomously bot from scratch similar to the one that showed in the demo. You can find more details about the workshop from the workshop page at hardwarefun.
Buying Arduino in Bangalore
As it used to happen in my other talks about Arduino, even today lot of people asked me about places where they can buy Arduino in Bangalore. I have already collect a list of places from where you can buy Arduino in Bangalore. You can refer to that page, in case you are planning to buy Arduino in Bangalore.
Couple of people asked me what’s next and someone suggested that I build two robots, that can interact with each other. My personal favorite is to create a bot, that can fly. Let’s see what I make next
I just came back from giving a talk in jsFoo 2012 about controlling robots using JavaScript. I talked about the different options that you have to control external devices using JavaScript and also gave a demo, which allows anyone on the internet to control the bot that I created.
Slides
You can download the slides from my slideshare account or you can view them below.
Demo
I created a demo using express, socket.io and node-serialport, that allowed anyone in the internet to control the Arduino bot that I created. The entire source code is available at github. Over the next couple of weeks I will be writing more articles explaining how the different components of the demo worked. So stay tuned
Arduino Workshop
As I said before, I am conducting an Arduino workshop on Nov 3rd and 4th. The workshop consists of hands-on sessions, where you can learn about Arduino and then use that knowledge to build a fully autonomously bot from scratch similar to the one that showed in the demo. You can find more details about the workshop from the workshop page at hardwarefun.
Buying Arduino in Bangalore
As it used to happen in my other talks about Arduino, even today lot of people asked me about places where they can buy Arduino in Bangalore. I have already collect a list of places from where you can buy Arduino in Bangalore. You can refer to that page, in case you are planning to buy Arduino in Bangalore.
Video
HasGeek has uploaded the video of the talk and demo. You can view it in youtube or below.
Yahoo is currently conducting HackU (Hackday for university) at IIT – Bombay and I was part of the Technical crew that is conducting the event, similar to the previous HackU.
During the event, I gave a talk titled Hacking 101, basically explaining what is a Hack, how to participate etc.
Last weekend, a couple of us from computer club (read hardware enthusiasts) met together to discuss about the different development boards available and also to learn from each other.
Boards
The following are the list of development boards that we discussed during the hackthon.
I spoke about Arduino and also discussed about the different capabilities of Arduino. You can view the slides that I used for my talk in my slideshare account. I have also embedded it here for easy reference. You can also checkout my other presentations and slides from my talks page.
Hacks
After the talks, we decided to hack the different boards and make them talk with each other. I was able to program the DDK board using Android libraries. I also succeeded in making two Arduino boards talk to each other using I2C (more details about it soon). After the hackthon I am also currently working on making both the Arduino and DDK talk to each other using I2C. Will let you know guys once I am able to do it.
Last Thursday, I conducted a workshop about web development and node.js in Girl Geek Dinner event sponsored by Yahoo in Bangalore.
Girl Geek Dinner
Girl Geek Dinner was organized by Yahoo!’s Women in Tech (WIT) group, a grassroots volunteer-led employee organization at Yahoo!. The event is conducted to inspire and support the next generation of technical women.
Slides
You can access the slides that I used for the workshop from my slideshare account. I have also embedded it here for easy reference. You can also checkout my other presentations and slides from my talks page.
Demo source code
I have uploaded the source code of the demo which I used for the workshop to my github account. Feel free to use it in whatever way you want.
Embedding code in presentations
While preparing the slides, I solved a problem, which I wanted to solve for quite sometime (ie) to embed code in the slides with full syntax highlight. I will be writing a separate blog post explaining the same soon. So stay tuned
I just came back from Google Devfestx which happened in Bangalore today. The event was very well organized and I gave a talk on building robots using Android and Arduino. This is a slightly modified version of the talk which I gave at Droidcon. I have added some additional information, especially about NFC and communicating Audio Jacket.
Slides from my talk
You can access the slides of my talk from my slideshare account. I have also embedded it here for easy reference. You can also checkout my other presentations and slides from my talks page.
Demos
I showed a demo of my pet bot Asimi. You can download the source code and learn more about the bot from its homepage.
Due to some problem in the circuit, the demo didn’t work well. I realized that in future, I should always have a video of the demo handy, which I can show in situations like this.
I also showed a demo of a game which I created using a bunch of LED’s all connected together using charlieplexing. Will post more details about it soon.
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