Renaud Bourassa » University

Microsoft Hardware Tech Talk

Rhino — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:01:39 +0000

Last week I assisted to a tech talk by a Senior Hardware Engineer for the Zune team at Microsoft Entertainment & Devices. He went over a number of subjects, ranging from cloud computing to handheld devices. A pretty good talk overall and a good look at what might come in the future at Microsoft. I managed to film everything, but not from the best angle.

Facebook VP at UW Homecoming

Rhino — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:59:02 +0000

Yesterday was Homecoming at the University of Waterloo. For the occasion, Chamath Palihapitiya, Vice President of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion at Facebook and University of Waterloo ’99 alumnus was invited to give a talk entitled “Pushing The Digital Envelope”. I filmed most of the talk so I thought I could share it with you. However, the last minutes of the question session are missing since I ran out of space on my Flip Cam near the end.

And also, the Warriors defeated the Windsor Lancers 49-0. Let’s go Warriors!

The World Changes

Rhino — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:28:58 +0000

Have you ever been obsessed by a question? One of these existential interrogation that continuously stays in your head and that you can’t get rid of without answering it? Well last week, I had such an interrogation. For the whole week I kept wondering what would happens if a T. Rex fell. With its short arms, it would probably hurt itself badly, wouldn’t it? Well, after watching the whole Jurrasic Park trilogy, I realized that my interrogation was totally pointless. Why? Because there is a larger dinosaur than the T. Rex called the Spinosaurus. This new information totally changed my world.

Talking about changes, you probably noticed that I changed the design of my website. I wasn’t happy with the color scheme anymore so I changed to something lighter. Again, I am not a photoshop pro so I kept it simple with a minimalist look. It should also be easier to browse. The rest of the website should follow soon. I am still working on bits of the wordpress template, but as soon as I am happy with the result, I will start working on the other parts of the website.

On another note, I finished my first year at the university of Waterloo. I am going back home tomorrow for my first work term. I will work as a software developer for Artificial Mind and Movement, an independent video game studio in downtown Montreal. It should be great. I will be part of the Wii/PS2 engine team, so I should do more technical work than what I am used to. I hope I will learn a lot. It also means a change of language. I will get to practice my C++ a bit more. As I like to think: there is nothing like practical work to learn a new language. I hope I am not wrong…

Back in Black (and Yellow)

Rhino — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:21:56 +0000

After what is my shortest Christmas Holiday for the last three years, I am back in Waterloo. During these two weeks, I took a break from everything I was working on and spent most of my time with my friends and family. The little spare time I got went into Project Euler problems. I managed to solve the first 25 using C and will probably post my code in the days to come.

I also received my marks for my first term and I have to say that I am pretty happy with what I got. This term is more focused on computer science related subjects with courses such as Functional Programming and Data Abstraction (using Scheme and C++) and Digital Circuits and Systems. I also have two economy classes which is something I enjoy a lot. It is also the beginning of the hiring process for this summer co-op term.

And, as of right now, I am reading books on ruby and ruby on rails to improve my skills. I did a lot of small scripts and projects using this language/framework, but the MVC concept is still new to me. I am now looking at creating a complete, usable web application so I need to expand my knowledge a bit more. Stay tuned for more.

The Day

Rhino — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:46:01 +0000

Today was The Day for our Software Engineering 101 robot. After more than two months of programming, our robot has finally been put to the test. The goal of this project was to program a robot that tracks a green line and turns when it hits squares of a certain color. I was the leader of a team of 9 peoples called team Nerdcore. We did pretty good, ending with the best time average. However, our robot having been benchmarked as one of the fastest had a big time modification factor so we ended up finishing sixth out of thirteen which is still pretty good. Here are the videos of our two forward runs.

We also wrote a backward program for extra points. We are one of the only team who got it to work. Here is the video of it.

So this is it for this project. The only thing remaining is adding the final touches to the final report and send it. If we can do as good with the final report as we did with the preliminary design report, this project would be nearly perfect. Well done Team Nerdcore!