My notes for the day end there, but I imagine I eventually headed back to the hostel and went to sleep.
It turns out that my notes for the next day start with a recap on what happened the night before. So I can fill in a few blanks here.
Back to the Hostel
I got back to the hostel and found it mostly empty. Most of the others must have been out doing something else. Chantelle was there in the common room though, and we filled each other in on what we’d done that day.
After that, we brewed some tea, and played a version of Scrabble where we can make up words, so long as we can define them in a funny way. It was good times. As we were playing, more people started to come back and fill up the common room.
I had some jam on bread as a snack, and talked with Peter, Alex, Tara, and Tom about politics (mainly US foreign policy). Somehow, Sonia convinced me to put some cheese on my jam sandwich. I noted in my journal that I didn’t think it added much in the way of good flavouring.
It turns out that Chantelle and I hadn’t been the only ones in the hostel – Ryan and Jiv had been there sleeping. They were both feeling pretty sick. There was some kind of illness going around, and my throat was starting to get sore, too.
It’s been about 5 – 6 months since my last Poland entry. There are a myriad of excuses for this: tough school year, busy Xmas holiday, relentless work load…
But I have to say I’ve kind of been avoiding writing this one on purpose. Why?
Well, for starters, I don’t have any photos. Long story short, before we got off the bus at Auschwitz, we were told there was no photography, so I left my camera on the bus. Then it turned out that there was no photography in the buildings, so I missed out on getting some snaps outside.
I’ve been able to get my hands on some photos. A big thanks to Alex Rubin and Anj Mulligan for letting me use theirs. I’m not entirely sure how using someone else’s photos will affect my narrative, but we’ll see.
The other reason I’ve been avoiding this one is because I wrote so damn much about it. 39 pages from my journal were devoted to this day.
Why so much? Well, to be honest, it was a pretty emotionally charged day. A lot of people were crying during the tour. My reaction was just to write down everything I could see and hear, as fast as I could. I hope I got everything right. Please correct me if I’ve gotten something wrong.
Anyhow, enough stalling. Here we go.
June 24, 7:45AM
It was an early morning. I showered, shaved, sent some email, and then hung out in the kitchen/common area with Yev, eating some cocoa-puffs while she boiled water for tea.
The breakfast lady was in a foul mood that morning. She stormed in to the kitchen and started rearranging things with a violent efficiency, clicking her heels. Yev and I were silent. Finally, I said “Dzien dobry” (good morning) to break the tension.
Wow. That was the last straw, I guess. The breakfast lady flew into a huge Polish rant as she stormed around us. We couldn’t understand a word, but she was clearly upset.
Yev said she reminded her of one of her Soviet schoolmasters.
I didn’t wait to see how the fury played out. I got out of there. Yev stayed behind.
Yev later told me that, after making a sandwich (which the breakfast lady saw her do), she made a super-quick pit-stop at the washroom, only to come back and find that her sandwich had been thrown in the garbage. Presumably by the breakfast lady.
8:25AM
We boarded the bus and were en route.
It was a tense morning. Tamara told us that the Auschwitz trip was optional, and so a few of us had stayed back. The bus ride was unusually quiet.
I think everybody was preparing themselves.
9:45AM
I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera (or so I thought), so I left it on the bus.
After getting off the bus, we read a multi-lingual sign that set the behavioural tone for the rest of the tour:
Througout the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. The German forces occupying Poland during the Second World War established a concentration camp, on the outskirts of the town of Oswiecim. In 1940, the Germans called the town Auschwitz and that is the name by which the camp was known. Over the next years it was expanded into three main camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz and more than forty subcamps.
The first people to be brought to Auschwitz as prisoners and murdered here were Poles. They were followed by Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies and deporters of many other nationalities. Beginning in 1942, however, Auschwitz became the settling for the most massive murder campaign in history, when the Nazis put into operation their plan to destroy the entire Jewish population of Europe. The great majority of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz – men, women, and children – were sent immediately upon arrival to death in the gas chambers of Birkenau.
When the SS realised that the end of war was near, they attempted to remove the evidence of the atrocities committed here. They dismantled the gas chambers, crematoria, and other buildings, burned documents, and evacuated all those prisoners who could walk to the interior of Germany. Those who were not evacuated were liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.
On July 2, 1947, the Polish Parliament established the State Museum of Oswiecim – Brzezinka on the sites of the former camps at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. In 1979, these camps were formally recognized by UNESCO by their inclusion on its World Heritage List.
PLEASE BEHAVE APPROPRIATELY RESPECTING THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO SUFFERED AND DIED HERE.
Next to this was a map of the compound. Again, no photos, so something like this will have to do.
Looking at the map, my eyes were drawn to the familiar word “Canada”. It turns out that, when new arrivals came to the camps, their belongings were stripped from them and sent to a special area of the camp called Canada for sorting and searching. It was called Canada, because at the time, Canada was considered the land of plenty. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on it.
Near the signs were, of all things, gift and souvenir shops, called the “informatory”. Postcards, books, videos, photos… seemed a bit in bad taste. After seeing the gift shops, I noticed all of the smiling tourists around me, and I found that quite macabre.
It was particularly disturbing because of how quiet it was. There were also “keep silence” signs all over the place. So yeah, it was quiet. Really quiet.
As we approached the entrance, we heard birds chirping. It was overcast – the grass was still wet from the morning dew.
10:00AM
As we were reading the signs, Tamara had gone off to get the tour guide. On her way back, her face was covered in tears. She’d visited Auschwitz for a tour several times before, and firmly stated to us that she couldn’t bring herself to do it again. So she went off to go wait in the bus. It was an ominous moment.
All of the tour guides were dressed in black. Ours was no exception. After a brief, quiet hello, she gave us each a set of earphones and receiver. This is how she would communicate with us during the tour. This way, she wouldn’t have to yell for us all to hear her. Instead, the tour became very personal, and she was able to speak softly to each of us individually. I wrote in my journal that her voice was incredibly soft, caring, and soothing – and that she reminded me more of a nurse than a tour guide. I really think part of her job was to soothe, as well as to educate.
The buildings of Auschwitz I were military barracks, originally constructed by and for the Polish army. In the late 1930′s, Poland had been invaded, split up, and annexed to the Nazis and the Soviets. So technically, Poland ceased to exist. The Nazis saw the barracks in their new territory as “very convenient” for housing the growing number of Polish prisoners, especially considering the railroad junctions that led to it. The Nazis set up shop, and the land and buildings became Auschwitz I.
The camp orchestra, composed entirely of prisoners, would play lively German marches as the prisoners were led into the camp. It was humiliating and dehumanizing. This also made it easier for the guards to count and keep the prisoners in step.
The men and women were then separated, and sent to different barracks. There would be 800-1000 prisoners assigned per barrack, which only had 2 stories. The prisoners in Auschwitz I were cramped to the extreme.
The roads we walked down were all empty and quiet, but it wasn’t hard to imagine them filled with the noise of thousands upon thousands of prisoners, being crammed into the buildings.
It was pretty disturbing. In this shot, you can see me scrambling to scribble all of this information down in the background.
The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.
The Barracks
Auschwitz was almost in the center of occupied Europe. With the already-established railroad system, the Nazis were able to send over 1,000,000 prisoners to Auschwitz. The majority of those prisoners were Jewish.
It didn’t start out that way, but at some point during 1942-1943, Auschwitz became an extermination camp.
A sign on the wall broke down the prisoners as follows:
1,300,000 sent to Auschwitz
1,100,000 Jews
140,000 – 150,000 Poles
23,000 – Roma / Gipsy’s
15,000 – Soviet Prisoners
25,000 – Other
90% Jews
A large, glass, transparent urn in the barracks held human ashes in rememberence.
During the original invasion of Poland, the Nazis focused on capturing/executing as many Polish monks, priests, lawyers, leaders, and educated people as possible. This was their method of “destroying” Poland’s culture and identity. After an uprising in Warsaw, 13,000 Poles were sent to Auschwitz I as punishment.
Many photos were taken at Auschwitz by the SS for their own use. Those black and white photos lined the walls of the museum. We weren’t allowed to take photographs, so I can’t show them to you, but I can describe some of them. Imagine black and white, blurry photos of extremely thin, extremely gaunt, bald people, wearing prisoner garb. Imagine seeing photos of them digging graves for themselves, or jumping to a particular height for a guard’s amusement, or running at top speed in a big circle “just because”, so the guards could watch.
SS “doctors” were always present at prisoner arrival to “conduct selections” on who could work and who could be executed immediately. There were photos on the wall of women, children, and old people, being sent to their death. They look calm, because they didn’t know.
The Jews who weren’t executed immediately were put to work. Some were sent to Auschwitz III, which was a work and manufacturing camp. Prisoners were forced to make things there for the Nazis.
Other prisoners became Sonderkommandos, which means they assisted in the execution of other prisoners. Sonderkommandos would work in the crematoriums and gas chambers, and were forced to witness and commit various horrible atrocities against other prisoners.
Gassing of prisoners took place underground. A single gas chamber would have 2000 prisoners crammed inside of it at one time. Prisoners who entered the gas chambers were told that they were taking showers. Fake faucets in the ceilings and walls helped sell the illusion.
After the doors were shut, crystals of Cyclone B were dropped in through openings in the ceiling. After 20 minutes, all were dead. Sonderkommandos would then go in and carry the bodies to the crematorium.
Before the bodies were cremated, Sonderkommandos had to cut off the hair from the women. The hair was packed into bags, and sent elsewhere to be turned into hair-cloth and other textiles. The ashes of the prisoners were used as fertilizer. Everything was reused.
At one point, we entered a room in the museum, where behind a large pane of glass, we saw mounds of human hair that had been found at the camp. Massive quantities of dead prisoners hair.
This was the point in the tour that most people started to lose it. Lots of tears. Lots of crying. I kept scribbling.
Any belongings or valuables brought by the prisoners into the camp were sent to the camps called Canada I and Canada II for processing. The plunder ended up being part of the evidence that was used to prove the atrocities that had happened at the camp. Like the piles of hair, we saw piles of glasses, piles of shoes, piles of Jewish prayer shawls, combs, brushes, suitcases, clothing, prosthetics, crutches, pottery, bowls, cutlery… everything was sorted. The quantity was simply horrifying.
In my journal, I noted that the lighting in the barracks was quite muted, but that the exhibits (the hair, combs, etc) were under bright flourescents. It was really macabre – like seeing a body at a morgue.
The next part of the exhibit was even more horrifying. It turns out that 20% of the victims of the camp had been children (90% Jewish). There was a room, absolutely packed to the brim, with children’s shoes. So many shoes.
And that’s the thing – I noted this in my journal: it’s not just the atrocity itself, but the sheer size of the atrocity that is so horrifying. The piles of shoes and the hair really gave us a sense of that size.
Prisoners
Of the prisoners that weren’t immediately executed, 50% were Jewish. Many were Polish. All were treated like property.
There were some prisoners who were given some of the responsibilities of the guards – for example, being in charge of work units. These prisoners were always German criminals.
The prisoners were deprived of all of their human characteristics. No names. Just numbers. Photos were originally used for identification, but this was eventually changed to tattoos because a prisoner’s appearence would change too much.
The Nazis were meticulous record-keepers. Prisoner IDs were linked to prisoner files that held details such as education, age, and history.
Hunger was rampant among the prisoners. There wasn’t nearly enough food for all of them.
One sign we saw gave us a breakdown of the daily life of a prisoner. I couldn’t get it all down, but the pattern was obvious: prisoners were slowly killed with work. They were punished and beaten. Most lasted less than a year.
All non-Jewish children became prisoners. These children were also often subject to horrific “scientific” experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele.
Among other things, Mengele apparently wanted to find ways of creating twins and triplets, so that German “Aryans” could reproduce quickly.
Other atrocities were performed by Dr. Carl Clauberg who tortured Jewish women, in an attempt at finding ways of sterilizing them.
Prisoners, often naked, were shot in the back of their heads. It is estimated that 10,000 prisoners were shot at this wall. There were also posts were prisoners could have their arms strung up behind them for hours, as torture, and as punishment.
There were also starvation cells. In one of those cells, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was starved to death with 9 other men.
Eventually, we entered a building where the first experimental mass killings took place. There were suffocation cells. There were cells where prisoners were forced to stand all night. Pretty horrific.
The “camp hospital” existed for propaganda, to keep the purpose of the extermination camp a secret. The hospital was really the “crematorium waiting room”, since selections would often happen there.
Roll call was also used as prisoner punishment. If a prisoner escaped, or it was suspected that a prisoner had escaped, the remaining prisoners would be punished. They’d be lined up and counted outside of their barracks, again and again. Sometimes they’d be out there for 20 hours straight.
Only 144 prisoners successfully escaped Auschwitz. Captured escapees were tortured for information on their escape, and then executed.
Crematorium I was originally an ammo bunker. The crematorium was dark…stone…dusty…gritty. It was all so much monstrous efficiency.
Break
The first part of the tour was over. We handed back our headsets and took a 10 minute break.
I wrote that the sun was warm, and that some of us were hungry.
12:05PM
We just got a small snack. We’re all sitting outside. Everybody is quiet. Some of us are eating. Some of us are drinking coffee. Some of us are smoking. Some of us are crying. It’s pretty rough. It’s hard to be an optimist here – hard to feel good, anyhow. Just…devestated.
12:20PM
We’re late. Our 10 minute break went on too long, and we’re late getting back on the bus. We’re heading to the next camp.
The bus really has never been so quiet. But what do we say to one another? This is no place for joking around…no place for making quips. What’s the first thing you say?
There are storm clouds in the distance.
It’s a 3km drive to the next camp. Tamara says that there are no exhibits…just the barracks and other buildings, the railroad tracks, and the gas chambers.
Auschwitz II
We’re here. I recognize where I am – I think I had seen it in Schindler’s List.
It’s brick and fields, barbed wire, and wooden barracks. It’s starting to rain gently. Those of us with umbrellas put them up.
The fields here used to be Polish homes and farmland before the residents were evicted by the invaders. The barracks were constructed from materials from destroyed buildings.
Not all of the barracks are still standing. Some have been dismantled. Others have crumbled with age.
The gas chambers have been destroyed, but the ruins are still there.
There’s grass and flowers now, but during the war, everything here was muddy and swampy.
We closed our umbrellas and went into the barracks.
The barracks reminded me of stables for horses. Wooden bunks, and a single stone oven for heating. At least 400 people per barrack. No toilets inside. No washrooms. Just buckets and ditches in the ground, and barrels of water outside.
There were “toilets” outside, which were really just holes in the ground with wood frames built over them.
Members of the prison resistance would meet by the ditches/toilets, since the guards would never go near them (due to the smell, and disease).
In November, 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the crematoria destroyed before the Red Army could reach the camp. Nazi soldiers began destroying the evidence of what had happened at the camp, starting with the gas chambers.
In January, 1945, with the Red Army getting closer, SS command ordered that all prisoners at Auschwitz be executed. This order was never carried out. Instead, the camp was evacuated, and the prisoners were sent on death marches to another camp in Wodzisław Śląski. Prisoners who were too sick or weak to march were left behind. Those 7,500 prisoners were still there when the Red Army came to liberate them.
According to Wikipedia:
Approximately 20,000 Auschwitz prisoners made it to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they were liberated by the British in April 1945.
Final Words
Some of the buildings and ruins in Auschwitz II are sinking, and the museum is working hard to restore them.
Just past the last gas chamber is a large stone monument. Large, Easter Island-like heads and monoliths.
At the base of the monument are numerous plaques, all in different languages. Here’s the English one:
The monument is surrounded by flowers and wreaths.
The tour is now over. We thank the tour-guide, and, in the rain, follow the train tracks back out the main entrance. Birds chirp. Grass grows. Puddles. Life continues.
It’s no surprise to me that existentialism and the Theatre of the Absurd came about in reaction to these atrocities.
And that’s it for my Auschwitz notes.
3:30PM
Just got off the bus. Had a nice long nap – I think most of us did. We’re back in Krakow. It’s sunny and warm. Tamara has given us free time now.
5:30PM
Had a nice big late lunch (or early dinner) with Alex, Linn, Una, and Jiv.
Just got off the phone with Em. Told her all about Auschwitz. Missing her a lot. I decided to try to make myself feel better by getting some lemon sorbet. It’s a pretty good deal at 4z. I found Alexi and Yev drinking coffee in the square, and joined them while I finished my cone.
I think Yev borrowed my camera and took these photos:
And I think I hear a dulcimer being played somewhere.
7:25PM
The street I strolled down is called Florianska. At some earlier point, I had gotten the urge to check out some of the local music scene, and the girl at the hostel told me to walk down this street. She said there was an indie rock bar around here called The Lizard, but I haven’t found it yet. And I’m slowly approaching the end of the street.
I’ve suddenly realized that there’s less than a week left in my trip.
7:30PM
I’m sitting in some park, listening to the birds. While I recognize some of the calls, most of the birds sound really different than what I’m normally used to.
Thunder rumbles in the distance. I think there will be another storm tonight.
7:50PM
I’m back in the square. I hear bagpipes somewhere – the notes from the pipes are reverberating off of the walls.
Eventually, I see the piper. He’s really far away, and I have to zoom in with my camera:
The square seems pretty busy for a Wednesday night. I imagine the place gets absolutely packed on weekends.
It’s a whole spectrum of age groups out this evening. I’m also hearing a variety of languages. Polish, English, and German for starters. Italian too. Mostly white people. One or two exceptions. Some rollerbladers.
The Trumpet
An ambulance raced by, driving through the crowded square. As it passed, I heard a trumpet playing a tune from the top of the cathedral, and then abruptly stop.
A crowd of people has formed in front of one of the cathedrals. Lots of talk, buzzing, but no English. Not sure what’s going on. Is it a tour about to start? Church service? Mass? At 8:07PM?
The Birds
I’ve noticed some noisy, high-pitched, tiny birds flying from building to building. They’re abundant. Maybe bats? I feel like an idiot trying to take a photo of them, but I do it anyways:
The three men playing on the accordions are still there, and now that crowd is starting to move. I guess the cathedral was acting like some big meeting point for a tour group. The accordion players are doing the William Tell Overture again – they seem to have a repetoire of about 5 songs.
My notes for the day end there, but I imagine I eventually headed back to the hostel and went to sleep.
My research proposal is going through ethics review, in order to make sure that I’m not going to blow things up (or hurt anybody if I do)
While my paperwork is reviewed, I’m refining my procedure and apparatus. Better and better.
I’ve been accepted into Google Summer of Code this year – I’ll be working on Review Board. Details about my project will be the subject of an upcoming post, which I will toss up shortly.
I may or may not be co-directing a radio play. I’ll let you know.
The MarkUs team is about to release version 0.7, and a fresh batch of Summer students will soon be here at UofT to work on it!
I have not forgotten about the UCDPtrip to Poland. I still have to tell you what we saw and did at Auschwitz. Cripes – it’s almost a year since I returned, and I’m only half-way through the whole story. And there’s a ton more to tell. Coming soon.
I’ve been studying for a midterm. It’s been a little while since I’ve had to write a test like this, and I’d forgotten what it feels like.
As a reward for some long studying, and a rather hard week for both of us, my girlfriend Em and I decided to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers DVD last night. Three things:
First, it’s better than I remember. Second, the special effects still hold up.
Third, I’ve realized that studying for an exam might be a lot like how generals prepare for war. I try to out-think and out-strategize my opponent (the instructor)…what angles are they most likely to attack from? What are my best defenses? What can I attack with? How will they try to surprise me? What are my weaknesses? What ammunition do I have? What might I have to sacrifice? Will I lose?
In this case, my opponent hadn’t given me much to work with. No past exams. No exam outline. Nothing. Just a point in the textbook, and everything up to it was fair game.
And so I strapped on my armor this morning (a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, my boots, and my pea coat), sheathed my sword (a 0.5mm mechanical pencil into my pencil case), and prepared for my epic battle.
I would be facing the Dark Lord of Automata Theory this morning.
I was just munching on some cereal and reading one of my (many) Peanuts books.
Sporadically, throughout the late 1960′s strips, Snoopy can be seen working on a novel, and receiving input from Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and the rest of the gang.
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!
A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!
While millions of people were starving, the king lived in
luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was
growing up.
Part II
A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the
tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.
At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital
was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient
in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.
Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas
who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the
daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?
The intern frowned.
“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand
head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two
men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous
hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right.
An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the
ranch was saved.
The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the
coffee shop. he had learned about medicine, but more
importantly, he had learned something about life.
THE END
And here’s a description of Snoopy’s desired cover art:
“How about a bunch of pirates and foreign legionnaires fighting some cowboys with some lions and tigers and elephants leaping through the air at this girl who is tied to a submarine?”
-Snoopy
Now that’s some damn fine writing.
It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
by Snoopy
Part I
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!
A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!
While millions of people were starving, the king lived in
luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was
growing up.
Part II
A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the
tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.
At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital
was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient
in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.
Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas
who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the
daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?
The intern frowned.
"Stampede!" the foreman shouted, and forty thousand
head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two
men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous
hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right.
An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the
ranch was saved.
The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the
coffee shop. he had learned about medicine, but more
importantly, he had learned something about life.
THE END
Every time I meet a non-native English speaker, I invariably ask them the same question:
I make fun of other languages all the time. I can spout out gibberish that sounds like Russian, Chinese, French, etc. What happens when someone who speaks a different language tries to spout out English gibberish? What does English gibberish sound like?
Belated happy holidays! My last post was over a month ago, and so my blog has a nice layer of web-dust on it right now. Well, here I am to ease your mind. I’m still alive!
But that almost wasn’t true.
I won’t bore you with the details – I’ll just give you the facts, and let you fill in the blanks.
My girlfriend Em, her sister Cassie, and myself, were up in Collingwood on New Years Day, enjoying a relaxing day at a Norwegian spa (the outdoor baths were amazing – how awesome is it to be in a boiling hot tub, while simultaneously, your hair is so frozen that it’s snapping off in your hands?)
The roads that night were treacherous. Snowy, un-plowed, and dark. I had borrowed my Mom’s car for the trip, and we took it realllllly slow.
After a tortoise-paced two hour ride back to Em’s place in Newmarket, and then another two hour drive from Newmarket to my home in Grimsby the next day, I was getting pretty sick of winter driving. On top of that, the brakes seemed to be acting funny. I found myself sliding a lot, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of resistance when I put my foot down.
The next day, my Mom takes the car to go to work. She doesn’t even leave the drive-way. The brakes hadn’t been acting funny: the brakes hadn’t been acting at all. Turns out we had a leaky brake-line for the entire trip…
Guts of the story: I think we drove home from Collingwood with about 35% brake power in one of the worst snow storms I’ve ever driven in.
Breakfast tasted especially good for us that morning.
Anyhow, now where was I? Oh yeah…
MarkUs
MarkUs 0.6 got kicked out a week or so ago. The MarkUs Team kicked the crap out of a bunch of tickets over the holidays, and I think we ended up with a pretty solid release. MarkUs is being used again at UofT this semester, and Byron Weber Becker is also piloting it at UWaterloo. I’ll cautiously say that things seem to be going well for this release. Great job, MarkUs Team!
I’m TAing the students working on MarkUs for Greg’sUCOSP course again. We had a fantastic code-sprint this past weekend! The new team members have already started working on tickets and submitting code to review. I think we’re on our way into another highly productive semester.
This is a pretty dead-simple code review tool that came about during a Rails Rumble a few months back. It has that “big friendly buttons and round corners” web 2.0 thingy going on. I haven’t gone so far as to actually try it out, but I did watch this web-cast:
Not bad if you just want to get your code out there, and get your team commenting on your changes…
A few things caught my attention:
It’s a web service, so you don’t install it…you sign up for it
It currently only supports Git.
There doesn’t seem to be any support for contextual per-line commenting…I think it’s just file by file commenting. I’d love it if I could comment on a single line of code…
Still, if I was working on a project hosted on a Git repo, and I needed a dead-simple code review service, and I needed it quickly, I could probably do a lot worse than this.
Remember that time when I wrote about how it might be neat if somebody created a code review tool on top of Google Wave? (or Bespin for that matter – though I didn’t mention it, and should have)
Anyhow, looks like something Wave-ish (yet simpler, more streamlined) has been developed. Check out Squad.
I just tried this thing out for free (with ads, features locked, etc), and it was pretty cool. I could see something like this being very useful for showing new MarkUs team members how to do things. Actually, I just used it to show a new member of the MarkUs team how to use Shoulda. Pretty useful. It sure beats coding through IRC and Pastie.org.
A few things to keep in mind:
Super simple to get going – open up a session, and send someone a generated link, and you’re both coding in no time
One person codes at a time…so while one person edits, the screen is locked for everyone else
Ads on the left are a little annoying
Sports syntax highlighting for a number of languages – though I noticed that Ruby wasn’t one of them. :/
I can see this becoming second nature, like Pastie.org.
Who knows – I might find more reasons to use Squad as the semester rolls, and MarkUs picks up speed. I’ll keep you posted.
This service crowd-sources code review requests, so don’t expect to get deep architectural feedback, because it’ll probably come from strangers who don’t/barely know your code base.
The idea is – slap a piece of code that you’d like refactored up on the site, and then others swoop in with brilliant suggestions (assuming of course, you asked your question properly…check this out…what the…?)
This is the sort of thing that CS instructors probably wouldn’t want their students using too much…it’d then become solve-my-CS-programming-assignment.com.
Still, I think it counts as peer code review. And it’s way different that anything else I’ve been looking at. Nice.
Adventure game developers have tried a bunch of ways of making it easy to control characters in 3d environments. Myst stuck with the basic point and click. Grim Fandango used the numpad on the keyboard. Gabriel Knight 3 used both the mouse and keyboard: the mouse moved the player, and the keyboard controlled the camera.
With all of these…it’s always felt a little bit…restrictive.
A few weeks ago, Ben Croshaw reviewed the new Monkey Island game. Here’s the review. Pay particular attention to 1:50 when he talks about the mouse controlling a character in a 3d environment.
NSFW (language):
That’s exactly right. He’s hit the nail on the head. It’s like trying to teach your dog something through a glass window.
The 2D interface of a mouse or keyboard makes actions in a 3d world awkward.
Multi-touch improves on 2d interfaces by giving us more bandwidth (multiple fingers = multiple cursors). If this is the next step in desktop computing:
What does that mean for 3d adventure games? How can 3d adventure games leverage multi-touch?
For that matter, how can 2d adventure games leverage multi-touch? Think of all of the puzzles…
Here’s a list of jobs I’ve had where I didn’t work with computers:
Dishwasher
My first job in Grade 9. I was a dishwasher for a fine dining restaurant. Besides washing dishes, pots and pans, my responsibilities included preparing salads, desserts, and cleaning the washrooms.
One time, I was scrubbing the floor, and the head chef threw a box of knives into the sink over my head while I was just starting to stand up.
I didn’t stick around for very long.
My first and last job in the food service industry.
Quality Assurance Clerk
Later in high-school, I was a Quality Assurance Clerk for Peninsula Liquidators. I think that was my title, anyhow.
This is probably the most interesting job on the list.
Do you know how Costco accepts returned merchandise, no matter what? What do you think they do with the stuff you return?
And what about mishandled freight from Purolator?
They sell it in bulk to salvagers. Salvagers like Peninsula Liquidators.
I worked on a team. Our job was to open the big bins of stuff from Costco, and see if what was inside was worth selling. If things were broken, we tried to repair them. If things were scuffed, we tried to clean them. If things were in pieces, we stored some parts in case we could use them in the future.
Whatever was worth selling got shipped to one of the PL stores. If we couldn’t repair it, it was auctioned off.
It was a cool job because we never knew what we’d get when we’d open up a box.
I wasn’t there for this, but apparently, a “decoder module” for a fighter jet was found in some of the mishandled Purolator stuff. They had to phone some government office, and some black vans pulled off and took it away.
Yeah, the mishandled freight from Purolator was probably the most interesting stuff. You won’t believe what people will ship to one another.
Gardener
I also worked as a gardener for a friends family for a few summers. They had an absolutely massive yard. Most of my job was weeding and replanting.
It was hard, sweaty work… but I liked it.
Greenhouse Labour
There are a ton of greenhouses in the town where I grew up. I worked in one for a summer.
This was probably the most exhausting, backbreaking labour I’ve ever done. I can’t even remember what I did – it was so mindnumbingly repetitive that I think I’ve blocked most of it out. I think I just did a lot of planting, and moving plants around…
And I had it pretty easy. The Mexican labourors there worked harder, and longer, and probably for less pay. They seemed happy though. Happy enough to play a full game of soccer in the hot sun on our lunch break, while I panted, poured buckets of sweat, and caught my breath in the break room.
Driving Range Guy
Have you ever been to a driving range to whack a few golf balls around? Somebody had to sell you the bucket of balls. That was my job.
Oh, and after you smack them all into the range, somebody has to go pick them up in a truck…that was my job too.
It was a pretty cushy job, actually. No supervision, and a relaxed pace. Probably the most exciting part was when some guy got whacked in the head with a golf club, and I had to call an ambulance.
GET US OUT OF HERE30-Jun-2009 15:02, FUJIFILM FinePix A345, 2.8, 5.8mm, 0.476 sec, ISO 100
NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
By order of the author,
Per G. G., Chief of Ordinance
