Yes, the code mentioned does contain both the methods to convert the short into degrees/second and then convert the degrees/second values into degrees (by accumulating over time in a background thread). Just to reiterate, it is not possible to directly convert the short values read from the sensor into degrees as its unit of measurement is degrees/second.
Please feel free to use as much or as little of the code as you want.
As a side note.
We are looking at the BNO055 sensor (Adafruit has a break out board for this one). This chip has an onboard accumulator and it is possible to get degrees directly from the chip instead of accumulating values in a Java thread. It also appears very stable when the robot isn't moving (almost zero drift when sitting still).
We are still exploring the BNO055 and may not get it worked out for this season. However, if you are interested in this 9 DOF sensor, there is another thread with working sample code provided by "otherguy" at:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ghlight=bno055