Friday, July 30, 2010

July 29th, 2010

The collect was finally today! Unfortunately we only got to help with cleanup because we had a meeting that went on the majority of it. During the morning we got a bunch more data for our two experiments that we created. We also recruited the astronomy kids for our experiments as well. Octavia and I also started on solving the problems that Jeff gave us for Adobe Lightroom. Lastly I also did some more heat maps.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

July 28th, 2010

Today we went for another attempt at helping out in the collection. It was a fifty fifty chance that they would fly over. However it seems that they want really nice and sparkly data so today was not the best. They are sticking around though and are willing to work with the department to figure out the greatest chance of getting lovely data. Octavia and I also did a miniature tutorial for several people in LightRoom. It went well and some of them even seemed impressed. A new experiment was created and we did some heat maps and testing there. Also got our College and Careers paperwork organized.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

July 27th, 2010

Today was more of a laid back day, more so than I thought it would be. After yesterday, which was very tiring, I thought today would be the same. However after the remote sensing kids got back from their meeting we were told that the fly by had been postponed until tomorrow. So we got working on more heat maps. Jeff is also leaving this week so he gave us a few tips on what had to get done. There is also a meeting we have to present in tomorrow about what we have learned in Adobe LightRoom. Hopefully this will go well. ALSO!! I almost forgot but I had a chance to sign up for College and Careers. Im going to room with Octavia, it will be tons of fun! We also had a chance to start making a new experiment for the SMI, that will probably also be completed tomorrow.

Monday, July 26, 2010

July 26th, 2010

Today was a very very eventful day. It was full of long hours out in the sun measuring and moving around targets. You see today was the collect, in which a plane, that I found out was called the 'wasp', was flying over the RIT campus and the remote sensing department needed a ton of help setting up, moving around, measuring, and then putting away afterwards. All of the interns who wound up helping dwindled down until there where only four of us left by 3:30. After the cleanup we finally finished around 4:00. This day has to be the most physical that I've had the entire summer and Im tired.

July 23rd, 2010

This day was a very fun one. Jeff gave us a few parameters and we were set free to do what we wanted with them. We had to gain experience with the SMI eye tracker and the best way to do so was to create our own experiment. So Octavia and I set out to create and test an experiment. We went around the building taking pictures of interesting situations. Now since Jeff recently showed us a new way to pass the slides on the SMI we integrated that into our experiment as well. After the calibration was done we had a question before each of the slides in which the person had to read and then look at the X below to move the slide forward. Gathering up interns and a grad student we collected data. We had a total of six people participate. After our experiment was finished we ended the day with some more heat maps.

Friday, July 23, 2010

July 22, 2010

Day number two that was predominantly overshadowed by heat maps. I can proudly say that I have become a master at creating and storing heat maps now. Each one takes a max of about 16 seconds to complete. So anyway that is what I did most of Thursday until two o-clock in which we had another article meeting. It was interesting and I particularly learned how time consuming and troublesome it is to get and create an experiment that pleases the scientific community. Octavia and I also signed up to be the leaders of an article reading in the near future, I think maybe in two weeks? OH! I also got paid, lucky me. Until tomorrow then.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

July 21st, 2010

The morning was kicked off with about a billion more heat maps. I made it all the way up to 19 for each experimentee. Afterwords we headed off to Pelligrinos for delicious subs (in my case) and straight off to our destination. We were welcomed at the biomedical lab and introduced with a presentation on what exactly a biomedical engineer IS. It was very interesting as there was a bigger field than I originally expected. Then we split up into three different groups to visit individual labs. They were very interesting because two of them seemed to be using the same technology for something completely different! It was amazing what they were able to do with some sound waves. After the brief interruption of an alarm we continued on into the storm without the fun of playing volleyball. Hope fully next week we will have a chance!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

July 20th, 2010

We had a word that we were given at the beginning of the day and told to blog about. Octavia and I figured it out halfway through the day. However my first couple of guesses were around the lines of "terrain punisher" and the like. After some thought this word seemed to look a lot like entrepreneur. We rummaged around and found this new word that neither of us had ever seen before, 'intrapreneurhips'. This word seems to be sort of like entrepreneur but instead of working for oneself its about working for a company. Apparently this word is what alot of businesses want to see in their employees. Anyway on another invigorating note we finally FINALLY got our paperwork turned in, it only took forever. We also started working on the problem of trying to offset data that was gathered in the heat maps of geo and non geo. This problem is very frustraiting and I hope we can solve it soon.

Monday, July 19, 2010

July 19th, 2010

Paperwork and more paperwork filled up this day. It consited of typeing up the IRB going over it and then retyping it several times becasue WORD decided it hated us. We also found a big problem in the mainframe of our final project. After the entire lab helped us work out the problem and find a solution that was both concivable and time worthy we set off to make changes. We were also charged with the task of becoming experts on Adobe Lightroom. Its an amazing program for pictures and I especially like the part where the actual pictures can be changed and enhanced. Unfortunatly we will not be working with that part but with the organization and viewing of said pictures. By the end of the day we made several breakthroughs in the programs such as, what the arrow keys actuallly DO. We also figured out how to view several pictures at once without zooming around and making the adience sick.

July 15th, 2010

We spent the entire morning working on tweaking the details on our final project. Even after the paperwork was finished and details started to be discussed I realized how many variables we would have to control. We started to track down more experts to participate in the experiment but for being a gaming school there was a lack of people into video games. This surprised me greatly because I was expecting to have a difficult time finding novices. Then we had a meeting with a representative from Kodak. It was very nerve racking to present and I even wound up in the only echoing spot in the entire room. Although I was nervous all the interns got through it and we even got some helpful hints and tips for our final project. After subs we were treated to a tour of the optics lab. They had some sweet machinery in there. At the end of the day we said a sad goodbye to Nate and made our way home.

Friday, July 16, 2010

July 15th, 2010

A pretty normal day, we went to the lab after our morning meeting and were given an article to read. It was pretty interesting, all about change blindness and the studies that have been done on it. It also included right and wrong inductions. After that Octavia started the paperwork for our final project. It was especially tiresome because the people we would be working on were juuusssttt shy of 18, therefore technically kids. We had to make up permission slips for their parents to sign along with the safety forms that were required. Needless to say all this paper work made me wonder how many people got turned away from experiments because it was to much. Anyway after we finished our work Nate managed to finish up the heat maps. After lunch we reviewed our article and went out on a search for more participants. At the meeting the article was not discussed as much as the professors talked about what they did and why they were all connected. It was extremely interesting and the meeting itself flew by very quickly. At the end of the day we met up with more participants and made them take surveys and permission slips home.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

July 14th, 2010

I have come to the conclusion that RIT knows how to travel in style. After we had received our safety goggles we traveled outside to a normal looking bus. Turns out inside this unseemly bus is a limo. The only reason I could see for this is if people wanted to travel around in a sweet interior but not have the problems of vandalism normal limbos may have. We arrived at JML optics not to long afterward and were immediately put on grand tour. Traveling through the factory just as a lens would when it first arrived at the loading docks. It is first cut down to size and then either put on the fast track (which is more costly) or the hand made way. The part that I enjoyed the most was the polishing of the glass. You see after the glass is cut it gets filled with tiny fractures that have to be taken out. So its cut a bit above the size and then polished down to what a normal lens would look like. The little machines that polished were really cool and the lenses had to go through there twice! The end product was a very very see through and shiny lens. There is also a section of the factory dedicated to super duper microscopic accuracy. They even had a temperature controlled room! Then we departed and made our way to lunch which happened to be delicious subs. When we got back I coded some videos (actually finished up one and then finished another) and went over to help out Nate who was working on heat maps. Nate and I migrated outside and helped two girls from boot camp who needed test subjects. Then everyone played volleyball to finish up a very eventful day.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

July 13th, 2010

At the meeting today Bob said that we should go around to other groups to visit and learn what they were up too. As soon as he said this I made eye contact with the rest of my group and smiled. Why you ask? Well because we have been doing that almost every day since we started. On the second (or first, I cant remember) We went on a scavenger hunt to find other groups and find out what they were doing. The astronomy group was the first we found and we chatted them up and looked at what they were doing (which is sweet by the way, 3D models). After we left the meeting the three of us split up and started working on jobs. Octavia with calibration, Nate with heat maps, and me with manuals. After the first hour or so I jump off my computer and went and helped Octavia with coding. After two videos we went over and helped Nate who taught us what he was doing. Lunch ensued and when we came back it was more heat maps for us. We then visited the astronomy kids again but this time they came back with us. We did a tour of our labs and a brief introduction of what we did.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

July 12th, 2010

This day was a very productive day, it consisted of finishing one project and jumping right into the next. The entire morning was dedicated to coding the razor in three videos. We had several technical difficulties today which consisted of, crashing of semantic code and losing data, and not being able to upload said data onto the program in the first place. After much frustration we took off for lunch to cool down and take another swing at it. This proved successful and after finishing coding we moved on to taking heat maps off the nine participants of each test study. Overall a very productive day!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

July 9th, 2010

This morning was the last day of boot camp in which the interns would learn everything they needed to know for the rest of the summer. Because of the day before Jeff posted a safety word (n prime) in case we got terribly and inexplicably off track so as to lose as little time as possible. We got off onto minor tangents but I personally never said the safety word because I enjoy these tangents and think they are informative and fun. After boot camp was finished we got free pizza and drinks in celebration. We met up in the lab upstairs where we preformed several test experiments with the SMI. We ran one with Jeff there and then one we preformed ourselves. We decided to send off each person to get pictures none of the others had seen and then upload them for eye tracking. We were able to play around with the data and grasp a firmer understanding of how to use the software and the information it had to offer.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

July 8th, 2010

Today was the first day of boot camp. We started off with our morning meeting and then went directly to the room on the ground floor near the giant cube. Everyone introduced themselves and the interns were charged with the task of asking questions throughout the presentation. After the powerpoint started several student speakers went up and talked about different parts of the eye and other subjects of optical importance. I now realized why a presentation that would normally take one day was spanned over the course of two because Jeff and Andy would frequently disappear on tangents or get in an argument about what they agreed upon. Needless to say it was a wonderful break from boot camp for the rest of the audience to sit back and watch them duke it out. After boot camp and lunch with the rest of the interns we headed back and were sitting in on the explanation of an experiment involving change blindness and babies. Nate was tested on the eye tracking machine only to flunk out when he measured a 5.0 on the x and y axis's. The steps for setting up and manning the machinery were taught to us and then I was selected to run a geo test. It took quite a bit of time answering many questions to just as many pictures. After Jeff was called back I was informed it was to measure the change between Novice and Expert. This brought Octavia and me onto the subject of our final project in which we discussed until a bit after five.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

July 7th, 2010

The second day of my RIT internship was no less eventful than the first. When I arrived we had our morning meeting and were charged with two tasks for the day. The first to get our passwords four our CIS accounts and the second to meander upstairs to the third floor and swipe our cards to get access to certain rooms. When I arrived at my lab area Nate was already present and setting up his Twiki account. After we were shown how to work the website that anyone in the group could post on we were charged with a task. To find how many degree's the camera on the portable eye tracker took up in a normal persons field of vision. After Jeff left we had a group effort in clearing out the cobwebs surrounding the long forgotten trigonometry. After we came up with three separate answers, width height, and the slant we set off for completing our tasks set earlier in the day. When we got back from lunch we had another job to get done, this one taking the skills we were taught the day before and finishing the eye tracking video taken the day before. It was reviewed and accepted only to again be sent out on the arduous task of creating a 'hierarchy' of names for when we started labeling the fixations. Needless to say I am VERY glad that we have the technology we do now and I am not stuck spending 14 hours on seven minutes of video. A day well spent with results to show for it.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

July 6, 2010

Today was the first day of my internship it was more fun than I anticipated. We started off by being split into three different groups and told we were supposed to go on a scavenger hunt. Initially I was thinking of how this would be another BORING team building exercise in which nothing was accomplished but wasting time. However I was quickly proven wrong when we were set free on campus with a packet of very obscure images and told to find them, by any means necessary. After the first five minutes of fumbling I approached the first of many people to help us out on our journey through our scavenger hunt. I was pleasantly surprised to find almost everyone glad and ready to help a group of seemingly lost Interns who had no idea where they were. Everyone was friendly and went out of their way to help us from the students all the way up to the faculty. After we all got back and breathed a collective sigh of relief for once again being immersed in air conditioning we had lunch. Next we were put on the task of making our videos into a full length movie. After many technical difficulties we came out empty handed and much more wary of Mac's or more specifically IMovie. After receiving free t-shirts we were shuffled off to our respective professors to get acquainted. Again to my surprise we started right off and even did an experiment after meeting everyone in the lab. Then our director started showing us the ropes on how to catalog and organize the movie to maximum quality and future usage. All and all a very eventful day.