First is a very brief video showing highlights from a portion of Wave’s development. View the full clips on YouTube.

Web App

The WaveArt.ca web app is the gateway to interaction.

Wave, the day before launch

When tapping on the “Interact” action item after scanning the QR code on-screen, they are taken to a grid of thumbnails representing the grid of cameras waveboard display. These thumbnails resize to fit the user’s device, and add labels if screen real estate permits. When tapping on the thumbnails, a request is sent to the server to “play back” the webcam on the waveboard. Should the webcams change, as they do every few minutes, the thumbnails automatically reload on the device to remain consistant with the waveboard.

When the user scans the QR code on-screen, a waveling ID and color, which is always visible at the top of the device, is assigned. Their session times out after a period of time to reduce conflicts. It is based off WebApp.net, a framework for developing mobile web applications.

Quartz Compositions

A Mac Mini running Quartz Visualizer

On the Wave Mac Pro (Wave-1), the webcams and poetry are rendered using the 8-core processor coupled with two high performance graphics cards. Quartz Composer is a visual development environment that allows complex graphical operations to be created without the need for traditional code. Despite the visual programming environment, Quartz Composer uses the same native graphics libraries in Mac OS X, which is entirely hardware accelerated.

The first composition polls a script on the local machine to generate the webcams, their names, and a word cloud related to the webcam. A MySQL database, stored on an external web server, serves as the central repository and communication between Web App, Quartz Composition, and the Wave Admin interface.

Real-time actions, such as a user tapping on a thumbnail or scanning a QR code, is activated by using the OSC patch in QC. When the user taps on their smartphone, a request is sent to a remote server, which checks the status of Wave-1, then relays the webcam request to Wave-1′s built-in web server. A PHP script on Wave-1 uses an OSC library to send out the message to the QC composition, and “playback” of the webcam is initiated. Despite the numerous “hops” needed to achieve this operation, interaction is very responsive.

Wave Admin

A view of the Wave Admin UI

In order to maintain state and store complex information about the 500+ webcam collection, an external MySQL database manages most of the data associated with the webcam composition. Scripts on Wave-1 poll all webcams worldwide every 20 minutes, downloading and storing their full size images, and generating appropriate thumbnails for the Quartz composition and web app. Each webcam’s status is verified, and cross-checked with their predecessors to ensure that the webcam is not dormant. If the webcam has not been updated in a significant amount of time, it is suspended and not checked for 24 hours to reduce bandwidth and polling time. Suspended cameras are pulled out of circulation so they do not appear on the waveboard.

Wave downloads about 1000 images a day, or about 1 gigabyte of data to keep its information current, and emails the creators when it goes offline or has an error. Wave changes colour throughout the day, and turns off automatically at night to save energy.

All of this information can be managed from the Wave Admin web interface.

Hardware

Wave contributors place the last cover, sealing up Wave

Two 60″ LCD displays are used in Wave, connected to the Mac Pro via HDMI. A Mac Mini powers a third, smaller display, which provides patrons with facts and information about the installation. Finally, a fourth monitor is setup inside for administering Wave both locally and remotely.

A private Wireless LAN is used to join the two Macs and allow administration. If one computer has become disconnected from UWS, the other one can be used to reinitialize its WiFi connection.

Diagrams

Connectivity Diagram of Wave (Click to Enlarge)

Audio Diagram (Click to Enlarge)

• New and improved Bearbook Books (buy and sell!)
• Fall poster campaign (plus over 8000 users!)
• Bearbook featured on UAlberta.ca (twice!)

We’ve recently improved Bearbook Books to allow students to list their textbooks for sale quickly and easily, with any ads being shown directly to students who will be needing them for their courses.

Listing a book for sale on Bearbook Books is quick and easy!

Our Fall poster campaign kicked off today, with about 100 posters being distributed all over campus. We even reused the old ones from last year to save paper! Around the same time, we pushed right past 8000 users on Bearbook!

A few of the 100 Bearbook Posters distributed during the Fall campaign.

As a last bit of news that came as a bit of a surprise, Bearbook is featured twice on the brand new UAlberta.ca website! Bearbook is listed under Student Involvement on the Current Students page, and under Featured on the Keep in Touch page. Thanks to Jennifer Chesney at U of A Web for all the support!

Bearbook featured on the new UAlberta website.

Bearbook listed as Student Inolvement on UAlberta.ca

P.S. Did you notice us in the recent post for Democamp?
P.P.S If you want to spread Bearbook too, download the poster and put them up wherever!

Via Flickr:
Folk artist Elise LeBlanc performs for LTDs (Leaders in Training and Discipleship) on the beach at Gull Lake Centre near Lacombe, AB.

I have been working at Gull Lake Centre for the summer, putting together videos and shooting photos for all the campers who come through the gates. It has been a wonderful opportunity to practice my photography, especially on days like these!

Via Flickr:
The Wave Art & Media Installation was launched on Thursday June 23, 2011 as part of the McLuhan Centenary and the Media Ecology Convention 2011 in Edmonton Alberta.

Wave was unveiled in the atrium of Enterprise Square (old Bay building in Downtown Edmonton, owned by U of A). Several convention attendees and students of the MACT program, along with friends and colleagues attended the launch and tried their hand at being a “waveling.”

Wavelings can connect via their smartphones, tablets, or traditional computers to a special web app, which allows them to explore webcams from all over the world, based on the McLuhan concept, “the global village.”

They can also view their image as a silhouette amongst a series of “renga” poetry written for Wave. This interaction explores McLuhan’s “the medium is the message.”

The Wave will be in Enterprise Square until November 2011, and will be continually updated and developed with software and hardware updates though out its stay. Stay tuned to the @wave_art twitter page for the latest news.

Thanks to Jeremy Keay for shooting the photos.

New Nikon 35mm F1.8 Lens

I contemplated between the new 55mm and the 35mm, since the 55mm certainly has a unique close-up perspective (and from what I understand a slightly better portrait shot) but since I already have a 55mm in manual form, and 35mm seemed a bit more versatile, I opted for it in the end.

Nikon E-series 50mm F1.8 (film, full manual) Tokina 80-200mm F4.5 (film, full manual) Nikon 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 (kit, full auto)

Most of my comparisons will be to the kit lens my D40 came with, the 18-55mm stock zoom that is pretty much the cheapest lens Nikon sells. My first impressions are that this thing produces very sharp pictures. Perhaps I just haven’t picked up my DSLR in a while, perhaps I just haven’t been using RAW often enough, but these look pretty sharp to me. Thanks to the F1.8 aperture size, plenty of light can enter the camera in low light, which makes it easier to capture a shot without dropping shutter speed to blurry-inducing levels, or increasing the ISO on the rather limited sensor of the D40.

To compare, check out the two shots below, first with the 18-55mm at about 35mm at F4.6 (largest allowed at this zoom point) and 1/200 shutter speed. The next is the same image shot wide open (F1.8) with the 35mm prime. Both were shot at ISO 800 on the D40.

Shot with 18-55 Kit lens (F4.5 1/200 800)

Shot with 35mm prime lens (F1.8 1/200 800)

My goal was to be able to shoot in lower light without being forced into high ISO ranges, so this should help out quite a bit.

Check out more shots of the day on the Flickr set.

It has been a while since I went out and took some pictures. I suppose winter was a bit of an inhibitor. I actually lent my SP-320 to my sister for a trip, so these shots (and any others in the next few weeks) are with my little F440 ultra compact, and considering the limited control, I thought they turned out extremely well. It IS good to go back to basics sometimes.

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