Ok, ladies and gents. So I had a very fun weekend....but freakin tiring. NEMUII To TSUKARETA!

Translation, sleepy and tired. Friday night, 10/9/2009, we went to the Alps as usual. the Alps is a bar/restaurant/chill spot type of thing. The bad thing is that there is a lot of smoking which gets on my nerves! Every time we go there we spend close to 300 hundred bucks! Never again. Lets see......Saturday I went to Ueno, Japan thinking that I am going to meet a friend there, but it supposed to be on sunday so I felt stupid when I called her and asked her "where you at?" lol. So I decided to look around and saw these girls staring at me, but tryin to be inconspicuous about it. They worked at a Very small jewelry store so I decided to walk in. They were very cute, we talked a little....well as much as we could since there is a language barrier, but my Japanese is getting a little better every week so I could convey some of my thoughts to her. I bought something for my friend in the U.S. Anyway, Sunday night I met with my friend in Ueno and instead of taking me on a tour, she surprised me and took me to another city called Odaiba. It was freaking beautiful! There is a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty residing on the coast of the waters. There is also a amazing view of Rainbow Bridge. Not only that, we went to a restaurant called La Boheme where there was an even better view of the bridge, and if you notice Tokyo Tower is right behind it. Romantic, kind of. Anyway, I did a lot of things this weekend, but I am tsukareta right now. this is just another day in the life of me :)

Ok, ladies and gents. So my Eastern Religion class was suppose to get our test back today, but apparently most of the Japanese students grades are very low so the teacher wants to boost their grade up by allowing them to turn in homework that was passed due. However, she will not return or reveal anyone's grades until next week!!! I was severely pissed, well.....not really, just disappointed. I really studied my ass off for it and I want to see the fruits of my labor. She said there were three A's, but I do not know if I was one of them. Life goes on. Anyway, I just got an email confirming that I am receiving a check to support myself in Tokyo!!! This "organization" that is funding me is freaking AWESOME, without this "organization" i do not know what i would have done, probably take a loan and work it off. But once i get this check, its over, Tokyo is going down!!! Well, its just another day in the life of me :)

Ok, ladies and gentlemen. What should I talk about.....well last friday 10/2, I took an Eastern Religion test. There was only one thing on the test that I had no idea about. The question asked to explain the Four Yugas. Seriously, in my head I said "What the F!!! is a Yuga?!!!" I skipped it and went on ahead and finished the rest of the test. Then I came back to the question I literally spent like 30 minutes trying to figure out what it was. Yuga is related to Hindu time which was covered in like the very first week of school back in September 1st or something!!!! I was highly pissed! But life goes on and I tried my hardest, and God bless, I believe that I passed it with at least a B, hopefully. Anyway, back to my social life. So I have been to the club EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND I have been here smh. I spent alot of money smh. The clubs are expensive smfh. This past weekend I didnt want to go, but the girls insisted smh. I'm a sucker for women s...m....h. But I had fun with them so I guess it was worth it. The only thing I dont like is all the smoking in this city, especially a place as confined as clubs. My whole body, including my hair!, smells like cigarettes after I leave and it takes a whole day before it can air out. It still smells like smoke but not as poignant. Most definitely, one good thing came from going to the club, which was meeting a bodygaurd who is helping me find a teaching job!!! So yes, again, it was freaking worth it cuz I NEED MONEY!!!!!!!!! Another day in the life of me :)

Ok ladies and gents. I totally forgot to blog about my hike to the top of Mt Fuji!!! So this trip occurred during the first week after I arrived in Japan. It took eight hours to travel to the top of Fuji-san, and out of the eight hours four of them were excruciating. Climbing Mt. Fuji is not an easy task. I would not recommend it to anyone that is has not grown up in Japan to climb this mountain without exercising hard. I say this because the Japanese people walk or bike everywhere mostly so they have leg muscle to handle the climb plus the lung capacity. I can not imagine how long it would have taken me to reach the top if I did not exercise at all this summer. This trip can only be done by the brave and the bold, as well as the determined. There were many times I felt like giving up, but Charlie-san, Lakeland College Japan staff, helped me tremendously, and I am truelly grateful for that. Fuji-san is not something to take lightly because people have died trying to climb to the top; eight people died in July 2009 and I climbed it August 2009. One wrong step could be the end of you, seriously. I am glad that I made it to the top because I was able to see the sun rise, which was beautiful. Not only that, I have a sense of accomplishment for beating the greatest physical and mental challenge I have come across in my life. But, there is a proverb stating "a wise man climbs Fuji-san once, a fool climbs it twice." I do not see myself trying that feat again, at least not anytime soon. Anyway, um... I think I passed my Japanese test with an 'A', maybe. I have another test for Eastern Religion Traditions this coming Friday, and that is the only class I am worried about, but hey....I love a challenge. This is just another day in the life of me.

Ok, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday I took a test in Humanities, and I think I got an A....hopefully. Anyway, right now I am studying for my Japanese test. I believe I will pass it too, I just got to make sure I do not make careless mistakes which I have been doing on past homework assignments. So since I have been here most Japanese people, especially on a train, treat me like a disease and are afraid of me, at least that is what I think. It really irritated me, but I can not do anything about it. However!, last night on the train I was trying to study Katakana and then a Japanese older man started to kindly help me. I could understand certain words he said and used context clues to figure out what he was saying. Basically i was writing the Katakana in the form of 'a e i o u' but he said it was wrong to do it that way, it is actually 'a i u e o'. So there is 45 'a i u e o' characters such as ka, sa, ta, ra, ma, na, ha, etc. It felt nice that someone looked at me like a normal human being. Today is gonna be a good day! This is just another day in the life of me!

Ok, ladies and gents. So I spent most of the day studying Japanese, Humanities, and Eastern Religions. I have a test on tomorrow, thursday, on Humanities. Then on friday I have a test on Japanese. Humanities I cover pre-historic European, Mesopatamia, Ancient Egypt, Cyclades, Minoa, and Phoenicia cultures. I hope I past this test and any other tests in Japan because if I do not....well say bye bye to my scholarship back home. My scholarship program requires me to have a 3.2 gpa at least every semester and to obtain a grade higher than a C in every class. But WAIT... even getting straight B's is out of the question because thats a 3.0! I know, thats kind of harsh. Oh well. Life goes on....but between you and me.....I LOVE the challenge in it. I get a natural high off of challenges....you can say its my anti-drug. Anyway, this is just another day in the life of me.

Hello ladies and gents. So I went to Tokyo Disney Sea yesterday and it was freakin awesome. That was my first time attending a Disney theme park....ever. So Tokyo Disney park is split into to park which are Disney Sea and Disney Land. My first impression of disney sea is that its huge, but there is another half I have not explored yet. Apparently, compared to Disney Land in the U.S., Tokyo Disney combined is small! I need to visit the park in the U.S. My favorite part during my adventures at D.S. was the attraction shows. They had several throughout the day. My favorite one was the very last which was during the night. It was beautiful. It was epic....it is really hard to describe. There are seconds in life you can record, instants you can capture, but then there are those events that can only be experienced. Those events are hard to describe because sometimes you feel words can not capture the moment nor describe it. It felt wonderful to say the least. I am enjoying Japan extremely, except for the insane prices they have here lol. Til the next time in another day in the life of me.

Hola

So, I've been in Japan for about three weeks now, and its great. They have
some cool/weird stuff here. The first thing I saw when I got to the airport
was in the bathroom. The toilets have buttons on them besides the regular
flush, which I found to be very hilarious. The cell phones have 8.1 mega
pixels cameras on them, tv, 3d viewing capabilities, and other great stuff.
Plus unlimited txt messages and internet plan is very cheap...relatively. The
women....the women are beautiful! I would say that ...one in every 7 girls
in america looks "good", but in japan one in every 4 girls looks good. So no
matter where I walk, im not bored for even an instant since the women
outnumber the men by a huge amount. Anyway, im living with a host family
called the Shimizu. They have a 3 year old daughter that is really cute. The
worst part about living with the family is that they live over an hour away
from my school which really sucks. That brings me to my next topic. The
transportation here is crazy expensive. I just bought a train card for like
300 dollars and that is only because I have a discount since I am a student,
and if I wasn't the price would double. The food here is expensive too, but
it is really good. The bad thing is that you buy food with more money for
smaller portions, which is what i am not used too. Just another day in my life :)

Yo!!! Wat up People. Its the last official working day!! I just finished my research paper, but it was two hours late. I had to do 4 hours of like revisions and stuff. its watever. I just gotta say, its been good.....and bad, but I learned alot. Gotta give thanks to the SRL for what I learned and accomplised, and that I hope that future interns receives the same or even more knowledge in the world of CS than I did here at Texas A&M. This is gonna be my last blog, so I'll leave it with this: I CANT WAIT TO GET OUT OF THIS SUN, DC HERE I F'N COME!!!!!

Ok, ladies and gents. So I finished my research paper yesterday. But I know it needs revisions, so my grad student mentor is gonna look over it. Im just chilling now til I hear something from him. Peace

Ok, ladies and gents. On friday, I worked on my poster all day. I used photoshop cs 9. It took me longer than I wanted to but I finished the rough draft. I sent my grad student my rough draft saturday morning so that I can make revisions if need be, but he didn't respond until sunday afternoon!!! SMH! Right now, I dont think Hammond is gonna approve every part of the poster but, hey, its the last week and there is nothing that can be done. I always put my best in everything I do especially if I am working for someone else because I feel that you do no want to leave with a bad name. So if Dr. Hammond does not like it, I hope she just knows that I put my best at it even though I am still a novice at this stuff. Anyway, my time here in College Station, Texas is almost up. The last thing to do is to work on my research paper. So gotta get to work. Peace!!!!

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday I finished my research paper section for the user study design. I also started on my research poster design. I am using photoshop to create it. I am trying to make it look interesting, not like dull posters I have seen in the past. I also spent alot of time anaylzing and finding the trends in the data I collected. It seems that our hypothesis is correct, that people naturally draw in an invisible spherical plane. Today I will work on the poster, so hasta luego.

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday...what did I do? I wrote up the flock of birds specifications and related work sections for the research paper. I also read a couple research articles on human motion and the building block of them, "movemes." Movemes is a term invented by Bregler and Malik in 1997 to describe the primitives of human motion. I think i can used that in my paper. Peace

Ok, ladies and gents. I finally did the final calibrations to the code, I think I am finally done with the code now. I also finished my introduction for my research paper, well, Hammond and Peschel of course has to do their revisions, and trust me I think they will be doing a lot of that. I do not mind, because I am not that good of a writer. I am very open to suggestions because I know what I am capable of which is not much when it comes to writing. Time to get back to doing my own revisions of the intro. Peace

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday I talked to Hammond and Peschel, and I got to say that it feels good knowing what you are doing, and especially why. Time is winding down, and there is alot of things going on right now. I have to write this research paper, finish my website, analyze the data that I have now, .....I just got a lot to do. nuff said. Peace

Ok, ladies and gent. I have not done much in terms progressing in my research and writing the paper. I did add one more functionality that will allow users to compare the first half of the time vs x , y , or z graph with the latter half of it. Very useful. Other than I have not done anything. Peschel has been busy so I could not get help from him. But he said he is going to help me today, and I will be returning tonight to finish some stuff up. I am hoping to finish the calibration for flock of birds code and finish my abstract. Peace

Ok, ladies and gents. On Tuesday, I read a research article about sketching, but it was relating to drawing in 3D. Since I am still not sure what this research could be applied to or why it is significant, I do not think reading any random article about sketching will be useful. I sent Peschel an email, but I guess he didn't check it. Here are my problems that I need solve this week: 1. Understand the significance of my research. 2. Finish the calibrations that Peschel wants me to implement in my code. 3. Read more articles regarding sketching that relates to the significance of my research. 4. Start writing research paper. Currently I am scared of writing the research paper because I feel like I might sound incompetent, but hopefully if I understand the significance of my research then that will not happen. Ok. Peace

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday, I realized something about myself, well not really, but just a new development. You see, on sunday night I was reading Daniel Dixon thesis paper and I fell asleep really early around 9 p.m. That is really early for me, but I just figured that I was tired. Well, yesterday I was re-reading research articles so that I can references them when I start writing my research paper. After reading the 5th or 6th article I fell asleep. A week ago, I went to Barnes&Nobles to read a book called Blink, and I feel asleep in the store. Are you starting realize the trend? I have a very.....very short attention span, so if the book or paper is not....engaging enough, then I will fall asleep. I did not want to "interesting enough" because some of the papers s and the books were interesting to a certain extent, but it did not draw me in. Three weeks ago, we were assignedt to read the HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy, and I read that really quick because, not only was interesting, it also sucked me into reading more. That is why I voted for the next installement in the series, but obviously we didn't get enough votes to read it. I think I need to buy that 5 hour energy drink. Anyway, I need to get to work. I'll see you later.

ok, ladies and gents. It is the end of the day, and I feel way more accomplished than I did yesterday; this time I got stuff working. Today, I altered the GUI so that I can view two different views. The first view show a 3d plot of the Flock of Birds data. The second view show 6 different 2D plots. It shows the x vs y, x vs z, y vs z, time vs x, time vs y, and time vs z. I know this will be very useful in the days to come.

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday I wasted so much time trying to get the GUI to look correctly, and at the end of the day I failed. I am not wasting no more time with it. I will just do what I can. Thats all I can say for now since the GUI is the only thing I worked on. Peace

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday, I successfully exported flock of birds data to a file, but it took longer than I expected. I had previously done this before this year's spring semester, but I could not remember how I did it. So it took me most of the day, in which I wasted most of my time. Anyway, Peschel told me this great idea. He said I should make planes of references based on the a averages of the graphs. The graph of interest will be easier to comprehend if planes of references in the x, y, and z axis. I actually created it, but the system significantly slows down and I can not see through it. I'll keep working on it.

ok, ladies and gents. So today, I added more functions to my code so that I can find the standard deviation for each dimension, i.e. x, y, and z. The next thing on my list of things to do is to a csv file of the data so Peschel can use Excel to look at the data "statiscally." I will not be able to do it today because it is ....4:24pm and I am going to leave at 4:45 so I can go to the Fed ex to mail some stuff and take pictures. Peace out.

Ok, ladies and gents. I most definitely forgot to post on thursday and friday...so I'll give a brief summary on those days. Thursday, I was able to get the drop down menus to work, all four of them. This means that I can choose a specific flock of birds xml file to graph, and after, I attached listeners to the menus so that when the user hits "ok" button the program will graph the file immediately. At first I thought I had some bugs because I got some wacky looking graphs, but then Hammond came in and looked at it at a different perspective. Btw, she was really excited, overzealous even. I felt like I accomplished something by performing the user study and creating a program to visualize the data, but as excited as Hammond was it seemed like she was the one programming lol. Anyway, Hammond looked at the line plotted graph and the change the orientation of it, then I saw that you could see what was drawn by the user study participants using the flock of birds system. Pretty amazing. Some of it is hard to distinguish at times, though. Anyway, hasta luego.

Ok, ladies and gents. Yesterday, I realized that it was harder than I thought to create a drop down menu to select different methods, users, and trial for a specific data file. The reason is that the data file does not give enough information within it, or its in different places, so its harder to pull out the data. Peschel thinks I should just do what I can right now, and later he will alter the how Flock of Birds system outputs its data so it will be easier to pull out vital info next time around. That means, all the work i am currently doing to "do what I can" will be for naught because I will have to change the code to work for the different format of the data file. I guess I do not mind so much because doing "what i can" has lead to a bad design and hectic code. Anyway, so far I got two of the drop down menu to work, now its time for the others. Hasta luego.

Ok, ladies and gents. Since I finished the XML parsing, I can use the extracted data and place it in a 3D plotting system. So I was working on a JMathTool tutorial and trying to alter it so that I can apply it to my research. Currently, I am trying to make a GUI window where I can select any user, with any trial, and any method to find the specific data file from the user study. So, I am bout to get to work so I will see you later.

Ok....ladies and gents. So I have always thought, and even mentioned it to some grad students outside of srl, that I believe that my school is failing extremely in preparing me for computer science grad school. That is why apply for internships to become a better programmer. I have started working on a xml parser, which I literally just learned what that is today, and I am loving it. I want to keep improving my skill as a programmer til I am satisfied, but I have an unsatiable hunger for knowledge so that is gonna be hard to stop. Anyway, Peace out :p

Ok....ladies and gents. Yesterday I did my last two user study test with srl participants. I wanted to start working on some code yesterday and so Peschel said there is a website that has resources to aid me in my goal. I want to be able to visualize the data that I have obtained from the othere srl user studies, but Peschel, I believe, either forgot to send me the link or never found the website. I do not know what happened, but I guess I will find out today....I wonder what I am gonna say to Hammond because I basically did not do much yesterday....and that woman scares me sometimes lol. Anyway, I do not read much at all, and I can probably count the number of books I have read on both hands, or maybe its more than that. I read the first installation of the HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy.....AND I FREAKIN LOVED IT. I have a very short attention span, really short, that is why I do not read much because the books that I have attempted to read fail to keep me interested. However, Douglass Adams had me laughin in the first several short chapters of the book. The book was very amusing, quirky, and funny. I really want to read the rest of his installments in the series. Peace.

Ok....ladies and gents. Thursday....what....hmmm.....oh ok. So I finally did the user study test, which Taele and Dixon were my first subjects. Taele went first and it took an hour because we had to work out some tinks in the user study procedure. Taele was a great help, and I thank him for that. When Dixon came up to the plate, it seemed it would take about half an hour the rate we were going, but then I realized some of the data were missig from both Taele and Dixon tests. Apparently I must have switched, at some point, the location of where the data was saved. I found where they were and placed it where they were supposed to be, but then they are some data still missing. I thought I can just re-test that part of it that were missing, but then I thought it must have been overwritten meaning I might have to redo the whole test. I want to be certain that the data is matched up for the write person and test so, it is a must. I'm glad I realized it before the like the 5th person, or that would have been a pain in the.....well you know.

ok....ladies and gents....i totally forgot to blog on monday and tuesday....but here is the good news. You didnt miss anything! I'm dead serious. Well, I had to get re-aquainted with photoshop so it took me a while to do so, but now I am actually working on the t-shirt that i should have been working on last week....oh well. Anyway, Hammond told me that is my last priority, the t-shirt that is. My first priority was ....your gonna love this....SEWING! Let me tell you, I was really getting into the t-shirt thing, but I had freakin sew some velcro to a pair of gloves. I hated each and every second of it. It took me twenty minutes just to put the string in the pin hole.....i was just about to scream. So it took me bout two hours...i think, the good news is that I can start an actual user study, but w/ srl grad students. Anyway, the best thing that's happening for me is the t-shirt design. I got some cool ideas, I just need to figure out how to do it now. Question of the day:

"Nothing," what is it? When I close my eyes, do I see nothing? Or is "nothing" the only word that can describe a phenomena such as a vacuumed space?

Ok, ladies and gents. Lets see....a couple of days ago, I thought I had the Flock of Birds coordinate system down, but then Josh Peschel presented a good point- Is the coordinate system based on the orientation of the box or is it irrelevant? So when I tried changing the orientation, I was getting very random readings, or so I thought. I later figured out that, not only does the coordinate system depend on the box orientation, but it also depends on the location of the sensors. Readings of positive and negatives from when you are in front of the insignia that looks like an upside down "V," gets flipped when the sensors are behind the insignia. Not only that, but the values does not seem to have negative values if you were directly on top of the imaginary x-,y-, and z-axis of the box itself; the values will decrease to zero then increase again. I was getting frustrated, but I figured everything out in the end. If it wasn't for Peschel questioning the box's coordinate system, the user study that I would have done later in the summer would have came with outrageous results. Anyway, here is the question of the day.

What is a soul? Does it exist at all, or is similar to truth, good, love- perceptions of the human mind?

Ok, ladies and gents. So, I presented on tuesday...and lets just say i felt a quite bit nervous. But the worst part, I think I will not be doing the research I originally came here for because of time constraints and my lack of knowledge of threads :( . You don't always get what you want. So now I will be creating a user study, maybe wizard of oz type, to anaylyze if the user does two things: 1. When asked to draw a 2D primitive shape, does the user not only move in the x and y plane, but also in the z dimension (toward and away from the user) using a pen. 2. the same as number one without a pen. I will collect the data using Flock of Birds equipment. Its a electro magnetic device that emits these waves that is picked up by specific sensors which can tell you the spacial orientation of the sensors. Anyway, I need start on this new proposal. Here is the question of the day, for yesterday lol.

"But who was more tragic, or who was more damned - the man who knew it, or the man who did not?" Oliver Sacks

Ok ladies and gents. So today, I worked on my presentation for tomorrow, and let me say that im completely nervous. I get nervous when I feel that I do not have much knowledge in a particular subject, and just being around these grad students just make me feel like im really ignorant. Hopefully I can get to their status one day. Anyway, I tried working on my "three slide" presentation, but I can not come up with anymore ideas so i said sol. Hopefully, each topic that i have so far is a 5min convo. Anyway, im bout to go to sleep...my eyes are weary, but here is the question of the day?

What is good and evil?

Ok ladies and gents, before I get into what I wanna talk about I want to say something. I have this annoying reaction to cold. When I'm cold I have the tendency to fall asleep no matter how hard I fight. So it is usually cold in my work area, so I have to fight everyday not fall asleep. So I was reading an article, then I realized an hour later I was still at the beginning....because I feel asleep in my chair. They got to fix this ac cuz I dont know what im gonna do for the rest of the summer.

Now, so i finished the article "ICARE: A Component-Based Approach for the Design
and Development of Multimodal Interfaces" and it was a complete waste of time. This article is about a software, ICARE, that enables the user to build an application to build specifically tuned applications of multimodal interfaces. Multimodal refers to multiple input devices pertaining to the humans senses (i.e. sight, hear, speak, etc.). One good thing that came out this paper is that it sights an example on a future work of a application using a multimodal interface, a Rafale. A Rafale is a French military plane. Using a mulitmodal command, the pilot could possibly say "mark" and use his eye to point directly at the target of interest. That itself could prove useful in skethching in 3D with the not only the aid of eye-tracking devices. Since we have the vibrating glove, the SketchIR pen, and the eye-tracking device, I could, for example, change the color of I am drawing in but activating a sensor on the glove by pressing thumb onto my hand, look directly at the color of interest in a virtual "color map" and use the pen to finish the task. Pretty cool idea. So I guess this paper wasnt a waste of time.

I already have a question of the day.

Good day ladies and gents. I know, I said I would be back to submit an article, but I didn't last night. I went to go exercise for over an hour, went back to my room, and dropped to my bed; I was exhausted. So I back to submit a report. I read the article "A Painter's Eye Movements: A Study of Eye and Hand Movements during Portrait Drawing." I can say one thing, I do not read much but this article was really interesting, especially since I like to draw every now and then. This article basically analyzed a skilled artists' eye to hand coordination which was later compared to a novice's skills. In the article, an eye- and hand-tracking device was attached to his head and hand, respectively. This allowed to collect data to see the correlation between the two when the artist drew a model of person's head. The artist had rapid fixations most of the time, and then had a little longer fixation on complex visual data, which both corresponded with smooth movements. The novices were the opposite. Uhhhh....is it significant to my research....to a certain extent. I definitely know that I to sketch in "3D" that the user must be looking at what the user is drawing, as in this experiment where the artist had to focus on the spacial arrangement when drawing. Anyway, here is the question of the day?

God created everything in the universe, then by logic, He created evil too, or did He?

Hello ladies and gents. Today was the first day I haven't done any programming since this REU started...so I guess I shouldn't have stressed at all...wrong! So what I did today was write my proposal and I am really bad at writing, like I struggle because I don't know what to say. I do not want to sound dum or unprofessional, but I try my best. I just sent my draft of the proposal to Tracy, and I wouldn't be surprised if that paper turned red lol, but I always try. Anyway, Ill be back later tonight to submit a report on an article. Here is the question of the day.

What is truth?

Ok ladies and gents. Today I went to the Immersions Virtual Center and it was pretty cool. I got to see how Texas uses their center to aid other students, organizations, and/or industries in visualizing their data sets in 3D. Using 3d, they get a more in depth understanding of what their data looks like. For example, Texas A&M itself collects gigs of data on the weather. Well, they used that data, input it into VTC, a free app that helps visualize data in 3d, and ran the program. The result was an image of a thuderstorm forming. It was cool. But this center has more applications than just visualizing data, it can probably run video games in 3d too. Anyway here is the question of the day.

What is the purpose of our (mankind) existence?

Ok, just finished reading Specifying Gestures by Example by Dean Rubine.  I can sum up this article in a simple sentence: using recognized drawing patterns, i.e. gestures, to cut, paste, move, group select, navigate, etc.  GRANDMA (Gesture Recognizes Automated in a Novel Direct Manipulation Architecture)  is the algorithm they used to accomplish this task.  By giving this system at least 15 examples of a gesture connected to an operation such as delete, 98% were classified correctly when testing.  The gesture for deleting in this experiment was an "x" in a single stroke though.  All of the gestures were single stroked in this experiment.  So to delete something on the computer using gester recognition, all that was needed to be done was to start the mouse over the "file" of interest, press the mouse button down, and create an "x" without letting go of the mouse button until after the cross.  This was a very interesting article. Here is the question of the day?

Would you murder the one you love out of love if they asked you to release them from their suffering?

So, what did i do on wednesday? I dont really remember, but I definitely know I have been working on OpenGL and ARTag code. So basically I have been programming, which I love, but it has its pros and its con. Everyday, thus far, I have come across a huge bump in the road, but by some miracle I figured it out after some time. Usually you find minor problems, but these are like "how the hell am I gonna fix this?" Anyway, life goes on. I went to a pool party on wednesday evening and I met some people to hang out with, FINALLY!! I do not mind staying in my room for long periods of time, but every day though? Nah, i like to go out and chill, watch a movie, eat out at restaurants, enjoy the sights....including women :) Anyway, here is the question of the day.

What defines your existances? Can you prove that you exist?

So I just read Holosketch : A Virtual Reality Sketching/Animation Tool by Michael Deering, and I got to say that the Holosketch software almost got it down pack. Holosketch is a 3D software that grants you the ability to sketch, draw, paint, and animate. In laymen terms, its a three-dimensional Photoshop, and that is freaking awesome. To operate this amazing system, you first need a head-tracked field sequential stereo shutter glasses and a six axis mouse. The head set allows the user to view images in space at different angles as if the object of interest were there. The six axis mouse, or "wand" as they refer to it, allows the user to interact with the virtual enviroment in three dimensions, x, y, ans z. With the headset, wand, and the features and capabilities of Holosketch users could apply this software to everyday objectives. For example, a business man could display a company's finacial figures using virtual graphs, an engineer could have a close to realistic visualization of a building the engineer designed, or an artist could express his/herself with virtual art. The great thing about this is that this was possible about ten years ago, and technology is exponentially growing. Therefore, if not the Holosketch system, there must be a system with improved features, capabilities, etc. Anyway, here is the question of the day?

Would you kill one person to save a thousand?

So....its the second day so far....and um..."it always could be better." The interns that I have met thus far....are a bit weird and funny. Some of my friends back home are mostly weird, but I guess I am not used to Caucasian weird lol; I have mostly African-american friends as you can tell. I just gotta adapt. Anyway, one thing that I definitely don't like about Texas, or at least College Station, Texas is that the people here aren't really friendly. Well, I guess I am comparing it to the population in Ames, Iowa. I am from the east cost, and I am not used to people being friendly, but when I went to Iowa last summer for an internship....90% of the people who passed me said hi, good morning, how do you...etc. Here, 99% of the people who passed me just turned their heads, look at their cell phone, look right through me like I wasn't even there!!! I tried to say Hi and good morning, but I'm getting tired of no responses. Hey, I always say "you don't always get what you want in life." Enough with the gloomy stuff, I AM EXCITED bout my project. I gonna be working on an Augmented Reality project with John Peschel. I am just trying to attain as much knowledge as I can from these brilliant individuals. I want to be where they are after I graduate, pushing technology as far as it can go, and thats no where near finite. Well, this is pretty long, so I'll end it, but here is a question for the day?

Is a key still a key if there's nothing to unlock?