Ryan Wallace
Life as a Computer Scientist
Mac Tips – CPU Performance Meter on the Dock
Nov 12th
If you want to have a real time CPU performance meter on your task bar, all it takes is a few simple steps:
1) Open the Utilities->Activity Monitor application
2) Right click on the Activity Monitor icon in the dock
3) Select Dock Icon-> Show CPU Usage
Notice you can also add all sorts of other handy stuff! I find it can get a little cluttered if I use more than just CPU usage personally
Facial Expression Recognition in Video using OpenCV and Delaunay Triangulation
Nov 11th
So I’m starting a new project for my Computational Geometry course, and I needed a way to relate computational geometry to things I’ve been working on lately. I’ve been toying with openCV (Intel’s open source computer vision library) for the past few weeks, and decided it’d be a fun library to do a project with. I’m just in the very starting phases, but I’ll update this post as I progress.
VIMX Motocross – Nanaimo May 2nd 2010
Jul 7th
Nanaimo was a blast! They have a great track and it was groomed immaculately.
Unfortunately my good friend and Rock Racing team member Phil Wilson’s engine blew. We’re not sure what happened exactly, but it sure put a damper on his weekend. Sorry Phil…
I however had a great time. The jumps in Nanaimo are sweet, and the track has a really nice flow to it.
We started out the weekend with a little instruction from Bruce Donaldson, who’s an ex pro I believe. He had some great pointers on proper positioning and cornering technique. Turns out I do everything wrong… But I’m getting better! Practice went well, and Saturday night I could barely contain my excitement for racing on Sunday.
VIMX Motocross part 1
Apr 29th
So I started racing motocross recently. Upgraded my CRF 230F to a proper CRF 250R (Honda four stroke dirtbikes) and headed to Campbell River for my first real race. It was AWESOME! Not gonna lie, It’s a scary sport. I figure every race in which I don’t hurt myself is a success, so Campbell River was a success! I had one good crash coming out of the whoops late in the race. Your arms get sooo tired when racing motocross, so when I was going through the whoops (a series of short harsh bumps close together) I lost my balance a bit and started to lean back. As I did so, I “whiskey throttled” meaning I hit the gas trying to hold onto the handlebars. Well that just makes things worse… a lot worse! The bike leaps forward, wheelie’s with me on the rear fender, I bail off the back, and the bike goes shooting off the track towards a flag girl, missing her by a few feet. I jumped up, pumped full of adrenaline, dragged my bike out of the dirt, and got back to racing. No major injuries, and I didn’t notice until the race was over that I’d broken my front brake lever off. It was definitely a rush. I think all in all I got 9th out of 15. Not great, but not terrible considering I stalled out of the start gate in the first race and crashed in the second.
Screen Capture On Mac
Mar 14th
My first in a series of tips for Mac users.
Screen Captures on a Mac:
There are 2 ways I’ve found to do a screen capture on a mac or macbook.
1) To capture the entire screen:
Hold down the Apple Key (command) ⌘ + Shift + 3
Now on my Macbook Pro as soon as I push the three keys it snaps the shot, but I hear that on some machines you may have to click the mouse to actually take the screenshot
2) To capture a specific area
Computer Science Bibtex Citation’s
Mar 11th
As a Masters student in Computer Science, I read a lot of papers. It can be a hassle to track down accurate BibTex citations. Google Scholar is alright, but another excellent resource is The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies. While they may not have every paper you’re looking for (I was unable to find a citation for Brennan Rusnell’s excellent XToon paper on extending a typical toon shader for DOF, variable LOD and other effects), I’ve found the site easy to use and the citations to be very accurate.