All posts by johncohn

Sunday – Worked all day !

I’m just sitting down at 6PM after getting home from another full day of working at Champlain. We have our first review of our Good Games project tomorrow. I’m pretty nervous about it.. But I’ll tell you … I really can’t remember a project that didn’t involve blowing stuff up that was this much fun…

Oooops.. Gotta take a break.. Susan and Sumner just showed up!.. More later !

Ahh.. just back, It was great visiting with Sumner and Susan.. Sumner is in the Stowe Ski and Snowboard academy this year.. so he spends his weeks at a dorm in Stowe. We miss seeing him up at Bolotn. Sounds like he’s having a great time, though…   He’s such a cool guy.   

Where was I.. oh… I as talking about my day…    I stayed up ’till two again last night hunting down pictures and movies that we can use in the Good Games media package .. I was pretty sleepy when I went to bed.. but somehow I ended up dreaming about the project.. My dreams were all mixes of Flash code, Maya animations and JPG’s… not too restful. When Chai jumped in our bed at 7:30 I just wasn’t ready to get up. I had to get up though, the team was showing up at the EMC at 9 AM again. I went down stairs and started cleaning the kitchen.. I was thinking hard about Max for some reason.. as I was thinking of him, the phone rang… and it was Max.. and this is 8AM … so I was a bit freaked.. why would Max be up at 8AM.. well.. evidently my goofy cell phone had called him from my pocket.. I had a nice short talk with him then he fell back asleep. I know it may not sound like much, but the fact that my phone would come out of it’s locked mode, find Max’s number and call it from my pocket just as I was thinking about him is pretty cool. Blood is thicker than radio waves….

Anyway.. I left home and stopped at the Duncan donuts again and grabbed another day’s worth of fuel for the programmers and artists..  I figure you get about half a page of code per donut .. and 2 pages of code per quart of Mountain Dew. You can get 2 pages of code fro a Red Bull.. but the code will have more mistakes in it. I think I should write a paper on this.   I showed up and the room was full again.. I’m hoping that the team went home last night.. since they were all sitting in their same places.. I couldn’t quite tell..

There was some signs of activity.. there was broken glass everywhere and this sign.. I’m still not sure what happened.. but no one would tell me the gory details

We got rght to work,. One team (Laren and Bryan) worked on the interface in Flash.. they were writing tons of code.   Another team (Mike and Tony) were working on the artwork and design will another team (Max and Awesome) were working on the content.  Ray worked on some of the documentation while I bounced from team to team trying to help.. but mostly got in the way. I was looking pictures and videos, drawing some others..

Here’s our storyboard

Here’s a cool video of the PS3 processor helping do real time MRI processing

Here’s a dated picture of the new IBM video game that’s about to come out for Engineering week.

Here’s a stylaized picture of the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death)  we’re using to illustrate a point on Game testing

And.. here’s a simulated picutre of a frerari done on one of the new game consoles.   Looks lamost real.. or is this real.. I forget..

Our freind Wes showed up for a while to heckle us.. He’s one of our Maya programmers.. Tomorrow he has a job interview at the CIA…. (but don’t tell anyone). I told him not to tell them he knows me since I  have an FBI record… but that’s annother funny (and true) story.

We finally had eaten all the food by about 5PM.. After two weekend days of working all day we decided to take a break.. though I know some of the students will be working more tonight. We all headed for home….tired but happy with what we’d accomplished so far… it really has been an amazing time working with these guys.. I’m looking forward to dong more projects with them in the future !

When I got home. Diane met me at the door and sat me down at the computer to listen to something. She’d just heard a radio program all about Nikola Tesla .. one of my big  science heroes.  Tesla was an amazing inventor in the early part of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. H invented may of the worlds most important electrical  gizmoz including the AC generator, the AC motor, the florescent light, radio  and the tesla coil.   etc.. but somehow, history has given him a fair shake..Every school age kids know Edison or Ben Franklin.. few have heard of Tesla..  He was certainly a genius, but also an eccentric and complicated person.. Somehow his personality interfered with his rightful legacy. I’ve been so taken by his story that I do a traveling talk/show on him called “High Tension: the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla;

I’ve only had a chance to hear one of the sections. fro the Studio 360 piece… but it’s really great .. Check it out..

I’ll listen to the rest and pick out some choice nuggets to share.

OK.. Now I’m going to try and relax.. I’ve bee  working something like 16 hour days for the past several days and I’m beat…  

TTYL folks.. ttyl Sam…
-me

-jc

Saturday night – Champlain

Friends…
    It’s very late.. and I need to be up early to go back to Champlain early tomorrow morning. We’re getting down to the wire in our Good Games project and we’re working through the weekend to get it finished in time.

I headed over to Champlain this morning at about 8:30 AM to see if any of the students would be working. I stopped on the way to stock up on caffeine products and sugar.. the two things that make programmers productive.. Stop one was the Richmond Corner Market for soda and candy bars. When I went to pick up the soda, my neighbor Pat.. the butcher there, told me that I was in the paper this morning because of the Champlain project.. That was kinda cool and unexpected. I’m not sure who put that in there.

I also stopped at Duncan doughnuts and got a dozen dougnuts and bagels.. and a box of coffee. I got to the EMC (Emergent Media Center) expecting one or two of the folks to be there. I was so happy to find a pretty biug crowd. Ann had actually invited soem more folks.. and lots of them showed up.

There was Tony-the-perfectionist-artist

Bryan-the crazed-programmer

Ray-the-bossman

Laura-queen-off-the-Flash

Max-who-is-not-a-dog

Mike-the-sleep-deprived-artist-and-techno-DJ

Alex-the-profeesor (I think he looks liek a wise professor.. don’t you ?)

Awesome-the-kendo-fighting-producer (Actually Allison.. but I thought she said her name was awesome and it stuck)

Iain-the-pizza-guy

We geared up and worked all day.. It was really, really, really wonderful teamwork. These kids are so incredibly talented and creative. It’s a real pleasure to be workign with them. I’m leanring so much. The atmosphere was great.. actually the atmosphere was hot and steamy.. we were working so hard it started to get really stuffy in there. At one point this morning I walked into the room and announced that I was having more fun at that moment than I’d had at work since….  uh.. since…. maybe forever.. I really meant it.. now I should  really think about what that means.  

By noon everything I’d brought to eat was gone. I snuck out for pizzas and more caffeine..   We got a break on the Pizza since Iain works for Dominos.. Thanks Iain, thanks Dominos!

By about 5:30 we were all getting pretty tired.. I had to leave.. but soem of the team stayed and kept working.. It looks by therei upload logs that some of them were there past 8 !. They are so friggin amazing to work with. We got a ton done today.. any we start again at 9 AM tomorrow !

I got home just in time to feed Chai meet up with Diane and head off to our friends Tom and Beth’s house. We were meeting our other freinds Rona, Paula and their son Pat  there for a potluck. It was great hanging out with all of those guys. We did a bunch of tlaking about our lives… It’s been only a month since Tom and Beth’s daugheter Kate died. I remember so clearly where my head was a month after Sam’s deth. I know how good it was to have folks to tlak to.. It was a great evening.

I found a goofy picutre of Tom from a few years back. I love it.

Here’s beth with an article in the Essex newspaper about Kate..

It was 11:30ish when we started for home.. Diane found this poster near their back door.. Hey.. maybe it’s not too late !

Gabe was home waiting for us with 4 friends over for a sleep over. They all want to get up on the mountain around 8L30…. We’ll soo how that goes.. they were still eating dinner at midnight 🙂

Oh.. one cool thing I found waiting for us were these pictures from freind Jena’s Mother’s friends who’d just visited Antarctica.. They put a SamStone on Shackleton’s grave in South Georgia Island

Here’s where South Georgia Island is.

OK.. now to sleep !
Love you guys.. Love you Sam
-me

Friday night – yiddish

The day began with an unusual chill Diane came into our room and told me that it was 24 degrees below zero outside. I immediately felt like I was freezing. i bundled myself up.. came down stairs and hovered by the wood stove. I looked at the temperature and (thought I saw) that it was indeed 24 below.. actually as low as 26 below as I watched. I bundled up to go and get the paper.. that’s when I realized something was wrong.. it wasn’t all that cold out at all. I came back in and puzzled about it for awhile. It wasn’t until i was in the shower that I realized we’d both missed the decimal point after staring at the thermometer all morning. . Rather than being 24 blow, it was a relatively balmy 2.4 degrees below. I felt so funny.. and so grateful 2 below is pretty normal. 24 below can be a real hassle.

My first job today was a science show at Brewster Pierce Elementary in Huntington.. really one of my favorite schools in the state.

The show went really great.. I loved the kids and they loved the show. there’s always a hard part when I dedicate the show to Sam.. the kids seem to understand that I need to do that.

Afterwards Barbara, Chayna,  and Andrew helped me load the car.

My friend David also showed up at the show.. I didn’t know he was coming. David is deaf.. He and I have done a show before for deaf kids. David does the whole show in ASL. We have another show for the deaf coming up in Feb. Dave and I are going to spend some time before then experimenting om how to convert some of the sound oriented stuff into visual or kinesthetic excercizes.

I was late getting back to work from  Huntington and had to rejoin the quarterly Technical Vitality Council meeting already in progress. The meeting was great. I saw so many friends there that I hadn’t seen in many months. I’ve been working at home so much that I forgot how much I missed talking to some of these folks .

I worked at IBM until about 6:30 then unloaded my van from my equipment.. that’s where my little electric go-cart comes in so handy. Max and I built it many years ago.. it now serves as my tug… I use it to move my equipment from my storage closet to my car and visa versa. It’s so much fun to ride through the halls at work.

Jlleigh had called me to tell me that someone had found my bluetooth headset.. and that it was locked in her desk. She told me to pick the lock and get it. while I was in Williston. . so I did.

Unfortunately , id had been run over by a car.. so it no longer works.. 🙁

From there I went straight to ‘On the rise’ . Rand and Julie had invited me to go hear ‘The Firehouse District’ an eastern European / klezmer band. They were phenomenal..Even more so when I realized that none of these Yiddish singing, accordion playing folks were even Jewish !

I was so impressed with the show.It was great being out with Rand and Julie.. I ran into so many folks I knew. I’ve never been to a music show at On The Rise.. now I’m going to try and check them out whenever I can. They have a great calender of shows coming..

OK.. I gotta be up early tomorrow to go to Champlain College.. I better end here.. Gnite everyone.Gnite Sam.. I love you
-me

Thursday night – sleepy

Jam packed day and boy am I beat. I gotta make this short so I can get soem sleep. I ony got about 4 hours sleep last night because I satyed up working/playing on the computer. I was not ready to wake up when Chai started pawing me at 6:15 AM..  I stayed in bed and meditated for about an hour then slithered downstairs. I took Gabe to school then came back and worked while Diane taught her Thursday morning Yoga. After Yoga, our friend Betsy came in for a nice visit. We talked about how kind and sensitive folks have been to our feelings around Kate and Brandon’s deaths. It was interesting trying explain how we felt.. So many folks are worried that these new tragedies will somehow open old wounds for us around Sam’s death. It’s true, we are deeply saddened by the loss of these great kids… Our sadness though is for the kids, their families and our community. Not for us. It’s not that the situation doesn’t remind us of our own loss..  everything reminds us of that loss. It’s that we know where we are now. We don’t need to be protected from others pain.. we want to be there for them as others were there for us. I hope that makes sense. Anyway.. it was a good conversation. Sometimes it really helps to try and put thoughts like that into ords.. it helps crystallize your thinking.

Speaking of crystallized.. I nearly crystallized when Diane and I took Chai fro a run. I was dressed for  about 10 degrees warmer than it was.  I nearly froze.. especially because we had to stop to play with Chai’s friends.

Interesting to see lots of new beaver activity out by the river . They recently dropped a huge tree across our running trail. Beavers are both industrious and impractical  That’s why they’re the MIT Mascott..  (“Beaver, beaver, build your damn, who’s the best school in the land ?“..  What were they thinking ?!

We dawdled a bit too long outside and got home at 10L48. I had a big meeting to drive at 11. In those 12 minutes, I managed to 1) move my science equipment from the station wagon to the van, 2) shower, 3) shave, 4) brush teeth,, 5)  (almost) get dressed and 6) eat something resembling breakfast. I say almost get dressed because half way through my meeting I realized that my shirt was on inside out..   I’m pretty hopeless.

I had an extremely focused and productive day after that. I spent a few hours at Champlain working with the students on our project. It all has got to be done in the next week and a half or so. I don’t know how that’s going to happen.. but it should be fun. I’m really loving working with those guys. BTW, Ann and her team were written up in a great article in Seven Days this week . Check it out. the piece had some great artwork by the students there . Including this on by Nick who will be interviewed for our project.

and this one

Which is the mascot for this Saturday’s Vermont 3.0 Tech Career Jam. I’m proud to be working with these guys !

Oh.. one really cool other thing happened today. I heard back from Paul Zaloom (the Beakman’s world guy) he’s interested in collaborating on soem big stage science shows. That would be SO cool .I’ll keep you poseted as to how that plays out..

After Champlain it was home to pick up Gabe and back out to eat at Mexicali’s (yum) and to pick up some of my equipment for my show in Huntington tomorrow morning. Seaking of Mexicalli , they’re doign the Penguin Plunge as a fund raiser for Special Olympics. Stop by and support the guys as they jump in Lake Champlain on Feb 9th (my birthday !). I may try to do it too.. if the times work out. Diane and I are goign to be in a meditation workshop that day.

It was really fun hanging out with Gabe tonight.. we were pretty goofy.

OK .. Enough for now. Gotta sleep. more tomorrow .Gnite all. Gnite Sam
-me