Lights of the Dana Porter, Part 12

The latest of the designs of the “Pi On The Porter” group, this year’s arrangement was the “3.14159265358”. Arranging the curtains of the Dana Porter Library to spell things has been past time of students for several years and this group of Grebelites has been providing Pi Day designs since 2009. You can see all of their previous designs here.

Lights of the Dana Porter, Part 11

As part of the ongoing tradition of the “Pi On The Porter” group, the blinds in the windows of the Dana Porter Library were arranged as a celebration of Pi Day. The words “PI DAY”, “3.14”, as well as the Greek letter pi, adorned the four sides of the building.

This has been a tradition for the group for several years. We’ve previously written about their other designs, and you can see them here.

Hope you all had a excellent Pi Day!

Lights of the Dana Porter, Part 10

To kick off the IRS celebrations, the graduating class of 2012 Electrical & Computer Engineers (ECE) pulled the classic prank of arranging the curtains in the windows of the Dana Porter Library to spell “ECE IRS ‘12”

This was carried out on the evening of February 9-10.

One should also note that this is not the first time that the lights have been made to spell “ECE”. It was also done back in November, 2005.

Lights of the Dana Porter, Part 8

April 3, 2010 — Engineers Without Borders spread their message to the UW campus by arranging the curtains of the Dana Porter Library to spell out the letters “ESTW”.

ESTW stands for “Engineers Serve The World”, as opposed to the usual “Engineers Rule The World”.

According to Mei Ling Tamkei (VP of Communications for UW EWB):

“It was not difficult to do… We had a computer program that helped us plan out which shutters to open and close, as well as a team of people who we split up the floors among.  It was done as a part of a 2 day blowout of EWB activities called ‘EWB Days’.”

The Wonders of Electric Light!

As we have seen throughout the last week, the curtains of the Dana Porter Library are often arranged so that various patterns are drawn. It has been done to show school pride, to celebrate events, and to advertise a club or cause. It is nice, simple, low-tech prank that can be pulled rather easily. With that said, there are some things that you will want to think about:

• The Design: The Dana Porter library is square, with each of the four sides being 24 windows in width, 6 windows in height. These correspond to floors 5-10 (Floor 4 is administration and does not have windows). However, due to the trees that have grown up, and lower buildings around, the bottom row is blocked from view at most angles. It is reccommended that you design using only the top 5x24 windows (Floors 6-10).

• The People: The Dana Porter library is the quiet(er) arts library. There will be people there trying to study whenever the library is open. They have been know to become mean-spirited if disturbed, and may intentionally destroy your design if not handled well. When interupting their studies to adjust the curtains, be courteous. You may want to have something to say to explain what you’re doing.

• The Floor Plans: Floor plans for each level of the Dana Porter can be found here (login required). Print out a copy of each of the floors you intend to use. Mark them up with floor numbers in large print (to avoid accidental mixups), what you can see if you look out the window (eg. “Arts Quad”, to help those who can’t tell what side of the building they are on), and of course which windows need to be open and which need to be closed.

• The Coordinator: You want to have at least one person outside, on the ground to help coordinate things. While the floor plan shouldn’t be too difficult to read, people will inevitably make mistakes in the heat of the moment. Each person should have a cell phone that the coordinator outside can text/call in order to make corrections.

• The Timing: This is a prank that is better done near the ends of the year. Since the sun sets much earlier in the day, you have more time before the library closes in order to arrange the curtains. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be done during the summer, just that you will have to be quicker about it. The time of the sunset can be found here. The hours of the Dana Porter Library can be found here. Arranging all of the curtains will take sometime, however, the more people you have working on it, the quicker it will be.

As mentioned above, this is a low tech prank. This is likely way more detail than you will need to pull it off yourself, but it never hurts to be prepared and well informed. Finally, send in your photos and videos of you work to us here.

Lights of the Dana Porter, Part 6

Date unknown (post-2005) — The University of Waterloo Parkour Club had some fun arranging the curtains of the Dana Porter library to spell “UWPK” in the lights of the building.

So far, we haven’t heard any details back from them so the exact date of this prank is unknown. As always, if you know more details as to how a prank occurred, or would like to share your story, you can go here or here.