This is the new home for Technical Musings, the technical blog I have maintained for a number of years. Virtually all the posts prior to 2022 were ported directly from the old github.io site. I also addd a bunch of news items (from my old personal website) that are now curated under the News category. While my old github.io blog will be perserved for posterity, all current/future updates will occur here.

Raspberry Pi OS - 64-bit headless with VNC

EDIT: In April 2022, the Raspberry Pi foundation no longer allows default passwords on Raspberry Pis. Therefore, instructions as written originally here no longer work. I have modified them slightly to show how to complete the headless setup using the new Raspberry Pi imager. The original text still appears, but is struck out. Today’s post is about setting a Raspberry Pi running the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS for classroom use. This setup is very portable, uses very few cables, and costs about $60.

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I Won Best Paper at EduPar'20!

Wow, the world is different. I was supposed to attend the 10th NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar-20) in conjunction with the 34th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium in beautiful New Orleans, LA but then the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and IPDPS went virtual. The EduPar'20 team did a fantastic job transitioning the conference to a virtual format, and I really enjoyed attending. I was delighted to learn at the end of the conference that my paper, “PDCUnplugged: A Free Repository of Unplugged Parallel & Distributed Computing Activities” won the Best Paper award!

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2020 Jean Bartik Computing Symposium

On February 27th – February 28th, 2020 the second Jean Bartik Computing Symposium (JBCS) was held at the U.S. Naval Academy. The event was co-chaired by myself, Dr. Adina Crainiceanu (U.S. Naval Academy) and Lt. Col. Traci Sarmiento (U.S. Air Force Academy). In addition to co-chairing JBCS, we are also the founding chairs of the conference. The goal of the Jean Bartik Computing Symposium is to bring women and underrepresented minorities studying computing at the service academies with their counterparts in government and military.

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Raspberry Pi 4

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m still working on Raspberry Pi (and Raspberry Pi related projects). My latest project is Dive into Systems, a free on-line textbook for introductory computer systems concepts that I co-author with Swarthmore professors Tia Newhall and Kevin Webb. You can learn more about it here: http://www.diveintosystems.cs.swarthmore.edu Of course, the other bit of news is that the Raspberry Pi 4 was released earlier this summer, and it not only boasts gigabit Ethernet, but configurations that support up to 4 GB of memory.

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Dive into Systems receives SIGCSE Special Projects Grant!

I am so pleased to announce that Tia, Kevin, and I received a 2019 SIGCSE Special Projects Grant for the Dive into Systems book project in the amount of $5,000! We heard from the Special Projects committee that our project was one of 5 chosen out of 39 applications (13% acceptance rate). What an honor! We are planning on using the money toward proof-reading/copy-editing, and running an Early Adopter program. Faculty who are part of our mailing list, please keep your eyes peeled for an announcement soon!

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