Carnival
Well, another Carnival has come and gone. Probably the last I'll attend as a student, although that's far from certain yet. (if Dave (my advisor) has his way with me)
Although I didn't get to help out much with booth again this year, I did get to pitch in on move-on and tear-down, arguably the times when we need the most concentrated man power. Though compared to the total amount of the work that goes in to a booth, this is probably only really a small portion.
I know the guys really had their hearts set on getting a trophy, and they did extremely well, though it was not to be. The usual big booth houses, which have significantly more brothers than we do, all had amazing booths this year. Carnival in general was one the sharpest I've seen. Even the non-greek and blitz booths were approaching greek-quality.
In particular, I wanted to mention that our move-on this year was one of the best I've seen. Although we got screwed by the carnival committee holding up our slot until it was almost dark, which cost us a lot of time and productivity, once we got moving things really flowed. There were only two fairly minor mistakes in the plans/plan execution, and everything fit together flush and plumb. Amazing. In the past we've had to spend significant effort to skew and bend frames into alignment. This year it was a well oiled machine, and this on one of our most ambitious booths, a two story behemoth. I couldn't be more proud.
I just hope that the guys won't be too disheartened by not getting a trophy this year. It takes time to build up the experience and manpower on these things, and we're definitely gaining on the competition. 4 years ago we only had 3 walls, a floor, and a prayer it wouldn't rain (it didn't ;) This year we had 2 very solid stories, and lots of design and detail work.
I notice more and more booths doing electronic/computer-based games. (For non-CMUers, the point of each booth is to run a game that the little kids who come to carnival are supposed to be able to play... hopefully the college "kids" will enjoy it too.) So usually this involves throwing things at targets, but this year several groups had either computer based games or at least computer displays as part of the decor.
I did most of the looking around the midway on Saturday since I had an important demo on Friday with Matt Mason (head of Robotics PhD program) and Peter Lee (head of CS department). That went pretty well, so they've got a job offer in the pipeline to get me to stay as staff and work on Tekkotsu for a course Dave wants to teach. I must say, there are tempting elements of it. Hmm.
Pictures!
See also Gail's pictures.
Although I didn't get to help out much with booth again this year, I did get to pitch in on move-on and tear-down, arguably the times when we need the most concentrated man power. Though compared to the total amount of the work that goes in to a booth, this is probably only really a small portion.
I know the guys really had their hearts set on getting a trophy, and they did extremely well, though it was not to be. The usual big booth houses, which have significantly more brothers than we do, all had amazing booths this year. Carnival in general was one the sharpest I've seen. Even the non-greek and blitz booths were approaching greek-quality.
In particular, I wanted to mention that our move-on this year was one of the best I've seen. Although we got screwed by the carnival committee holding up our slot until it was almost dark, which cost us a lot of time and productivity, once we got moving things really flowed. There were only two fairly minor mistakes in the plans/plan execution, and everything fit together flush and plumb. Amazing. In the past we've had to spend significant effort to skew and bend frames into alignment. This year it was a well oiled machine, and this on one of our most ambitious booths, a two story behemoth. I couldn't be more proud.
I just hope that the guys won't be too disheartened by not getting a trophy this year. It takes time to build up the experience and manpower on these things, and we're definitely gaining on the competition. 4 years ago we only had 3 walls, a floor, and a prayer it wouldn't rain (it didn't ;) This year we had 2 very solid stories, and lots of design and detail work.
I notice more and more booths doing electronic/computer-based games. (For non-CMUers, the point of each booth is to run a game that the little kids who come to carnival are supposed to be able to play... hopefully the college "kids" will enjoy it too.) So usually this involves throwing things at targets, but this year several groups had either computer based games or at least computer displays as part of the decor.
I did most of the looking around the midway on Saturday since I had an important demo on Friday with Matt Mason (head of Robotics PhD program) and Peter Lee (head of CS department). That went pretty well, so they've got a job offer in the pipeline to get me to stay as staff and work on Tekkotsu for a course Dave wants to teach. I must say, there are tempting elements of it. Hmm.
Pictures!
See also Gail's pictures.