A Very MAD Blog
Month
We decided the best way to show off our prototype once it is finished is in a film styled similar to a crowdfunding video.
We needed a way to test the device, so we talked to the lab manager in the science department about using some lab equipment to test our device. she said we would need to complete a hazard report and have a lecture send it to her. Clint said he would be happy to send it and check it for us. I then helped some people in studio with electronics and programming.
Later I did calculations determining the amount of gas the sensor should detect and I learnt about Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) which is the minimum amount of gas needed for combustion. If the device could detect the gas before it hit that level, It could save a life. (citation needed)
For Butane I found the LEL to be 1.5% which is 0.015m^3 gas in 1 m^3 of air. It doesn’t seem like much, but, it could be the difference between life and death.(citation needed)
Reflecting on our project so far, I think it has real potential in a real market. I think one thing both Chris and I struggle with, however, is knowing what studio wants. Both of us are so used to how school and other uni courses work that this way of learning and presenting ideas can be difficult to understand. That said I agree more with this style of learning; I think schools do not implement enough creative practice and generally end up destroying any chances of it showing.
This looks interesting, going back to the sound project. I want to eventually get my hands on a Teensy.
After talking to Ricardo about our idea and getting feedback about how we should go about submitting it, we headed to meet with the SCRUM Master from NZ Post, which by the way I think is the coolest name ever, way better than Project Manager.
After learning about agile project management we made a board filled with all our ‘stories’ and 'tasks’. This was quite a lengthy process and also surprisingly difficult as we needed to break everything up into tasks. However, the hardest part that I found was predicting how long each task would take. After finishing our board I can see how it will make our jobs easier as now we can visualize everything we need to do and get an idea on when we should finish everything.
We then decided to try our chances at the local fire department, by this I mean see if they would have any interest in our product at all. What we found was amazing, they seemed to love the idea! Of course just explaining the idea isn’t enough, we need to get a prototype working so we can give it to a firefighter and truly measure its effectiveness.
We spoke to Steve, who is a Senior Station Officer. He gave us the contact details for the person who handles new equipment for firefighters.
After talking to Steve, however, we also realized the whole design had to be completely redone, less civilian focused and more worker focused. A firefighter doesn’t want anything else to put on, neither do they want something complicated to use, it’s just something else to add to training. They also don’t want something they always need to charge either. So, the device has to last on battery for a long time, say a month; the device should attach to the equipment they already have; It has to be easy to use, in both UI and in the stress of an emergency.
After getting back home we both did some research into events in the news involving firefighters that our device could have prevented, or at least saved a life. What we found was surprising to me. There were numerous occasions where a device like ours could have saved many lives. That leaves me with the question it makes me wonder why this hasn’t been done before now.
Reflecting on today I realize how quick I went from thinking my Idea was amazing to completely reworking it, I mentioned this to Clint and he said: “Yes, that’s called learning”. I also had my first real experience of giving a product pitch, I think it needs some refining though. Today could have been more productive on the hardware side, however, I think it was still a fairly productive day.
The Bachelor Creative Technologies (BCT) has been an extreme and bizarre journey and it is only just the beginning. As semester one is coming to an end it is an appropriate time to reflect on what I have done and what I have learned so far. In this post I will reflect on all of my blog posts from this semester and discover where I have improved and also where I still need to improve.
My first blog post was brief to say the least, literally just stating my design for my card game. Back then I didn’t know what I was supposed to write or how to blog in general. Before the course I did not blog let alone read blogs, so I had nothing to base my posts off. However, over time my posts did improve, getting more in depth and reflective in the process, as I read more blogs and wrote more blogs.
Up until the day this was written I struggle with my at least one post a day schedule. At first I thought it was a complete waste of time, but now, I see why it is important. I’m slowly developing a better blogging habit and writing more. It was probably halfway through the cards for play project that I started to try being reflective, however, I still didn’t see the point.
It wasn’t until after the sound project that I started to see the point of reflective practice. I feel like the sound project’s final post was the first time I properly reflected on something. As the project was over 3 weeks I could look all the way to the start of the project and see everything I did and everything I learned. Looking back on the final blog post for the sound project, I can see the things I learned and reflect on them again to see if I have implemented them into my next projects to see if I am truly improving.
I feel like I need to blog a lot more to tell if reflective practice is truly helpful in developing creativeness and improving myself all together. However, with the blogs I have I can tell I am at least improving. I think I still need to work on reflecting more deeply on what I learnt and not just what I physically learnt.
My biggest area of improvement that I have noticed is I haven’t been blogging about the Introduction to Creative Technologies (ICT) paper. I have a good schedule for blogging about studio and I have almost a post per day, however, I have hardly any ICT blog posts. This made understanding the ICT paper very difficult for me as it mainly covered concepts of creative technologies and ways to learn. I think ICT is as, if not, more important to blog about than our studio projects. Furthermore, I find the point of ICT hard to understand. I think if I blogged more about each class I might have better understood what we learnt
In conclusion, I feel my reflective practice has improved from the start of the semester, however, there is still a lot of room for improvement. I need to reflect more on the ICT paper and not just focus on the studio projects. I should also focus on reflectance on skills that I learnt other than the physical ones. I need to change my reflection from forced to more natural now that I see how useful reflective practice is.
This relates to what we had to do for the film project. Someone might find it interesting.
I used something that I thought I would never use again… algebra. Okay, that was a joke, but still…
After evacuating our building and fleeing through toxic smoke, we headed away from the sirens towards Chris’s apartment. We then without wasting any time, worked on getting the sensor working. Over the course of the night, we managed to get a reading from the sensor. By holding a lighter with the gas on next to the sensor, it printed a warning message to an SSH terminal.
For those wondering about the fire, It wasn’t our building. However, there was a lot of smoke. I’m glad I had a mask with me. Here's a news article: http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/05/major-fire-billows-from-auckland-central-skycraper.html
The part I was impressed with was we lacked a few parts yet we made it work with some bodging. First, we didn’t have a logic level converter as the sensor worked on 5v and the raspberry pi works on 3.3v. So we decided to fix this with a voltage divider. To make the voltage divider we needed a value of resistor that I didn’t have (which is a first for me). Furthermore, we didn't even have the right capacitor for the voltage regulator circuit.
How did we fix all this when all the shops are closed? WITH MATH!
I worked out we could add up smaller resistors in series to make the right value for the voltage divider and we can add up capacitors in parallel to make the right capacitor value. The math was actually very simple, all stuff that NCEA teaches in year 12:
For managing our programming we decided to use git, this helped up both work on the same thing, as well as, automatically updating to the raspberry pi for testing. We chose to program the sensor in python.
By some late/early hour in the morning/night, we had a sensor that read levels of flammable gasses in the air. I think this is a good starting point as far as testing goes.
Reflecting back on today, we mainly focused on the hardware, should something change, this time could be wasted and we only have 3 weeks to have something complete. We have the skills and the ideas, however, we are lacking something, I’m not sure what yet. I also still have no idea how we are going to submit this. Next week it looks like we will also be implementing agile development, which I will try to cover in my next blog post.
Today I took a majority of my circuitry development components into studio through the pouring rain, luckily the important things didn’t get too wet, but, I was soaked. With the equipment now in the studio, I could talk with Chris about how we are going to put it together and what I should involve. We came up with some Ideas of a final look for the prototype and also how the warnings would be displayed on the screen, speaking of which, we also brought the screen today from a New Zealand seller, hopefully, it will arrive early next week.
We also talked about the viability of the project as a product including target markets. It now looks like this project is going towards the path of miners, firefighters, or Civil Defense, as these people would be more likely to need a warning to toxic gasses and also know what to do should they be detected. Another idea we could expand on is all the data going to a monitoring station for the organization, for example, miners can wear the device and have the air quality and their vital signs remotely monitored by staff so if something goes wrong they have more data to work with when trying to solve the problem.
Today I planned to make a plan. I made goals for each week, now I plan to break them up into smaller tasks. The goals are: Week One, Read from the sensor; Week Two, Display on the screen; Week Three, expand on functionality, test, and get feedback on its usefulness with the target market.
I also formed a project partner, Chris, for this project who will help with the programming and also look into the viability of the product. His Blog can be found here: https://karia-technologies.tumblr.com/
Overall, the goal for the next three weeks is to create a prototype to test the usefulness of such a device and look into the marketing of it. If we can we will also talk to some people in industry’s that may benefit from such a device.
Today I had to decide on which project to pursue next. After going over many ideas I decided on something related to my film. A device that could be worn and monitor toxic gasses and give a warning if the level goes above a threshold. This relates to the e-waste speculative design as it could monitor the buildup of toxic gasses. Tomorrow I will need to make a plan on how I will lay the project out over the next 3 weeks and what my end goal is.
This solves Everything!
Advanced technology is all you need to solve the problem of e-waste…
Video:
Description:
This is a short film set in the near future that tracks a speculative device that will solve all of our E-Waste problems… or will it? The idea behind the film is the idea of a device that tracks the lifespan of electronics so they can be collected to be recycled, this is monitored and controlled by an AI so, of course, it all goes wrong; just not the way you would think.
What we did
In the first week, we worked out the script (The direction of the script was James’ idea.
In the second week, we did almost all of the filming.
In the third and final week, we did all of the editing and a recording to tie everything together better.
While completing this project, we hade a lot of late nights and some days we don’t even remember what we did. This is slightly worrying and I think there is no real solution, one thing that helps me to remember what had happened is to read my blog and see what we did.
Thoughts
I liked the group structure that we implemented. We used a structure without a single ‘leader’, instead we changed lead roles depending on our strengths, for example, James was a leader during script stage and I was a leader during Editing stage as those are our strengths. In terms of the film I like the way the picture images turned out and also the overall storyline, as in the beginning it didn’t make much sense, but, now it does.
I disliked the way the nametags turned out, however, this was mainly because they were the last thing we did and we did not give shades much time to do them. The Quality of the LAWS graphic could have been better, but, the reason it looks low quality was mostly because of the late decision to zoom in on it. So, James was not to know to export it at a crazy resolution or as a scalable vector graphic (SVG). Another thing that annoys me but we didn’t have time to fix was the mistake in the PSA 2025 take which is not that noticeable but it is there.
What I Would Do Differently Next Time?
Take better care when recording a scene and take more takes than I think I would need, this would have stopped me having to use a take with a mistake in it and not having time to edit it out.
What I learned (The Important Part)
A big learning area for me was how to share leadership, our group changed leadership for each section depending on the strengths of the members. I also learned that different adobe versions are only backward compatible, for example when I send the project from my Adobe CS6 to shades to edit on Adobe CC it was fine, however, when shades gave the file back to me I could not open it at all no matter what we tried.
Copyright
Copyright is a very important as by not taking it into consideration, it can get you in big trouble. Some of the photos and sounds in our video are not owned by us and have a Creative Commons license, meaning we can use the content, however, we must give credit where it is due. Shades made sure all of the licenses could work together and formatted the references.
References:
Attribution for creative commons images:
“It’s Alive!” by Steve Jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0“Tesla Motors Assembly Line” by Steve Jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0“Shall We Play a Game?” by Steve Jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0“Fraunhofer Face Finder” by Steve Jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0“Guiyu e-waste” by Bert van Dijk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“Guiyu e-waste“ by Bert van Dijk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“Guiyu e-waste” by Bert van Dijk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“Bao'an sports Center Shenzhen” by Chris (dcmaster) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Attribution for creative commons audio:
Memory by Creo is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
A warning to all, STOP EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING and UPDATE your computer. On Windows 10, go to settings, update and security and hit check for updates or install, then click restart now. There is a ransomware pandemic going around the internet that is using software stolen from the NSA, Link:
http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannacry-ransomware-unlock.html
Windows has patched the vulnerability in the latest update. If you become infected I would recommend not paying the ransom as you are supporting them and they probably won’t give your files back anyway. Please share this as updating is the key to protecting yourself and your files from this virus.
Today we finished all the main editing, the only things left is the typography and color grading. To my surprise, we were the only group that came in. I made use of this by plugging my laptop into the projector for editing.
We came in on Saturday so we could complete it on time. I don't think it was because of poor time management that we had to come in, but rather some things took longer than we initially thought they would. Another factor was we tried lots of different things as we were unsure how to make it all make sense so that also took up a bit of time.
As a fail safe, when I was done editing I exported a non-color graded/non-typographied version of the video. This is just so we have a backup to submit on the deadline in case something goes wrong, however, the final version should be of higher quality.
Today we worked hard on editing. I Completed all of the cuts and put all of the scenes in the right place. Shades worked out the color grading and completed the image montages of GuiYu and AI.
I’m now realizing anyone reading this probably has no idea whats going on or what I'm talking about. For those people don’t worry about it… It’ll all make sense when we post the finalized film.
The graphic after the PSA explaining everything was a little difficult, mostly because it had been a while since I did work with key-frames. James drew a graphic of the LORS process and I zoomed in on it and panned across then zoomed out.
Overall I would call this a pretty productive day, however, not productive enough as we will have to also come in tomorrow (Saturday) to do some overtime work so it is completed on time.
I was just thinking, editing all of this would be so much easier if all of the files were in one place rather than exchanging external hard drives all of the time. Then it hit me, this is why professional companies that do editing or any form of production have high-speed servers, so multiple people can work on the same project at the same time. I definitely think if I do this again I will set up a file server of some kind to edit on. It not only ensures we all have the right versions of things but also keeps a backup if something goes wrong.
Today we worked on a game plan, deciding what is left to do and decided we needed to film another clip. James and I went off to film the scene leaving shades and Jacob. Jacob went home to record the voice over we need and shades kept working on the color grading and the image montage. My next task is to finish the editing incorporating feedback we got today from people in studio and also others in the group.
Our Reporter was a bit tired by the end of it:
This night was my first time attending a Tea Ceremony. I was fascinated by all the small details that were so carefully detailed and the discipline necessary to get everything perfect right down to how many times you wipe the spatula. The ceremony got me thinking about the small details in film also; Often these small details won’t even be noticed until the third rewatch if at all. These small touches make all the difference, however, they will most likely never be noticed, yet without them, you immediately see the difference.
I thought this might be interesting to blog about for two reasons, caffeine, and random thoughts. I was given Caffeine earlier today and I’m still debating whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Furthermore, I had tea at the Chaji, so more caffeine…
DVD also stands for Dissociated vertical deviation in Ophthalmology. I was researching a way we could release our film on blue ray and DVD… However, not a disk. Literally on a ray of blue light and something else DVD could stand for. I don’t see much point actually releasing the film on disk. It was interesting that DVD stands for an eye disorder, however, I don’t think I can really use that information; just another random fact that will float in my head for a while and then come out at the least expected time.
Bonus fact: Blue Ray is a species of fish in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean also called Neoraja caerulea.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociated_vertical_deviation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophthalmology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_(optics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoraja_caerulea
Today we booked the editing room on level 2; We used this to work on editing and planning. I did some work on the editing, James worked on graphics, and Jacob worked on fixing up the script. At the same time shades was getting feedback on the raw cut from people in studio.
Advanced technology is all you need to solve the problem of e-waste…
Coming this May on Blue Ray and DVD
Currently, I have no memory of this day, see the last post for my alien invasion conspiracy… This is also a placeholder for if I remember.
On the way to University on the bus, I managed to get a large chunk of the editing done. After meeting with the group we were thinking we really needed a room that was quiet yet we could still make noise in; Ricardo overheard us and suggested a meeting room on floor 9, he checked that it was available and booked it for us. We used the room as a place to brainstorm editing so we could be a little loud yet also hear the video.
Edit:
There is an ongoing conspiracy in our group that aliens may have invaded and wiped a day from our memory… more investigation is needed.
Today I attended a talk hosted by The University of Auckland. The hosts introduced Git and how to incorporate it into software projects. I already had an understanding of how to use git and you can find my GitHub at github.com/professor-red. I was a little disappointed that they only covered the absolute basics, however, most of the people there seemed to be completely new to Git and had surprisingly never heard of it before. Git is one of those things you just know if you are in the coding community at all but especially in the open source community. For anyone who writes programs at any level and definitely for projects I would recommend Git. I might even post a video on my youtube channel on how to use in the future.
My Group has come up with the idea of a film revolving around a chip that monitors electronics and when they reach their end of life a signal is sent so they can be recycled. The chip is based on AI so of course, it all goes wrong… The film so far includes a 2025 conference planning the use of the chip then a 2050 conference saying it is getting shut down because it all went wrong.
I have started a youtube channel, It would help me a lot if you could subscribe.
The link is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_iJ0uW8rOIVpw3IuVvXeLg
Trailer:
Today we booked a study room in the library while waiting for Jacob to get a makeover (haircut and shave). One of the reasons for doing it now was so he could look younger for the take as it is meant to be 25 years earlier. It was worth it as he did look a bit different, more different than if he did nothing but not too drastically.
The study room is not soundproofed and on top of that, There is a silent study just outside the study room. Despite this, we decided to go ahead with the take using my lavalier mic (which recorded amazing sound). We were slightly quiet but not to the point that it is obvious that we are trying to be quiet.
We managed to record the PSA 2025 scene before heading home. We were in the study room recording right up to when our booking ended to the second.
James stayed home today to work on the graphics at home on his desktop that he also built that day. He managed to get a majority of the chip graphics completed. After that, the plan is to animate a flashing light on top if the chip.
The rest of us shot the press conference. We managed to get the class to all be quiet for us [thanks, guys!] I was also able to set the camera up quite quickly because of the practice in past days. There was some debate on the position of the camera though, mostly regarding what should be in the shot.
Lighting was another issue for the shot as there is not much natural light in the studio. We tried using the projector with a white image in full screen, however, this was both too small (the edges of the light was in the shot) and also too bright so the presenter couldn't see; this also meant the light looked obviously artificial. The later point could have been solved by adjusting the settings and the image, however, we decided that it wasn’t worth it.
We also tried Shades mini photography light, however, it wasn’t bright enough to make a noticeable difference.Therefore, we decided who needs lights and just took the shot which actually was not that bad.
Overall, we now have one more scene complete and some graphics ready to be animated.
Today we shot all of the outside/interview scenes. We decided that the weather was perfect to film (overcast but not raining) and the forecast was for bad weather later in the week so today was our only chance to get these shots right. Overall, we completed 3 acted interviews, each totaling around 5-8 takes.
I filmed all of the interviews except the interview of me obviously. It was actually surprisingly tiring, I expected it to take way longer than anyone else would think and I was right, however, I did not expect to feel that drained; I was especially tired and sore from carrying the camera on my shoulder all day. The moral of the story is, Filming is hard.
We planned to also film the press conference scene today, however, we decided that the classroom was too noisy/not noisy enough; so we will try to do it tomorrow. I think we will have enough time to film everything anyway. However, we may need to come in on Friday to do a scene.
In conclusion, all of the outside interviews are complete, filming is hard, and we may need to come in on Friday because the class is either too noisy or not noisy enough.
Day two, James worked on the chip’s graphics, Shades worked on the CRSA Logo, I planned some camera shots. Tomorrow we start filming the scenes. We briefly went over what order we will film on what day and also where we will film them. We also tried some lighting and sound solutions.
Today we went over the script and broke it into what we will film each day. After learning how to use the model of the camera we had I planned how the camera and microphone will be set up for the conference recording. We also made a definite decision that we were sticking to the script and made any final adjustments. Lastly, we worked on the script a bit to decide who is doing what.