Marking Still Sucks (Mostly)

First, this week has been, shall I say.. annoying. Gyah. First, Monday night, I had to proctor for the first year course I'm TAing this term. As my readers know (and which they will no doubt be reminded multiple times over the course of my degree) I hate proctoring. Two hours of watching people write exams is worse than watching paint dry because at least with paint watching, you can leave and do something else when you get bored.

Proctoring is also usually accompanied by marking. Yesterday I spent all day marking. ALL DAY! From 9:00 AM to about 4:30 PM, with a short break for lunch. This is horrible! When I mark assignments, I usually only mark for about and hour or so in one go, not nearly eight. Brain... leaking... out of... ear... Gyah...

Ranting out of the way, about two weeks ago we marked assignment 3 for the undergrad graphics course, which I am also TAing this term. This is much more fun than marking stupid first year courses. Assignment 3 is the "puppet" assignment in which students have the opportunity to make interesting character models. This terms models have been posted up on the course website which can be located here. Go take a look! There's some nice puppets this term (most recent are at the top of the page).

Anyway, that is all for the present. Until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Three Little Words

I did marking for the final for the class I was TAing this past term earlier this week which, as usual, was a barrel of fun, for some sufficiently lenient definition of "fun". Though in all honesty, the exams for this class (both midterm and final) was actually fairly easy - probably one of the easier pair of exams to mark from my experience so far. Still boring, but not too horribly bad.

Even so, the best three words a marker can encounter when marking an exam are "Did Not Write", generally abbreviated as "DNW". As should be plain, this means that a student (for whatever reason) did not show up to write the exam. This is, as one should expect, very easy to mark! The second best thing that a marker can see is a question that was left blank. Also easy to mark, but there may still be other questions to mark on the exam.

Anyway, TAing is all done until next term so I get a few weeks of not having to do any TA stuff at the very least.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Grab Bag

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!

Today I actually started doing some programming related to my research. Nothing exciting yet, just laying down some groundwork. And, of course, since it's just getting started, it may all end up getting discarded before the end anyway. Who knows! I sure don't!

In much less exciting news, I will be going off to proctor in about ten minutes or so. I've probably said it before and shall no doubt say it again, but I - hate - proctoring.

Well, that is all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Grinding for Fun and Profit

I spent much of my weekend grinding in some fashion - mostly either marking assignments or by staining a fence. Neither was particularly "fun" nor "profitable" (though I suppose I do get paid for marking, though not enough) and I didn't even go up a level. Oh well. Fence staining was slightly more fun than marking since it at least got me outside on a pleasant day and did involve some interaction with friends, so it wasn't all bad.

I'm TAing one of the first year CS courses again this term which mostly involves marking assignments. I've TA'd this course before and it's about as boring as I remember. Somehow, marks seem to be worse than the last time I TA'd this course, though it could be that the online system we're using for marking makes it easier to be pickier about things over all. Meh, whatever.

Today, I'm actually doing some research related work, mostly some planning and reviewing before I dive into coding something. Part of this involved digging out some manga and skimming through it. I think it's pretty awesome that I can read comics and justify it as "work".

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Marking Sucks

So, after not having posted in a while, I return to complain about being a TA! Excitement! Well, there are a few other details, but first with the complaining!

For the course that I'm TAing this term, the people in charge decided that each TA would mark an entire assignment, by themselves. Thus I have found myself, over this long weekend, spending a lot of time marking assignments which really sucks. As I've no doubt mentioned before, marking is generally boring and this assignment has been really painful to mark. First, the course material is not in my area of interest (thus I don't particularly care for it much) and second, most of the questions are actually hard to mark because they're the sort of thing where one has to try and follow the student's train of thought which is not always easy, especially since I do try to figure out what the students are trying to do and give part-marks rather than just put in a big X when something's wrong.

On the plus side, since I only mark one assignment it means I haven't had to do TA work for most of the term (besides the midterm), but I honestly think this is too much for one person to do in any reasonable amount of time and I think I'd prefer having the pain spread out a bit. Having each TA do half the marking for two assignments would, I think, be a better arrangement.

In less complainy news, I discovered a new recipe last night! Its from the (now much abused) cook book that I've had for ages and is a recipe for hamburger-vegetable soup. It turned out quite tastey and is definitely going on my will-make-again list.

I also managed to sneak in a little bit of work on the QRT project this weekend despite the marking (and some FASS work today), which I really must write about in more detail sometime, and not just because I said I would about a year ago and never did.

Well, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Graphical Interlude

So, I've spent the better part of the past three days doing marking and marking-related activities for the graphics course I've been TAing this term. Monday and Tuesday were marking projects (which included demos by the students) and Wednesday was proctoring and marking the final.

First, the projects. There were some very good projects, but also some, shall we say, not so good projects. Kinda felt sorry for some of the students who, for whatever reason, weren't able to finish their projects and obviously felt bad about it - then, of course, there were some students who didn't seem to care much as long as they passed the course. Ah well.

For the final - well, I've mentioned proctoring before and this was just as boring as all my previous proctoring experiences. Marking the exams went significantly faster since the prof who's teaching the course this term seems fond of making exams that are easy to mark.

In related news, here is the final version of the image for the course t-shirt:

All of the interesting puppets from assignment three are positioned on an 8x8 grid of tetris pieces (the background colours are, supposedly, the official tetris colours according to wikipedia). Since sixteen pieces fit in an 8x8 grid and there were only fifteen puppets, I snuck in my evil snowman from my raytracer scene in the last piece. The four leftmost images along the bottom are raytracer scenes (the middle two being from students who didn't make a fancy puppet) and the images along the right side are project screen shots. The top, middle and bottom projects were raytracers with the other two being openGL projects.

There is a full-size version of the image (4500x4500 pixels) available here.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Work in Progress

For the graphics course I'm TAing this term, sometimes one or another of the TAs puts a shirt together with an image of the good puppets and ray tracer images. I'm currently attempting to create a t-shirt image and thought I'd show a preview of the work-in-progress. As I'm not adept at any 3D modelling packages, and there seems to be no good way to import the puppets into any such program (at least not in a reasonable time frame) I've decided to go with something that is, essentially, an exercise in image editing:

Not all the puppets are there because I have to get larger versions of the screen captures of them so I don't have to scale them up too much for the shirt image and I want to get different poses for some of them (including a couple of the ones already in the image).

The reason for the Tetris-like background is because the first assignment for the course is, essentially, Tetris (which I believe I mentioned in a previous post). I managed to fill an 8-by-8 grid of Tetris pieces and have associated each puppet with a piece that sort of, but not quite, approximates the shape of the puppet - or that's the idea, anyway. However, there is one extra piece since there were only 15 puppets so I think my evil snowman will be putting in an appearance to fill up the last one.

To those of my readers who are familiar with the FASS script for 2010, note that I have associated Luigi with an s-shaped piece.

I haven't decided what exactly I want to do with the background - if I should leave it white, use some uniform colour (like grey) or fill in each square according to the colour of the associated Tetris piece. I'll probably make a few different versions and see which I like best. The final image will also have four ray tracer images across the bottom.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Shooting Rays

The fourth assignment for the graphics course I'm TAing was due earlier this week. This assignment is a ray tracer and as part of it, students are supposed to create a "unique" scene. Unique in this case just indicates that the scene needs to be different from everyone else's, not that it needs to be creative. However, as with the puppet assignemtn, students receive bonus marks if they create an interesting raytracer scene.

As with previous assignments, I re-implemented the ray tracer to refresh my memory on the details and I ported my original snowman scene to the new ray tracer. Students are supposed to implement one extra feature of their choosing in addition to the basic features required by the assignment. Back when I originally did my ray tracer I implemented reflections. This time around, I also added in some anti-aliasing which makes the scene look nicer, but also renders a lot slower, which is not really a surprise since it involves shooting a lot more rays into the scene (five times as many for the way I implemented it).

Here is my new, improved, snowman scene:

And here is a link to the course gallery that has the better ray traced images from this term (they're up at the top): to the exhibit!

That's all for now.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Puppetry in Motion

Last week, the puppet assignment was due in the undergrad graphics course that I'm TAing this term. The main focus of the assignment is hierarchical modelling, but it tends to be referred to as the puppet assignment because part of the assignment includes creating a posable "puppet" model which can have it arms, legs and head moved.

From a programming point of view, it's actually one of the easier assignments in the course (or that's the way I found it, anyway). Most of the work comes in that students can get a bonus mark for making a fancy puppet, but doing so tends to take a lot of extra time.

A number of students usually do fancy puppets, though, which is nice 'cause I like seeing what people come up with, plus it's something interesting to look at while marking them. The puppets are located here, with this terms being at the top of the page.

The next assignment is the ray tracer which should also, hopefully, produce some interesting things to look at.

On an unrelated note, since it was Hallowe'en over the weekend, I wore my cape at school on Friday (I did not wear it on the way to/from school as it was wet out).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Watch for Falling Blocks

I spent yesterday afternoon playing Tetris. Well, "tetrominos", but same diff. There was, actually, a good reason for this. The first assignment assignment (technically the second, actually, but the first one is just practice and doesn't count for anything) for the graphics course I'm TAing this term was due yesterday so the other TA and I spent much of the afternoon marking. The assignment is, basically, Tetris. The students don't actually have to implement any of the actual gameplay, they just have to render the results. Part of the marking invovles "playing" the game, hence why I say I spent much of yesterday afternoon playing Tetris.

I was also in the undergrad graphics lab earlier this week for the first time since I took the course nine years ago (not really a surprise or anything since I had no reason to be there until this term). It seemed nicer than I remembered, though that may be largely because all the computers are reasonably up-to-date with reasonably nice flat screen monitors, as opposed to the clunky octane workstations that were there when I took the course and which were kinda out of date even back then.

I'm finding I'm actually kind of liking the lab/office hour side of TAing, as opposed to just marking that I've done the past couple of terms. Of course, part of that might be because this is the graphics course and, hence, an area I'm reasonably familiar with. I may not like it as much if I had to do this for some random CS course.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Continuing Adventures in Proctology

It's a week late, but last Monday I did my proctoring for the final exam for the course I was TAing this term. Now, as I've said before, proctoring is boring, but this was a 9AM exam and the proctors were supposed to arrive at 8:30AM which meant I had to wake up at around 6:30AM, ugh. I suppose I shouldn't complain as I tended to wake up at 6:30AM on weekdays when I was working full time, so it's not like I'm not used to it. The luxure to not have to wake up that early has just spoiled me, I guess. Anyway, point is, proctoring is still boring and it's even more boring when it's early in the morning.

In related news, it looks like I'll be TAing the undergrad graphics course for the fall term so I'm actually kind of looking forward to that.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Potpourri

There hasn't really been anything that I've had a pressing need to blog about lately - not that there is ever really a pressing need for me to blog about anything, but less so over the past couple of weeks than normal, anyway - so I'm going to do an essentially random summary of recent events. Yay for recap episodes!

I gave my first tech talk at the weekly lab meeting last week. Everyone in the lab takes turns and, given the number of people in or attached to the lab, it seems to work out to about twice per year. Since I've not started any actual research yet, my talk was about my Masters' Thesis, essentailly the same talk I gave at Siggraph five years ago this summer. Seemed to go ok, especially since I basically hadn't looked at the stuff since Siggraph. Hopefully I'll have my PhD research started by the time my turns comes around again.

Also finished the first draft of the scene I'm writing for FASS 2010 last week. As expected it was on the long side, but it seems like some of the stuff will fit in one or another of the other scenes so there won't be too much that's actually lost when I start to trim things down. However, this means I have to restructure the first half of the scene and it's not quite as straight forward as I had thought. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

Been a bit lazy on my RPG editing tools lately, but got a little bit of work done on them this afternoon. I've been a little hung up on how to go about managing some data, but I think I've got a workable solution (though it may get changed later on) so I can start making some progress. Hoping to have it to the point where a player can walk around maps by the end of the summer so I've got to get moving if I plan to meet that goal.

And lastly, it looks like I may not be taking any courses again in the Fall term. So far, there's no graphics courses being offered and nothing else really catches my eye. I know there'll be at least one graphics course in the winter term, but for now I may just TA two courses for the fall if nothing else shows up.

Anyway, that, as they say, is that.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

High King and Other Rambling

The term is more-or-less finished.

My only exam for the term was this past Wednesday (and I thought it was fairly easy) and I finished the last of my TA duties on Friday. Marking the final was less painful than I was expecting, and I was able to avoid having to proctor by volunteering to help enter marks. In the end, I think that mark entering was certainly the better end of the deal.

Went hiking yesterday along part of the Bruce trail with the usual group. It was a wonderful day for hiking, if a tad on the windy side, so overall a good break from school stuff.

I've also been working along on my project for the colour course (which is the main thing I've got left) and have been updating the blog for it (link in the post beneath this one) so interested parties should give it a glance - it's starting to produce some interesting visuals, so go look at the pictures if nothing else.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Adventures in Proctology (And Other Random Things)

So, I've been meaning to write something about the state of being a student again, but I've been a bit remiss so this could end up long and rambling as a result.

Anyway...

I've been back to school for about a month now and am starting to get settled back into a bit of a routine. With only two courses, it's much more laid back than when I was an undergrad, a bit moreso even than when I was doing my Masters since I had three courses per term (for the first two terms) at the time. Even with marking, it's not bad since marking (so far) is pretty easy, just boring. Eventually I'll have research to do as well, but I'll probably be pretty much done my classes by the time I really get into that full swing, and I expect I'll be taking at most one course at a time after this term anyway (unless I see more than one thing that I really wan't to take).

As to the courses I'm taking, the Networks course is one of the ones that I've often thought, in retrospect, that I'd have liked to have taken when I was in undergrad (a lot of the 4th year courses are also cross-listed as grad courses) compared to a couple of the courses I did end up taking (databases, I'm looking at you) and, so far, that opinion seems to have been confirmed. So, it's nice in a way to be able to actually go back and take the course.

The other course is about colour in computer graphics and is not cross-listed as an undergrad course (though there is an undergrad in the course). So far it's been pretty interesting with lots of stuff about how people perceive colour. Haven't really gotten into the computer graphics bit yet, but I'm sure we will eventually.

As to the TAing, I'm marking for a first year CS course for non-CS majors, so it's easy (as noted above) but dull. The annoying thing is that they use scheme in the course and I'm not really fond of scheme. The first midterm was this past week, so we spent a couple days marking exams (half days for me as I had classes and whatnot). Again, it was rather boring, but we got some free pizza out of the deal, so that's ok.

In regards to the midterm, I had my first experience proctoring an exam as well. It was, well, uneventful which, I suppose is good, since I don't think I'd really have wanted to deal with anybody cheating or fire alarms or anything, but as a result it was rather boring. I mean, two hours of watching people write an exam in not exactly the most riveting thing in the world.

I did, however, find myself thinking that "proctoring" sounds somewhat like "proctology" and wondered whether or not they shared the same root. I rather doubt it, but the thought amused me nontheless.

So, yeah, that's my first month of returning to student life. It's also been a bit interesting reacclimating myself to the unix/linux environment that the school uses since I've been pretty much exclusively in Windows land for the past five years. I'm a bit surprised how much I actually remember, but it does seem to be coming back relatively quickly.

Anyway, that's enough for today.

Freak Out,
-TFitC