RIS 2000 - Home

Announcements

November 29:

The Portfolio Checklist is on-line. There is a link to it at the top of the Assignments page.

Reminder: Tonight there is a special discussion section on Ethics, 6pm in 1810 Litton-Reaves Hall. Drs. Doug Pfeiffer, Skip Jubb and SueTolin will join us. Pizza and soft drinks will be served.

November 7:

Data Visualization Lecture will meet in 3050 Torgeson Hall, and will be led
by Dr. Ron Kriz.

NOTE:

Class begins at 11:15 am, as usual, but Dr. Kriz will be there early to show you a virtual reality demonstration, something like the CAVE.
This will be done in groups of four, beginning at 10:45 am, so if you can get there, please come early.
Don't worry if you can't be there early, those who arrive at 11:15 am will make up the last group for the demo.
After the demo, we'll discuss scientific data visualization and look at some resources for doing this.

October 26:

GIS Lecture/Lab Follow-up: Andy Roberts wanted to clarify a couple of things from the GIS lecture and discussion in the lab.

In comparing VECTOR (points, lines, and polygons) to RASTER (grid of pixels) data formats, it is the VECTOR format that requires less space. The RASTER format takes up more disk space, in general.

GPS Satellites are NOT in GEO-STATIONARY orbit. The 24 satelites are in high orbits with a period of 12 hours. They transmit their position to the GPS receiver, and their positions are monitored from the ground.

There is an excellent tutorial on how GPS works at Trimble's web site.

Also, please note that the assignment handed out in the lab is on-line on the Assignments page.

October 18:

Laboratory 10. As announced in class today, we will be using the facilities in the Media Lab located in Torgerson Hall, Room 2080 for our Laboratory on video editing. The labs will be split into the two sections, one meeting at 1:00 PM Thursday Oct 19, the other at 9:00 AM Friday, October 20. Jason Lockhart will be instructing you on the latest video editing techniques. These facilities will be available for you to use in preparing your video clips. Several of you have prepared some video recordings for your project. I you have prepared recordings, please bring them with you because there may be time for you to begin working with them in the lab. For those of you who have not prepared a recording, please consider getting started soon!

October 12:

Midterm Exam: Last year's midterm exam is on-line. This year's exam will be similar in format: 8-10 questions worth a total of 100 points.

October 3:

Digital Images from Lab 6. The digital images are up on our site. Find your images using the postage-stamp-sized images. They're linked to the full JPEG files, which are each about half a megabyte.

September 21:

Laboratory 5. This week the lab sections will meet separately. We will be working on obtaining and processing electronic images. Please bring a colored 35 mm slide or a colored plate to scan.

September 12:

Laboratory 4. This week both lab sections (Thursday & Friday sections) will meet together on Thursday, September 14 at 1:00 PM. June Mullins will be discussing scientific illustration. The class assignment will be for each of you to prepare a black and white drawing of an organism, or piece of scientific equipment, including a dimensions scale. We will begin drawing these illustrations in class on Thursday. Please plan on bringing something to draw, a soft lead pencil and eraser . This Wednesday in lecture, some examples from previous student assignments will be available for you to examine. You may also wish to see some of the illustrations prepared by last yearÕs class by visiting that web site.

September 11:

Note: The New York Times published an article this morning on the latest improvements in digital photography. Kodak has announced a new sensor chip with a resolution of 4,096 x 4,096 pixels per square inch -- according the the Times, that's "about twice the resolution of 35-millimeter film." A photo blown up to a size of 8 ft by 4 ft shows no visible degradation of quality at that resolution.

September 4:

Lab this week and for the next several weeks WILL be split into two sections

Digital class portraits are available on-line. The URL is:
http://www.ento.vt.edu/ris/students/2000/portraits/lastname_firstname.JPG

Posting Sensitive Info to your Web Sites: Each of you, in your home directory on the server, has a folder called "protected". Files, images, etc., that you put in this folder can't be viewed on the Web without entering a login and password (yours). So, if you have any material you think is sensitive or that you think might violate copyright law if you just put it on-line, store it in the protected folder.

August 28:

Pictures: Don Mullins is back from Brazil and will be at class on Wednesday to take pictures for our class roll (you may use the pictures for your web sites as well).

Lab Sections: The class is now divided into two lab sections. This week's lab WILL be split into two (but not all labs will be):

Thursday 1pm to 3:50pm	Friday 9am to 11:50 am
Stephen Abler Marjorie Browning Ken Cote Bill Dimock Joe Napolitano Lois Swoboda Aaron Syracuse Lane Tabor Ksenia Tcheslavskaia William Witt	Corey Broeckling Elizabeth Bush Erin Holden Bryan Jackson Bryan Johnson Ashley Lamb Racheal Perrott Sarah Satterlee Youngsoo Son

August 23:

Class Times: There is just one hour of lecture each week, on Wednesday, currently scheduled for 11:15 am to 12:05 pm. The published timetable was incorrect.

Laboratories: In addition to the lab scheduled for Thursday afternoons, we have arranged to have a second lab section, when needed, on Friday morning, from 9 am to 11:50 am. Only some labs will need to be split.

Lab Times: We would like to change the lab time on Thursdays to 1:00 pm until 3:50 pm so that many of us can attend departmental seminars scheduled at 4:00 pm on Thursdays

First Lab: We will MEET IN THE LIBRARY at 1:15 pm Thursday, August 24th, in the main lobby at the information desk. Dr. Stone will leave from Price Hall 301A at 1:05 pm, if you'd like to walk over.