Blog
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My Blog
2004-09-02
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Life has been very, very
busy. I don't feel like writing very much. I've added the Anatomy section to this site. Lots of work,
too little sleep...
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2004-04-23
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There's nothing much been
happening recently; or nothing really worth writing about anyway. I
spent today working on a Python
wrapper for the GNU
Linear Programming Kit (GLPK). Solving muscle forces
using the minimum muscle stress criterion can be done using linear
programming, so I plan to use GLPK for that.
I've been spending a bit of time at AJ's place recently; mostly in the
evenings between other things. I discovered that Vodka and lemonade
tastes pretty good. We watched the last Matrix movie the other night:
Revolutions. Generally, I think it didn't live up to expectations. They
didn't get into any of the interesting stuff; like how Neo was able to
communicate with the machines in the Real World (TM). And they didn't
need to kill Trinity!
I had a chat to Lauren last night which was good. Hi Lauren! - Just in
case you check this out sometime. It's all very geeky...
The only cool thing I've done recently is create a Matrix character
generator. Here's a screenshot:
You can download a Java 2 application (executable JAR file) that runs
and displays the animated character generator in a Swing JFrame. Go
check it out in the Gallery. |
2004-04-07
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My research seminar
presentation went quite well today. It wasn't complete, since I'm still
collecting data, but I think it was good overall. I'm very tired though
- I had hardly any sleep last night, and giving presentations is still
quite stressful. It's amazing how much demonstrating in undergraduate
pracs has helped with that though. I'm much more confident now than
when
I first started. Quick virtual hello to the undergraduate who turned up
to the presentation!
Here's a picture of an animation of the bones of the carpus. The
animation of these bones, and a larger version of the picture are
available in the Gallery.
Click for larger image.
I can't wait to get all of
this conference stuff over and done with. I'd like to write more
tonight, but I'm too tired. The potato that I'm going to call dinner is
almost ready too.
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2004-04-05
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I'm feeling depressed
today. It's a Monday: that means waking up at 5am, getting to Uni
at Werribee by 7am, getting to Flemington Racecourse by 8am, taking 40+
radiographs of horses' legs, and then trying to stay awake for the rest
of the day!
My life's depressing too at the moment. Here, read this:
"Her grey, sun-strained
eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our
relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am
slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my
desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of
that tangle back home."
That's from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The
Great Gatsby. I've never related to Nick (that character)
very much. I'm not some kind of social dynamo (heck, I'm a social
pumpkin!), but I'm a lot less existentialist and compliant than him.
That particular description is a perfect match for me
though.
I don't know what to do with my "interior rules". I want to follow
them,
but I can't - it's not my fault; someone else changed things. So then I
wish I could get rid of them, which feels wrong. I don't want to get
out
of "that tangle back home", but I feel this desparate need for
resolution. Only one person out there has any idea what I'm talking
about... she's in the Goulburn Valley at the moment, and probably won't
read this anyway... Maybe I should just spend more time with the nicer
undergraduates.
The only good news from today is that I finished the first draft of my
presentation for the seminar I'm giving on Wednesday afternoon.
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2004-04-04
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Another weekend of
marking
Mech Eng assignments. This assignment was more fun than the last. It
involved drawing shear force and bending moment diagrams for simplified
geometries of lots of common items. It's one of the few assignments
that
I actually enjoy marking. However, it still took a lot of time.
Friday's equine forelimb prac went quite well. It's a lot better than
most of the pracs, from my point of view, since I don't have to do any
revision for it! It's still quite difficult for the students though,
and
I don't relate to the problems they have since I know everything so
well. I always wish that we had so much more time to spend on it.
Next week is going to be busy. I'm behind already thanks to time spent
marking. I have to modify some of my chapter on hoof biomechanics,
prepare a presentation on carpal kinematics before Wednesday, and still
make some progress on the
current chapter of my PhD. There are no undergraduate pracs for me next
week either, which is disappointing since they provide a nice
distraction from everything. The vet students are always very grateful,
which makes me feel like I'm actually achieving something.
I uploaded a picture of myself to the About
section today. Go check it out.
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2004-04-01
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Wow! Another big day, and
a bit dismaying.
The good news is that in the morning, I finished my first draft of a
chapter of my PhD. The chapter is entitled Static Solution of Forelimb Muscle Forces
Using the Minimum Muscle Stress Criterion. It's very messy at
this stage (otherwise I'd upload it for sure!), and it also needs some
diagrams. I'll probably be doing that tomorrow morning, and possibly
during the weekend as well. I feel like I'm on a bit of a roll with
this
at the moment, although there's a lot of work still to do.
April Fools Day went by without any hitches really. Someone at Uni had
put "Out of Order" signs on the lifts, but alas it didn't fool anyone.
I'm glad someone tried, but I was hoping for something a little more
elaborate. Maybe the vet students are feeling a bit deflated, otherwise
I'd expect them to come up with something much more spectacular.
We had the third forelimb anatomy prac with the first years this
afternoon. It covers the entire canine distal forelimb from the elbow.
It's a terrible prac: there's lots to do and many of the structures are
difficult to isolate with confidence. What's worse is that some of the
students were quite upset about their lack of progress and a few just
gave up and left early. Hopefully tomorrow's equine distal forelimb
prac
can make their experience a little more positive. Poor table 11 were
looking very sorry for themselves; I'm planning to spend a lot more
time
with them tomorrow to cheer them up about anatomy pracs.
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2004-03-31
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I updated this website a
little more today. Aren't I enthusiastic? I've added the About and Gallery
sections. I was going to add a mockup SVG image of the visualisation
stuff I'm working on to the gallery, but I added a frame of a hair
animation I'm rendering instead. The hair animation has been "cooking"
(ie: rendering) for a while, so it deserved the bandwidth:
I skipped demonstrating the first canine head anatomy prac with the
second-years this morning. I woke up after marking eng assignments
yesterday and knew I wasn't going to be contributing much. We have the
third canine forelimb prac tomorrow, and my favourite anatomy prac -
the
Equine Distal Forelimb - on Friday.
This afternoon, I went to a seminar on Animal MRI at the Howard Florey
Institute. We're looking at using MRI images as an aid in creating 3D
anatomy models within (and without) the Vet School. The seminar was
quite interesting, but it was focused on MRI for research and didn't
have very much that aided the specific question of creating surface
models of objects. They use voxel rendering for 3D visualisation, which
works very well, but it isn't an easy representation to modify / edit /
manipulate. I'm still in love with Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces
as
my "representation of choice" for anatomy models for use in teaching.
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2004-03-30
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OK, I've finally started a
BLOG. That's short for WebLog. "Hello world" and all that.
Hello Linda, if you get around to reading this. I probably won't have a
very wide audience, but my ramblings are now out there for everyone to
see!
So what did I do today? I marked Engineering Design assignments. And
that's all.
Right now, I'm heartily sick of the little design that the second years
were asked to consider. I miss the days when I was an undergraduate and
doing the course for which I'm now marking assignments. Life was so
much
simpler! Oh well, it helps to pay the rent. I'm sure I'll be better
equipped to read professional reports and pick holes in them too, so
it's not a complete loss academically either. It is all very
mind-numbing though.
I had hoped to spend more time on the linear programming solution for
minimising muscle stresses that's part of my PhD. Unfortunately that
didn't happen. I'm writing up the 20-page "cheat sheet" that will form
the basis for the computer program I write and the basis for that
chapter of my thesis. It's the central reference point that I'm going
to
be working from over the next few weeks, and it tells me "what scalar
goes where" in the giant matrices and vectors I'm working with. Part of
this stuff is figuring out how I'm going to visualise it all. My
current
plan is to produce SVG diagrams of the horse's limb using Batik (an
Apache open source tool - go look up the URL!), with some pre-made SVG
components authored in Sodipodi or Inkscape to represent the bones. My
code will draw lines of action of muscles algorithmically over the
bones. Seems like a good solution in theory - we'll see how it works
out
in practice over the next week or so.
Didn't get around to checking out AJ's borrowed webcam this evening.
I'm writing this instead before I drop dead and go to bed (hopefully
not
in that order). Sorry AJ - tomorrow night maybe?
Anyway, better go and upload this and go sleepy-byes before my brain
just plain refuses to go any further. |
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