We did our dry runs when we got to the office. Kevin arrived at 11.30am and we discussed about the "Drawing Board" application before we presented to him. Kevin gave us comments on our presentations and a few more tips before going for lunch.
After lunch, we collected the stuff from SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 from Kevin's desk and brought it back to our "working space". After bringing back the stuff, I studied the Overlay example to see how the overlaying is done in Quartz Composer for the rest of the day.
16 December 2008
It's a rainy day today, which made most of us pretty sleepy. We started the day by having breakfast in the pantry, where we met Kevin and his parents. After breakfast, we went back to our "working space" to continue researching on the overlay. Before lunch, we had a short discussion with Kevin regarding what we would be doing on Friday. It was decided that Ryan, Leonard and You Hock would be presenting to the kids while I toggle between the applications.
After lunch, Ming Hong got a call that the Lightdraw at Fusionworld had some problems. So we went there to get it fixed. After troubleshooting, we realized that the projector's setting was changed. Ming Hong adjusted the projector's setting and the application was working fine.
Went back to our "working space" to continue researching on the overlay. After much research, the overlay is actually done by making the application's window transparent. At the end of the day, I managed to find the codes to make the window look transparent in Cocoa. Shall implement the codes tomorrow.
17 December 2008
Reached the office as usual and continued with the overlay. We managed to make the application's window background to be semi-transparent and set it to full screen upon running before lunch. This was done with the help of this website.
After lunch, I tested the application to see if I could load a OSC-based Quartz Composer application in Cocoa with my 'CaterpillarOSC' application. However, it isn't working as expected. So I did some research and found out that I may require an OSC framework plugin to be added to the Cocoa application. Found the plugin from this website and downloaded it.
I tested the application again by loading another OSC-based Quartz Composer application, '4 Player Pong', in Cocoa to test it. This time it worked. However, the positioning of the application is off. So I guess we have to revise the positioning of the application.
At the end of the day, we were able to make the 'Overlay' application to be on top of all the applications by specify the window’s level to NSScreenSaverWindowLevel. We were also able to set the position for the Quartz Composer application in Cocoa by setting some properties in Cocoa.
On a side note, I've changed my wallpaper and the dock's position. Here's a picture of my new wallpaper and the overlay running on it:
18 December 2008
We planned for the 'Whiteboard' application when we arrived and here are our assigned tasks - Leonard is in-charge of the palette design, Ryan is in-charge of dragging the image, thrashing, idling and removing of image, You Hock is in-charge of integrating the application with OSC, the drawing and erasing while I am in-charge of toggling the application/overlay on and off. However, Leonard and I would help both Ryan and You Hock once we are done with our parts.
After the planning, we went ahead to do with our individual task(s). I brainstormed for ways for toggling the application and managed to come up with 2 ways before lunch. First way is by using Apple's hot spots, but we have to toggle 'Lightdraw' to X11 mode in order to make use of the hot spots. The second way is to assign a small space in the corner of the screen to just toggle the overlay. I guess I'll have to wait for Ming Hong to be back so that I could get a brief idea on how he toggle his 'Drawing' application.
After lunch, we experimented with out of body experience. However, we did not get the expected result. So we googled for some experiments and learnt more about the out of body experiences. Here's a video on one of the experiments:
A short while later, Kevin came in and informed us that all of us needed to present tomorrow instead of the initial 3 person. So we spent the rest of the day doing dry runs of the presentation and set up the applications needed for the demo.
19 December 2008
It's Friday and IHPC has a Project Reachout 'Back-To-School Celebration' with Beyond Social Services. Kevin came in early to pass us our name tags and taught us how we should present to them. We also received the schedule for the day, the first demo is starting at 10.15am. This timing was earlier than expected because the past demo are mostly after lunch. Luckily we did our dry runs for the presentation yesterday.
The kids reached around 10am and were seated in the Visualization Chamber Hall.
We demo-ed from 10.15am to 12.15pm(Kevin did most of the talking) and helped the kids with their crossword puzzle before going to the pantry for lunch. IHPC ordered McDonalds and it was delivered in a huge box. It's my first time seeing McDonald's Delivery delivering in boxes.
After lunch, we helped to transport the gifts for the kids down to the seminar room in level 15 and arranged them. We ushered the kids to the seminar room and the staff began distributing the gifts to the kids before watching the movie 'Surf's Up'.
We headed back to our lab because we wanted to rest. After the movie, the kids came back down to the Visualization Chamber Hall to take a group photo before heading to the pantry for tea-break. And this was how we spent the day.
Reflection for the week:
This week has been a rather fruitful week for me. I've learnt how to adjust the windows properties in Cocoa and even did an overlay in Quartz Composer. However, what left a better impression on me was what we did on Friday.
Unlike in secondary school, which community service was a compulsory thing, we hardly get to do community service work in Polytechnic. Luckily for me, I've done some community work through my 3 years in Polytechnic. This would be the first local community work as the community work I've done so far in my Polytechnic are overseas. One of the volunteers told us that we were very lucky to help out as this was a 'once-in-a-year thing'. I guess we are. We were also able to make use of this chance to work on our presentation skills by practicing and trying to pick up more tips from Kevin.
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