Yesterday: (Last term and a half). Was tasked with formally writing up the unsuccessful results mid-summer. Summer vacation. Continued writing through the fall, submitting a starter-draft midway through. Numerous suggestions for revisions, though the dominate question is what specifically should be described. Requiring better results before an improved iteration. Reached out (December) to researcher Barnes in Australia who has had success with similar work through student Perera, but have yet to hear back on possible collaborations, discussion or testing validation.
Was a sessional instructor for CPSC453 - Introduction to Computer Graphics during Fall 2015, managing 3 TAs and 75 students. While an amazing opportunity and incredibly motivating and inspiring for computer graphics, it was very time consuming (attempting to teach well, organizing and creating lecture material, re-working existing materials, organizing and updating assignments, creating and grading exams).
Today: (And last couple of days) After winter break, have been re-visiting where I am in the code base, and what needs to be updated/corrected to improve results. Overall todos:
- Improving visuals through KinFu integration - variant of Barnes/Perera's 2014 work
- Supporting NaN values for feature points (ie. spatially or temporally occluded) - consider modern tracking methods?
- Improve speeds (GPU, parallelization, use of transformations, dynamic/adaptive feature tracking based on success/structure?)
- Joint network determination
- Improved test cases
I've taken on a temporary part-time contract with a great software company downtown for the coming term. An artificial deadline for April has been set for evaluation of PhD progress for future directions.
Roadblocks: Recalling what everything is in the codebase (thank goodness for documentation), working out clear directions for the above list and deciding what can be accomplished and how.
Where Does this Fit In: Reviewing the current stage helps with determining what takes most priority, what can be reasonably accomplished within a set time. Returning to this daily scrum helps with tracking directions. Part-time work helps with group interactions on a common and exciting project (which is currently lacking in the research plan) as well as funding, and maintaining technical skills even during periods of writing.