Cailyn and I followed through with our plan to go ahead with the Oracle Massive Open Online Course: Develop Java Embedded Applications Using a Raspberry Pi. The first week’s lessons came out last Friday. I didn’t realize how unprepared I was for the course, but it took a couple hours to set up my computer. I have my mom’s old mini computer, my wireless keyboard that I used for the computer attached to the TV, and my older brother’s old monitor. I found a USB wifi adapter as well, so cobbling everything together I was good to go. Also, the computer already had Windows 7 installed, so bonus! Only took about 2 days to download and install all of the updates after having it off for a couple years. Wow is it slow though. I don’t know if I just need to reformat it, but compared to Cailyn’s new laptop it’s a bit of a nightmare. 

We sat down and started to get our respective environments set up, and after about 45 minutes had gotten through the very first video. This included installing the Java ME 8 SDK, NetBeans 8 and the Java ME Embedded plugins for NetBeans. Now we have to find some time to do the other 9 videos – including setting up the Raspberry Pi and soldering the breakout boards for the BMP180 and the GPS module. It’s okay though, we have until tomorrow to finish all of that and the homework…