Last Day of Work!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0xig8ImwDY

****Here is a link to the video Jane,Matt,aj, and I created. It's just some different eye movements put to really good music haha. CHECK IT OUT!!!****

There will also be a video of when we eye-tracked a novice and experienced player playing Guitar Hero, so that will be up soon. I dont have a link but i'm sure you can just search it if you want to see it.

Yes today was the last day of work! The presentations went really well. We had a slight glitch in our presentation-the screen kept flickering but nothing major, all our videos worked(which i was thankful for). So i was actually surprised at how well I did presenting today because normally I get really really nervous for presenting and that is usually just in a classroom. There were a decent amount of people there today but not too many which was good. After the talk we took our parents up and showed them the lab and they finally met Jeff and Andy. We didn't go out to lunch like previously planned but Jeff said he'd make it up to us by taking us out for a reunion in about a month. Plus he said I could pick the restaurant because I was apparently overly enthused about a comment he made (or something he wanted us to do i don't remember). Basically I was a suck up haha but at least its guarrenteed that we aren't go out for Thai/Chinese/Japanese food since I get to pick. I'm thinking Italian!!!!!

So I am kinda sad this is over because I am going to miss all the other interns and our good times. Plus this means no more income....and i will now have to pay for more expensive gas!!!(AHHHH) I am going to miss those Wednesday talks also. The pizza was always so good but it was also cool to hear students present their work....plus thats where we first saw Harry Potter!! Overall I am really glad i was able to do this internship becasue I had so much fun-mainly because my lab was just so cool!! And just for the record we did put all their names on the presentation slide- They flashed on the bottom for a few seconds in case you missedd it.

If anyone reads this because they are interested in the internship, I would say to do it because it is so much fun. Just make sure to get in the Visual Perception Lab.

U of R Practice Presentations

Today we went to u of r for our practice presentations. Our group went in the morning and the guy from u of r practically ripped us apart. He was slightly annoying and merciless but I guess thats how this kind of stuff goes. All in all i thought our group did fairly well, much better than our original draft.

This day was just too long. I think I have a pretty good attention span BUT not for 7 hours of presentations! I enjoyed watching/listening to them but not 30 of them in a row. I think it should have been split up over two days maybe.....

Oh and I left my sunglasses in the computer lab the other day and walked in today to blog and they were still here!! :)

Guitar Hero

Yes that's right we played Guitar Hero practically all day. But Jeff wasn't to happy about that so he made us come up with a one day experiment!! Well it was kinda fun. We tested the difference of where experienced and novice players look when they play the notes. We found that experienced players look ahead and novice players look right before they have to play the notes. So we designed, carried out, and analyzed data all in one day!! Plus Jeff then wanted a youtube video made. So I was pretty proud of the progress we made today.

Didn't do much today

I spent the morning at volleyball try-outs, which aren't really try-outs but more like practice. So I got here at 1pm stressing out because the girl-scouts were supposed to come and we were going to give them a presentation. They never showed up. Instead we went down to the booths and got some free candy. I then worked on figuring out what i'm gonna say for our presentation. I might even leave early because i am soo tired plus we really don't have any more work to do.

Practice Presentation

So today Aj brought in donuts for everyone instead of bob but no one really showed up to the meeting today. Oh well it was more for us.

We worked on our presentation all morning and at one we gave a practice talk minus jane of course. Everyone had tons of comments so now we have to go back and change some things. Jeff really didnt like how we only had one tape coded so now Aj and i are taking some tapes home to coded over the weekend. Matt on the other hand is working on the presentation. Jane is the lucky one because she is getting away with no work.

Yeah the whole coding at home thing is not going very well. The laptop I took home is kinda slow so it is almost impossible to code on but i'll try again tomorrow.

Java Wally's!!!

This morning consisted of working on our project some more. We added the Eye Movements video to the powerpoint and it looks pretty sweet!! Now Jeff aparently wants us to give a practice talk tomorrow but Jane won't be here so she's pretty lucky. We went to Crossroads for lunch because Jane fogot her lunch!!! Haha I know it surprise me too! Before we started walking it began to pour so we got soaked on the way back.

After lunch we did some more presentation work and then we went to Java Wally's, which was so cool. I had a strawberry smoothie and a cookie which was really good. That sums up the day because after Java Wally's we didn't get anything done.

OptiMax

Today was our fieldtrip to OptiMax. But of course we are not allowed to blog about anything we saw in there. I will say it was one of my more favorite fieldtrips. It was all really organized and the guys there seemed to really love their job. We also got a special surprise today of a decked out party bus!!!! It was awesome with nice comfortable, bench-like seats and lights on the ceiling. We went to Amiel's for lunch and brought the food back to RIT. All the interns ate lunch again which was fun.

When we got back to work we worked on our abstract and sent our rough draft for the poster to Joe, so hopefully he will like it and we won't have to change too much.

I once again worked on the Eye Movements video, mainly fine-tuning. We added some cool music to it, which spiced it up some. Now I think it is finally done!!

Progress....Sort of

We started the day out by pushing a car up a hill!! Yeah it was pretty hard too until the driver of the car realized he had his parking break on...Arg. Well when we got back from our good deed, we tried calibrating our tapes again. Some were O.K.

Then a guy from Proctor and Gamble...something rather came and Jeff, Andy, and others showed him around. They ordered DiBella's for lunch, which was really good. After lunch I tried working on the Eye Movements video...again. Today was another day where I just hated technology. The original computer i was on was too slow so i moved into the lab that Leanne normally occupies. It was pretty sweet cuz Jane and I had the whole room to ourselves. I was in a smaller room off of the main one so I could turn off my lights and turn on these soft glow lamps which were very relaxing. It helped seeing as i have had to re-do this video from scratch about 5 times!!!!!!!!!!!

Well i am glad to say that it is finally finished and looks beautiful. I even helped Jane with a problem she had today. It was cool, the answer just popped into my head and it even ended up working. So that means that we have started to code a video today!!! Yay only 3 more days to code the rest........

Forgot to blog yesterday :(

So I forgot to blog yesterday. Oops! In the morning I worked on calibrating our tapes which was a pain because the tracks weren't that good. We had one good track from Px 4!! We went to lunch early at crossroads because Matt forgot his lunch. After lunch I went and helped Nick with his car experiment but we couldn't calibrate the participant so we couldn't do anything. 

I also started working on the new Eye Movement video, which was being a pain and kept freezing on me. Ugh! Some days I just hate technology. Matt, Jane, and Aj kicked John out of the Asl room so they could run more participants. So John started playing with our legos since he couldn't do anything and built a pretty cool spaceship. Not much else happened; We just worked on our presentations and posters some.

So many presentations today! We went over to building 78 and got to see some posters. They had a continental breakfast which was pretty good. Jon had his poster there but he had it up on a huge TV-which he was the only one. Jane and I wanted to hear him present to us but we were interrupted and we still haven't heard him yet. We also saw Mattie-Jeff's daughter- present a project she did. her presentation was so good- I give her props for doing it.

We were about to head back to our building for lunch when we spotted John, Nick, Tristan, and a free buffet line!! So of course we stayed there for lunch and it was pretty good. We stayed for some other presentations. Then I participated in Nick's experiment which took about two hours!! poor Jane was left alone coding. So the experiment was pretty fun because i got to play with an ipod touch. 

Lots of Progress made

I spent all morning working on our presentation powerpoint while Matt worked on the poster and Jane coded some of the video's. It's coming along really well.

Today we started testing our first participants!! It looked like it went well, the people enjoyed looking for Waldo. Maybe I'll bring in some food for them tomorrow. We now have to calibrate to see how well it worked. We will probably do that tomorrow if we have time. But so far we have made lots of progress today!!!!

I tried to go on Nick's experiment but when we went out it was way to sunny for his experiment. We have to try tomorrow. Also tomorrow there are a bunch of presentations so we will be going to those. Jon will be presenting so hopefully we will see his work that he has been struggling to finish today.

Final Presentations!!

So this morning Jane, Matt, and I finally started on our final presentation and poster!!! We don't have any data to add to our experiment section of it seeing as we haven't tested anyone yet. But we have started the background info about the lab and on eye-tracking etc. Matt's been working on the poster while Jane and I worked on the 'back-bone' to our presentation. While doing the presentation I came across a question that I had. So I went to ask Leanne and John but they weren't very helpful. I waited for Jeff and when I asked him we got into an hour long discussion which ended in Jeff burning the image of his hand into our retina's.

I don't remember why he thought of showing us this experiment but he turned of all the lights in the room and had us become dark adapted for 5 mins. Then after that he set off a very bright flash behind his hand which caused the image of his hand to be burn into our retina's. So as i looked around i saw Jeff's hand which had a cool purple color to it which then turned a neon green color. Don't worry the burn on my retina's went away after a couple minutes. 

Nick quickly ran us through a program(which i apparently can't blog about because its not out on the market yet) which was pretty neat. Plus later in the afternoon we shot some videos for jeff with the new mobile eye-tracker which only runs on 'that new program', so in order to calibrate the tapes we will get practice with the program- Dang and I was just getting familiar with Iscan.

Today for lunch we went to a picnic given by the people that put on the wednesday talks. The food was good but I was only allow one hamburger and they had NO CHEESE!!! Ahh, oh well but Tristan had a veggie burger because he is a vegetarian- which i could never do because without meat i like i would starve. Hmm so we bonded some with the other grad students and i'm pretty sure they are all going to die of poison except me (including Jane and Matt) because they all ate these tiny apple looking things on a tree.(I think they might have been crab apples) They will probably all show up to work tomorrow sick and I will just laugh at them.

Oh and we saw Harry Potter again at the picnic!!! :) It's just so uncanny, even more so up-close. 

After lunch we ran an errand for Jon and we worked on our presentations some more. I feel so much better that we have actually started them so now I don't feel as stressed out as before.

Trial and Error I Suppose

I coded ALL morning!! And this time I'm not exaggerating because i started at 9 and coded till lunch at 12.  I made such good progress tho and i am almost done!! I will definitely finish tomorrow. For lunch today we all brought our lunch which was a first. So we decided we should have a picnic and therefore we walked to a nice courtyard and ate lunch on a bench. On the walk back we found some cool benched that looked 'snake-like' and we tried them out.

Umm, I coded some more when we got back but i admit i got distracted a couple times. Jeff finally got a chance to see the eye movements video and now we basically have to re-shoot the whole thing. I guess thats what happens when you underestimate the Cassio's focusing ability. We didn't realize how good the camera can focus which is apparently a lot more than we shot the video's at. I guess it's all trial and error. When we went to re-shoot the videos we had massive failures. A quick side-track-- For nick's experiment he needs bad weather so that it is not too bright when he eye-tracks outside, so today he summoned some dark cloud to roll by when he went out to do his experiment. However for us to take high-speed video's we need a lot of light in order for it to be less blurry. Therefore, when we went to shoot, Nick's cloudy weather showed up and it was too dark to see our video's.

Then the camera's battery started to die and it takes at least 4 hours to be fully charged. Plus Jeff is taking the camera tonight so we won't have it tomorrow so that means we will have to re-do these videos another time.

Trip to ITT

Today was our trip to ITT. All in all it was pretty interesting. We got dressed up like marshmallows again today. Except this time we even had little booties to cover our feet. We got taken through the manufacturing plant where they showed us the different steps of making lenses. It was pretty cool but it was FREEZING there. We went to Dibella's for lunch and then brought it back to RIT. All the interns ate in a conference room and we all bonded some. Basma drew a lovely picture of a Kiwi bird from New Zealand on the white board and then preceded to draw the correct version of it once we told her it looked like a normal bird. Surprisingly the second Kiwi bird she drew looked a lot like the first one. Since her lovely diagram wasn't too helpful in picturing the bird Jane, Matt, and I looked it up online(pic. above) and it looks more like a duck than anything or Matt says it looks like a bear but I don't know. We coded for about an hour today.

Jane finally finished a video-the first one out of all of us. It was really exciting but now one of us has to check it before we can say it is completely done. i still have half of my video to go :( but i'm almost to the 1sec pictures-which goes by really fast during coding!!

Jane helped Nick out by pretending she was in a car. So that is pretty much all we did today.

Relaxing Day

This morning all I did was code. i made some progress on my video so now I'm about halfway through it. Jane however is almost done with her's so I think we should have a party when she finishes. At 1 pm we went to the a talk given by the guy who works with the old documents-I forgot his name already. But that was really interesting and the pizza we had there was really really good. I feel like i'm a college student already-going for the free food. No but the talk really was interesting. He told us how a guy out bid the Greek government for $2 million in order to obtain an old document. He even showed us pictures of the old documents and how they got the image to show up. It was cool to see a project that is having a big impact on society.

After lunch I helped Jon with his experiment by being a pilot. I'm not sure what his experiment was but it entailed walking in a circle 25-30 times. After that Nick, Leanne, Matt, Jane, and I thought it would be nice to walk down to the new Barnes and Noble to see new books and everything- of course not realizing how far away it really is. It was a very nice building with lots of cool books. I wanted to stop for ice cream on the way back but I didn't bring my money with me :( That took at least a couple of hours-we got back at 5.

That was basically my whole day- it was a pretty chillax (chill/relax combined in one word) day.

Trip to U of R

Today was our trip to U of R and over-all it was pretty interesting. I liked it because it was more of the Biology aspect. The Epilepsy lab seemed pretty interesting. However there was this one lab that showed us how they harvest a brain from a mouse and it was quite disturbing. I won't tell you what they did because it was pretty graphic. After the tour all the interns met and ate pizza, which was nice.

When we got back I coded for a little bit. And we finally got time to calibrate the tapes we shot. Most turn out pretty good, which is promising. Tomorrow I have to finish digitizing the tapes. We also get to help Leanne with her experiment tomorrow because tristan won't be here. It seems so quiet around this lab. Jeff, Andy, John, and Aj aren't here this week. Jane left early today to participate in an experiment so it was just Matt, Jon, and I here for the last couple hours.

Surprise Sighting

Our morning meeting lasted a new record of about 30 seconds. Matt and I headed to the lab to start coding since the U of R interns were planning to stop by we figured we would actually get some work done. We coded for about an hour or so and then we went to meet the interns in the lobby. After that welcomed break we reluctantly got back to coding until the other interns stopped by. Matt showed them the mobile eye-tracker while Jon had up a live feed from the eye-tracker on the projector screen. Then I played the Eye Movements video for them that we just made and an already calibrated tape. They seemed to really like our lab but I felt bad we couldn't show them everything.

At 12 we meet them for pizza. And at 12:45 Matt and I went over to the seminar AND we didn't get lost!!! This week's talk was a little more interesting since it was Biology related I understood a lot more than past weeks. HOWEVER the first guy dragged on his presentation FOREVER and the second guy talked about basically the same things but added a new aspect to it. We didn't stay for the third one because it was 1 p.m. by the time the first two were done presenting. Half way through the presentation I noticed we were in the presence of Harry Potter!! I tried to get a picture for proof but as soon as it was over he ran away and jumped on his Firebolt and disappeared. :(

When we got back Matt and I worked on writing the scripts for our experiment. I worked out some more kinks in the Where's Waldo Power-Point and then I was a pilot to our lego experiment. Maybe tomorrow we will be able to calibrate our tapes to see if our experiment works but right now Leanne is calibrating tapes from her experiment.


* The picture above is of the wonderful spaceship that Matt built with the legos. Don't worry it's for our.....uh experiment? Ok so not really but we still got work done today.

Coding

This morning bob took us on a tour of the color science building. It was pretty cool, they had a bunch of cool objects.

Once in the lab we decided that today we should probably focus on coding. Therefore we coded for a couple of hours until lunch. We ate at crossroads.

After lunch we recorded our video for another project we were given by Jeff. We eye-tracked ourselves while watch the Kung-Fu Panda's trailer. We couldn't calibrate however because Leanne was busy calibrating the tapes from her experiment. So we moved on to working on our own experiment. We recorded ourselves as pilots but we are not very reliable because we knew where Waldo was. We mainly wanted to see if it would calibrate and if you could see exactly what we were looking at or if the scenes were too crowded. We also tested Nick which was cool because he had never seen these scenes before so we saw what we still need to 'iron out'. 

Then sometime during the afternoon Nick and Tristan brought us slushie's!! They were so good but I could hardly finish mine!!

I think I improved the Waldo powerpoint so hopefully it will work better now.

That's basically it, we spent most of the day coding.

Eye Movements

Ahh today was a good day. We decided that today we would start on Jeff's project of making a video of different eye movements. However Andy had to pop our little bubble and remind us that coding still exists...Aka we need to also keep coding the video's for them :( So Jane decided she would code some of her video while Matt and I played with the Cassio and took some awesome high speed videos of our eye. Well since none of us took the camera home this weekend we didn't know how to use it but after some trial and error we got some pretty sweet shots!!

Then Jane and Matt switched places and Jane and I took even better shots that were more in focus. My favorite was when Jane and I took a rolling chair outside and recorded her eye while I spun her in a chair haha. Well after that we went to lunch at Crossroads since I forgot my lunch today....Oops(but the subs at crossroads are so good...) 

Anyways, after lunch we all played around with trying to create a video out of all the clips and after awhile Jane and Matt left me to finish. It only took a couple of hours but I have finished!! It looks really good and we made good progress seeing as we started this project today. Hopefully it passes Jeff/Andy's inspection but Jane was a good model so I'm sure it's wonderful :)

7/25

Once we got to our lab we started right away by hooking up a video conference with Sue who is in California working for Sony!! She has to do a presentation on eye-tracking and wanted to practice on us. We started at around 9:30, however it was 6:30 her time!! I give her a lot of credit, I could never do a presentation at 6:30 Am. Her presentation was pretty cool and I understood most of it. She developed a new algorithm that can automatically code a video(tell where a person fixates) in about 30 secs!! That is AMAZING since it takes days to code a 30 min tape. I hope her algorithm can be used soon.

Hmm after that we worked on our Where's Waldo experiment. Last night I went to Border and bought two Where's Waldo books. Aj and I took the Cassio and took some pictures of the pictures. However after putting them on the PowerPoint we discovered that the pictures were too dark and so I fiddled around with a new scanner the lab had in a box( that they never opened before) I installed that and played around with it and eventually got GREAT pictures and so our PowerPoint for the experiment is almost finished!!

Then right at noon when I was ready to break for lunch Jeff called an unexpected meeting with the interns. At the meeting he proceeded to add three more projects to our list of things to do AHHH. It doesnt seem like we will finish everything. We are trying to get our project done by the 8th but I don't know if we will plus the next to weeks we will only have 3 people since Aj is gone.

Not much else to say except that we ate at crossroads instead of on the roof (even though it was such a nice day) because Matt decided not to bring his lunch...oh well maybe next week.

Legos

We all spent the morning today working on our project some until Jeff suggested we take a break and read a chapter out of a book that deals with visual perception. However, Andy then suggested that we make copies of the book. So Jane and I tried scanning the images and e-mailing them to ourselves but the images weren't any good. Then we attempted to copy the book and I think I am now a master copier because I ended up doing about 100 copies-no joke either.

Anywho after all those copies I made we all took the article to the corner office room to read it- where there are actual windows!! However the weather decided not to cooperate with us and it was cloudy and then it poured! :( Which the rain also canceled our lunch plans to eat on the roof. Oh well maybe tomorrow or next week. We also built these awesome lego displays(for our experiment) and everyone kept asking why we were playing with legos-We told them it was all for science.

The rest of the day was spent working on powerpoints for our experiment. Andy popped his head in and told us there were airplanes practicing for the air show and that we could see them if we went on the roof-so of course we did. We didn't see much of the airplanes but it was fun to get outside for a minute.

YAY!!

So before our morning meeting I decided to take a quick nap since I get here so early but unfortunately I never actually fell asleep. Our morning meeting was brief and bob reminded us of our lovely posters that we have to make and Jane and I started freaking out since we didn't know what to do. However that fueled our brainstorm and we decided to talk to Jeff about a possible experiment. We came to him with several ideas and he really liked the one with eye-tracking a person while they are looking at a Where's Waldo picture. We want to determine peoples search tactics, where they tend to look and if inhibition of return is a factor. I'm really excited about this experiment because we worked on it all morning and actually had something else to do other than coding. We are also going to compare that data with how people do a visual search with real life objects. This should be interesting and we are going to present our project but Matt and Aj won't be here that day so it will just be Jane and I presenting.

We went to the presentations for lunch. Today there was a guy from the imaging science building so that was cool. He even used a 5 screen PowerPoint which was spread out on the side walls.

After lunch Aj and I created a PowerPoint for our project but it still need some tweaking. Tomorrow we are bringing in supplies so we can work on it. I even coded some parts of a video but when I tried it in the morning the stupid program kept closing out which loses all the data if you didn't save it. I swear it closed out at least ten times. Grr. Anyways I did some more coding in the afternoon despite my anger towards the system and it was actually fine and didn't close once. Now we have to do some literary research and read some articles for our project.

Bausch and Lomb

Today was the field-trip to Bausch and Lomb! We left around 9:30 and rode there in a nice bus thing. When we got there they had to wear gowns and goggles and earplugs and hair-nets and they made us wash our hands. Once we were all prepped and looked like something out of Willie Wonka they took us through the lab where the contacts were made. There were a bunch of machines on an assembly type of system and they were all enclosed in barriers to protect the contacts from contamination. Oh and hen the guy was describing some things about the eye i actually understood it because we learned it in boot camp!! 

We stopped in several other labs and the people showed us some other things, I don't really remember what they were tho. On our way back Joe and Bob treated us all to lunch at Amiel's. It was delicious by the way!!

Once back in the lab I prolonged coded as much as possible. Instead I digitized two more tapes and checked another transcription.  Then I loaded the videos to Tweedledum and organized the other videos for the experiment on there.  Ironically once I decided to start coding, I set up the video and everything, so when I was about to start Jeff and Andy asked for help with the t.v. So I went out into the hall and got thoroughly distracted with it's pretty display and resolution of the video. We attempted to watch the trailer for the Dark Knight but the audio wasn't working so we watched it in silence. The video still had an awesome quality. We also watched the video of Jane and Nick in the car but it didn't have a calibration yet so we couldn't see what she was actually looking at. We watched it anyways and laughed at Nick's awesome hand gestures.

Coding, Coding, Coding

Today consisted of coding all day. I finished checking the transcription I started friday and then started to code a video. I now have a new realization... a second is super long. So the videos we code, we have to go frame by frame which is 1/30th a second. This is extremely slow and I have spent all day coding only to have coded 6 minutes of a video when it's probably a half hour long.

Matt came back today so I helped explain some things to him and he joined Jane in the DPI room and Aj went to the ASL room so I guess now Aj is in exile...not really but he is down the hall some and now everyone is in the same room as me since Leanne was conducting experiments today.

So we ate lunch at crossroads again because Matt didn't bring his lunch. And after lunch we coded some more!! At about 3 or something Jane and I couldn't take anymore so we went and wandered the building. We stopped by Laura's lab and chatted about 'Harold' the robot who is currently not working because the dongle is broken haha that's such a funny word. Anyways, then we traveled up to Alex's awesome deserted tower where he is working. He works in this tower that leads out to the roof which was cool because we don't get sunlight in our lab. After our journey we went and coded some more and I digitized two tapes so we can code them later!!

Well other than that we didn't do much else....We get to go Bausch and Lomb tomorrow tho.

An Over-whelming Day

Oops I almost forgot to blog today....

Anyways the day started off with bob bringing in donuts again!! Which were delicious of course. Then Jane, Aj, and I went to the lab and awaited for others to arrive. The first people we saw were Andy and Jeff. Apparently I didn't get the memo about today because both Jon's weren't here today and Aj left early...Anyways since the Jon's were missing it made the morning lab meeting seem kinda small compared to last time.

In the meeting we talked about business and all the tasks we need to get done. We also learned the priority of those things as well. Number one is to help Leanne with her project then help Jon then help Nick then help Tristan with his and so on. Number two is to work on the project we were given of checking transcriptions and coding. Number 2a is to do more projects that Jeff assigned today and number 3 is to work on our own experiment or ideas for our presentations at the end of the summer. However if Andy or Jeff need help they take the alpha prime position and we drop what were doing to help them. Haha it's a really confusing and complicated list and as you can see it's a little over-whelming. (Sorry if that whole list didn't make sense)

After that lovely meeting we went to lunch at crossroads. Nothing really exciting happened there.

After lunch I did more of the checking the transcriptions. By the way that is basically when in the experiment the participant was asked to describe photos and there is a file that has everything the participant said. My job is to listen to the audio on the video and make sure that what was typed in the file is correct and if not then change it. Once I change it I need to upload it to the Twiki (online website where they keep their files) so that others can access it. I got through about 3 videos before I became bored with that.

At about that time a new huge t.v arrived for an upcoming experiment. We helped unpack it and I looked over the manual for Jeff to see some of the directions. Jeff, Andy and Nick then moved it out into the hall because that's where they want to put it and fiddled around with it. Jane and I looked on for a bit and watched some Wall-e trailer previews but then went back in the lab and I started on checking another participant. I have to finish that video Monday but so far the person is speaking really clearly, I can understand most of it, and I've hardly had to make any changes on the original copy so that's really good!!

First Project

Today we got our first project!! YAY So Andy finally gave us instructions for our project which includes checking transcriptions of tapes, then coding all the tapes that we have just checked. The project also includes various calibrating and digitizing. It seems like it will take forever since the tapes are pretty lengthy and coding just a couple seconds of a tape takes forever.

So once we got into work we moved around computers so that we would be able to code these tapes but be out of the way for Jon's experiment which is going to be taking place very soon. However it wouldn't be a day at the VP lab if we didn't have set backs so naturally the computers weren't cooperating because the hard-drives were too full. ANyways, Andy deleted some things and we finally got started only to realize that it was about 15 minutes to lunch AND there was a cake in the break room. So we all rushed out to grab a slice. By the time that was over we went to lunch with Laura and Gretchen.

After lunch we all just worked on checking the transcriptions on the tapes and getting second opinions every time we changed something. After that we updated it on the Twiki. We basically just got set-up today and I'm sure we'll be able to accomplish more tomorrow. Although Tristan is supposed to be sending out an article for us to read before tomorrrow so we can have our lab meeting. However its about 7 now and i still haven't gotten it...so i dont know about that meeting tomorrow.

Oh yeah I almost forgot...Bob gave us a scrambled word this morning and told us to figure out what it means. After a couple minutes someone igured out that it was Astoria but no one knew what it was or what it meant. By googling the word I found that Chester was the first to do a "dry-copy" and he copied the date and Astoria because it is where he was, Astoria,Ny.

Fun Goggles

Today started off as usual, with the morning meeting. We really didn't talk much so we all just went to our lab. Once in the lab we tried calibrating the tapes from yesterday only to find that the tracks were terrible. Mine was the only one that was somewhat decent but I even ended up re-shooting my video.

So Jane, Aj, and I spent the morning fooling around with Iscan and the mobile eye tracker trying to get good tracks. Aj's and mine were the only two we eventually got to work. It took FOREVER to calibrate the tapes because things of course kept going wrong. The screen kept getting really bright so we couldn't see the calibration points. We finally figured out the problem but it still took awhile to find the correct power supply cable.

We went to lunch at the seminar thing and had some free pizza for lunch again. And boy can the guys in the lab eat a lot of pizza!! I swear they must have devoured a whole sheet pizza by themselves. A little bit before lunch and afterwards Jon, Nick, and Andy pulled out some cool "beer goggle" things but they are used more to correct a lazy eye in children. However, they distort your vision and shift it to the right. It was hilarious to see them try to catch a ball because they would miss or throw way off. Jon even wore his all through the seminar- I'm not quite sure how he was able to see anything.

After the seminar I digitized and coded the tape I made earlier. It was actually good practice once you get the hang of it and when the technology actually

cooperates.

Oh and in one of the times I wasn't doing much I won a game of Hearts for the first time I think and got a high score in Pinball!! Haha don't worry I was actually only playing games for less than a half hour today, and the rest of the time I was actually working.

Boot Camp Day 2

When we went to the staff meeting today, Joe and Bob took us on a tour of the Remote Sensing lab (i think that was what it was). The guy there showed us a cool camera that could be used to detect gas leaks. He even did a demonstration by releasing some gas and showing us what it looked like through the camera.

So yes today was day 2 of Boot Camp. We got through the remaining 400 something slides...not joking either. There were literally 400 slides to the presentation and it took awhile to get through especially since Jeff and Andy kept getting off on tangents on almost every slide. But anyways it was still interesting just a lot of info. There's not much more to say about that except that Nick was kind enough to order us all pizza-which was delicious by the way!

After lunch we all sat around and had some pretty cool discussions. We bounced around from topic to topic with everyone asking questions and Jeff and Andy explaining things. I thought this was more fun and easier to pay attention to rather than a lecture or something.

Hmm after the discussion thing Jane, Aj, and I got out the mobile eye tracking device and recorded each of us walking around and looking at the cube in the hallway. Tomorrow we will calibrate, digitize, and code our own sections of the tape. That should be fun since it's ourselfs and it should also be good practice.

We really didn't do much else today since most of the time was spent in the boot camp.

Boot camp! (Week Two)

Today was Boot Camp Day! Once we got to the lab things started off right away with helping to move tables for our boot camp presentations. Then some targets for the lab arrived(from France!) so we helped move those into the building as well. After that we started boot camp, which is just a crash course of everything related to the eye. Such as parts of the eye, how the eye moves, backgrounds on eye-tracking scientists, and equipment used to track the eye. Both Jeff and Andy were here today and the rest of the grad students attended the boot camp too, which was cool but I'm sure they had already heard of most of the stuff we talked about.

The Boot camp wasn't terrible, information wise but it was just really long. We did boot camp all morning broke for lunch and resumed afterwards until 5. We all took notes though so that will help in retaining some of the info. I ended up taking about 5 pages of notes. Also there was a part about action potential and depolarization, which I had learned about in Ap Bio so I was pretty excited that I knew at least one of the things they talked about beforehand. Jeff and Andy also gave each of the interns an assignment to look up before tomorrow. Mine was figuring out the the different wavelengths that the Macula Lutea filters out and find a graph showing it. The Macula Lutea is a filter that absorbs short wavelengths such as blue light.

We also talked about near-sighted and far-sighted people and what causes those conditions. We also talked about contacts, glasses, stigmatisms, which was interesting since they all related to my own eyes. After the anatomy of the eye they talked about the actual tracking of the eye and did cool experiments.

One thing brought up was that the smooth pursuit of the eyes can only happen if you follow an object otherwise the eyes just move in saccades. However, i was wondering if when you roll your eyes if they make a smooth pursuit or if they are saccades? He didn't know the answer to that so he wants me to try experimenting with the high speed camera which can capture if the eye is making a saccade or a smooth pursuit. I think this will be fun to experiment with especially since i'm a master at rolling my eyes :)

Donuts!!!

Bob brought us donuts for our morning meeting!!! That was so nice of him. So we just ate donuts because there wasn't really anything to talk about today. Who wouldn't want a meeting just to eat donuts? The donuts were one of the only highlights of my day. The other one being that I found gas for $4.05 on my way to work!!! Woot Woot! I was pretty pumped after I almost filled up for $4.29 because I was on empty. (Ok sorry that had no relevance but I'm bored right now and I was pretty excited about that)

So Today Bob had an assignment for us. He told us to pick a job off the student opportunities board in the hall that we would want to do if we had the credentials. So if i had to choose i would pick the imaging architect. The imaging architects work with designing new technologies dealing with personal computers etc. It seems like interesting work and its based out of oregon so that would be cool to live there. Plus it is a growing field that is always making new products and advances. It would be cool to say that i was involved in a project like that.

After the meeting we went to our labs and we convinced Jeff to let us have a key to one of the labs so we don't have to keep pestering the other students. The key also unlocks the "forbidden room" though but of course we won't go in there. Apparently there is a very expensive piece of equipment that only one man in the world knows how to repair. Therefore "it is hard to repair so don't break it" , once again we see the mantra of the VP lab.

Once in the lab we took turns coding again. While we weren't coding I played some Pinball again and did very well actually. Joe stole the boys to go and move a heavy piece of equipment. When the boys came back we sat around and coded some more and just hung out.

At 10:30 we went to our department meeting with everyone. First, we talked about some business for a good hour or so. Then we started talking about the article we read. Jeff explained some concepts such as smooth pursuit of an object Vs. trying to do a smooth pursuit and it being just a saccade. We had to cut the meeting short because we had made reservations at The King and I (Thai restaurant) for 12 o'clock. I don't really like Thai food but i was a good sport and just ordered something that was basically just chicken. I ate some of it but had to box up practically my whole lunch. I'm sure my parents will eat it for dinner tho, they enjoy that kind of food. Oh and today was our longest interaction with Jeff yet, since we had an hour and a half meeting with him and then lunch afterwards.

After lunch we took turns coding again. We still have to code the experiment the boys did. But we are leaving that for tomorrow since we are already so bored with coding. I coded some while Matt and Jane calibrated another tape. Yeah we basically hung out in the lab all afternoon. We decided we are going to bring in some speakers so we can listen to music and at least be somewhat entertained.

The Best Job I've ever Had

Yes this is the best job I've ever had! Ok so I've never had a job so this one wins by a long shot. We didn't get much done today, therefore we got paid for sitting in the lab which is why this is the best job ever.

So even though we didn't do much today Tristan came and showed us how to code a video which takes a really really long time. Apparently it takes a day or two just to go through and code a twenty minute video, so yeah we could be at this for a while. Oh and Jeff came in and talked to us for a bit about this lab meeting we will be going to tomorrow and then we'll be having lunch afterwards. That will be cool but it's going to be Thai food and I'm not a big fan.

At our 8:45 staff meeting Bob really didn't have any info for us so he did a demonstration with us. we went into a dark lab and got our eyes accustom to the darkness. We tryed walking around the room but we really couldn't see and kept bumping into people. After a couple of minutes we closed one eye and placed our hand over it and we walked out into the light and took a trip around the building. Afterwards we went back into the dark room and took our hand off and opened our eyes. Instantly we were able to see and walk around without knocking over the expensive equipment. Bob told us to find out why that is but I really have no clue. However, according to Aj there is a chemical produced in the eye when it's dark so by keeping the eye closed it keeps the chemical built up so when you return to the darkness the chemical is already made and your eye is accustomed. I don't really know if that is why but Aj sounds like he knows what he is talking about and it makes sense.

In the morning, Matt and I calibrated a tape of our experiment yesterday and recorded it onto a new tape. Meanwhile Aj digitized another tape and Jane worked on reading an article and writing down info for John. After we calibrated that tape we went and digitized it. Unfortunately we had to wait for that tape to finish before we went to lunch.

Then we went to crossroads for lunch again. This time a ordered a sub due to the recommendations of Aj and Matt. It was delicious!! If it was free or i didn't have to buy my own lunch I would probably eat at crossroads everyday! However that is not the case so next week I'll be bringing my own lunch :(

After lunch there was absolutely nothing to do so we sat in the lab for about 2 or 3 hours. Aj and Matt played some computer games while Jane and I read a book for school and listened to music.
After these two non-productive hours is about when Tristan came to save us. We took turns coding the video for about the next hour. While the others were coding I started playing Hearts but I was having a bad streak so I decided to play Pinball!! Haha That was fun at least.

Free Food!

One of the highlights of today was that most of the interns and some of the people in the VP lab all went to the presentations given by some of the R.I.T students. The perk was free food which is why we all went. And by the way the pizza was awesome so i definitely think we are all going back next Wednesday. The presentations weren't too terrible. I didn't understand most of it but some things I understood so I suppose thats good.

We learned some good news today too. I guess Andy is on vacation this week but he is coming back next week, which means we will actually have some work to do!!

Hmm, let's see... Today we started off by reading some more of that article. Then we watched Leanne calibrate a tape. A little while after that John saved us by asking us to go hang up some fliers. So Jane and I went to do that but with our wonderful sense of direction and knowledge of the campus we went in the opposite direction and the furthest away from the building we wanted to go to. We finally asked a nice lady for directions and she told us it was in the other direction. So after a while we finally found it and it turned out to be right behind the Carlson building!! Oh well.

After the lovely flier insident Jane and I had to read through an article for John and pick out the important info. I thought it was going to worse than it was because it was 25 pages but we did the whole "seek and destroy" method. That is basically when you just search for the answers you want. Then we got used for Nick and Tristans experiment!! That was pretty cool because I got to just sit in a chair while the ASL system remotely tracked my eyes. Jane on the otherhand had to wear the mobile tracking device. Anyways, I'm not sure how that turned out cuz they never told us but I hope we were good pilot testers.

After that we worked on copying files on to Tweedledum (it's a hard drive-they name all the computers after someone) that Matt and Aj previously digitized. That was interesting since it was on a Mac computer and Jane and I had no clue how to use it BUT we did do it all by ourselfs so yeah I was proud of that. After that we really didn't have anything else to do so we just went home.

Second Day

So, overall today was a pretty good day. Jon showed us how to use the Iscan software and then Nick showed us how to use the Remote Tracking software. Honestly when they were explaining how to use it I zoned out a couple times and didn't really understand it all. Thankfully, Jane was our designated scribe for the group and took wonderful notes! The notes helped but it still took Jane and I 4 times to somewhat accurately calibrate a tape haha. Anyways the remote tracker was much easier to use and the other John helped me out a lot since i really didn't understand it at first.

After lunch we were assigned a reading so we read that for a bit. Jon showed us how to assemble the mobile eye tracker and then he tried setting Matt and I up with an experiment but the videos weren't working due to a glitch with the video recorder. So we tried to do another experiment but the ASL system wasn't working either. Basically nothing was working and Jeff Pelz came down to fix it and I met him for the first time!! He seems really nice and explained to us what he thought the problem was. He thinks there was too much voltage being put into the video player and it was enabling the copy protection on the video files. (I'm not sure i got that right but it's something like that) Anyways, they are trying to fix the problem so hopefully everything will work tomorrow.

This sums up the day because we didn't due much in the afternoon due to the equipment not working. :( But learning to calibrate the tapes wasn't actually that bad once I could play around with the programs and go through it myself. I personally like the ASL system (remote tracking) much better. It's only been two days but I feel like I am learning a lot and I'm having a lot of fun even though we haven't done much, what we did do was fun.


My favorite motto of yesterday and today was "It's expensive so don't break it!!"

First Day

So, today was my first day as an R.I.T intern and we basically did no work. We started in the Red Barn playing games, which was fun and I got to know most of the other interns. We ate lunch at crossroads for free, which had awesome pizza!! After lunch we went on a tour and we were shown Java Wally's, which looked cool, plus another ice cream stand which I will make a point of visiting very soon. Then our Visual Perception group got together and we learned about some of the equipment we will be using, although most of the info went right over my head.

One thing that I did learn was that some of the equipment was really expensive (In other words I learned to make sure that I didn't break any of it). The people that were in the lab today( I'm not really sure but I think they are grad students) helped us out by showing us some software, the eye trackers, and basically what they are used for. Tomorrow will probably be more of learning about the equipment and me not understanding any of it but I'm sure someone will help me out. However, Jane, Matt, and Aj are pretty awesome and I look forward to working with them.

P.S. I still have not met Jeff Pelz and he is beginning to seem like a mystery man!!