Washington and Facebook

I'm just back from some NSF panels in Washington. They were read-on-site panels, so we had to read, write reviews, meet our panels, and do panel summaries in just over two days. Hard work, but I always enjoy meeting other panelists and learning about what's happening around the country. And sometimes I even get some time on my own -- I was able to get to DCA pretty early so I could go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to catch a marvelous joint exhibition of Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams. The exhibition was built around the concept that they had natural affinities, and I think it made the case pretty well. And, of course, their works are incredibly gorgeous.

While I was there I got an email from Rob inviting me to join Facebook and be his friend. I'm too old for that, I thought, but what the heck -- it's Rob, so how bad could it be? And it's not bad at all, though I think I'll stick with my blog and not be QUITE so cool as he is. But it is a chance to be a little closer to him and Trista, and that's great.

Al Gore and the internet

A recent conversation in which somebody said "Yeah, and Al Gore invented the internet" in a depricating manner -- to which I had no real answer -- left me wondering just what was said. So I looked for sources, and found that he really said, in part,

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Judy managed the University of Iowa's networking system in the late 1980s and she says that indeed, Gore's initiatives were critical in moving from the older networking environments to the real internet, and that it wouldn't have happened without him. This is confirmed by Vin Cerf and Bob Kahn. How did the distortion leak out? Through the efforts of that real Friend O' Truth, George W. Bush and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, whose efforts continue as consultant to the John McCain candidacy.

Catching up

Once again, I've let the blog slip. Perhaps that's telling me something, but I'll choose to believe that I'll still be able to keep it up.

So -- what's happened over the last couple of weeks? We were in LA for a week at the annual SIGGRAPH conference, where we enjoyed the awards dinner where our very good friend Stephen Spencer received the 2008 Outstanding Service Award -- very much deserved. We also enjoyed seeing a number of friends. I also organizes a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session on teaching computer graphics in context in computer science that generated a very active and productive discussion, and was part of a short course on proposal writing. And after the conference we had a wonderful visit with Randy (our son on Judy's side) and Cynthia that included an informal organ concert at the home of Randy's boss. Some of the music was familiar and lovely, and some (by Olivier Messaien) was pretty challenging, though interesting.

Since coming home, I've been focused on working on the Computer Graphics Shaders textbook and on a paper that was accepted for SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore in December. I guess that focus is my excuse for not doing a blog sooner. But with the political conventions coming up, it should be a lot easier to find things to write about!

Computer changes

Lots of chanages going on in our computers here. I've bought a new MacBook Pro so I could work with the full set of computer graphics shaders for my textbook project, and I've instilled Windows Vista on it as well using Boot Camp. It seems to work pretty well, and I can use Mike Bailey's glman application on the Windows side and access geometry shaders. Of course, the machine has some new bells and whistles, including an onboard camera, so in the true "new toy" sense that had every new Macintosh user in 1984 using the San Francisco font, below is a photo of myself with one of the built-in Photo Booth special effects. Yes, Virginia, it is more than a toy, but old boys can still enjoy the toys...
Most of the changes involve repairs, though. Judy's PC has been in the shop for a successful disk transplant and memory upgrade (boy, what I'd pay to get one of those upgrades for myself!) and my older Mac is in the shop for a fix on the display. And Rick's machine is down, but he was able to get most of his files off it and now we're trying to figure out if the disk is fatally broken. But that's life with machines, I guess. And a big tip o' the hat to Julie Gorman, the Stanislaus computer science sysadmin, who's been a great help in consulting with us on Rick's system and has continued helping me in many ways after I retired.

Back home

We're back home from the Czech Republic after attending the WSCG 08 conference in Plzen (I was programe co-chair, though Vaclav Skala really developed the programme) and having a couple of lovely days in Prague. I'll have more to say on the trip and the travel in the next couple of days, but right now we're getting settled back home.

Winter travel can be challenging, but it was a surprise to be called at 4:30 in the morning we were leaving to be told that our flight out of Cedar Rapids had been canceled and we couldn't get out of that airport in time to make our connections to Europe. Fortunately we were able to be switched to a flight out of Moline, but that meant that we had to drive 60 miles in the snow. It worked and the rest of the trip went well. Returning things went well as far as Chicago, but another snowstorm gave us a delay getting back to Iowa and made us dig out the car at the Moline airport. Still, we're home and our bag is with us.

We did miss a lovely snowstorm while we were gone, apparently. Our back yard has at least a foot of great snow that made it fun to go out and fill the bird feeders this morning. But the streets are quite passable and we're warm, even if it's cold outside, so we're again reminded of just how lucky we are.

It Shipped!

Today was something of a red-letter day; Mike Bailey and I sent most of our book on computer graphics shaders off to our publisher, AK Peters. We've been working on it for close to a year, and at this point we have something like 340 pages in Word format, with three chapters left to go. Now we have some time to work on the remaining material while we're getting reviews, but we'll have to work pretty furiously in another month or so if we're going to get it in print (or near print...) by the SIGGRAPH conference in August. Sooner or later I'll probably put some of the examples up in this blog; they're really fun to see.

This sure beats the seven years it took me to get my introductory graphics text written; it helps a lot to work with someone like Mike who really knows the field.

NSF panels

I'm in Arlington, Virginia for some National Science Foundation panels. I won't mention the program, but it's always interesting to read people's ideas and discuss them with a group of very skilled and knowledgeable people, and then give an assessment of the value of the ideas for funding. I've also come to know many people and make a number of friends through panels. The NSF policy of peer review is the most equitable way I've ever seen for making professional decisions. It is a very human process and panels (and program officers) can make mistakes, but I'm very proud to have been involved with it over the years.