Imagine my great distress when I woke up Sunday morning the 17th, the big public opening, to a screen full of alert messages - our web site (and Art on Call) had been down since about 4:30 that morning. I had a terminal window open from the night before, so I quickly tried to restart one of the Apache servers — file not found?!! There were no files in the software folder. No files in the home folders for our websites. Panicked, I checked the logs: full of I/O errors for the drive. Trying to reboot left the machine completely unresponsive. AHHHHH!!!
I knew there were backups being made by the company we’re colocated with - Onvoy - but I’d never had to use them and didn’t quite know where to start. Some quick reconnaissance in our internal wiki told me the drive was a SCSI drive. Crap. On the 17th I knew just enough about SCSI to know I didn’t know enough to run out and buy a new drive on the spot - way too many options to wade through. A call to a local hardware store (General Nanosystems) confirmed my fears - “is it SCA or LVD?” “um…”
The SCSI interface (pr. “scuzzy”) is really quite incredible. Most desktop machines use the IDE interface to connect their hard drives, which is all well and good for their needs, but production-quality servers need something more - something faster, more reliable, better engineered, and self-diagnosing… Enter SCSI drives.
I head out to Onvoy with a pit in my stomach - even if I can get a new drive today, I’m not confident I can learn or find someone who knows how to restore from the backups… Oh, did I mention it’s the biggest day for the Walker since I started working here? The grand public re-opening?
Tune in next time for part two of the saga, in which our hero saves the day — but really only postpones disaster…
Art on Call has been up and running now for almost two weeks! I’m super pleased with the outcome and the fact that people seem to be using the app - for my part it was great on opening day to be able to stand in front of the artwork and listen to the artist or curator talk about what you’re seeing, all without the hassle and overhead of checking out an audio tour device. Very cool.
How did it go getting it finished? Busy. The biggest drama came just before the launch, and involved the text to speech (TTS) engine — when we turned on the high quality TTS it was taking almost a minute(!) to render the text for event descriptions. A user would hit a key and the app would just drift into silence… (details on the problem and solution - it’s solved - can be found on the nmi wiki). So between that and the mad rush to produce content for the opening, it was busy all around - I think the team did a great job getting it launched on time..
Now we’re proceeding (Brent and I) with a website for the project including an interface to the audio clips for each “stop” or artwork id. Not quite the same as standing in front of the art, but I think it will be a good experience for people who can’t make it to the Walker galleries, or who didn’t have their cell phone with them at the time…
Keep watching the blog and wiki for updates as phase two commences - hopefully adding a “browse by artist” function, possibly event reminder callbacks, a set of downloadable MP3 files to put on your iPod to take into the galleries, and more…
The Bazinet Lobby kiosks were installed the day before our press event, along with the wireless network. This gives museum patrons a way to experience our website, and also gives them free wireless access to the internet in the front lobby should they need it. The goal at some point is to enable wifi in the entire building, but for now Bazinet Lobby is where it’s at. There are several tables next to the kioks for people with laptops, as well as the Orientation Rock to sit on and chill. And of course if you don’t have your own computer, the kiosks are there to use and enjoy as well.
Also, the building is now open! The opening events went well, particularly the member’s party, and while there were a few hiccups along the way (such is life in the technical world) we seem to have fixed the worst of it. It was a very long weekend for New Media (and every other dept at the Walker), but it was worth it. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should!
Well everything was in place two days before the press arrived for the official press preview. Then somehow two of the projectors got messed up when their autosync malfunctioned. The guys from SPL and Larry from AV took a couple hours to sort it all out. Everything should be good for the press preview today and donor reception tonight.
The projection is a bit splotchy but I think it ended up looking mysterious since the glass is still mostly transparent. The huge letters are legible from a long ways away and make up for most of the dim zones. We also found that if we move the letters faster it appears like the words shimmer. I was told someone from HGA could read the sign from Loring Park when the big letters were on. So far this project seems like its going to be a great place for our announcements.
Here is some documentation with real content in it.
I took some video from the sidewalk, from the crosswalk and from across Hennepin Avenue.
We did a final round of testing with a clearer vinyl film by 3m. I think there was a general concensus that it was the best looking on the glass and the least intrusive in the space from the inside and outside. The projection showed some hotspots during the day and the colors were not perfect though. Over all though it the projection showed up good enough to be very impressive. Especially with bold black and white graphics. In the end I think everyone seemed to accept that the little loss in image quality was more than compensated for by the more subtle appreance of the film on the glass.
Now to install the film we hired some experts (i don’t know what company sorry). They came in and had to build these wooden platforms between the two window walls so they could reach the frosted area. It seemed slow going, they had to stop a few times to set up fans and cool down the window cavity. I guess they didn’t want the glass to crack from the temperature difference. Here are some picts of the scaffolding inside the windows.
Jakub arrived from New Jersey today to finish the installation (and programming) of our Dialog Table. Since i last posted we added all the video for the avatars changed the cursor graphic around and Jakub did a ton of updating the general functionality of the table. It is getting more refined every version so I think we will have something nice in time for everyone to party around it on the 17th.
Here is a little video of me using the table. I had a some trouble grabbing anything because I changed the cursor graphic and now its hard to see through the camera viewfinder.
