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 :)