I started using a new programming environment for the NXT called leJOS. This is a significant step up from the original software that comes with the NXT. I don't think that visual programming environments are yet powerful enough to do the things that I want while at the same time being concise and easy to read. I was looking at a benchmark which compares the relative speeds of the different systems available for NXT, and I couldn't help but notice that the NXT-G and LabView program diagrams were quite a bit more complex than the simple C version.

In any case, I plan to attend BrickWorld 2008, and am entering the "Trash Wars" robotics competition there with some friends. I think leJOS will work well for this project.

Today my Belkin F8T012 bluetooth interface arrived, and I tested out loading leJOS programs using bluetooth, and streaming data between the PC and the NXT. It took a little bit of setup, but it works nicely.

When we get pictures, I'll post them here.

Chumby arrived last week, and I've put him to work already.

I'm running a monitoring widget called "Server Uptime".

Eventually I plan to implement my own widget for a similar purpose, and tie it into the NMS system I'm putting together for DataSlab.

On a brighter note, my heavy project at work is coming to a close, so I'll have more time to work on my own stuff.

... arrived today. So I loaded it up with widgets. I'll probably not get to make my own until next week, this week being used up by working late. It seems like there's always a project with some sort of emergency that needs blood, sweat, and tears.

Got my new notebook PC for work today too. Spent some time loading applications, configuring, etc. It's a Dell Latitude D830, and it's nice and fast. I guess it should be since my last notebook was a D600, and is now more than 3 years old.

I almost forgot! I bought a Chumby. It runs flash apps. I've started messing with FlashDevelop, to see what I can do about making a widget which will let me visualize the NMS data that I'm collecting now.

It's been a while since I've updated the blog. So what's going on?

Well, the robot is still sitting in the state it was in the last post. I have yet to write code for it.

The code for this site is my main focus right now, and it's undergoing a rewrite to make it run inside OSGi. This gives me the advantage of an easy extension mechanism, along with dynamic loading and unloading.

Along the way to getting that done, I've also implemented the network monitoring system for dataslab. The prototype is online now, with 6 servers feeding data into it, and more to come. Several of the pieces (bundles) that were used to build NMS, are also parts of the new code for the blog/wiki/forum system.

On a completed unrelated front, the co-author of rtChess contacted me after more than 6 years, wanting to resurrect the project in a new form. Since I tend to work better when I have lots to do, I agreed.

The real-time ray-tracing engine in rtChess was his baby, and my main job was to provide the user interface and controls. It's sounding like it's going to be very cool, since he's pulled the ray tracing code out and has created a library. Oh, and made it run faster and have more features.

The good news is we're talking about making the library open source, which means there soon could be lots of games (or other apps) with real-time ray-tracing goodness built right in.

So until the project gets going, I'll track it's progress here. Once it does, I'm sure it will have it's own home.