So things are finally starting to look up again.  Our cat Snoopy is doing exceedingly well after the crisis I wrote about in August, so he’s back to normal if not a little more clingy than before.  Our roof has undergone its repairs and is back to being good as new, so I can breathe a sigh of relief when it rains or snows; our cookware was rusted beyond use after two months of catching leaks, and had to be thrown out – ultimately a small price to pay.

But there’s some more good news for us, as I enter a new chapter in my own life.

Enough people find it wildly impressive that Steve and I can run a popular magazine and website between the two of us.  And as some may already have been aware, I’ve managed my responsibilities with GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine alongside of other full-time tasks for the entire duration of my involvement.  So the magazine has never been a full-time job for me.

At first it was my Bachelor’s degree, then it was my Master’s degree, and until very recently I had my day job working as a researcher at the University of Calgary.  So here’s the story.

Majoring in Computer Science as an undergrad, I took a fairly standard 3rd year course, an introduction to Human Computer Interaction (HCI), a field that focuses on studying and improving the way that computers conform to human needs and expectations.  I was first exposed to computers at a very early age, when interaction was done by typing on a DOS command prompt – no Windows, no mouse, not even internal hard drives – so I was used to conforming to what the computer required of me.  But as technology advances, there are more and more opportunities to improve this experience by making the act of using a computer more user-friendly, with smaller learning curves, and more natural means of communicating.

This initial course slightly sparked an interest in me.  It was one of my first departures from low-level command-line C++ programs to Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), where the interface was the focus, not just a means to an end.  Considering I went into Computer Science because of my affinity for video games, being able to explore richer visual content was thrilling after several semesters of text-only blah.

This led me to enrol in the next level HCI course, which I discovered was a lot more exclusive than the general admission of the course prior.  A portfolio and interview were required, since the desired class size would be a lot smaller: only about 10 people, as opposed to hundreds.  My music and other artistic pursuits came in handy for the portfolio, and I was accepted on that alone (since the timing of my summer holidays made it impossible for me to do the interview portion).

This became the highlight of my undergrad career.  All of the effort I would normally pour into those creative activities outside of my class projects went into this course, since it was the first where the two were really compatible.  It was a good feeling to finally be excelling so much at something, and to finally have the latitude to distinguish myself beyond the right and wrong answers of math, logic, and theory.

The professor teaching the course took notice of this, and invited me to work in the Interactions Lab as a summer intern, which I accepted.  Over the summer I had the opportunity to experiment with and develop applications for new technologies that weren’t available commercially.  I worked with a prototype multi-touch surface that could identify the touches of up to 8 different people (sadly this particular surface never made it to market because, as I was told, it didn’t scale to larger sizes).  After developing the infrastructure to bridge the gap between the hardware and software, I created a fun game that used graphics and sound to demonstrate the surface’s capabilities, and even got to put it on exhibit at an HCI conference in Vancouver.

As my internship came to a close, my professor made an offer to be my supervisor if I was interested in pursuing a Master’s degree or Doctorate.  This was something I needed to think about, as my original plan was only to get my Bachelor’s degree and then move on.  Furthermore, after completing a games programming course and receiving a similar offer from that professor, I had a very difficult decision to make.  While games programming was directly related to my original motivations for studying Computer Science, I saw much broader potential for myself in the field of HCI.

And so I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, and started into my Master’s.  There were a few fellow gay people in the lab – I knew because I bumped into them at the bars on occasion.  Some of them chose to be out and had no problems in the open minded environment of the lab.  I chose not to come forward with that information about myself, because I didn’t want to cause a fuss, or perhaps it felt awkward telling people that I had already been working with for a summer.  As a result, this kept me a little personally distant from other lab members, which was regrettable.  Furthermore, with my magazine responsibilities, I had to pass up most lab social gatherings, so I rarely entered a casual social setting with my peers.

Meanwhile, I was occupied with thinking up a thesis topic.  I wanted to do something with graphics and sound, while my supervisor’s specialty was groupware systems – applications that help people accomplish collaborative work, even if they are separated by distances.  So as I took the required graduate courses, I pitched some ideas that appealed to me, most of which had to be thrown away; the whole point of having a supervisor is to benefit from their experience and these ideas were outside of his realm of knowledge.

But one day, an interesting idea came to me out of the blue, and I spent a few hours that afternoon programming a rough prototype to try it out.  It captured images from the computer’s webcam, measured the difference between two in a row, and used that magnitude of change to control the volume of a piece of music.  The end result was that a person could walk silently by the webcam, but the computer would play a swell of music representative of their motion.

My supervisor found it really promising, and encouraged me to investigate further.  Eventually this became the basis for my Master’s thesis.  I went on to develop a sophisticated application that could monitor different regions of a webcam image, and map a number of different motion measurements from any webcam region to particular properties of playing sound (e.g. volume, pitch, pan, and fade).

For me, the programming was the easy part.  When it came to writing the Thesis, that’s where I really started to drag my feet.  You might think writing is one of my strong suits, but writing a magazine article is worlds different from academic writing.

I had a time limit of 4 years to complete my degree, but my responsibilities with running and maintaining this magazine admittedly bogged me down; I was putting in a lot of work streamlining the GayCalgary.com website at the time.  My supervisor began to wonder why I was having so much trouble concentrating on writing.  I explained that I had work obligations outside of the University that I couldn’t withdraw from.  Ultimately, after meeting Steve at the lab Christmas party, and witnessing how unwaveringly loyal I was to Steve when he pleaded with me to scale back on this outside work, my supervisor put two and two together and asked, “Steve is your partner, isn’t he?”  I didn’t lie.  I told him about the magazine, and so he finally understood why I couldn’t just leave Steve high and dry.

So with this weight off my shoulders, I redoubled my efforts on completing my thesis and soon finished writing.  Then it was down to the mandatory task of defending, where I gave a presentation and answered a gruelling volley of questions from a panel of professors.  Steve was there in the room to watch this; my mom came too, but waited outside because she was too nervous for me.  I was successful, and after completing the final formalities, I graduated at the 3-and-a-half year mark.

After the defence, my supervisor sent out an E-mail to the lab mailing list that announced my favourable completion, and gave a summary of my work during my time in the lab.  Included in this summary was an image of one of our magazine covers and a link to our website.  I was stunned for a moment that I had (innocently) been outed to the lab by my supervisor, but realized it didn’t actually bother me – or anyone else in the lab for that matter.  In a way I was glad, because it forced me to get past that awkwardness and move on.

My supervisor was happy to offer me a paid position, to work on some additional projects while I got my feelers out for an industry job.  So I made a fresh start of this.  I brought a copy of GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine to the lunch table every month; I spoke more openly with people about my life, introduced people to Steve on the occasion when we stopped by, and engaged in discussions about LGBT issues when they came up (often spurred by articles seen in the magazine).

Meanwhile, our economy started its downward slump, and as I did my job hunting, I entered the twilight zone where I didn’t hear a peep from anywhere that I was submitting my résumé.  So my position at the University lasted for over a year, during which time I made the most of it by completed some exciting foundational work on 3D motion tracking.  It opened up a new field of research for present and future students to explore with relative ease. 

Seeing me struggling to drum up interest in the job market, my supervisor stepped in to help me revise my deceptively humble résumé, and used his contacts to get me an interview at a major technology company here in town where many people from the lab have tended to migrate.  The interview process was pretty intensive, and I wasn’t shy to show off the GayCalgary.com website as an example of my skill set, or ask about medical coverage for my partner.  After an unnerving two weeks of silence (as they checked my references), Steve had the honour of opening my welcome package and reading it to me over the phone while I was at work, nearly in tears for joy.

So by the time this magazine comes out of press, I will be just about done my first week at this new job.  For those who think I talk far too much about myself in these publisher’s columns, you’ll be happy to know that many details of this job are protected by a non-disclosure agreement, so it will definitely not be a topic for future columns!

How does this affect my involvement with GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine?  Well, not terribly much, I hope.  The stricter hours of my day job may force us to juggle the assignment and timing of a few tasks, and push us to further streamline some of our processes, but nothing insurmountable.  My attention will be primarily devoted to this day job, and the magazine will continue to be something I do in my time outside of work.

So I for one plan to be happier and more motivated in general, not to mention a little better paid.

September 2010

Calgary Pride dominated last month’s itinerary.

Opponents of last year’s move of the event from June to September might have delighted in the irony that it still rained on parade day this year.  While the move was motivated by the fact that September is statistically less likely to have rain than June, that doesn’t mean a guarantee of good weather.  So this outcome wasn’t exactly surprising, considering that this year’s Stampede only had two days of sun, and one nasty hail storm.

The dance occurred on the Saturday night before the parade, where a diverse group kept Spur and Italian Kitchen packed for most of the night.  In the midst of the dance, we headed over to the Twisted Element to see Kristine W perform.  Her show was a medley of many of her songs, while she wore some fabulous costumes and sung alongside some sexy backup dancers.

This being our first Calgary Pride with a car, we came a little better prepared for the parade, with a standing lawn umbrella.  It gave us shelter on the sidelines while we photographed and videotaped the procession.  Speaking of the procession, we were told by organizers that parade entries were nearly double that of last year, making for a much longer and more interesting spectacle.

But I digress.  We had a booth at the Street Festival where we went through a stunning amount of our current edition, and issues all the way back to January of this year.  I even surprised myself how much I perked up while interacting with people.  That energy put me in a great mood for the rest of the day, while I made my rounds to the bars to get photos of their individual after parties.  One of the girls at FAB wasn’t about to let me get away unscathed, and arranged a fun photo with her hot (straight) brother, who was so frisky as to make me blush.

I returned to the Street Festival to help pack up our booth when the time came.  Though I was having a great old time, and had gotten a burger for lunch from the ISCCA BBQ at the Backlot, poor Steve was running himself ragged between photographing and manning the booth.  He felt much better after getting a burger (and some gropes) at the Calgary Eagle.

From there we did a whirlwind tour to Club Sapien, the lesbian dance at The Soda, the Rocky Horror Picture Show at Plaza Theatre, Twisted Element for a special Pride-themed drag show, and finally to the afterhours dance at Goliaths (where for privacy reasons, we respectfully do not take pictures).

All in all, despite the rainy weather, Calgary’s community came together and the Saturday and Sunday were each a resounding success for Calgary Pride.