St. George's Youthnet C@P Site!

Jess and Melissa, c@p Interns!

St. George's Youthnet c@p Site

The past two weeks have been the Youthnet Camp for the kids who are out of school right now. This week has been a culturally themed week where each day has a new country's theme. The kids have been great in c@p site, we worked on basic html web design, uploading photos to the computer, creating a blog for the kids at Youthnet and photo editing in photoshop. All the kids have been so fantastic and receptive to all that we have been teaching them about. We're looking forward to working with all of the kids in the c@p site over the next month!

Below is a link to the blog that we've been working on with the kids. They've been having the opportunity to pick a photo of their choice and then upload it to the blog with their own caption.

c@p Kids at St.George's Youthnet!

Picnik for Seniors

Here's my submission for the challenge - first attempt at video-editing! I've had some questions here about photo-editing so I decided to make something for Picnik going over some common functions like red eye, cropping etc. It's directed more towards seniors but anyone who isn't familiar with more advanced programs like Photoshop or GIMP may find it useful.

New graphing technology

Now that Google has scanned over 10% of books ever published, you can graph the occurrence of difference words of your choice from 1400 to present day. It's called the Ngram Viewer (ngrams.googlelabs.com). It shows some really interesting relationships between words.

Here's one that shows an inverse relationship between science and art throughout history, up until now, where science and art seemed to have stopped becoming so mutually exclusive. Here's a funny one comparing jesus and google (for better or for worse!). It lets you see the raw data too.

Challenge # 2.9: Youtube Tutorial

Thanks to Matt, Glen, and Shona (her post is coming later today) for the Sketchup buildings! I admire your talents and patience... my buildings have always ended up looking like nightmarish rectangles. You all get a point on the Challenge scale!

On that note; all of Dan's tutorials have been very helpful for us amateur Sketchup-ers. Recording oneself complete a computer task is actually a genius idea.

So, for our next challenge, that's the goal! Record and edit a tutorial for our Youtube Channel.

It can be for any level of computer learning, any skill, any program, etc.

Use a free trial of your choice of Camtasia, Hypercam, or any other Video Capture program to record yourself in action. You don't need to worry about perfection, or getting it all in one take, because next you will be able to edit it.

Once you have your footage, e-mail me, and I will give you the sign-in info for our YouTube account. From there, you can clip, merge, and add text to your footage.

I really hope that this challenge takes on! It would be awesome to have some short, easy tutorials for training sessions up on our page!

Spencer House Sketchup

Hey! Not sure if this is A+ material, but I played around with it and here's what I came up with. For now, it does not like quite so realistic because although I was able to grab the photo texture for the roof, I could not do it for the pale building walls because there was a tree in front of it! Nonetheless, here it is:

I am still going to work a few kinks out before I add it as a location for google maps. 

For example, the side here is triangular, and I don't know why!

Google Analytics

Hi all,

I started using Google Analytics on the Spencer House website last month, and it's pretty useless at first, but now that there is a longer timeline, it is starting to show some interesting patterns.

For example, almost all the hits that our website gets is on weekdays. I am pretty sure it is because most of the hits come from the C@P site, and it's closed on weekends. This goes to show how inter-reliant the C@P site and seniors centre are. Sometimes there will be 15 hits on Friday, then none at all on Saturday. The graph is unique hits only. Here it is below -- the yellow dots = weekends.

Keshen Goodman C@P Library Video

Hey,

So I played around with the flip cam to make this short video just giving a little tour of the Keshen Goodman Library. There's some shotty camera work on my part, but for doing it on my own I thought it was pretty good! Don't laugh too much, lol.

Lyndsay

Link Broken

Also, I made it with i-movie. Just wondering if theres any way to export it. I only could see the option to upload it to my youtube account, but maybe one of you guys knows the trick to saving it. And no, there's no File>Save option.

First Creation with Sketch-up

Here is my first creation with sketch-up. It's my junior high school that I went to. I would have done my CAP site but street view was done when the old Empire Theatres was here so it looks very different. Maybe someday I'll take my own photos of the building and try to sketch it that way. It took me a couple hours to get used to the tools and make this. It wasn't too bad since it was only a couple rectangles and minor push and pull. This is addicting though - I'll think I'll definitely be doing more in the future (hopefully much better looking when I get practice!).

Prospect Road Community Centre Premiere Screening

Hi All;

I wanted to see if anyone out there will need a ride to the screening on March 6th...

Jeremy will be leaving from the Chester area and will likely have 3 seats

I am leaving from North End Halifax and we will have 3 seats

Karen will be leaving from Cole Harbour and she will have 3 seats

If there are enough interested, we will look into renting a van. Please try to carpool as much as possible :)

Thank you, have a great weekend everyone!

Joanne

Our Commercial

Here it is, the final product!

Pretty good for on a small camera, with a small amount of time!

Congrats to all who participated, you're famous!



'Intern Interviews' are also now live on our Youtube channel, so check them out while you're there! They'll make great advertisements for our Summer jobs!

Cole Harbour Place

Hey all, here is something I whipped up, which is where my C@P Site is located, Cole Harbour Place.

And here's the adjacent Cole Harbour High School:

And finally the Pope John Paul XXIII Church in Cole Harbour:

All of the KMZ files for viewing in Google Earth can be found here.

Sketchin`it up!

So the idea is to show you what I do when I am bored. I have no CAD training and had never used SketchUp until a few months ago. At first, my buildings looked pretty plain and simple, but over time I have slowly started the understand the tools and the relationships between them.



Used the push/pull tool to shape the eaves....


Wabo's - note that this looks plainer because I did not shape the eaves with push/pull



The entire front of this restaurant is done with draw square tool & push/pull. After you have a basic shape, pull up the streetview image of the front of the building. (use the add photo texture tool). Use this as a template for all your lines and dimensions.



Starting to get a bit more complex. Total time for this model, six hours.



Another church takes shape. You can see that i have used "draw triangle" to make the basic house/pitched roof shape.



Next, using the technique of pulling squares right out of the streetview image as a template - you can start building more detail



Churches are great autodidactic projects because they are a little more complicated than the average house. Don't worry about the images! At this point they are ONLY a template.



Using the shadows in the GE imagery helps you judge HEIGHT.



"ARC tool" is very complicated. Grr.



Use very narrow, tall, sections of Streetview imagery for arc surfaces.



Refining the steeple



More Google Art, pardon the pun.



here, the square on the right is just a placeholder for the image, so that I have something to build by on the left. When the one on the left is done, I'll delete the one on the right.



Some detail of the belfrys


Don't do twice what you've already done. Use the "component" tool to easily clone and position large structures.

Again, using "component tool" to easily place entire sections.


Expanding the back...


Finished model in Google Earth




Oooooooh small repetitive parts! use Component Tool to easily clone and position these rather than spending hours creating each individually, and placing them individually. Component tool saves time!



This looked like it would be easy despite it's size.



Was I ever wrong. Streetview has no good, unobstructed images. The imagery doesn't fit, it's fuzzy at best, and the terrain is not level (cuts off the bottom of all the buildings. This makes positioning the imagery very difficult.



This Foodland had pretty clear images on Google Earth & Streetview. Took 20 minutes to build.


Service station, take two. This time I got it pretty good. Stole the pumps from the previous model, as an entire component.






So this model was rejected to 3D Wharehouse because I made the shrubs in the back in 3D. Shrubs are ephemeral and should not be included in Google 3D models.

Challenge # 2.8: Sketch-Up Your Site !

Points for all who participate!

As discussed on Saturday, Google Sketch-Up is a fun tool, and great resource for CAP.

It's pretty much a self-taught skill (one I haven't quite mastered), that is valuable to have.

So, your task this week, is to Sketch-Up your site and any other important locations in your community using Skins from Google Earth, and share them here!

Can't wait to see your artistry!

HRCA Winter YI Orientation Day @ The Hub Halifax

the team @ The Hub

:)