Greg and Kat's blog

I spent the weekend trying to get together a paper for WCCCE 2009 (Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education). WCCCE is a fairly small, local conference. I always like going: the people who go pretty much all know each other, and it’s a good chance to talk to people from other schools.

What I wanted to do was look at the Subversion version control repositories from the last few semesters of CMPT 470. I figured I could make a good story out of it somewhere: there’s a lot of data in there. I assumed there would be some correlation between the way the repository was used and students’ marks or peer evaluation or something.

There wasn’t. Bupkis.

Anyway… I could have tried to sell a paper along the lines of “hey, look how unquantifiable this marking thing we do is”, but that’s pretty unsatisfying. I thought I was going to have to give up on the whole thing, or at least wait until next year and take some time to analyze things in a less frenzied way.

But, just before I sent the email calling the whole thing off, a thought occurred and I proposed a workshop instead:

Using Subversion in Your Class

In this interactive workshop, we will explore the use of the Subversion version control system in a class, particularly one that involves group work. Topics will include the basic usage of Subversion, creation of shared repositories given various technical restrictions, resources for students, and discussion of how instructors can enhance their teaching using a version control system. Participants with laptops will be invited to explore a shared repository as part of the workshop.

That’s a lot better than some dodgy paper: it’s something the people at the conference might actually want to hear about.

The lesson: Everything has a good idea in it somewhere. Unfortunately, you might spend your weekend fruitlessly doing statistics before you find it.

I’m starting to really see the mixed-blessing of having a study leave (or “sabbatical” if you like). As I mentioned before, the purpose of the leave is essentially to do stuff that you didn’t have a chance to while teaching.

Here’s the problem: I can always find time to do most of the stuff I really want to do. What’s left are tasks that I had been putting off because I didn’t really want to face them.

Case in point: This month is pretty much dedicated to CMPT 165 distance ed revisions.

The old 165 distance has gotten a little crufty, and needs some attention. I had already done the work on the course content and Study Guide. Now just have to do the assignments, exams and final admin stuff. What parts of teaching do I hate most? Yup. Those.

And the kicker is that I know that no matter what I do, half of the students taking 165 are going to hate it and me anyway. They want an easy no-work credit and are still going to find that if they don’t know any tech anything, it’s going to be a University course worth of work (but realistically, no more than that).

Feh!

Okay, let’s start with the facts: I have a cold. Now, a cold isn’t that big a deal. It’s not like I have a touch of the hanta virus or something.

But, I hate it. It’s never going to be bad enough that I can properly complain about it, or even take time away from work with a clear conscience. I’m just going to be vaguely annoyed for the next week.

I wish I could take the whole cold and pack it into 24 miserable hours rather than have it drag on.

Okay, I give up: I’m going to start Twittering. I have created an account (@ggbaker) and everything.

Given that I can’t usually be bothered to update my Facebook status, I don’t know how this is going to go. I figure if a few people are following it, that might motivate me.

We’re back from Vegas. Many pictures were taken. A small amount of money was lost, more was spent. Some highlights from me:

• We had a meal, and took many pictures at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon. My favourite courses were probably the lobster carpaccio and the sea bass.

• Now that I think about it, I might have been up slightly. I have photographic evidence of being up a total of $85. I only lost money when I sat at a slot machine a couple of times. The dollar slot that Kat told be was good was the worst of it. I reckon I’m up $20–40.

• At one point, Kat wanted to play a dollar slot for a while. I said I was going to see if there was a quarter slot or something nearby. I circled a couple banks of slot machines and came back. Kat was done, having lost $40 in like two minutes. Stay away from the slot machines, kids.

• My best gambling experience was when we found a roulette table with a $5 limit (as opposed to $10) at the MGM. I sat down and started playing pretty randomly. Every bet on the roulette table has a house edge of 2/37, so it’s not like my decisions meant much anyway.

  The dealer was nice and very helpful (since all of us cheapskates at the $5 table were amateurs). I got a free drink while sitting there, and happened to come away $43 up (actually $48, but I left $5 with the dealer). That was pretty much everything I wanted from the casino.

• The best picture I got in the casino was right before a pit boss walked up to me and told me that “for future reference, pictures are allowed anywhere else on the property, but not in the casino.” Polite but firm. Very good.

  There are probably 27 ways to cheat at the tables using a digital camera, none of which I would be able to figure out.

• The Neon Museum/Boneyard was really good, and a great opportunity for pictures. Definitely recommended for anybody going to Vegas.

• My 30mm f/1.4 lens did come through very well for some night shots on the strip.

My Vegas status: total bets $26, total winnings $36, so I’m up $10. I’m trying, but I just can’t bring myself to put $10 down (the table minimums) on, well, anything where all I might get is the thrill of losing $10. I want my $10!

Kat’s status: down significantly more.

We went to the Neon Museum/Boneyard yesterday, which was cool and provided many picture-taking opportunities.

We had dinner at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon last night. It was really very good: one of the best meals I’ve had, although both Kat and I agree that our first meal at Lumiere (when Feenie was still there and it was a fixed menu) was better. One gets extra critical as the bill blasts past $100 each. 🙂

Cirque de Soleil tonight. I’m hoping to get out on the strip tonight with my f/1.4 lens to get some cool night shots. Many pictures on our return.

As some of you know, Kat and I are heading to Las Vegas tonight. Of course, we will see things and do stuff, but that’s not what I’m worried about right now.

I’m psyching myself up to actually gamble something while I’m there. Any previous gambling experiences I’ve had have ended with me thinking “shit… now I don’t have five dollars.” But, I figure I’m probably not going back to Vegas with any regularity, so I’d better do it while I’m there.

So, I’m worried about how to look the coolest while I’m losing whatever money I decide I can part with. My options, as I see them:

1. Slot machines: These are easy enough, but I might as well put curlers in my hair and chain smoke. Plus, the house advantages are criminal.
2. Roulette or Craps: These two are easy enough to understand, and have decent house advantages. But they rely entirely on luck, so how cool could one possibly be while playing them?
3. Blackjack: Very good house odds, and require intelligent choices on my part to do well, so that’s pretty cool. But getting the good house odds depends on playing well, which for me would require sitting there with a strategy card. Decidedly uncool.
4. Of course, there’s always the last option: I’m too old to look cool anyway, so I should just give up and hit the buffet.

Opinions?

Edit: Eugene’s comment reminds me of another option: poker. I refuse to be one of those guys that sits down at a poker table practically screaming “I started playing poker when it was trendy and have played with my friends three whole times” and then proceeds to lose everything to guys who are actually good at poker. Plus, I’m not even that good at it.

I wonder if they have Euchre tables.

Even those familiar with the food court in Metrotown might have missed a place called “Cultures”. In fact, the best description I can find of it online is a page offering a franchise.

The place basically does sandwiches and salads (in the potato salad, coleslaw, pasta salad vein). There are some other wraps and lasagna and stuff that I haven’t tried. I have been going there for a while out of fast food fatigue: it’s all tasty and different than the usual mall faire. They have a sandwich and two salads combo: I usually get a tuna sandwich, potato salad, and some pasta salad. It’s like having a little personal picnic in the middle of the mall.

But, I’m not blogging to praise their food: it’s good, but not worth blogging about.

The place is run by a Chinese family (or they seem like they might be a family). As far as I can tell, between the group of them, they speak the following English: “sandwich”, “tuna”, “white bread”, “brown bread”, “toasted”, “mustard”, “mayonnaise”, “drink”, and the various numeric/money/change-making vocabulary. Even at that, about half the time, somebody other than the first person that addresses me has to be summoned to deal with complicated things like “tuna”.

I’m also not blogging to point out that there are some people in Vancouver who don’t speak much English. Nobody who has adopted the city as their home would be bothered by that.

I’m blogging to point out that there is pretty much no such thing as Chinese people (who are from China, with Chinese tastes in food) who like potato salad and pasta salad and beet salad and whatever other salad they serve. That means that every morning, these people wake up, follow some recipe that they got with the franchise, and think “I can’t believe white people eat this. It would be so much better with MSG and some kind of dried fish flakes or something.”

I’m blogging to praise their entrepreneurial spirit. Anybody can sell a product they like. It takes some real stones to sell a product that you probably are at best indifferent towards. I couldn’t do it.

So, go to Cultures when you’re at Metrotown. Get a sandwich and marvel at their courage.

I have now had my Digital Rebel XT for almost exactly 3 years. As I have said here before, I do most of my shooting with a Sigma 18–50mm f/2.8 and also have a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 that I should get in the habit of using more. I also have a Speedlite 420EX flash, a decent tripod, and a Kingpano head for panoramas. Realistically, I have all the kit I need for most of the shots I’m going to take.

As with every good hobby/money sink, there’s always more stuff to play with. In my “Stupid DSLR Tricks” post, I talked about a lot of that. Every little while, I start thinking about picking up another lens, but it hasn’t happened since the 30mm for various reasons. Here is my wishlist if money suddenly rained into my life (in the order I could see myself spending real money on them):

Lens 1: Super-wide Fisheye, the Sigma 4.5mm f/2.8 Circular Fisheye. As far as I can tell, nobody else makes (or perhaps has ever made) a lens this wide. The Flickr pool for this lens will give you an idea just how wacky it is. As you can see from the line on the ground in this shot, it is a genuine 180° fisheye (for an APS-C sensor).

I like taking panoramic pictures, and would use it for that. It would cut my current 40-ish shots down to 6 for a full 360×180° panorama. Every time I think about actually getting this lens, I think about how much joy I get from taking panoramas and come up with a number less than the US$800 you can get one for.

Lens 2: A Long Zoom. I don’t do a lot of nature or long-distance photography. In general, I figure that if I leave nature alone, it’s probably for the best. (Let’s call that “environmentalism”, not “carpetbagging urbanite”.) Still, there are times it would be nice to get closer to the subject. I have no problems with my Sigma lenses, but in this range, I suspect that going on-brand is worth it so I’d go for the Canon 70–200mm f/2.8 IS. If I had anything longer than that, I know I’d never carry it anyway.

At US$1500, I’m not in any danger of picking one of these up any time soon. The f/4 equivalent is only US$950, so that’s a lot more likely to make it into my camera bag in the distant future.

Lens 3: Something Wacky. I would still like to play with a tilt-shift, or bellows, or a Lensbaby as I mentioned in my older post. I haven’t seen that any of those get a cost-to-usefulness ratio within an order of magnitude of what I’d want to actually drop the money.

Maybe I’ll get bored enough to try a DIY bellows thing at some point. How hard could a bellows setup be? Medium format lens from eBay + body cap to connect to camera + some kind of cloth bag or flexible tube to hook them freely together. Hmmm…

We had our first (annual?) holiday open house on Saturday. We had a good turnout: thanks to everybody that came. I think the whole thing was a success.

There was food, and Kat has promised she will blog about that sometime soon.

For me, the conversation piece was the camera on a tripod in the corner. It was hooked up to my laptop and taking an image every 30 seconds (then displaying it). The setup was based on somebody else’s instructions on creating a time lapse movie in a similar way.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do with these pictures. I thought that a time lapse movie of the party might be cool. I thought it might accidentally capture some good images. What I didn’t realize was that neither Kat or I was going to have a chance to take any pictures anyway, so these were almost the only ones that we would have.

I have gone through the pictures in a cursory way and posted some (along with the few pictures we did take by hand) in our gallery.

I did put the frames together into a time lapse movie (that link is about 24MB; I also did a smaller 12 MB version, or use the direct link to the movie if you’re having plugin problems, or the Facebook version if all else fails).

I’m actually pretty happy with how the movie turned out. I kind of wish I had left the camera running until we had really finished the cleanup that night (with the last frame being lights-out, say), but that didn’t seem as important as actually cleaning stuff up at the time.

Camera Setup

I played with the camera settings for a while before I got it rolling. What I ended up with was the smallest image the camera would take (about 2 MP), my Sigma zoom at 18mm, ISO 1600, auto white balance, auto exposure (most shots were around f/2.8 and 1/30 s), manual focus at about 3 m (depth of field was surprisingly good for the wide aperture), LCD image review off (to save battery).

If I was doing it again, I might lock the white balance and aperture, just to keep everything in the video as consistent as possible.

I swapped out the battery in the camera twice during the day. I’m not totally sure that was necessary, but I didn’t want to take the chance of it running out.

The net result was 1800 exposures in 15 hours: almost as many as I usually take in a year.

Computer Setup

When I had the idea, I thought I was going to have to do some low-level USB hacking, but it turns out gphoto2 will do exactly what I want. The script to start it was this: (gphoto does die occasionally, which is why it’s in the loop)

#!/bin/sh
INTERVAL=30

killall gvfsd-gphoto2 2>/dev/null # kill program hogging the camera
gphoto2 --set-config /main/camera/setcameratime=1 # set time from computer

while true ; do
  killall gvfsd-gphoto2 2>/dev/null
  gphoto2 \
    --set-config flashmode=0 --set-config beep=0 \
    --capture-image --interval ${INTERVAL} --hook-script hook
  sleep ${INTERVAL} # keep going if gphoto dies
done

And the script “hook” that just bumps the display:

#!/bin/sh
if [ $ACTION = "download" ] ; then
  gqview -r $ARGUMENT # press "f" for full screen
fi

I did have a small problem with gphoto and the Rebel XT which was fixed with a one-line patch. Also, the original instructions above are pretty liberal with the bitrate: I encoded with 1000 and 500 bps for the large and small movies. I also had to crop the frames from the Rebel’s 3:2 aspect ratio to the 4:3 of your average video.