30 Days of Disney JobSeeking Tips

 30 Days of

Disney Job Seeking Tips

I'm a fresh graduate, with a recent postgraduate degree, and I am now ready to jumpstart my experiences into the job world.

Inspired by POW! with Acel Fortes, I will be writing short, reflective posts on navigating job searches and minor tips on how you can elevate your attitude during these "oh-so-annoying" times. But these come with a little twist. I chose to write in relation to something I'm passionate about - Disney. 

Disney movies aren't just meant for kids - you know! If you look hard enough, you will find lessons upon lessons that the movies voluntarily or unintentionally teach kids and adults alike. So, during the month of April, I will post a job search tip, featuring a Disney movie, every day.

The calendar below can help you navigate to these posts. Just click on the date you wish to visit.

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Fun With Racket: Traffic Lights

Traffic Lights

Working with Racket and Arduino.

The Challenge

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To design and implement a Racket / Arduino traffic light system. Demonstrate what you know about Racked, arduino, design, states, etc.

Project specification drawing

 T-junction with 2 road signals

 Road is 200m

 Speed limit is 30mph

Traffic lights Racket project visual

Resources

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 Arduino (running Firmata), LEDs (red, orange, green), resistors, pushbuttons, any sensors you may need, and so on

 Racket, the firmata.rkt library

 Sample racket code showing a simple prototype for a single traffic light

Behaviour of System

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Finite State Machine for traffic light working

The FSM above was used to, in a way, simulate and plan our ideas thoroughly before implementing or making any further decisions. It has 14 states as represented by the coloured circles.

Q = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 }

T = { a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h }

Q₀ = { 1 }

F = { }

t = { ((1, b), 2), ((2, f), 5), ((2, g), 4), ((2, h), 3), ((3, a), 8), ((3, d) 14), ((4, a), 7), ((4, d), 12), ((5, a), 6), ((5, d), 13), ((6, c), 10), ((6, d), 13), ((7, c), 11), ((7, d), 12), ((8, c), 9), ((8, d), 14), ((9, a), 5), ((9, d), 14), ((9, e), 1), ((10, a), 4), ((10, d), 13), ((10, e), 1), ((11, a), 3), ((11, d), 12), ((11, e), 1), ((12, a), 11), ((13, a), 10), ((14, a), 9) }

;; a = 5s   b = 10s  c = 20s  d = PB  e = IfPBswitch  f = 5s (from state 2 to 5)  g = 5s (from state 2 to 4)  h = 5s (from state 2 to 3)

State	Rep. in FSM
1	0/ped1/s1
2	0/ped0/s0
3	003
4	030
5	300
6	100
7	010

State	Rep. in FSM
8	001
9	002
10	200
11	020
12	ButtOnorange
13	ButtOnpurple
14	ButtOngreen

;; 0 means RED,   1 means GREEN,   2 means AMBER,   3 means RED-AMBER.

;; So, 001 indicates signal1 at red, signal2 at red and signal3 at green

The language accepted:

    b [ (f| g| h) (a (c (d a| e b | a (a| d) ) | d a (d| e| a) ) | d (a (d a| e b| a (a| d) ) ) ) ]⁺

State transition diagram

Evaluation

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We haven’t put in a pedestrian button as the time delay did not work when we tried the coding. This did not allow us to proceed with the remaining plan, and had to use “sleep” which does not effectively use the button.

The system will only work on a certain time and will not change, even if there is a traffic jam on one side and the other side, empty. It will still run its course.

No blinking lights to indicate signal change or physical state change.

This task was a group project done by:

Timofei Vacula

Tayyab Sultan

Mehran Joya

Kristen Rebello

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Introducing Kinect and Locative Strategies

 And RubikRevolution is a go! I have seen this video about a guy who made a self-solving Rubik's cube. Being so thrilled with the idea, I wanted to look into it further. Robotics? Not my strongest point. I went digging into other ideas and solutions.

Meanwhile, the best class ever. We had a little while to play Pokemon Go, which I found out everyone plays. It's a popular game. In the beginning, when the hype of Pokemon Go was growing, I had the crazy idea of making a Disney version of it. Or, maybe even a Krisney version.

Knocking reality was starting to interest me and keeping my imagination busy. There are definitely lots of areas and places technology can grow, and is now increasingly becoming fundamental to art, design and culture. Technology and creativity are progressively adapting and overlapping across multiple industries; one only has to keep up.

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Fun with MIDI and ReacTable

Starting in Creative Technology, we were presented with basic graphics programming in Processing. And more importantly, the AR Sandbox. I didn't even know something of the sort existed.

 Considering we were fairly technical students, we were tasked with what, to my understanding, was, is and will always be my biggest nightmare - Working with hardware.

Introduced to the Arduino and working with the MIDI was quite intuitive and confusing at the same time. I'm not musically gifted per se, but something seemed to work and I swiftly moved along on knowledge of concepts itself.

Next, another one of my dislikes - Speaking in public. This was just in front of my own class, but the nerves still do get to me. And my topic, Cars. Something I know very little about and have very little interest in.

With any technology, vehicles are getting more autonomous and sparking up various discussions on the growth and progression of these technologies. I remember I had a class with a full dedicated discussion on whether a programmer or engineer should be held liable for self-driving car accidents.

This idea of puppetry and unusual input devices, including my limited hand at the ReacTable, had me curious about doing different things and it is one of the things that brought me to do my project RubikRevolution.

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The Creative Technology Path

 "Imaginative, original and full of ideas, Creative Technology combines technical and creative skills to shape the technologies of the future."

When Creativity meets Technology, the bounds of where technology can reach, blur. This path doesn't require skill, although it does help. It requires intuition and imagination. Ideas and Innovation. Find curiosity in the unknown.

Having been exposed to programming and software development for only three years, it was conclusive that it came to me with ease. Understanding concepts, logical thinking and problem solving were key points that I had actually picked up from Art.

^ Creative Technology, Week 1

This course fulfilled my thirst for learning and creative thinking. I've learned technologies I never knew even existed. And then, there was the freedom of choice to experiment and learn new technologies or rediscover old ones. With each challenging project, I was tempted with ambition and creative wits to go one step further.

I have to admit I did not plan to go in a creative direction. My understanding was that my artistic side would compel nothing more than a hobby. And with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, I was getting ready to walk the software development path. This course has definitely exceeded my expectations and even though some of the assignments were a little far from my interests, I enjoyed working with my peers and the professors as well.

When I look back, the one word that comes to mind is CRAZY. A good kind of crazy. A little weird and crazy is always a good thing. And this isn't the end for me. I'm hoping to use my learning in a lot more creative projects my brain won't let me stop thinking about. A blessing and a curse, this course opened a door to a whole room full of ideas.

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