teaching machines

Madeup Status Report #8

June 3, 2016 by . Filed under madeup, public.

Last week I submitted my grades and breathed a big sigh of relief. I love summers. It’s time to work on Madeup!

My students and I did make considerable progress during the school year. I mentioned many things in the last status report and we’ve accomplished the following since then:

Now, let’s talk about our goals for this summer. Here’s what I have in mind:

  1. Develop a desktop client that doesn’t need an Internet connection. I have spent the last week getting this started:
  2. Fix bugs. I have a list.
  3. Find a better host. The Madeup server currently runs on university machine. This environment is too slow, has been knocked down by several power outages, and gives my sysadmins more headache than they already have. I’m experimenting with a $5/month droplet on Digital Ocean that seems to fix all these problems. I’m always on the lookout for grants to help pay for a higher-tier plan. g++ crashed on me when it ran out of the 512 MB memory I get on my current plan.
  4. Improve code performance. Things get kinda slow in loops, like those often used to generate vertices for the surface solidifier.
  5. Make stuff with some summer school kids at my sons’ elementary school.