baalexander

Iron Ox (W16) | MechEs, SWEs, roboticists, Grower | SF Bay Area | Onsite | Full-time

Iron Ox is building robotic greenhouses to supply fresh produce year round. We're a team from Willow Garage, Google[x], and Boeing that are passionate about deeply understanding and developing the new wave of technology to feed people. Iron Ox is a well-funded startup backed by Y Combinator and located in the SF Bay Area.

We're growing quickly and hiring a range of positions, including mechanical engineers, software engineers, roboticists, and a Head Grower.

Learn more at http://ironox.com/jobs.html

Iron Ox | San Carlos, CA | Full-Time, ONSITE

We are looking for a Head Hydroponic Grower to help automate farming.

Iron Ox is building robotic greenhouses to supply fresh and sustainable produce to grocery stores and restaurants. We're a team from Willow Garage, Google[x], and Savioke that is passionate about developing the next wave of technology in food production. Iron Ox is a well-funded startup backed by Y Combinator and located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

* Head Grower: https://jobs.lever.co/ironox/df6bc19d-bca3-4942-ba09-93615ab...

Iron Ox | San Carlos, CA | Full-Time, ONSITE

We are looking for a Lead Mechanical Engineer and a Head Hydroponic Grower to help automate farming.

Iron Ox is building robotic greenhouses to supply fresh and sustainable produce to grocery stores and restaurants. We're a team from Willow Garage, Google[x], and Savioke that is passionate about developing the next wave of technology in food production. Iron Ox is a well-funded startup backed by Y Combinator and located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

* Lead Mechanical Engineer: https://jobs.lever.co/ironox/1d0b917b-dea8-494d-b7d4-2ee222d...

* Head Grower: https://jobs.lever.co/ironox/df6bc19d-bca3-4942-ba09-93615ab...

Heads up that since Vagrant 1.2, Ansible is supported by Vagrant without the need of a plugin. I created a gist similar to the one we're using at work to show how to use Ansible on Vagrant: https://gist.github.com/baalexander/5845528.

I work in our office in Palo Alto and we have a small, 4 person office in Argentina. While I've worked with remote persons and teams in the past, a few changes to our office and their office has helped the working experience for both sides.

1) Both offices have a TV in the main office area with a web cam. We can see what they're up to, if someone is at their desk, etc. and they can do the same. This has been great for quick questions that are harder to explain over IRC and even for a simple waving good morning when I walk in.

2) We have a handful of "remote presence devices" in our office. This allows them or anyone else working remotely to attend meetings without having to ask someone to Skype in or conference call. Once again, it's the simple things like being able to wave or gesture to someone as they're rolling by. (Full disclosure, I work for a sister company of Suitable Technologies, who make the Beam).

3) Like others have mentioned, centralized, collaborative document control (Google Docs that are actually kept up and maintained), source control (GitHub with pull requests), and chat (IRC) help a lot.

4) A trip every 3 - 6 months from some of the Argentina team to the Palo Alto office. While technology has helped, there's still something to be said about being physically present.

Has anyone had experience with newer versions of Chrome Vox (http://www.chromevox.com/)? Would that improve the experience over the other screen readers for web browsing?

I recently bought a TurtleBot (turtlebot.com), a ~$1,000 robot with a netbook, kinect, gyro, and roomba. The TurtleBot platform combined with the Robot Operating System (ros.org) - a popular, open-source robot framework - is an affordable way to test out and learn many cutting edge robotic algorithms like room mapping and navigation. It even supports telepresence.

I consider myself software oriented too, and recommend it to others who are looking at going beyond a basic microcontroller based robot, but without all the soldering.

I bought the Early Release of this book a couple months ago. The book does a good job of introducing MVC concepts and how they can and should be implemented in a JavaScript web app. Even if you have a background in RoR, Django, CakePHP, etc., the best practices for implementing the MVC concepts client side should prove helpful.

The most worthwhile part of the book - for me - was maccman's coverage of three popular JavaScript MVC frameworks: Backbone, Spine, and JavascriptMVC. The coverage included the basics of how each framework worked, as well as sample apps for each. Other gems included dependency management options (module loaders) and testing client side apps.

My only complaint - and one that maccman can't be faulted for - is the book covers a topic that's rapidly changing. There's few de facto client-side frameworks for MVC or dependency management or maybe even testing. Personally, I think that makes this more exciting, and the book does cover the current state well.

While the PR2 is beyond the reach of a hobbyist, the company's meta operating system ROS (http://www.ros.org) can be installed on any personal computer for free. You can run the same navigation, vision recognition, and other algorithms the PR2 uses (among other robots) on most capable computers.

And with the new AVR bridge (http://www.ros.org/wiki/avr_bridge), you can even interface the "hobbyist" Arduino with the OS.