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?