Bolivia Photo Night

The group that traveled to Bolivia in May met on Sunday to have a photo night. Everyone was able to attend, and even some who did not go on the trip showed up. Each person was asked to show their favourite 20 pictures they took. For the most part, people used their own photos, but there was some poaching of those classic shots. Even though some of the pictures were the same, often the stories behind the pictures were different. Below are a few of the group favorites:

Wilma strategically arranged more than one photo on a power point slide calling it one picture. Sneaky, but technically correct. Lyle, on the other hand, blatantly disregarded the rules and just went quickly through his top 65. One the other side, Neil and Alicia only showed 20 pictures between them. I guess this is the true sign that they are a team. They also brought some beautiful prints for us to look at between presentations. It is obvious the difference a good camera and operator make! Many of the pictures chosen were not great quality, but it has been my experience that the picture is really a symbol or a reminder for a memory.

OK, enough of the polite stuff. The real reason for the evening was to eat and have fun. This was a big theme on the trip too--eat and have a laugh. We had a dessert potluck with the pictures. That meant that every time we had a break to load another set of pictures, we got to sample another dessert! I managed to trade my 20th picture for a pair of socks (ask Corinne to add a comment to this blog to explain), and I got to roast Lyle! Poor Lyle seemed to have a series of bad...sorry, make that 'unique'--pictures taken of him. As I was going through the combined set, I kept coming across pictures of Lyle that were dying for a witty caption. I packaged the pictures up in a little video and added captions (notice I didn’t say "witty"). Please click on this link to view. I thank Lyle for laughing almost as loudly as I was. But don’t think I don’t know that he will get even with me! Thanks for a great trip. Who is coming with me next May?

Paintball

I hosted a trip to the local paintball range last weekend--my first attempt at paintballing. Four teenagers and the old guy headed out to the site on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I wore big, baggy sweat pants and a baggy long-sleeved shirt because I suspected that being hit by a paintball would hurt and that the more padding I had the better off I would be. My extra clothing proved unnecessary and extremely hot, but more about that later. What I didn’t wear was a hat compatible with the mandatory face shields, so my balding head took more sun than it has seen in a long time!

There was talk about how they were going to destroy the old man, gang up on me and take me down. One of my favorite sayings is “Confidence is the feeling you have before you fully understand the situation”. I truly don’t know if I made this up or heard it somewhere, but Google can’t attribute it to anyone, so I will claim it for my own. I have found it to be true far too often in my life! I had a great time, as did the kids with me.

It turns out that I still don’t know what it feels like to be hit by a paint ball, after a 1000 rounds, none of them hit me! This leads to my second favorite saying “It is far better to be lucky, than good!” I did manage to inflict quit a bit of pain on them however with a number of hits leaving manly welts to show off during the post war BBQ.

Paintball is not what I want to tell you about, although I had a great time, what I learned is that I would be no good in war. Why, you ask? I did very well at the game; I happily, and without guilt, shot the enemy and I strategized to avoid getting shot in the process. Sounds like a good candidate for war to me. It turns out I am just too cheap! I found myself saying things like “why are you shooting, you don’t even have a target” or “aim before you shoot”. I also spent a great deal of time picking up paintballs that had been shot at me, but missed and fell on the grass. I wondered if, perhaps, this was a deep, dark side of me that liked the irony of killing my enemy with their own bullet, but I think it was just the Scotchman in me saying “look, 8 cent, just lying there to be picked up”.

I envision myself in Vietnam (yes, I know this dates me) walking through the jungle going “look, another unexploded hand grenade” or digging out unexploded bombs for reuse, bent fins and all. Can you imagine how irritating it would be to have someone in your platoon forever yelling at you for wasting bullets ever time you fired blindly into the jungle! Economizing does not seem to show up near the top of the list of traits when describing a good soldier. There are times, like trying to save your life, when you should not have to worry about adding up the dollar value of the bullets you just fired. I suspect that if I found myself in a war, I might just “cheap” myself right into and early grave, so I will stick to paintball, were losing means the game, not my life. Thanks to the boys for trying to take me out, better luck next time!

Destination Desktop 2009

The 10th anniversary of Destination Desktop happened at Olds College last week in conjunction with the 25^th anniversary of Autodraft. (It disturbs me somewhat that I can remember when AutoCAD was released, and I wasn’t a kid!) The event went very smoothly from my perspective, and it was due to many hours of hard work from many people. Kelly and his team started to organize right after last year’s DD; Claire and her husband were wonderful hosts; and between Autodraft IT and Olds College IT, the labs ran very smoothly! My job was to put out fires, so I had it pretty easy this year. Thanks!

I always look forward to the evening design-and-build event. Last year, Murray and I organized it. Without going into details that may get me fired, it involved flames, smoke, high speed, breaking things and blowing out tiki torches. The event went off without incident. This year Kelly toned things down a little and opted for an event involving soft tennis balls and bungee cord. It turns out that a tennis ball traveling at high speed can do a fair bit of damage. A good time was had by all—even the injured. Thanks Kelly!

I always enjoy the corporate goody bag you receive at most conventions. I remember from many years ago a mint tin with a pop lid. I don’t know how else to describe it: you pop the top of the lid in, and the tabs release around the edges. To close it, you squeeze the edges and the top pops back up. Very cool for my twisted mind, and I continued to pop the lid long after the mints were gone. I got another one this year!

Better than that, though, was the coolest little flashlight I’ve ever seen. It is hand cranked and LED powered. When I saw it in the swag bag, my very first thought was, “that would be perfect for finding your way to the outhouse and checking for elephants.” This might seem like an odd thought as few of us have an outhouse or need to worry about elephants in the backyard, however I have many friends who do need to worry about such things. This would be the perfect little light to show them the value of LED lighting while also being very portable and very inexpensive. I think of it as a technology lost leader: get them hooked on the idea first, then they can sell a sheep to get larger, better quality lighting. I approached Claire Botkin, the owner of Autodraft, to find out where she got the lights, and she gave me 100 to take abroad! From party favour to life saver! You got to love it! Thanks, Claire!

I do love being around the tech-y crowd, and I will miss it next year as I will soon leave the College for a 14 month holiday. Thanks to Autodraft, I-Design and Olds College for organizing this event to feed my mind and the minds of about 150 other people, too!

Micro Mapping

I have mapped a lot of things in my day but never an ankle! In the Fall, I wrote a blog entry about the value of being a generalist, a jack-of-all-trades; about the worth of the ability to use knowledge acquired in one situation to help solve a seemingly unrelated problem. The events of this past week re-confirm my position in favour of having a jack-of-all-trades as part of every team.

Some of you may know that my daughter has had an ongoing issue with an ankle and that we have been working on finding solutions for many years now. The latest approach is to try to track a couple of nerves that seem to be causing the majority of the pain (we think) and, when we have found them, block them and thereby relieve her pain. We are working with an amazing doctor who is creative and caring, innovative and practical. He has access to some great tools, such as ultrasound, for locating nerves.

One of the problems, however, is keeping track of what has happened during past treatments. I am a visual guy, so I like to work with pictures and drawings. I also like things to be to scale. In the past, I’ve worked with air photos and have sometimes drawn on the photo those features that are not visible. I realized lately that the ankle situation was no different. We were trying to locate things (nerves) we could not easily see and then record their location for future reference. So what if I’d only previously done this with irrigation lines? Same thing, right?

So, I took a camera to this last treatment, and we photographed my daughter’s ankle before they started poking. She was able to define the edges of the effected area with colored pens, and we recorded which injection sites corresponded to the effected areas. A few more pictures and the raw data collection was complete.

Back at home, the data processing began. Many times I have used Autodesk software in ways the programmers never intended, and this was another instance. There are many programs that let you work with photos, but I wanted the results to be to scale, not merely a pretty picture with lines drawn on it. I wanted the doctor to be able to measure on paper and locate a needle-stick site on the ankle, for instance. By scaling the photo by reference length (the length of the scar; that won’t ever change) I had a drawing that is real-world size. Overlay the marked up photos onto the ankle and…voila!...an “as built” map of the effects of that session’s treatment.

With CAD, each treatment can be recorded on a unique layer, and a composite image can be viewed over time. I want to take a few more referencing pictures so the curvature of the leg can be accounted for with variable grid spacing. In other words, I want to create my own projection: the HAP (Heather’s Ankle Projection) Coordinated System. Okay, I have to quit writing now, because I think I just bent the needle on the geek meter!