Today I…

• Skipped out on yoga.
• Met with Jeroen and talked about how to derive volume density distribution.
• Had an excellent group discussion in AStecs.
• Went to modelling class.
• Read more astronomy papers.
• Picked up astronomy books at the library.
• Had a great laugh at London Drugs: MacBook + Photo Booth + “Set image as wallpaper…” = HILARITY!
• Couldn’t sleep.
• Blogged.

Links 123:

• rhymetorrents dot com
• ytcracker – new album
• iPod GelaSkins: Just Cause You Feel It, Tokyo (not a fan of the war flag though…)

Can’t sleep. Time to blog. I noticed a new album, Nerd Life, by YTCracker today when I was suppost to be working. I’ve only heard the sample tracks that are available online, but if it’s like Nerdrap Entertainment System it’ll be lots fun.

Speaking of music, it’s been a good week for new albums: Skinny Puppy’s Mythmaker came out on Tuesday. And it’s good. From Skinny Puppy’s last album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (definitely my number one favourite SP album titles), I found myself only listening to two songs regularly: “Pro-Test” [video] and “Past Present”. I couldn’t get really into anything else, but that’s not an uncommon situation with this band from my experience. Ogre and cEvin slither between the lines of cacophony and melody, and it can be a rough dichotomy at times. Mythmaker seems to keep the former at bay, teasing the melody along–for the most part–through all ten tracks of the album. And it’s a different sound this time, not a remake of old glories. For a band that was formed over twenty years ago, that’s crucial. It distinguishes the group as contemporary artists that are producing Art (yep, that’s a capital A). An example of band that isn’t growing musically, is KMFDM. Everything after ADIOS, minus Schwein and MDFMK which were both new and different expressions for the group, has been more of the same. And very much so at that. Kapt’n K is putting out new songs, but it just sounds all the same. Skinny Puppy doesn’t suffer from this type of artistic bankruptcy and Mythmaker is a testiment to that claim.

Something interesting from Skinny Puppy’s MySpace (vomit) page:

Orge: “The most amazing thing that I’ve found is that people usually look outwards and project on others what they hate the most about themselves. At the core, Mythmaker surrounds the things people do, calculatingly or not, to either prop themselves up—like MySpace—or protect themselves.”

Grade: B+/A- (Just cause split grades are a big joke.)

Today I…

• Found my plastic pencil box–wicked awesome!
• Went to my FIRST Innovis meeting!
• Read a whole bunch of astronomy papers.
• Picked up Information Dashboard Design from the business library.
• Read some more.
• Blogged.

Links 123:

• Daily Tech

To continue with today’s theme of RMA issues, here’s another one for you: a crack in the left hinge of my Nintendo DS Lite.

I noticed the crack back in November, and called Nintendo of Canada (1.800.255.3700), set up an RMA but never got around to sending the DS in. At the beginning of this month I finally sent the DS in for service. You can send Nintendo products in for RMA with Purolator and Nintendo covers the shipping costs both ways. Here are the directions of how that’s all done. So I sent the DS in on Thursday and the following Tuesday morning I received my fixed DS that looked like new! I was impressed.

The built in speakers on my MacBook Pro stopped working this weekend and so I am currently on the phone with AppleCare (1.800.263.3394). Turns out it’s the same issue as bob b‘s, however I’m no down with the “violently jiggle” solution, so I’ll be bring my MBP in for service.

To reiterate the problem, when a device is plugged into the analog/digital output port on the MBP, everything works fine. There is sound coming to the external speakers/headphones. Super. However when nothing is connected, at which time the audio should be routed through the internal speakers, there is only silence. The internal speakers are perpetually disabled because the MBP thinks that there is still something connected via the digital output. Below is a screen shot of the System Preferences window for the Sound options. As you can see the output is set to Digital Out (hence no sound) and this is when nothing is connected to the audio output port.

As noted by bob b, this seems to be a OS X software/hardware issue.

Today I…

• Went to 6:30 am yoga.
• Made editting changes to my proposal–thanks Tim and EVDS Jim!!
• Received a free lunch!
• Went to modeling class. Learnt about B-Splines. Almost fell asleep in class. Woke up. Spilt my bottled water EVERYWHERE. Did not fall back asleep.
• Had coffee with R.
• Watched a few presentations at Demo Day. Saw Mike Nunes‘ and Mark Hancock‘s work for the first time.
• Went to rendering. Global illumination. Had a few great ideas about how to get out of this AStecs funk I’ve been in lately.
• Talked to Mark and Chirs about my proposal.
• Went to dinner with the iLab.
• Back to the iLab to rewrite my proposal.
• Dreamed of A.I.

Links 2 3 4:

• gethuman 500 database
• Music video of the day: 30 Seconds to Mars – Was it a Dream? (Acoustic)

Thursday…

• Went to class for AStecs: set up PolarViz in Amy’s studio space in the Department of Art.
• Went to class for modeling.
• Went to lab for rendering. Enjoyed further coolness of programmable shaders.
• Went to class for rendering.
• Wrote up two CPSC 699 seminars.
• Posted PolarViz data sets for this week to the AStecs blog. Annotated the data sets from Banff.
• Wrote up two CPSC 699 seminars.
• Did my monthly desk defrag.

Friday I…

• Worked from home–YES!
• Was unproductive.

Saturday I…

• Began my scholarship proposal.
• Talked to Sheelagh about stuff.

Sunday I…

• Went to yoga.
• Read some astronomy visualization papers.

Monday I…

• Wrote more of my proposal.
• Did something which is completely non-memorable.
• Dicked around in FaceBook.

Tuesday I…

• Went to Westworld Computers for a product demo of a Mac Pro multi-graphics card system. The idea is to have multiple displays connected to multiple video cards under a single system, with one OpenGL window spanning across these multiple displays all WITH hardware acceleration. In the case of the Mac Pro, that’s four NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT cards each running two displays, for a total of eight displays. I’m not too happy about the 7300 Gt’s in general, since it’s a pretty weak card compared to a 7800, but that’s the best you can get from Mac these days. So, this is what happend at the demo:
  • OpenGL application running on one display from the first video card, FPS 2000 +.
  • OpenGL application running on one display from the second video card, FPS 2000 +.
  • OpenGL application window straddling two displays which are connected to different video cards, FPS drops by an order of magnitude to 200.
• Was late for AStecs, wasn’t able to set up PolarViz. Whatever.
• Went to modeling. Watched a humorous video on the application of 3D graphics in the dental industry, some infomerical…
• Went to rendering.
• Completed my proposal.
• Read over Floh’s SIGGRAPH paper.
• Sent proposal to Mark for review.
• Read about how to make stencils.
• Listened to the latest DS Life podcast on the train home.

Wednesday I…

• Slept in.
• Met with Amanda to talk about our AStecs project.
• Went to Andrea Bunt’s HCI talk. Cough.
• Minimal edits to my proposal.
• Sent the proposal to Tim for review–thanks Tim!
• Posted my first iLab-today in a weeks time.
• Hooked Helen up with some Java literature.
• Downloaded two new Generation Trance VOT mixies. “Show me what you got!”
• Re-submitted my Open Scholarship application.
• Wrote up my review of Bunt’s seminar for CPSC 699.
• Submitted four reviews for 699.
• Cleaned my desk.

Links 123:

• Kelly – Shoes
• Jesus – I will survive
• Sensitive Light
• Crazy shit from PopSci, or such I say “ConsumerTechnology monthly”… Popular science my ass.
• WiiBot

Today I…

• Went to the dentist. Worked from home the rest of the day.
• Read Chapter 1, 2, and 8 of OpenGL Shading Language, 2nd Ed. Programmable shaders are cool.
• Blogged.

Links 123:

• The Diamond Age is going to be made into a TV mini-series on the SCI FI channel.
• Music videos for the day: Bloc Party – Banquet, Metric – Poster of a Girl, The Shins – New Slang., The Spinanes – Lines and Lines, NIN – Only.

I took this picture at about 3 am in Montreal last year, while attending CHI 2006 and enjoying the influence and lifestyle of Mike et al. The yellow light of the street washed out the graffiti a bit, which should look like so. I don’t think we put the black sickle on that one (well, obviously not), but the yellow star was definitely there.

On Monday I…

• Went to yoga at 6:30 am.
• Attended Carman’s successful PhD defense. Congratulations Carman!
• Met Scott from the Evolutionary and Swarm Design Group, and talked about Quartz Composer / Quartz 2D development in OS X.
• Attended Catherine Plaisant’s talk titled, “Network Visualization: Seeking Alternatives to the Traditional Node Link Diagram”.
• Did stuff in the iLab.
• Went to yoga at 6:00 pm.
• Decided not to wake up early and program.

Today I…

• Met with Jeroen Stil and talked about radio astronomy. Learned about astronomy.
• Went to Andrew + Dave’s presentation for AStecs at ACAD. Used PolarViz to recorded the groups disposition as to the art/science focus of the talk.
• Went to class: modeling. Learned about Bézier curves.
• Bought the text book for rendering.
• Went to class: rendering. Overview of BRDF for the Cook-Torrance model. Hey, it’s better the Phong!
• Met with Sheelagh. Hardware accelerated graphics on all eight heads of a Mac Pro, equipped with four NVIDIA 7300 GT cards? That is the question.

Links 123:

• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
• Intro to BRDF based lighting.

Just as in Secret Wars #8, Spider-Man‘s costume change for red and blue to the symbiotic “Black Suit”, so to has PantherModem dot com undergone a similar transformation. It was time for something new, and since there hasn’t been ANY time as of late, for leisurely activities like designing my own WordPress theme, I jacked DarkBlix. I hope you like it.

Today I…

• Met with Amanda and Sheelagh to discuss the radio astronomy visualization project, now that I have a better idea about the data set. Conclusion: we need to met with the radio astronomers.
• Installed my new external FireWire 800 harddrive. Soon be part of a RAID 1 array… OS X rocks!
• Went to class: modeling.
• Talked to Cody and Eric about internships and life in the video game industry.
• Went to class: rendering. Computer graphics also rocks!
• Cleaned up reading list for AStecs.
• Received a reply from Ray Norris!!! Way cool.

Links 123:

• The best biking video ever! From M.A.S.H. SF. Soon to be released on DVD. I can’t wait!

Today I…

• Read about OpenGL compatibility in Windows Vista. Yes, there is OpenGL support. In one of three ways…
• Shopped for a new lab machine.
• iLab meeting. Any takers for my proposal for a monitor calibrator? Anyone? Anyone? …Bueller. Bueller. Bueller.
• Read “The Challenge of Visualisation of Astronomical Data”, Norris, 1995.
• Read “Visualisationof Radio Data”, Oosterloo, 1995. Wrote a review.
• Emailed Norris himself–what happened to radio astronomy visualization research?
• Attended a quantum seminar titled, “On the Role of Shared Entanglement.” Now, not knowing exactly what quantum entanglement was before hand, coupled with the presenter saying: “there’s no need to explain what entanglement is with this audience, so moving right along”, was… not so good. I left after the first hour.
• Thought about the what the future will hold.

Links 123:

• How to Respond to a SETI Detection, by Ray P. Norris. Published in Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars, Proceedings of IAU Symposium #213. Edited by R. Norris, and F. Stootman. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2003., p.493
• maser
• Word Shoot – “Impossible is the only level worth playing”

Today I:

• Conspired. But in a good way.
• Went to three different grad graphics classes: animation [Courses/Course] with Dr. P, modeling with Faramarz, and rendering with Dr. Mario. Now I have to decide which class to audit… I’m thinking modeling AND rendering.
• Got to start the Golf. Wiii!
• Discovered that Chuck Palahniuk was an article in the latest issue of VICE (that is, Volume 13 Number 12).
• Restocked the private deli. Cheese + Yogurt!
• Met with Sheelagh. Signed up to do some drab (but necessary) web stuff.
• Looked over Advanced Graphics Programming Using OpenGL.
• Found and purchased Real-Time Volume Graphics from the bookstore. (Wow that blog looks familiar… I think it might be time to make my own theme, and stop using the default one.)
• Went to my Club Racer biking class.

Tomorrow I will…

• Attend the quantum seminar on “On the Role of Shared Entanglement” by Dmitry Gavinsky from the University of Waterloo, presented in SA 145 at 15:00.

On my to-do list:

• Write proposal for the Open Scholarship.
• More radio astronomy.
• Decide on which graphics class(es) to audit.

Links 1 2 3:

• Happiness 101

Today I:

• Went to yoga. Signed up for the thirty day challenge in February!
• Wrote my first ilab-today message for Twenty Zero Seven.
• Cleaned my desk in the ilab, and started thinking about how to implement a cube design inspired by Kelley Moore’s funky book (which I got for xmas, by the way): Cube Chic.
• Was told that Paul Woodrow is beginning to rubbing off on me–hence the title of this post.
• Clean out–as in moved out–of my EVDS studio space. Tear.
• Settled my borrowings with the interlibrary loan office.
• Day One of direct work on my radio astronomy project. That is to say, that there was been work done toward this project in the pass, but it was ever so indirect. Today was all about FITS data files and the like. Progress on this project can be found here: Amanda + Matthew AStecs Project Blog. It’s password protected–the I.P.! Oh gosh, we must protect the illusive I.P.!!–so I guess you can’t view it directly.
• More FITS stuff, check out this Photoshop plug-in: the FITS Liberator!!
• Read Vol. 2 of Rising Stars on the train ride home.

Tomorrow I will…

• Determine which graphics class I will audit this semester. Is it animation, modeling, or rendering?
• More radio astronomy stuff. This is a incessant “to do” item.
• Write my proposal for the Open Scholarship.
• Design my cube.
• Go biking with my Club Racer program!!