Monthly Archives: June 2007

A physics teacher begs for his subject back

It’s no secret that I believe that primary and secondary education in this country is basically abysmal, with minor pockets of competency and occasional bright flashes. We do a terrible job of educating children, particularly in mathematics and science. In my bleaker, more skeptical moments, I believe that primary and secondary schools may in fact do more to damage children than to educate them.

I’m now forty three years old, and I must admit: I have a fairly eclectic set of interests. But underlying most of my interests is a desire to actually know what’s really going on. Take for example hybrid cars. I bought my SUV back in 1998, when I was hauling more people around, and when gas was $1.20 a gallon or so. My car is beginning to show its age, and I’m thinking of replacing it. So, I ask myself, what would be the best environmental choice to replace it? The car I bought for my son is a Civic which gets 30 or so MPG. A Prius might net me 45MPG or so. My Expedition gets 15. So, what is my best, most reasonable choice?

It’s a difficult question to answer, but a quantifiable one, if one is willing to dig and think. Maybe I won’t even come up with the right answer, but the answer will at least be rational: I will have more than just my kneejerk reaction to justify it. Sadly, most people don’t ask these kinds of questions. In fact, most people don’t even understand how you might go about asking these questions.

Well, that’s a garbled, rambling introduction, but I’ll pass you off to an open letter by Wellington Grey. Apparently the UK Department of Education has revised science standards, and not for the better. Grey is a physicist, but the new standards cover biology and chemistry as well. His basic complaint is that in an effort to make students understand how science works, they have abstracted away everything that actually shows you how science works.

An open letter to the AQA board and the UK Department for Education

There is an educational philosophy which is popular in this country that says that it is important for students to have positive learning experiences. This doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but it has become one. Let’s face it, for most people, becoming educated is hard, and hard things are often not the positive experience that you might think they are, at least not every day, and not all at once. In an effort to “remain positive”, standards have been set ridiculously low. It is a mockery of education.

Education is neither hard, nor easy. It is simply necessary. If it comes easy for a child, they are fortunate, and should be challenged even more. If it is hard, we should not abandon them, but should redouble our efforts to teach them. But in both cases, the goal is to educate, not to pander. The positive outcome for all students is that they should feel confident that they have obtained a reasonable education: one that allows them to understand the world around them.

Oh well, there’s my rant of the day.

Technorati Tags:

More Panorama Noodling…

Okay, since I went to the trouble of actually doing a bit of panorama stitching on Linux, I thought I’d go ahead and make a 360 degree panorama (not a spherical one, I didn’t have the patience). So, as I walked out the door at Pixar Animation Studios, I snapped fourteen handheld images using my little Panasonic, and then stitched ’em into this panorama:

Not too bad! The exposures aren’t held very closely (no way to exposure lock on the DMC-TZ1) but the overall quality of the stitch is quite good.

(If you don’t have java installed, you can at least click here to see the full panorama data)

Technorati Tags:

San Francisco From Angel Island

Yesterday, we had our group wrap-up-party excursion. We settled on a leisurely bikeride around Angel Island, accompanied by barbecued ribs and chicken. It was a stupendously nice day, warm, but not hot, and while I was feeling a bit under the weather during the first bit, I had a lot of fun. I snapped some pictures with my little Panasonic, including 7 shots that spanned the view of the San Francisco from Bay Bridge to Golden Gate. Today, under less than entirely optimal conditions, I used the programs autopano-sift, hugin and emblend to produce the following panorama:

I could probably do a bit better in keeping the horizon from curving, but overall, I’m quite pleased.

Addendum: converted to black and white, and converted to black and white.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Meraki

One of the mailing lists I was on suggested that the best way to provide network access to a neighborhood was to use a mesh architecture based upon the Meraki nodes. I seemed to have vaguely recalled seeing them before, so I went to peek. They look really interesting, and quite competitive pricewise ($99 for an outdoor node, $49 for an indoor one). I haven’t used ’em, but they look really cool. If you have the need, check ’em out.

Meraki

Ratatouille Wrap Party Highlights

Well, we wrapped up Ratatouille production (well, almost) with a wrap party on Saturday at the Masonic auditorium in San Francisco. Carmen had a lovely dress (REALLY lovely), I had a tux, and we had a screening followed by eating, drinking and dancing. I’ll try to get some pictures up sometime, but off the top of my head, here are some highlights:

  1. The Pixar singers did a lovely job again performing a piece composed and conducted by Brian Rosen. These bits get better every year.
  2. There were some nice speeches by the big three: Catmull, Jobs and Lasseter. Producer Brad Lewis was his usual erudite self in thanking those associated with the production, and Brad Bird was his usual, self-effacing self, seeming almost shy as he introduced the picture.
  3. A terrific little featurette about how motion capture was used in Ratatouille. I hope and pray this makes it on the DVD.
  4. The screening began with the Gary Rydstrom directed short Lifted, and the trailer for the upcoming feature Wall E (not sure if I’m typing that right). You should be seeing both soon.
  5. The screening itself, from the front balcony with some of my peeps in Rendering. Yaz, Don, Kate, Kim, Paul, Domenic, Matt, Jay (we missed you, man), Pam, Eric, Sandy: you’re all the best. Susan and Julian: saw you as I walked in, but didn’t find you again. Looking forward to working with you on Wall E.
  6. Tom’s fancy sneakers: glimpsed only from afar, I didn’t run into you either, and I obviously missed out.
  7. Snacks, libations and dancing: yes, Carmen got me to dance for a bit.
  8. A short walk back to the Mark Hopkins. The bed? Oh, so very soft.
  9. Bumping into a tired looking Brad Bird in the lobby the next morning. Initially, he just walked by as I said hi, but then stopped, tapped me on the shoulder, and shook my hand and thanked me. Brad: you’re the best. I’m just a geek with degrees in computer science, but when i watch you work in reviews, it’s obvious that I am in the presence of greatness. It’s always a pleasure.
  10. Brunch at the Top of the Mark. Best, breakfast, buffet, ever.

It is kind of tough when you work in rendering: you see every single shot in the film at least a half a dozen times, and have worked on lots of them. You’ve seen the gags, you’ve watched it all play out dozens of times, and yet, when you see it for the first time all cut together with sound and music, you know that it’s good, but you can’t really see it with the same eyes that the public will see it with. Still, I bumped into a number of people who hadn’t seen it, and they all seemed to really like it. I hope that come June 29th, some of you will go out and see it too, and enjoy it as much as I did in playing my very small part in bringing it to you.

Technorati Tags: ,

Well, if that didn’t entice you into wanting to go see it, check out Brad in this clip from YouTube: