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.