Deliverables Delivered!
Well, it’s finally done. I don’t know how we managed it, but somehow our Capstone Project was ready in time for the demo. I was worried the weekend before because, while we only had 1 more critical features left to implement, a short run-through of existing features quickly revealed that the program was in desperate need of testing and debugging. You could hardly run it for more than a minute before it crashed. However, in comparison to some other groups which had several rather critical features missing, we were actually in comparatively good shape. After many long nights and sacrificing some other homework assignments (probably not such a good idea in hindsight) our project “UvRay3D” was finally completed. I only have one screenshot of UvRay3D in action online right now, and it’s kind of old (i.e. about 3 weeks old, it looks quite a bit different now).
http://www.ualberta.ca/~nrossol/images/uvray3d_large.jpg
In the hours leading up to the presentation, we did some more quick bug fixes and a few small changes here and there, as well as review our order and plan for the presentation. Although I typically tend to get nervous during presentations and forget stuff, that wasn’t really the case this time. It helped that there were only 12 other people in the room, and that I pretty much knew everyone there really well anyways. Plus, I made a pretty darn good powerpoint which always helps because it draws the audience’s attention away from you. My group memeber Chris, though, didn’t fare as well. I could see him getting nervous and anxious leading up to the presentation, and during the presentation, he was shaking quite visible with an equally shaky voice. I felt sorry for him because any small nervousness I was feeling, it seemed like he was experiencing 10 times as much. Still, after our quick solid presentation we moved onto the live demonstration where (thankfully) the feverish debugging paid off and the program ran as smooth as silk. The demo of UvRay’s features got quite a few impressed looks from the audience and even elicited a “cool!” from the prof about halfway through.
Among the 4 capstone projects from our class, the TA told us during our follow-up demonstration (yesterday) that UvRay was probably the best in the class, and that we might even get a nearly-perfect score on it (despite a few lingering bugs here and there). The other group that I like best was this group that did palm-pilot-poker (i.e. playing poker with bluetooth-enabled palm pilots wirelessly). Only a sliver behind was the “Gigatron” group which had a somewhat confusing time-series analysis tool, but had a good (if a little long) presentation explaining just how it works, and what it’s many uses are (like stock market price prediction). The fourth group didn’t finish and had some wireless inventory management system that didn’t work for the demo. After the presentation, the prof recommended that they see him afterwards to “discuss the situation” O.o
I was kinda surprised by the TAs comments given that the other groups projects did so well during the presentations, but apparently, all the other groups were missing some of their required features, and were especially short on documentation and help files. The TA explained that ours was the “most complete project by far”.
Well, that’s all behind us now. It was pretty cool, and I’d like to see UvRay3D taken to the next level, but it had a good run, and was still pretty cool to make all around.
Anyways, in other news, it was over 2 weeks ago, but I finally got my Iron Ring! For those not in the know, the Iron Ring is some crazy Canadian Engineering ceremonial thing where all students who graduate from an accredited University in the Faculty of Engineering go to the Iron Ring Ceremony where they swear to uphold the highest ideals of engineering and then get an Iron Ring. The ceremony isn’t nearly as secret-society / cult-like as people were making it out to be. Sure it had banging on anvils, kicking seven chains, people dressed in robes, and a swearing of secrecy… oops, ah, wait, disregard what I just said...
The Iron Ring itself isn’t actually made of iron (thankfully) but rather just stainless steal so that it doesn’t rust or anything. It’s an unremarkable ring with a pretty conservative design:
http://www.ensc.sfu.ca/undergrad/euss/enscquire/Vol10No2/page9_1.html
but I suppose it’s the “symbol” that matters. I heard that geophysicists get a gold one (*grumble*grumble*mutter*mutter*)
Other than that, I have one more final exam to go, and then I’m (semi) free for the summer. Perhaps then I’ll be a little more consistent with my LJ posts :P Well, I’d better get back to studying, I’m off!
http://www.ualberta.ca/~nrossol/images/uvray3d_large.jpg
In the hours leading up to the presentation, we did some more quick bug fixes and a few small changes here and there, as well as review our order and plan for the presentation. Although I typically tend to get nervous during presentations and forget stuff, that wasn’t really the case this time. It helped that there were only 12 other people in the room, and that I pretty much knew everyone there really well anyways. Plus, I made a pretty darn good powerpoint which always helps because it draws the audience’s attention away from you. My group memeber Chris, though, didn’t fare as well. I could see him getting nervous and anxious leading up to the presentation, and during the presentation, he was shaking quite visible with an equally shaky voice. I felt sorry for him because any small nervousness I was feeling, it seemed like he was experiencing 10 times as much. Still, after our quick solid presentation we moved onto the live demonstration where (thankfully) the feverish debugging paid off and the program ran as smooth as silk. The demo of UvRay’s features got quite a few impressed looks from the audience and even elicited a “cool!” from the prof about halfway through.
Among the 4 capstone projects from our class, the TA told us during our follow-up demonstration (yesterday) that UvRay was probably the best in the class, and that we might even get a nearly-perfect score on it (despite a few lingering bugs here and there). The other group that I like best was this group that did palm-pilot-poker (i.e. playing poker with bluetooth-enabled palm pilots wirelessly). Only a sliver behind was the “Gigatron” group which had a somewhat confusing time-series analysis tool, but had a good (if a little long) presentation explaining just how it works, and what it’s many uses are (like stock market price prediction). The fourth group didn’t finish and had some wireless inventory management system that didn’t work for the demo. After the presentation, the prof recommended that they see him afterwards to “discuss the situation” O.o
I was kinda surprised by the TAs comments given that the other groups projects did so well during the presentations, but apparently, all the other groups were missing some of their required features, and were especially short on documentation and help files. The TA explained that ours was the “most complete project by far”.
Well, that’s all behind us now. It was pretty cool, and I’d like to see UvRay3D taken to the next level, but it had a good run, and was still pretty cool to make all around.
Anyways, in other news, it was over 2 weeks ago, but I finally got my Iron Ring! For those not in the know, the Iron Ring is some crazy Canadian Engineering ceremonial thing where all students who graduate from an accredited University in the Faculty of Engineering go to the Iron Ring Ceremony where they swear to uphold the highest ideals of engineering and then get an Iron Ring. The ceremony isn’t nearly as secret-society / cult-like as people were making it out to be. Sure it had banging on anvils, kicking seven chains, people dressed in robes, and a swearing of secrecy… oops, ah, wait, disregard what I just said...
The Iron Ring itself isn’t actually made of iron (thankfully) but rather just stainless steal so that it doesn’t rust or anything. It’s an unremarkable ring with a pretty conservative design:
http://www.ensc.sfu.ca/undergrad/euss/enscquire/Vol10No2/page9_1.html
but I suppose it’s the “symbol” that matters. I heard that geophysicists get a gold one (*grumble*grumble*mutter*mutter*)
Other than that, I have one more final exam to go, and then I’m (semi) free for the summer. Perhaps then I’ll be a little more consistent with my LJ posts :P Well, I’d better get back to studying, I’m off!