Still Holding Down the Fort Out Here!

So, I might have done that thing where I don't blog for a really long time again. Oops. I've been up to a lot though, between Sparks (we went to the firehall and the library!), school (been doing lots of 41X and have finished marketing, I believe, successfully!), work (I coordinated the building of a can sculpture and we had our Christmas party on Saturday night, which was awesome!) and adventuring around Vancouver (the aquarium, Science World and this crepe place that I found!) with the boyfriend.

Just to make things easy on you, I'll post lots of pictures, so those of you who are writing exams can save your brainpower for that.

The Vancouver Aquarium

We just really love it here. We probably should have just bought season passes because this is the third time I've been here since May and the fourth time this year. We saw the penguins (who never swim, ever), sea otters (they were feeding them shrimp treats!), the dolphin show and a sloth. The jellyfish exhibit was also on, so we had fun looking at that!

Science World

We hadn't made it to Science World yet, so we thought we would head over there one weekend. We went through and explored all of the exhibits (I might have also been very sore the next day from trying to beat the boyfriend in a jumping contest) and saw a movie in the IMAX dome, which was at the top of the facility. We had to walk up this long and winding ramp to get there, which was pretty cool! I created some energy in the running machine (which lasted about 10 seconds) and saw conveyors (I think work is getting to me) and a Pelton wheel (applied fluids and thermodynamics will never let me forget because this is the second Pelton wheel picture I've had in my blog!). We also saw a dinosaur (skeleton) and played with some fun machines.

Trixi's Crepes

I found this place one evening on my way to Sparks and have been going every week all month. I sit in there and have a crepe dinner between work and Sparks, since I don't have time to go home, and I work on the crossword or sudoku (usually I'm done this already because I've become a sudoku master while commuting to work) or read the newspaper. So tasty!

Can Sculpture

I coordinated and executed the building of this can sculpture at work during the airport's big charity blitz for the same food bank that we volunteered at earlier in the year. I drew up the design (the airport logo), selected the cans (which were actually not all correct when delivered, darn it grocery store!) and helped coordinate volunteers to build it on the day of the event. That's (almost) 800 cans you're looking at!

So, that's been most of my adventures lately! I've got less than two weeks left out here, so it will mostly just be packing and wrapping things up. My last Sparks meeting is this week and I should probably get around to my work report at some point.

The Space Centre!

Yesterday was the best day EVER. I went to the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and heard a lecture about robots!

Dr. Elizabeth Croft from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia gave a lecture on human-robot interaction as part of a Women in Science initiative. It's almost like the event was made for me!

Not only was it really cool to hear about the kinds of things she was working on, but some of it is actually kind of relevant to my upcoming 41X project.

A few of the highlights:

• People understand the rules for sharing a space (i.e. what to do when both reaching into a bowl of popcorn) and how people have trouble responding to this when it happens with a robot. However, when robots are programmed to show hesitation, like people do, the people respond better to them. This personifies the robot and makes people want to work with them, like they would a person.
• A strong form of communication is gesturing and it can transcend language (or be useful in noisy industrial areas . . . or even underwater!). Her research has shown that if robots gesture properly, people can completely understand what the robot is asking them to do.
• Human balance is based on "sensors" and "actuators": vision, the vestibular system and proprioception, and muscles. The combination of all of these sensors allows us to balance and correct ourselves because it acts like a feedback system.

Before the lecture, I also got to check out a bit of the museum, from the Russian space shuttle look-alike  to the astronauts hanging from the roof.

This is my new favourite place!