Medieval Feast Info

Next weekend is STM's annual Medieval Feast where you can see yours truly (along with a large cast of other people) act out an awesome dinner theatre experience and hack each other to bits. This year the setting is a Viking mead hall, and features a more sophisticated storyline (I have lines this year!). The fight scenes are also going to be even bigger than last year. So, put your need for historically accuracy firmly on hold and COME!

When and Where:
Saturday, March 31 (7:00?), tickets $17
Sunday, April 1 (7:00?), tickets $8
Monday, April 2 (7:00?), tickets $8

On Saturday we'll have the dinner with the performance so it's more expensive. On Sunday and Monday nights we'll just have the show with a cash bar and some simple finger foods (there's been talk of garlic bread). The Sunday and Monday shows may have more performers from the way things look, so they might be better (the guy who's missing is part of an amazing sword duel).

Why do I care anyway?

Pepler?! How the heck does Pepler get elected? I'll never think of USSU politics as a step above high school again (most politics probably isn't, actually). Oh well, at least nobody from this year's executive got reelected. Three of the people I voted for in the executive were elected, along with the two people I wanted to have senate seats.

I suppose I care because both of my sisters will have to go to this crazy place next year.

Competition Results

So today was the big College of Engineering-wide design competitions. There were two, a poster competition for most innovative design, and a presentation competition for best presentation. The chemical engineers swept both (my team was sent to compete in the presentation one). The chemicals really did have the best presentation, so I don't think we could have won. Unfortunately, our presentation was not as good as it could have been. One of our team members (who's rather nervous about public speaking) slowed right down and stumbled over his part, so the rest of us had to rush quite a bit. Also, one member of our group didn't do a very good job with the questions (he was the guy left standing with the microphone at the end of the presentation). He didn't repeat back the questions so the audience could hear (which our supervisor had said to do just a few minutes beforehand) and he barely even looked at the rest of us before answering the questions himself. I'm really not mad at the guy who slowed us down, just disappointed (some people simply find public speaking hard). However, I'm really angry at the other guy because in the last few weeks he's consistently shown that he doesn't care about the competition and doesn't care about the fact the rest of of us do care. I've always fantasied about winning this competition, so not having done the best job possible because someone doesn't give a darn about his teammates is incredibly frustrating.

The good news: we were one of two groups (out of seven in total) that received an enthusiastic honorable mention from the judges. So we were in the top three of the seven best presentations. Also, unlike engineering physics, some of the disciplines had 15 or 17 design groups, so the number of people we beat is actually largely than being in the top three out of the seven engineering disciplines would suggest.

It's all over but the crying.

Tomorrow is the most important day of my academic life.

Quote of the Day

"So, when Jesus comes and kills us all. . . ." - Little Sis

Announcement

My group has been promoted on to the College of Engineering wide competition. We'll be competing in the presentation competition on the evening of Wednesday, Mar. 31/07.

The Design Project

I thought I'd give you all a little update on the design project. I have the presentation on Monday (as previously mentioned). This is the most important event in my academic career so far. However, there are only three design groups in EP and two of them will be sent on to the college-wide competition. Therefore, there's a good chance I'll shortly be doing that presentation (on the 21st) and it will be the most significant academic thingy I've done. Anyhoo, here's some photos of the design so far.

This is our development set-up. The breadboard on the left has all the emitter and detector driving circuitry and the serial cable leads to the probe head (alternately called Fred or Pablo, depends who you ask). The board on the right is the development board environment for the microcontroller.

This is our basic test set-up that was used to produce the signal strength graph posted earlier.

This is the probe head being held over a little sack of 75 microMolar methemoglobin (a haemoglobin compound). We got a fairly strong signal drop-off from it (from 2V on the white plastic reflector down to about 0.6V). The concentration is reasonable for a tumour, but this compound absorbs almost three times more strongly at 950nm than the one we'll actually be looking for. However, creating plain oxidized haemoglobin from this substance would involve much more chemistry than we understand, or have the time and equipment for. Incidentally, does anyone know how to rotate pictures in Blogger?

This is the transparent box for the probe head. One of my group will try to wire-wrap the emitter -detector configuration unto the perforated board on the right. Unfortunately, the lid is fairly thick and only about 80% of the intensity will get through (each way), giving a large drop in the signal.

Here's the wire-wrapped board that we'll soon be testing out. It will replace all of the development set-up in the picture above. We would like to create a printed circuit board, but we definitely won't have time. It's sitting in its case.

Testing: The two peaks represent the signal from emitters one and two, respectively. Remember that they're on opposite sides of the detector. This picture shows the signal when they're both over the white plastic reflector.

Here the first emitter is now over the absorbing surface (notice the intensity drop) while the other one is still over the reflector.

Now both emitters are equidistant from the absorbing surface. This actually corresponds to the detector being directly over the "tumour".

Finally, here's how it looks as the detector continues scanning across the absorber. The first emitter is now over the white reflector while the second remains over the black absorber. The next photo would be identical to the first one.

One Dream Accomplished

I've really always wanted to do this. . .

And now. . .

Fire!

Tah-tah!

Design Presentation

The design presentations for the engineering physics department will be at 2:30pm on Monday, March 12, 2007 in room 127 physics. They should take about an hour (there are only three groups). All are welcome to attend.