Tag Archives: octopus

Pitching pennies

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We were all happy to see that our April Fool’s video had received more than 5,000 hits on YouTube as of this morning.  Thanks for all the great comments, and thanks to PZ Myers for giving us a nod.  I was amazed by the relative scarcity of comments from those whom Dave Barry calls the “humor impaired.”  As of this posting, one insightful commenter has managed to identify the video as “totally fake,” perhaps aided by the title card at the end stating as much.  We would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!

Shawn, Mark, Laura and I met this morning to discuss camera placement.  The Visitor Center D&D campaign map came into play, with pennies representing camera mounts.  Now that we’ve figured out the field of view and other pertinent characteristics for our cameras, it’s a matter of fine-tuning our coverage and figuring out which camera works best in which location.

Associating video and audio is another issue.  One approach would be to automatically associate the audio feed from each microphone directly with the camera(s) that cover(s) the same cell(s) in our Visitor Center grid.  Another would be to present each audio and video feed separately, allowing researchers to easily review any audio feed in conjunction with any video feed.  What qualifies as “intuitive” can be highly variable.

Hypothetically, my initial response to a fresh mound of audio/video data would be to visually scan audio tracks for activity, then flip through the videos to see what was going on at those times.  In any case, our software should be versatile enough to accommodate a range of approaches.

 

Octopus Video

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This is a video of Pearl’s relocation Friday. I always enjoy seeing staff, students, volunteers and visitors united in enthusiasm and concern for an individual.

Note what Sid says to Pearl at 0:21. The animals in our care help bring the world to our visitors. Our debt is deeply felt.

Release video

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Sid took some video of Ursula’s release last Friday.  You can see it here.  Thanks, Sid!  You’ll notice that Jordan and Cory take care not to turn their backs to the ocean, but the ocean manages to dump a gallon or so of water on Jordan’s back anyway.

We release our octopuses from Yaquina Bay’s South Jetty, which is just down the road from HMSC.  We try to release at high tide, when the octopus has more places to hide and a nice current if he or she wants to swim farther out to sea.

You can see our new external Octocam housing from the overhead “Outside Looking In” cam on the Octocam page.  Look at the right side of the tank.  The new camera is the small grey object sitting on the base of the tank.  Tony built the housing to protect the camera from bumps and to block out the glare, but it also makes a nice aesthetic fit.

The new octopus—Case #11-42, nicknamed “Pearl” pending a formal name—can still be seen on the quarantine cam until she goes out front.

 

Exhibit of Learning (+10 Wisdom)

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Mark and Katie identified a useful model for data collection using the face-recognition system. That model is Dungeons & Dragons. Visitors come with goals in mind, often in groups, and they take on a variety of roles within those groups. D&D and similar role-playing games provide a ready set of rules and procedures for modeling this kind of situation.

In practice, this means the Visitor Center exhibit space will be divided into a grid, with the system recording data based on proximity, direction and attributes of agents (visitors, volunteers and staff) and the grid squares themselves.

For example, the cabinet of whale sculptures inside the front door would occupy a row of “artifact” squares on the grid. Visitor interactions would be recorded accordingly. Interactions with the exhibit would update each visitor’s individual profile to reflect engagement and potential learning. To use only-slightly-more D&D terms, spending time at the whale exhibit would add modifiers to, say, the visitor’s “Biology” and “Ocean Literacy” attributes. The same goes for volunteers and staff members, taking into account their known familiarity with certain material.

Mark and Katie have drafted what is essentially a dungeon map of the VC, complete with actual D&D miniatures. Staff members will even have character sheets, of a sort, to represent their knowledge in specific areas—this being a factor in their interactions with visitors.

In a visitor group scenario Mark walked me through today, the part of the touch pool volunteer was played by what I believe was a cleric of some sort. Mark has happily taken to the role of Dungeon Master.

This all forms a basic framework, but the amount and specificity of data we can collect and analyze in this way is staggering. We can also refer back to the original video to check for specific social interactions and other factors the face-recognition software might have missed.

In other news, Ursula will be released Friday morning. Here’s the word from Jordan:

“Wednesday afternoon the HMSC Husbandry team decided that now is the best time to release Ursula back into the wild. Our octopus from British Columbia is as feisty as ever and we feel that she is in good health. Because of this, we will be preparing Ursula for her journey back to the ocean Friday, December 23, 2011. We invite you to attend starting at 8:30 a.m. in the Visitor Center. We will then proceed to release her off Yaquina’s South Jetty about 9 .a.m.”

What do you do?

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I’ve tried to describe my job and workplace to strangers a few times. Most often, these attempts have been met with looks of concern for an obviously unwell man. Is this a common experience for other folks working in UX, museums, zoos and aquariums?

A friend of mine in Orlando reported via Facebook yesterday that she spent part of her shift scrubbing a horseshoe crab with a toothbrush. How do you work that into a conversation? When the eye-tracking systems arrive early next year, I myself may stop and wonder if I’m actually just standing at a bus stop somewhere, making people very nervous. However, I am genuinely interested in how we respond to the question “What do you do?” Please comment.

Here’s an update on Ursula and our new octopus from Jordan, our senior aquarist. It seems Ursula’s situation and its attendant considerations have changed since I last discussed it here:

“As many of you know Ursula has begun expelling eggs and has been very inactive the past few weeks; even taking the unexpected step of barricading herself in her corner with the curtain. She continued by pulling rocks and PVC pipe around her to make a cave. Ursula has also been receiving live Dungeness crabs the last two weeks as well, instead of her normal fish and squid. This is to better acclimate her to a wild setting should she be released.  If anyone can donate more live Dungeness it would be greatly appreciated.

In the West Wing our new octopus has been eating voraciously and has quite the feisty personality. During her Sunday morning feeding she was shooting water at us with her siphon, which as you can imagine was very surprising. She greedily her mackerel in under 3 minutes. Once quarantined, she should be a wonderful addition to the Visitor Center.

The past few weeks have been filled with heavy cleaning, de-leeching, and of course finals. Coming out of this last term, I think that I speak for the entire husbandry team when I say that we are looking forward to winter break. With more free time available, you can expect us to be around even more over the next month. Our goal is to have the Visitor Center looking immaculate entering the New Year.

Happy Holidays from the HMSC Husbandry Team”