self observation of the day

Just getting the new coffee table experiment working. 

While I was I noticed that if I  scroll using the apple touch pad then the text appears on the baby monitor. 

I wonder how long before  I noticed this going on. Interesting that I was able to associate between two completely separate and unrelated things.  Was it a sound/ action thing. Could I notice the same between vision and action more quickly? 

Ruby on rails

This isn't about Ubi-comp. I just needed somewhere to make notes about the rub  on rails course. 

the central concept is to see how fast and light we can make the production of a new course. IN this case we are producing 5 points post grade ( assume you can program ) course about ruby on rails. 

just had a short meeting about it. What did we conclude

1. Treat the book chapters as the basic units 

questions how quickly can we get students to go through the chapter. 

        What can we add ( additional material) 

2. Interests in deployment  -

 something not done in the book

       need something like Drupal to make mutiple sub domains with seperate version of apache.  

Agreed to talk in 2 weeks time after looking at book again.  

      

Some success

Tried a number of alternatives out and found that having tracing paper UNDER the acrylic top with nothing above does a good job when using portvideo of Open computer vision. 

This does track your finger but needs code to reject large blobs. 

Also had some improvement with the background subtraction for the floor/wall stickies project. 

screen thoughts

We got the Rectivision stuff working on the table with a flood light + diffuser over it + the using tracing paper over the acrylic. 

Getting close to making the table work well in FDIR mode. I think i need to have some baffles to stop the edges leaking light down. I've managed to make the dot go away by tilting the screen so finally I can try upping the threshold to make the work work. 

Also got the basics of floor stickies working and gave demo. 

Heard rumours of large 4M media wall in new building..  

Visit from City University

Just finished a demo to Dr Sara Jones and Professor Neil Maiden. They have a new Diamond touch table and where looking for people who had used them. 

I came in late ( working libary and lost time but Simon phoned me to remind me), but had a nice discussion about using tables/tangibles in the context of user interface elicitation. 

So this was the last in a row of three demos of the fishtable. 

Over lunch Neil mentioned having some contacts with web usability people and I mentioned my intreast in  finding click stream data AND eye tracking in games (apparently not done yet).

Mean while the wrong kind of silicon sheet was delivered - to thick and not squashy! Makes me wonder if working on the vision tracking is better approach. 

Next week are moving buildings!