Planning

Today was a day of meetings. First off I met with Dr. K's daughter and talked to her a little about getting into a computer-based career, in which I think she has a strong interest. The second was a little closer to lunch and consisted of Mike and myself going through more of his process of taking images from Envi to Blender, I believe we have almost covered everything now and I just have to apply the bug fixes he told me about. Before lunch I also went with Sean and Kevin to see a master's thesis defense on the identification of vegetation and plant life. Lastly, at the very end of the day, we met with a group of Remote Sensing researchers and listened as they planned a fly-by that is going to occur next week using the wasp planes. It will be the job of us three interns as well as others to set things us for them. Part of it will be done on the RIT campus and will involve moving tee-shirts around the H parking lot, should be fun.

Progress

Today was a day for accomplishments. After talking with Mike some more both in his office and over AIM I finally got the Pontchartrain images to open in Envi. While that is only the first step of what I need to accomplish in the end, it is still a step forward which I could not begin without. Tomorrow I am going to meet with Mike again so we can get started as well as go see a thesis defense. I have never seen a defense before and am very interested in seeing one. I also fiddled with Blender some more, trying to figure out the application of textures. Sadly I forgot my headphones again so I couldn't hear any of the audio for the videos I watched. What was learned today? BRING HEADPHONES!

Fun Day

Today we took a small field-trip out to JML Optical to get an inside look at the inner workings of their production line. Overall I found the tour interesting, and it intrigued me how they could actually put coatings on the glass to make them clearer. Doesn't adding anything to an object make it less light-permiable? Besides that though we saw how each piece of glass is polished, how it is assembled, and such. I would hate to be one of the workers there who works on a lens for weeks and then finds there is a single particle of dust in it, then the entire process has to start all over until it can be corrected. All in all an interesting few hours. Lunch at the sub shop afterwards wasn't bad either. ^^ To finish off this fun day, at about 4pm all us interns went out and played volleyball in the grass just outside the building. It got pretty intense towards the end to. What was learned today? PAY ATTENTION TO DETAILS!

Tuesday

Nothing much new to report today; I stayed in the DIP Lab again and got some work done. I converted multiple folders of data for May using the IDL Workbench application so that they can be sent back to her, got some more images and data for my Lake Ponchartrain 3d modeling project, and had a brief but helpful meeting with Mike Gartley whose work I have to make a tutorial for. Everything is moving along at just the right pace for me to keep up and keep my sanity. On a funner note tomorrow we are having not only a field-trip but a volleyball tournament as well, I cant wait!

In the lab again

Yet another day spent in the DIP Lab, but good news; I found everyone! Sean and I hunted down May in her upstairs grad student office and she gave us some work converting/fixing images, and I ALSO got in touch with the man whose work Nina said I had to make a tutorial for! Despite the converting work being a slow, multi-hour babysitting process, at least we accomplished more today. I am so glad I finally got in touch with everyone (or at least most everyone) we had to meet. It might be corny but what was learned today? PERSEVERE!

Almost the weekend.... TGIF

Today was the first full day we spent on our own. There was no one hovering over our shoulders and we were each free to work on what needs to get done. I did a few Envi tutorials that involved more mapping and georefrancing, then went on to try and figure out more about my first 'milestone' (making a tutorial based on transferring map data from Envi to Blender) but quickly found I had no idea where to begin, and lastly went hunting on the internet for pictures of the causeway that could help my modeling. I also had time to look up a few Blender tutorials on youtube but they were not much good without headphones. Maybe I'll bring in my skullcandy ones on Monday. What was learned today? PEOPLE NEED TO CHECK THIER EMAIL MORE!

A very strange day

Today we got information as to what specific projects we are going to be working on this summer, and I am happy to report that I will be using Blender. My assignment is to make a Blender model of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, which is apparently one of the longest bridges in the world. Before I get started though I have to get all the measurements and my plan is to set up some sort of scale between miles on the bridge and the background squares on Blender. Another milestone Nina has set before me is making a tutorial based on someone else's work. While I don't fully understand the task yet I am trying my best to unravel its mystery. It wont be easy but I always did love a challenge. ^^ There was also another challenge this afternoon which came to my in the form of my computer going nuts. This is where things got strange.

After restarting the computer and trying to get an official desktop which would allow my files to follow me anywhere on campus, then making one manually when nothing happened, everything got weird; I couldn't delete anything without 'admin permission' which was then denied once an actual admin came to help me, then I could not open the notes i had saved as a simple word document because apparently the application 'did not exist', and finally the new folders I was trying to create turned into random files that even stumped the IT people for a while. Every time I right clicked to make a new untitled folder a different file came instead. This continued to the point where I had 47 unknown and unusable files on my desktop. The bizarre thing was that when they file names were called up by the Unix command prompt, they all showed with the name 'unknown folder' followed by a number (a normal occurrence when you have multiple files with the same name). Finally though my computer was cured and I could resume work. What was learned today? ALWAYS LET THE COMPUTER MAKE ITS OWN DESKTOP!