Some Neat Stuff
When I first went into computer science, my view on the discipline was very narrow. I thought it was programming, and for the first two years, that’s what it was: writing trivial applications to solve some well-defined problem that I was never going to revisit. That, and a lot of theoretical analyses about algorithms and runtime and calculus. This year, I’m doing stuff that’s a lot more exciting: development processes, development practices, development teams, and writing software that have actual applications, software that’s actually being used. One of them being the OLM project I’m working on. That’s a really rewarding experience.
But the really interesting things are being developed in grad school, something that I wasn’t even thinking about considering. Until the Research in Motion showcase yesterday. The projects that I found most interesting were:
- SketchPad, an tablet application that allows an architecture/designer to very quickly iterate through floor plans and furniture placements. They have the ability to divide up space with multiple doors, glass walls, workstations, etc. All of the renders were 3D so you’re able to see the space from virtually any perspective. What was really impressive was the walk-through feature. After the floor plan has been laid out, you can draw a trace around the floor, and a movie is generated to show the new layout based on the path that you chose; it shows you the space from the perspective of someone walking through the space.
- This is just fucking remarkable. I have no words, because I was watching the project representative, Seok-Hyung Bae, draw for an hour. Although I’m not sure how easy it would be to draw organic matter with the system. It’s relatively simple to imagine the wireframe of a spacecraft, or a car, especially with the system’s aid in perspectives, but for something like a human being, the planes are suddenly a lot more complex. I imagine it might still be easier to paint with colours and values, and rely on the brain to subconsciously resolve how it all comes together. Regardless, I need an ILoveSketch.
The video browsing by direct manipulation project was also really fun. Given a video clip, you’d click on an object, and the system will show it’s movement over time so by dragging the mouse, you move it back to where it was before or where it will be after. Then there was a video tracking system that studies various characteristics about people entering and leaving the space. E.g. demographics, how people are responding to an ad, etc. Tag clouds meet reviews. Using an adjective-noun extraction technique, you’re able to generate a visualization of all user-submitted reviews. In the end, you’re given a cloud of 20-30 keywords, and the context in which they were used. Remote control cars and airplanes were cool when you’re a kid, but a remote control robots are in another league entirely. It’s a whole new level of animation when control is transferred from a library of motion algorithms to the animator himself.
The breadth of this discipline is just amazing. It does’t matter what you’re interested in, there’s a place for it in computer science.
Other things that I’ve stumbled across that is worth sharing:
- Aurora: a new approach to the browser experience.
- How it All Ends: in reference to global warming.
- Everything’s Amazing, and Nobody’s Happy: we are spoiled with technology.
