Trepidation

The Word Smith is still on hiatus!  But I am not just writing to say that, today I'm going to dip into something a bit more personal.  Now, I don't typically blog about personal matters and I don't see that changing, but as I am approaching a somewhat major transition point (though whether or not it's a transition to more of a gas or liquid or Bose-Einstein condensate I'm not sure) I felt it might be useful, perhaps even a bit cathartic, to air things out a bit.

You see, right now I'm looking for work.  This after having been (and currently still being) a full-time student for, well, somewhat longer than I'd originally intended.  For a number of reasons I am looking to hopefully finish off the degree as a part-time student, with most of those reasons having to do with money (or, I suppose, the lack thereof) to some degree.  And so I find myself looking for full-time work which is presently the source of no small amount of trepidation.

I suppose that looking for work is seldom (maybe never) a stress-free affair.  While I can't rule out that somebody somewhere might actually enjoy going through interviews, I suspect that such people are few and far between and are perhaps a bit touched.  So a certain amount of stress and jitters is probably a normal part of the job hunt.  That said, I have some concerns that seem like they amplify these feelings:

• This current detour through grad school that I've been taking for longer than intended means I've also been out of the workforce for several years.  While I do have some work experience gained between degrees I nevertheless worry that this break from "real" work puts me at a disadvantage.
• Still not being done the current degree with the (I feel) real possibility that I may simply decide to walk away from it means that I basically have nothing to show for the past several years (well, nothing concrete, anyway) which I again worry puts me at a disadvantage.
• I feel like I probably suffer from Impostor Syndrome which certainly doesn't help to alleviate any concerns I have.
• I seem to have a general lack of confidence (perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I'm still a student at a point in my life when I feel I really shouldn't be anymore)

And while I know that I'm not the only person out there who has these sorts of concerns, it's not a thought that really comforts me or anything.

At the end of the day, I don't know that airing these things on the interwebs does much good, but it is what it is (whatever that means).  I'll muddle through things as best I can and as long as I keep looking and trying I imagine something will turn up sooner or later, though hopefully sooner rather than later.

That is all for now.  I hope the next post will be more light hearted.  Perhaps I'll get around to writing about one of those programming projects I keep meaning to write about.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Cleaving Vans

I have recently returned from a short trip to Vancouver for a short conference.  The conference itself was ok:  there were some interesting talks and some not so interesting talks and some talks that could have been interesting except that their presenters were not.  On the whole, I find sitting through two days worth of talks to be rather trying to the patience, regardless of how interesting the talks actually are.  My overall take away from the conference was, I think, that I'd like to have the chance to go back and visit Vancouver again for an actual vacation wherein I'd actually have some time to do something other than attend a conference.  That will, however, have to wait until I have the budget for it.

As it was, I did have some time to walk around the downtown area a bit - I went through Gastown and walked along the Waterfront a bit.  Nothing too exciting, but it is what it is I suppose.  I would have loved to have gone hiking somewhere but there was, alas, no time for that.

The trip back from the airport to my humble abode was... interesting, for some definition of interesting.  I took one of the out-of-town shuttle services and ended up in a vehicle with just the driver, an elderly gentleman who was otherwise retired, and one other passenger, an elderly lady, also retired.  And O. M. G., they were both stereotypical cranky old people.  Well, cranky might not be the right word, but I ended up listening to about an hour of nearly constant "Young people today and there things..." so, yeah, stereotypical old people.  Also, super awkward.  (None of this was targetted at me, I should say, but still...)

Anywho, I shall cap off this post with a few pictures that I took around Vancouver.

A couple of views along the waterfront.  There's actually a nice bike path along there with places to rent bikes that I would have liked to have had the time to take advantage of...

A plaque along the waterfront that amused me.

The Water Street Cafe in Gastown.  I include this since I used a picture of the cafe as the model for the Street Meat Cafe in episode one of The Word Smith - I hadn't realized that it was in Vancouver originally, I was just looking for a picture of a "street corner cafe" or something to that effect.

This is another picture from Gastown.  Featured (in theory) is the steam clock which is some sort of landmark or something.

And finally, here's a building downtown on Robson Street that's associated with UBC in some capacity.

Well, that's all for now.  Work will resume on The Word Smith in the near future, though there's no set timetable at the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Up For Air

Things (by which I mean school) have been a bit busy of late with various deadlines coming and going.  Having just recently done my second (of three required) PhD seminar talks I have a bit of a respite before diving back into the next deadline (a paper submission for a conferece) which is about a month and a half away so not immediate but still all too close.

The draft of the script for the rest of episode six of The Word Smith now exists, though it may be a while yet before work resumes on it in earnest - likely after the aforementioned paper is out of the way.  Hopefully, though, there'll be an interlude or two up in the interim.  One such interlude is currently in the works, pencil version below:

And with that, dear Freaks, I bid the until next narf.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Blargglesplorgglenarf

It seems like the Word Smith's sparse and/or erratic update schedule will be continuing for the foreseeable future  (note:  I do not claim to be able to foresee the future.)  This is due to a paper submission deadline coming up in a little over a couple of months so I may need to sacrifice some comic time for actual work work time.  Shock!  I know.

The past few days have also been a tad work-heavy as I was crunching for a presentation this morning - just a lab-specific thing, nothing particularly special, but treating it as a personal deadline, nonetheless.  Went reasonably well:  well enough that I will consider my goals to have been met.  However, the crunching left me feeling a bit, well blarg, so I spent this afternoon working on a sprite animation that has nothing whatsoever to do with work.  And here it is:

(Because the internet doesn't have enough animated gifs.)

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Wining

I attended a wine tasting event at the Grad House on campus last night with a few of the other CGL students. While the event was intended to be at least partially educational, I mainly went for some cheap wine (not that the wine itself was necessarily cheap, but tickets were only ten dollars - a bargain!) And while I did actually learn a few interesting things, it mostly reinforced my notion that "wine tasting" takes itself far too seriously, in my humble opinion.

For the event, we sampled eight different types of wine - four white and four red. Some salad and bread was served with the white wine and some lamb skewers (tasty, tasty lamb skewers) with the red. We also got some port (which was very sweet - I liked it), accompanied with some brie and crackers.

We were provided some papers with the wine list on it along with some space for taking notes, ostensibly for recording our impressions of the wine, though mine consisted mainly of things like "tastes like wine", "yup, still tastes like wine" and "remarkably, this tastes like wine." My palate is rather underdeveloped (I don't drink wine very often). I used the "notes" section for drawing a few sketches which more or less summed up the evening:

Overall, with nine glasses of wine and some food for ten dollars, the event was quite affordable (putting those grad association fees to work) and fairly enjoyable - I'd certainly go to another similar event in the future. It was more than I usually drink in a two hour time span (and wine seems to have a higher alcohol content than most things I drink), so yay for public transit.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Comic Workshop Post-Mortem

Another post-mortem, yay! This'll probably be the last one for the foreseeable future (awww...)

As should be apparent from my blog, this past fall (and January) I've been running a comic workshop in the graphics lab at school. We were working through the book "Drawing Words & Writing Pictures", a sort-of text book on comics. The book covers things like "what are comics", issues relating to panel layout, content design, storytelling, thumbnailing, penciling and inking (with both pens and brushes) and a few other topics. Each chapter has excercises and homework assignments, the last series of which walks you through creating a six page mini-comic (my results having been previously posted on the blog, though I still have to finish the inking).

Overall, it was an interesting book and the experience of running the workshop was also interesting. I did follow the book fairly closely in its presentation, though I drew in material from other sources (such as Scott McCloud's books about comics) where appropriate. I also added some extra workshop sessions on figure drawing and perspective, which is one of the reasons that we went into January.

We only had a small group - just four of us (including me). I think I would have liked to have had two or three more people, but with just the four of us I suppose it was easier to work around scheduling issues that came up and there wasn't any need to worry about finding a special space to hold our meetings.

Of course, for me, the workshop essentially involved giving a twenty to thirty minute talk each week (I wouldn't call them lectures) along with the weekly homework assignments. It kept me busy, but it was interesting and I liked having the extra motivation to do some regular drawing. I was also the only one to do all the assigned homework, but as I was running things I figured I should do my best to set a good example :)

One nice thing about the workshop is that it gave me the chance to try out some things that I wouldn't have otherwise, like using nib pens. One of the big reasons to run the workshop in the first place was that it was much more likely that I'd actually do the exercises and homework in the book. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't have done most of them, which would have missed out on part of the point of the book.

As to my presentation style - well, that's a bit harder for me to judge. My fellow participants seemed to find things interesting and we had some good discussion at times, but it was all fairly informal, overall. I was treating it more like a "tech talk" sort of thing than anything else. I mean, I think I'm generally a competent speaker, at least nobody showed up with rotten fruit or sleep masks or anything.

Would I do something like this again? Maybe. It would certainly be less work if I were to do it again since I'd have all my slides already and I've already done all the homework so I probably wouldn't feel the need to do most of it again. It would still be a bit of a committment, of course. Interestingly, the authors of the book have a follow-up one that's being published sometime this spring so there's always the possibility that I might end up going through all this again anwyay. We'll see - though I probably wouldn't mind doing a follow-up session, if i can drum up enough interest.

Well, that's all for now. My next post should be less talky and more picturey.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Limited Edition Prints

I've noticed that the recent trend on this blog is for most entries to have pictures included - not necessarily a bad thing (at least, I don't think I've posted anything that would make someone want to gauge their eyes out). And with this post, that trend continues!

I'm taking a course this term (auditing, actually, which means I don't have to do a final project) on Computers and Aesthetics. As part of that, last week the class took a field trip and had a print making class. Basically, what this entails is applying paint to some suitable material (we used plexiglass) and then transferring it to a dampened paper using a fancy press machine thing. This process means you actually need to paint the mirror image of what you want the final print to look like, which is obviously important for text.

I had time to make three prints, the first two in watercolour, the third using oil-based paints.

Here's the first print:
This is one of my FR characters. I forgot to write the text and the symbol up at the top as a mirror image so it ended up backwards (oops). For the curious, the text is her name and is written in Tolkien's tengwar system. It is supposed to read "Gillin" but, as mentioned, it ended up backwards.

The second print (also watercolour) was of one of the characters from my mini-comic project over the summer:I remembered to draw the text the correct way for this one, but I still ended up having to make fixes to the symbol, which is why it looks a bit smudged.

The final print was done using oils:The first "S" ended up backwards... but, oh well.

Anyway, that is that, I suppose. It was a fun class, but at the end of the day, I prefer drawing.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

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

Up For Air

So, not much has been happening here lately, it seems, or nothing worth flogging about, at any rate. The course projects for my last two courses were finished up at the end of last month and they were eating up much of my time. Since then I've spent a couple weeks taking it easy and not thinking about projects at all. But now that some time has passed, I've put together a web page for the non-photorealistic rendering project which I alluded to previously.

The images can be viewed at the results page and, for those who are so inclined, some of the technical details are on the main project page.

Now I'm getting back into the swing of things, focusing on research and also continuing my work on the QRT project again, which I still haven't blogged about though I've been meaning to. Well, sooner or later.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Status Update

Over the past few weeks I've been madly at work on my two course projects. Should I ever be in the position again where I need to take any courses I must remember NOT to take more than one project course per term. These things have a way of eating up all available time. Anyway, I'm almost finished - the projects are due by the end of day tomorrow (Wednesday). After that, I think I'm going to declare myself to be on a two week vacation since I've been work at least a little bit most days these past few weeks and I could use a break (not all on projects mind you as I did lose a few days to proctoring and marking - not fun). I'll blog some more about the individual projects once they're officially done, but for now here's a preview:

Also, it seems that the 'S' key on the USB keyboard that I use with my laptop has become terminally non-functional meaning I'll have to get a new keyboard in the near future. Ah well.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Projectile Blogging

The FASS AGM was held over this past weekend which is where I officially became CSW and included the final theme selection for next year's FASS. Theme selection is done by a voting process after presenting the top four or so themes that were selected at the Theme Meeting. Four themes were presented this year and the one that emerged victorious was "Myths and Legends" which should make for an interesting script. I'm going to try to work in Jason and the Arrrrrrgonauts somehow, and possibly also the Ninjas of the Round Table.

I have also been working on my final project for the non-photorealistic rendering course. My project is on simulating Greco-Roman style mosaics. It is still very much a work in progress, but here's a sample of my interim results:


There are obviously still some problems - holes that need filling and whatnot - but it should give the basic idea of what the end goal should produce.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Shooting Stars

The third assignment for the non-photorealistic course I'm taking has been submitted. This assignment continued on a similar vein from the last one and focused on aspects of ornamental design. In particular, the assignment covered tiling theory and Islamic Star Patterns. It's all very geometrical, really, based around tilings of the plane with regular polygons.


As per usual, there are some pictures to look at here, with some more of the details here for those who are interested.

-Freak Out

A Pot For Me?

So, a few things happening lately, some larger, some smaller. First off, the big thing is that I seem to find myself as the Chief Script Writer for FASS 2011, which means I'll be guiding the script writing process for the next several months. Yay me? I dunno, I may be a touch crazy to do this, but I figure since I'm all done my course requirements after this term that it should be manageable, for the most part, without driving me too insane. We'll see, I guess.

And speaking of courses, even though I'm only taking two courses this term, somehow everything still ends up being due at the same time so I'm spending a lot of time finishing things up this weekend. A lot of it is done already, but it still takes time to do the write-ups and deal with all the little details and tweaking that manage to pop up. The same thing happened for my last set of assignments too - both courses were due on the same day. At least this is the last batch of assignments, though I've still got a project to do for each course.

In unrelated news, I've been playing a bunch of Dissidia: Final Fantasy (fighting game involving characters from various Final Fantasy games for the PSP)- when I haven't been working, of course - and have been quite enjoying it. Chaos, the "end boss" was quite tough - far tougher than any of the other fights - which makes me inclined to say the developers may have gone a little overboard with him. Even having beaten Chaos, though, there's still lots left to do in the game, which is good since, as I said, I've been enjoying it (despite Chaos being a cheating bastard).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Knotty Issue

The second assignment for the NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) course I'm taking this term was due yesterday. The topic of the assignment was symmetry and Celtic knots (an example of which is pictured above). The Celtic knot portion of the assignment was based on a paper that presents a way to generate Celtic-knot style artwork using a grid-based method which can be done by hand or, as in the assignment, by computer. I seem to find it rather fascinating and doing the method by hand is, as the prof pointed out, a very good way to kill time in class. Some examples of knotwork that I created for the assignment (some based on ones that I did in class) can be viewed on the results page of my write-up. Those interested in some of the technical details (though I don't describe the method in detail - unfortunately there does not seem to be a freely available download of the paper in question) are on the main page for the write-up.

Completely unrelated to that, I was watching an episode from the 3rd season of Deep Space 9 last night - "Past Tense, Part I". As the name might suggest, it's a time travel episode and those often tend to be fairly good episodes, overall. The "treknobabble" invovled in justifying the time travel, however, was rather laughable. Ignoring that though, it was generally an enjoyable episode, despite being a bit predictable at points.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Assignment Overload

Gah!

I've been working pretty steadily the past couple days finishing up an assignment that's due tomorrow. I don't know how, when I do get started on these relatively early, I still end up doing a lot of last minute work like this. Though, I suppose, deciding to add a couple of new features and change how some of the rendering is handled at the next-to-last minute doesn't exactly help my case! Ah well. I suppose this goes to show that when I have interesting work to do I'm actually more-or-less willing to actually do it. (I say "more-or-less" because if I didn't actually have to do it I'd most likely have spent my time doing other things.)

Anyway, I'm going to relax for an hour or two before going to work on the other assignment that's due tomorrow. It's much less involved though, only a short 5 minute presentation on something photography related, so it shouldn't take too long - at least in theory.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

You wait... time passes.

So, it's been about a month since I last blogged, though I can't say I've had a burning desire to say anything into the ephemeral winds of the internets in that time. The last year ended, a new one started (as they are wont to do) and stuff has happened.

January is usually, at the very least, a slightly busier time of the year for me due to FASS. I'm not going to say too much about that at the moment. I was somewhat disappointed with my part (again) as it feels like I'm being type cast which I'm not sure I like. The part itself is not really a bad part, per se (it's in one of the scenes I wrote, after all), but it's not interesting enough or significant enough for me to look past the type casting and the fact that I'd really just rather have had a different role - there's quite a few parts I'd have preferred, actually. But as it turns out, as of yesterday I'm also doing another (small) part that was vacant after the original actor dropped out. I hope that it didn't come about as a result of me complaining to certain people, though I suspect that may have played a part. Ah well.

School has, of course, started up again as well. I am taking two classes this term, one in non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) and the other in computational photography. The first assignment for NPR was due yesterday so here's a link to my write-up: here. Most of the pictures are on the results page if you just want to look at some images (some of my readers may see some familiar faces in there) rather than worry about the technical details.

Since I actually need to be on campus five days a week this term, unlike the past couple of terms when I've been able to get away with only going in every other day, I decided to buy a bus pass for the term. Part of this was also because I decided in December that I just didn't feel like walking during the winter (I know, I know, my reader(s) in Edmonton will say I'm a wimp), but that aside, my walk is long enough that I'd be rather foot sore at the end of the week if I walked in every day. A plus to taking the bus is that my commute time is shorter and I'm generally in favour of shorter commutes, though I do have to set aside some time to go down to the exercise room now that I'm not getting my exercise through walking, though I don't view that as a problem. On the down side, I do have to schedule around the bus, but that hasn't been too bad so far and it's also cheaper than driving and parking every day would be.

And, of course, the orchestra has started up once again. This term we're doing Brahm's Symphony #4, a Rachmaninoff piano concerto and probably one other thing that hasn't been decided on yet. We have a small cello section again this term, but I suppose we'll manage.

Anyway, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC