Its been a while since my last photo update showing the progress of the New Build at the Garthdee campus of Robert Gordon University. As you can see the main entrance and plaza is almost complete, and the final stages of tidying things up are well underway at the south side of the library tower.
Today I gave a workshop on Codea Programming for the iPad at the Further and Higher Education Advisors Conference 2013 that was held today at the Garthdee Campus of RGU. The following photos should give some sense of the room setup just prior to the workshop commencing. As you will see from the first few images, I just had to put an array of iPad’s together to see what they were like.
Yesterdays post contained some photographs taken from the roof of the Round Tower at the Garthdee Campus of Robert Gordon University. This post as the title says includes a number of timelapse videos taken around 06:30 in the morning just as the sun was rising.
A few images of the Round Tower may also be seen below, giving some idea of the location from where the videos were recorded & yesterdays photos were taken.
Some photographs taken from the roof level of the Round Tower Accommodation block at the Garthdee Campus of Robert Gordon University taken around 06:30 in the morning. This early morning photographic session was organised due in part to a module I have concerning graphics with 1st year computing students. Ah – the things one does to readily promote active student engagement. Suffice to say that it was a really cold spot to be taking pictures at that time of the morning, it certainly must have been around zero degrees. You can expect to see some timelapse video in the next post, so check back again soon. The photographs are taken looking both to the east and west. The images looking east take in the new Library Tower that is expected to be operational by the end of May, the Faculty of Health & Social Care, RGU:Sport and the Aberdeen Business School in the foreground. Towards the end of the post, looking west, you will see some mountains far off in the distance, seeing these images immediately makes me think of Middle Earth, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
In the previous semester I had a group of students for a module on Audio & Video Production. In the past days a new YouTube Channel was created and a selection of videos were uploaded. A week or so prior to this I had organised a screening of the videos at a Cinema located just a few minutes away from where we’re based. It was really great to spend some time in the projection room and see both a film and digital projection system.
The videos below should give you a sense of what the students produced, I hope you enjoy them. Have written another blog post giving a little more info on this.
The previous post showed the evolution of the New Build since October 2011. The last photo update was on the 15th Jan when we were in the depths of winter and the landscape covered in snow. Almost two months on and the weather though still cool is getting milder and the days longer.
Quite a number of noticeable changes standout since the 15th Jan post. Firstly foundations have been laid for an exterior wall running the length of the site parallel to Garthdee Road. A set of what looks like chimneys has been added to the roof. Quite a good amount of progress can be seen with regard to the plaza area directly in-front of the main entrance to the build. The lower sections of the library tower have now been fully clad making a huge difference to the overall appearance, very much transforming it from a building site into a building nearing completion. You will also notice the formation of some steps heading down to the river, allowing one to link up with the riverside walk heading east / west. Will certainly be lovely especially when the weather is good to readily be able to get down to the rivers edge for a stroll along the bank. Those who enjoy photography may like the last few images at the bottom of the post playing with reflections at the main entrance to the campus. To view any of the images below at a larger size then one can directly access the Picasa Album.
This evening I attended a lecture held in Cowdary Hall at the Aberdeen Art Gallery titled Regenerating Aberdeen: A Vision for a Thriving and Vibrant City Centre. It was great to see the hall more or less entirely full to capacity. The event was chaired by the Principal of Robert Gordon University Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski. The panel of four speakers included a number of those who were involved in developing the report including Professor Richard Laing and Dr. David McClean. The photographs below should give you some sense of the event and the very much appropriate location.
The discussion paper centred around three distinct principles: 1. Connectivity, 2.Multiplicity of use and finally 3. Adaptability and coherence. The presentation was punctuated with a number of photographs throughout showing elements from cities around Europe. Copenhagen for example featured a few times, I had visited in 2005 myself and was amazed at just how easy it was for cyclists to get around. It was very much a city where the cyclist had the right of way, and I could see myself interested in using this form of transport given the priority given to cyclists. In most other cities I wouldn’t even consider it for a nanosecond as a viable option.
The paper also proposed ten priority action points ranging from creating links between Union Street and the Harbour to Restoring city squares such as Golden Square, Bon-Accord and the Castlegate.
One thing I found perhaps surprising was a limited mention of Aberdeens 2017 bid for European Capital of Culture. According to the news of 20th Feb Aberdeens team of five was appointed. Just a few days later on the 28th Feb the bid was lodged. Today it was announced that Aberdeen and Dundee would be the two candidates from Scotland. I have been to a number of cities that have held the title of Capital of Culture in recent years and each one was a joy to behold for visitors / pedestrians. The following are some of my own thoughts and comments for how life could be breathed into the city bearing in mind the ever approaching 2017 deadline.
One city I visited was Sibiu, which held the title in 2007. It was the summer of 2006 however when I visited and was really amazed by the sheer number of people throughout the city that were doing work to the squares and buildings. The best way of describing it was a veritable army at work. Never a time before or since have I seen so much work being carried out at such a rapid rate. The evening that I arrive in Sibiu I was treated to an outdoor concert in one of the squares. You will note from the images below the use of an easy to erect staging area and the myriad of market stalls selling all kinds of food and drink. The atmosphere was really quite amazing, especially with the concert ending with a fireworks display. Another interesting feature was the use of projections on the walls of the buildings surrounding the square (Piata Mare (Grand Square)).
With the demolition process of the Old City Council building just commenced, the transformation of this area into a civic square could be of tremendous benefit to the city, allowing functions such as that seen in the photographs above of the concert in Sibiu to be held. Further just like in Sibiu the surrounding buildings could become a platform for projected imagery, in particular Marischal College. Also the opening up of this area would bring a new lease of live to Provost Skene’s House. Those who like photography would also benefit from being able to photograph Marischal College directly face on and take in the entire facade, rather than all the photographs you currently see taken in a side on manner. It was mentioned that the arrival of the Olympic Torch was a great event for Aberdeen, and brought out the crowds by the thousands. Perhaps a plaza in-front of Marischal College could be a good venue for such future gatherings!
With a square in place capable of hosting a reasonably good sized crowd one could look at linking it with the other open areas of the city, perhaps by forming a thoroughfare or link via Neitherkirkgate through to the Kirk of St Nicholas on to Little Belmont Street and eventually linking up with Union Terrace Gardens. One one then have a haven of substantial area right within the heart of the city centre. Planting of course could help take toxins out of the air and create a set of lungs for the city centre.
What is a city of Culture without a viewing platform allowing one to readily get a feel for the cityscape. Plans for a 40-meter big wheel at Aberdeen’s Castlegate were dropped back in 2009. Perhaps the “new plaza” in-front of Marshall College could be a potential place, allowing for some spectacular views of the second largest granite building in the world to be captured. Would also make for a wonderful high rise platform to gather photographs of various events and concerts that could potentially he held in the square.
Some of the following images should give a sense of what Sibiu was like in the summer prior to becoming the Capital of Culture. Its interesting to see the work being done to the square, the planting and the revamping of all the facades of the surrounding buildings. Clearly this is a city well underway in preparing itself for the year ahead.
It may have also been interesting to hear about how the Expansion of Aberdeen Harbour into Nigg Bay would effect the city. What would be the effect on traffic, how could the city take advantage of the additional cruise ship visitors. Another interesting element to factor into the equation is the Western peripheral Route and the new Business Park and Hotels being developed in Dyce.
The hosting of a very active programme of summer festivals in the lead-up to 2017 could also bring out the crowds. Some film festivals as well could perhaps help enhance the cultural aspects of the city. Earlier today I hosted the what I believe to be the first collaboration between RGU and the Belmont Cinema, by organising a screening of the videos some of the 4th year computing students produced for one of the modules I was teaching in the previous semester, focused on Audio and Video Production. Perhaps more collaborations such as this can enhance cultural elements !
In Ireland both Cork (2005) and Dublin (1991) have held the title. Cork like Sibiu in the pictures above undertook a tremendous renovation project to the main street and surrounds in the years leading up to 2005. The amount of traffic going down the main street has been greatly reduced and a great deal of pedestrianization established. To say the city saw an immense transformation would be an understatement. The city of Linz held the title in 2009, in the lead-up its electronic arts museum moved to a much larger space and is a fantastic attraction for the city. The city also features a wonderful pedestrianized area, tram system, and a spectacular view overlooking the entire city and a really interesting modern art museum.
The city of Aberdeen has many other attractions that should be fully exploited such as the potential heritage centre at Rubislaw Quarry or the renovation taking place at Duthie Park. Speaking of Duthie park, right next door to the east lies the home of Aberdeen Model Railway Club. Expansion of the park to the east to take in the Railway Club area would be of tremendious touristic value. Along with a number of carrages that are being restored is one of the last remaining turntables in Scotland (see here for further images of Ferryhill). The new build at Riverside East, Garthdee Campus is also a great asset to the city along with the new Library at Aberdeen University. These buildings again can provide the photo enthusiast with some great views of the city.
One may find the following paper “European Capitals of Culture as Incentives for Construction of European Identity?” to be of interest. It identifies all the previous cities since 1985 and up to 2015 that have or will hold the title of European Captial of Culture (see page 5).
I could of course go on with further ideas and suggestions, but its getting late in the evening now and will be demonstarating the setup and use of the Libec Swift Jib to students early in the morning. Thanks to all those who presented and the interesting Q&A session afterwards.
Some members of the Computer Society and a few others gathered together for few games of Minecraft recently. The video below give some idea of what went on. More info on the RGU CompSoc wordpress site.
The following photographs give a sense of the evolution of the New Build at the Garthdee campus of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen over the course of about sixteen months. Additional detail may be seen by following the hyper-linked dates of when the photographs were taken. Beginning in October 2011 one can see the initial stages of the main building and library starting to emerge from their foundations and evolve over time to a fully clad and glazed structure. If you take a look at the photoset from the 15th August you will see some interior images. The most recent set located towards the very bottom of this post were taken on the 15th January 2013, you may like to compare these to a set taken one year before on the 14th January 2012 to see the progress made over the course of a year. Its expected that the building will start being occupied from July of this year.
Additional information about the project may be seen at http://www4.rgu.ac.uk/campusdev/masterplan. The embedded video below (from the RobertGordonUni YouTube Channel) provides a fly-through of the build and should give a good sense of what the completed project should look like, both inside and out.
The following are a few scenes from around the campus of Robert Gordon University taken around sunrise. If you look closely you just may spot a baby deer peeking out from behind a tree in one of the images.
It has been quite a while since the last photo update – 30th Sept 2012. Snow has been on the ground here in Aberdeen the past two days, as such it add an additional element to the images below, and thereby differing greatly from all previous posts on this topic. Most of the work being carried out over the past few months has been internal. One quite apparent difference from the previous posting may be seen on the roof of the library tower, these vertical elements were added in October. The addition of a dark cladding to the exterior walls of the services area is also a new feature. One will also notice the removal of the wall just outside the entrance way to the FOHS building.
The Computer Society – RGU CompSoc has held a number of events during the semester so far. The start of the year brought about a new name for the society along with a new logo. The wordpress and twitter feeds were updated to reflect this. In addition a facebook page was setup too to run in conjunction with the previously established flickr and youtube channels.
The following post on the compsoc wordpress site provides a summary of the events from each meeting.
Wednesday 14th Nov 2012 a dozen students from Oldmachar Academy spent the day at School of Computing Science and Digital Media. We kept them busy for quite a few hours with a series of talks covering everything and anything from Digital Media to the Raspberry Pi and what it’s like to do a 1 years work placement. One can find out further detail about this by visiting the following blog post.
The second of our two Open Day’s at the School of Computing Science and Digital Media took place today (Saturday 3rd Nov 2012). The visitors to the School arrived for 10:00 in the morning at one of our computer labs, following on from this they were presented with a short series of talks introducing them to the school. After the talks they had the chance to look around at some of the demos we had running including a remotely operated camera jib system, a setup for product photography, motion tracking with the kinect, motion capture with a 12 camera optitrack system and an eye tracking system. The day concluded with a set of workshops focused on iPhone Programming and Human Computation.
In the lead-up to the open day I had spent Thursday afternoon setting up a 40″ TV that had just arrived in conjunction with the Libec Swift Jib 50 and REMO30. Friday morning was spent organising the demo rooms and reconfiguring the Jib. Neither the product photography setup with a 4ft lastolite cubelite or the optitrak motion capture system are to be seen in the videos from today. The afternoon was spent re-calibrating the OptiTrack MoCap system and getting various cameras and other bits and pieces sorted out. Between the preparations and editing the videos below I have spent two entire days getting things up and running, some results of which may be seen in the videos below, enjoy.
You will probably note that Nemo features quite heavily in the videos below, I had seen this in a Disney shop the previous weekend and thought it would look good in the office. Nemo is a really nice example of computer graphics and animation, hence quite a suitable decoration for the office.
The video below was recorded during our open day four weeks ago and includes several other scenes that weren’t included in the videos from today (see above).
Is RGU CompSoc a Computer Society or a Hillwalking Club? That’s a question we ask ourselves every time we venture into the wilds of Scotland for a bit of adventure. This time we headed about 60km west of Aberdeen to Loch Muick, just a few miles south west of Ballater. As you can see it was quite an overcast and damp day but everybody really had a great time. In all about twenty students and academics joined in the fun, some took the easy option of just quickly going around the track that located just meters from the loch itself. The other dozen as you can see from this video decided to take a slightly more adventurous up into the cloud covered hills.
I kept on thinking that our journey through the misty and cloud covered hills around the loch were a bit like the journey of the “Fellowship of the Ring” trying to cross the misty mountains. In one scene from our adventures you can probably think of a very similar scene from the Fellowship of the Ring where the Hobbits, Humans,Dwarf, Elf & Wizard make their way in single file across the ridge of a mountain shortly after commencing their quest from the elven outpost of Rivendell. In our case we are in single file, but one of the main differences is that you can just barely see us given the cloud cover. As we all know the depiction of Middle-Earth was recorded in New Zealand, given its wondrous landscapes, I do wonder however that it could also have been shot in Scotland.
One of the students on the hillwalking adventure tracked our route via gps, you can see the route below, as you can see we travelled 17.2km in a time of 5h 10mins.
The following video will give you some small sense of what it was like today during our Open Day at the School of Computing Science and Digital Media, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. It was held from about ten o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon. After a half-hour registration period, visitors were treated to a welcome talk and a short series of lectures. Following on from this a number of hour long workshops were held on such topics as iPhone programming, cryptography and wireless networks. Their was also time to have a chat with Academics and see some of the demonstrations we had running throughout the day, most of which may be seen in this video. As you can see in some segments we were piping a video feed of the demonstrations happening in other rooms into one of our PC labs and projecting them for all to see.
Demonstrations included the use of an Eye Tracker to identify the area on screen a person was focusing on. A full body Motion Capture System comprising of a twelve camera Flex 13 system from Optitrack was also available to see in action. In concert with this we also had a motion tracking demo running on a Microsoft Kinect for windows, though the students who were doing the video recording didn’t get any footage of this. Also demonstrated was the Microsoft Surface (Samsung SUR40) which supports up to 52 points of interaction concurrently. If you watch all the video you may see that we certainly came close to this maximum value. All in all everybody seemed to enjoy the day visitors, staff and student helpers alike. Our next open day will be in a months time, at which point we hope to have a far larger and wider set of demonstrations to show the visitors to the school. See my YouTube Channel for further videos of some of the equipment seen here in this video.
Chris Young another member of staff at the School also grabbed hold of a camera and quickly recorded some of footage from of the Motion Capture System in operation. For more videos from Chris take a look at his Vimeo Channel.
Motion Capture System from Chris Young on Vimeo.
Time-lapse video showing the sunrise at the main entrance to Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. This video was recorded at seven in the morning on the 1st October 2012. As the sun rises you can see some nice reflections of the clouds in the library tower. The Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS) Building reflects the light of the rising sun just below roof level. The recently constructed main entrance is also illuminated by the rising sun and towards the end of the video one can see the lettering of the universities name being projected onto the road.
As you can see the exterior work to the library tower is almost complete apart from boxing in the facilities at roof level. Given that the University is hosting an Open Day on Wednesday 3rd Oct 2012 I thought it appropriate to create these videos to help give some sense of what the campus is like, especially as all those in the city centre will be moving to the Garthdee campus during the summer of 2013 in time for the kickoff of the 2013-14 academic year.
During the summer period at sun rise one could see some really nice interactions with the glass of the library tower due to the transmissive light from the sun cutting across the atmosphere, perhaps another time-lapse in about ten months time is called for when all the work has been completed and the sun is in a more northerly position at dawn. For further detail on the progress of the new build you can see my previous post from the 30th Sept.
It has been a number of weeks since my previous post focused on the interior of the New Build. The first week of classes has concluded and during that time some students inquired as to when the next photo update would be. Given that it’s the last day of September, it seems only fitting to finish off the first week of the semester with an update. One can see that the main entrance wall is in place and the Universities names features prominently. This has been in place for just a few weeks now. The glass surround at roof level of the library tower has also been in place a few weeks. Glass has been installed at the main entrance into the building, hence it’s getting very close to being fully watertight. Student services has been moved into level 3 of the FOHS Building, so its a one stop shop for all student queries. The other major point of note is that since the start of this week the number 1 bus now goes through campus, entering at the main entrance and exiting by ABS. Additional traffic lights have been set in place on Garthdee road to accommodate this.
Back in June funding was made available by the University for the purposes of capital asset acquisition. The School of Computing put in a number of bids for equipment ranging from Eye Tracking and Networking to Video Production and Motion Capture. Two years ago when a similar opportunity came around, I suggested the idea of acquiring a Motion Capture System. It really boils down to a question of cost benefit analysis. At that particular time any reasonable system would have been very expensive, so we ended up purchasing a Render Farm instead as we had quite a few students doing work in 3DS Max and the extra horsepower to quickly render out thousands and thousands of frames of animation seemed like a far more useful resource to have. I spent quite a bit of time during the summer of that year looking over render farm specs along with our Computer Systems Manager, we eventually settled on a 64 Core system. At that very same time as well, we also purchased a fairly high end 3CCD video camera, about 6500 watts of lighting for the Green Screen Room, and a few other bits and pieces.
With this year’s funding we finally decided to take the plunge and get a Motion Capture System. Quite a bit of work has been done in the past two years regarding 3D modelling and animation. So a motion capture system would greatly add to this, providing us with the ability to readily animate the 3D characters produced by our students.
The time frame for putting the documentation together for the funding bid was quite tight so it transpired that I ended up putting the material together for the Video Production and Motion Capture System whilst I was out-with the country on holidays. Towards the end of August the proposals were signed off and approved, so I spent a fair bit of time putting together a finalised shopping list that should provide the school with some really interesting equipment to work with. Throughout most of the month of September various suppliers were found and the various items put in for purchase, with the last item (a piece of equipment for camera stabilisation) being finally sorted out just a few days ago. Colin our Computer Systems Manager tracked down a company selling the Flex 13 Camera system. It came on the market around April 2012, and has some interesting specs such as 1280 x 1024 resolution running at 120fps. After quite a few emails it was finally decided to go with a 12 Camera system with a Medium & Large MoCap Suit.
On Wednesday 26th Sept the Motion Capture System finally arrived, so I spent the afternoon going through all the parts and checking all was ok. On Thursday evening Eyad (a fellow lecturer) and myself went about setting up the system in our Green Screen Room. We got all the stands setup, cameras mounted, and all the cabling in place. Then we set about installing all the necessary software on one of two new Z400 workstations that we had purchased just a few months previously. The software installation was quite straight forward, but we ran into a problem with the registration of the software license. The error was that it couldn’t find a network. It was around 21:00 in the evening so we decided to leave it for the day and get it sorted out when the Systems team were in the next day.
Friday morning I called in to see Colin and Tommy to see if the software license issue could be sorted out. We first of all began by transplanting the workstation from C5 into the Green Screen Room, it was then necessary to enable some of the network ports in the room so we could get the machine up and running on the computer network. All went well and within a short while we were able to try getting the license sorted out. So with the Motion Capture system now powered up and connected to the Workstation and network connectivity established we tried entering all the license details, but ended up getting the very same error as encountered by Eyad and myself the night before. We were finally able to register online through a web browser and received the license key via email. Within minutes of saving the license key to disk, the Arena Motion Capture Application was fired up, and the video feed from all the cameras started streaming in. So with the full system now operational we left it at that for the time being.
Yesterday (Saturday) Eyad and myself spent the afternoon at Uni aligning up the cameras correctly, calibrating the system, donning the motion capture suit and carrying out the first test of the system. Calibration consisted of Wanding the area to establish the capture volume, followed by the establishment of the ground plane and then the final phase of Skeleton Calibration i.e. getting the system operational for a specific individual. At the time we left the building (just before closing), we had managed to capture a bit of movement, I tried out the standard Calibration T-Pose followed by some golf swings (even though I don’t play golf).
As of now, the system is working well, though it will be necessary to go through the final Skeleton Calibration for myself, before it is finally configured correctly to accept motion data generated by my movements. It will be great to complete this final stage and see what the system can really do. All in all Eyad and myself have spent in excess of 20 man-hours (excluding the time spent going through documentation / tutorials) getting the system to its current operational state. Overall it was quite simple and straightforward to setup, just needing some time and patience. A large portion of the video production / graphics equipment on order is still in the process of being delivered, so hopefully it will all be in place within the next week or so. Sounds like an exciting semester ahead between now and Christmas.
The following videos above and below should provide an overview of some of the steps involved in the process. Quite a few more can be accessed from the following playlist showing most of the steps involved. Enjoy.
As the title says, the Linkedin alumni group has reached 303 members. My previous post on this dated 6th February 2012 highlighted it reaching the 200 member mark.
So why the wait until the number reached 303 and no mention of it reaching 300. The number 303 is referenced in the Matrix on a number of occasions. The film begins with Trinity being confronted in Room 303 whilst conducting her search for Neo. While trying to get away from the Agents, Neo is directed to Room 303, and finally Neo escapes from the Matrix via a phone in Room 303. In Room 303 is also the title of a film from 1947. According to the following site, George Lucas stayed in Room 303 at Troy Hall while studying at USC.
If you are a graduate of the School of Computing (now known as the School of Computing Science and Digital Media (since 1st August 2012)) at Robert Gordon University they you can join the group by following this link. Before joining it is well worth while to take a look at a few other profiles to get a sense for what they are like. You should clearly outline your link to the School – what degree you did, subjects of interest, extracurricular activities etc. You may also want to do some searching around and establish at least a few connections, before your request to join will be approved. The following post by http://cbeagrie.wordpress.com can be a useful starting place for some ideas regarding the content you may wish to include in your profile.
Nine people visited the site of the New Build at Garthdee this morning, of the nine four were from Computing. We went on a quick tour around the site, unfortunately due to work being carried out we were unable to get up onto the roof of the library tower, however we did manage to climb our way all the way up to the level below the roof. As you can see from some of the photographs looking at the FOHS building it was a very foggy day hence the views from the roof of the library tower would have been very limited. The vast majority of the photographs below are of the main open spaces. One can see an image from level seven of the library tower midway through the set (the large “07″ in the image before should prime you for same). The final pair of images show the construction of the floors which are made up of metal panels elevated up about 12 to 14 inches and one of the computer labs. To view the images in greater detail one can access the following photo album. To see how the building has evolved over the pasts months one can examine the following link.
The following set of photographs are focused on the south face of the build. As you can see the glazing to the library tower has been completed, with just the utility space on the roof to be clad. The final four panels to the north side of the tower were installed today (13/08/2012) thereby completing the process of glazing the primary structure of the library tower.
As you will see from the photographs below the glazing of the library tower is now nearing completion. A little over two weeks ago the glazing process was around the half way point. All going well it should be completed in the not too distant future and once fully weather proof the focus can shift to the internal fitting out. In just 12 months time staff should be settling in to the new build in preparation for the forthcoming 2013 Academic year.
Short video showing the interplay of Hard and Soft Light as the clouds pass overhead at the New Build Robert Gordon University, Garthdee, Aberdeen, Scotland. The footage was recorded over a period of about 12 minutes or so and sped up using time remapping by around 400%. This footage was recorded around half six in the morning.
