26th day

Today was a really busy day. I worked on the presentation all morning, adding more pictures and a few of the ideas Jeff talked about monday. The presentation is finally coming together. I also learned today that we have to add some more videos of our own, hopefully we will have enough time to do that. We filmed the videos today with Jeff, we spent about an hour driving around trying to get all of the different eye movements we needed. After I got back I worked on the presentation some more and went home around 5

25th day (mon)

Today was my 25th full day, I missed a week for a family vacation. I had a pretty busy day today trying to get as much work done as possible on my presentation. I came in Friday afternoon and saturday morning to work on it as well. Today I added videos and some pictures from the geosciences experiment. Other than working on the presentation I worked with the Nexus with Jake in the afternoon. Jeff also critiqued our presentation today, so I'm going to have a lot of work to do tomorrow.

24th day

Today was just a normal day in the lab. I got in at 9 and worked on the presentation untill about 1130. At 1130 I went outside to watch some of the people in the class drop water balloons and capture it on a high speed camera. Afterwards I watched the videos of the balloons dropping and popping, it was really interesting. After lunch I came back to the lab and worked on the Geology Tobii experiment until I left around 445.

23rd day

Today was a pretty normal day. After the morning meeting I went to my lab and worked on the presentation until lunch time. For lunch I went to the Undergraduate picnic with the rest of the interns, it was pretty good and it was free. After lunch I went with the optics group to see some of the things they were working on, and then I came back to the visual perception lab. At 230 I started trying to work on the Tobii with Jake and Ben, It went fairly well. We put all of the necessary pictures into the experiment, and ran it 5 times on different people. At 445 we explained the system to the dean of sciences, ran her as a subject, and then went home.

22nd day

I didn't really do too much today. I worked on my presentation as much as I could, but since I don't have the last project done, a major part of the presentation, its hard to work on. Jake and I were supposed to use the Tobii remote eye tracker today to start working on our geology eye tracking project, but since the hard drive was broken we only got about 30 minutes of work done. Other than that I finished the first half of my AP Physics summer work, and read the paper for the lab meeting Thursday.

21st day

Today was very busy. In the morning I worked on my final presentation as much as I could. We still havent started our last project, which makes it hard to make the powerpoint. At 1130 Joe and Bob took all of the interns out to lunch at pellegrinos, I got a turkey sub. After lunch we went to the U of R to see the laser lab. Unfortunately our tour guide didnt know that much about the facilities, but it was still really interesting. The rooms where the lasers were were extremely cool. We even got to see a test shot of the lasers. I got back to the lab at 2 and worked on my project some more until about 430 when I went home.

20th day

Today we went on a field trip to ITT. It was really interesting, we learned about what they do at the space branch of ITT, which is the one we visited. After a presentation we went on a tour of the area where they create lenses. We were also shown a project called ANGEL which had to do with remote sensing. Im not totally sure how much detail I'm aloud to tell about what we saw, so thats all I'm going to say. We went out for subs after the field trip, and then I went home.

19th day

Today was a pretty busy day. After the morning meeting I went to the lab and finished coding the fixation videos for Sue. That took me most of the morning. I went to lunch at 1120 because there was a lab meeting for the visual perception lab today at 12. The lab meeting went from 12 to about 130, we mostly talked about visual perception pertaining to advertising on TV. This went along with a paper we read Wednesday about a study that was interested in the differences in ad effectiveness on TV when fast forwarding, and not fast forwarding through the ads. After the lab meeting I went back to the lab and helped Sue work on some spreadsheets.

18th day

Today was a pretty normal day, I got to the lab around 9, and worked on coding videos for Sue for most of the day. That pretty much took up my entire morning. Today I had pizza and cake for lunch because it was Duygu's Birthday, and then went to a PHD defense in the auditorium. The topic of the defense was remote gas identification, which had a military application. After the defense I went back to the lab and worked with Sue some more.

17th day

Today was a fairly busy day. I worked almost the entire day on the experiment for Sue's dissertation. Jake and I had quite a few problems with the video cameras, which meant we had to run the experiment 7 times when it should only have been 3. Other than working on the eye tracking experiment for Sue, I learned how to use the Tobii, a non portable eye tracker, and talked to Jeff about a new project. The new project has to do with tracking the eyes of geologists on a ten day trip to the San Andreas Fault, I'm not totally sure what it will involve yet, but I think it will be pretty interesting.

16th day

Today was pretty normal, I went right to the lab around 9, after the morning meeting. I helped out Susan with the experiment she's been doing for the last few days for most of the morning. After lunch I worked with Jake to try to figure out the NEXUS machine some more, it didn't go so well. I ended up with electrode gel all over my forehead. after working with the nexus for 45 minutes we gave up and helped the other Sue with part of her dissertation. We ran an experiment in which we created different problems for the eye tracker, such as moving it up and down and adjusting the cameras, to see how it adjusted. Unfortunately we had some problems with the scene camera which will hopefully be cleared up tomorrow.

15th day

Today was the 15th day of the internship. We started with our normal morning meeting, today Mr. Callen brought in bagels, and we listened to a presentation on remote imaging. It was pretty interesting. The presentation was about taking two images from a plane and using them to create a 3d model of an object on the ground. After the meeting I went strait to the lab, I was the first subject of the day in Sue's eye tracking study. I was just told to look at pictures in a book. The study is about differences in visual strategies when looking at a book or a computer screen. For the rest of the day I pretty much just helped out with the experiment.

14th day

Today was a pretty busy day. As soon as I got to the lab I worked on getting two macs to connect and remotely control one another. I worked on it for an hour or two, sadly I never got it to work right. After that I worked with Jeff to see if we could use the Yarbus eye tracking program to watch video in real time while we recorded video on portable video cameras. It turns out that it wasnt as hard as we thought it would be. after setting everything up I documented it, and took pictures which I'm going to post on the Wiki later. After lunch we had boot camp again. It was much shorter today, only two hours. Afterwards I went upstairs with a few of the other people from the visual perception lab to work with the Yarbus software some more. I went home around 5.

13th day

Today instead of our normal meeting we went to see the RIDL lab in the basement of the building. It was pretty interesting, we got to see some computer chip worth half a million dollars, and we got to see two refrigerating systems that could reach temperatures of 50 K and 25 K. After the tour I went to the visual perception lab for about an hour. Then I went to a PHD defense, lunch, and two undergraduate presentations. The PHD defense was about a low light detector system and the undergraduate presentations were about detecting different colors from a plane using a computer program, and something math related that had to do with parametric equations. After the presentations I went back to the lab and was told to figure out how to use the remote desktop to run eye tracking for some upcoming experiment. I havent figured it out yet, hopefully I will tomorrow.

12th day

Today was the 12th day of the internship. I didn't really have anything to do in the morning because I had finished all of my jobs and Jeff was busy teaching a class, so I read some papers and took care of some work that I had left over from last week. I took lunch at around 12, and was back by 1 for boot camp. It was the first day of boot camp today, which is basically just a class on the basics of vision and visual perception. The class ran from 1 to 5, and I'm going to have it again on Thursday. Although it was very long, I thought the class was fairly interesting, and I learned a lot.

11th day (Third Monday)

Today was the 11th day. We started with our usual meeting, and then I went strait to the lab. Today I finished analyzing and plotting the shampoo data, and Sue sent it in to Proctor and Gamble. I also received an email from Jeff today that said Proctor and Gamble was very impressed with the work our lab had done analyzing the data, which I had a large part in doing. Anyways, I finished the data by lunch time, and went to lunch at the crossroads. I got back from lunch around one. From one until 4 I found different miscellaneous jobs to do around the lab. I went home at 4.

10th day (2nd Friday)

          Today was a pretty normal day. I finished my excel work today, and it is ready to be turned in to Proctor and Gamble. I found out that by the end of monday I have to have a completely separate set of data completely analyzed. I think ill be able to get it done, I spend about 2 hours on it today. Today I also started to brainstorm with one of the students from the honors school about a project we wanted to do. So far it looks like were doing something with board games which seems like it could be interesting. My I.D. finally worked today! Now it works for one of the 3 labs I need to get into, but its a start.

9th day

Today I started work by checking over all of my spreadsheets. After Checking them I began to work on the 3rd set of data, the data for the shampoo fixations. I got about halfway through the first step in analyzing it when Sue and Jeff told me that we had to figure out the plots for the time to first fixation, which we still hadnt cleared up. At 1135 Jeff took me and Sue to the King and I for lunch. We talked about the work I was doing, and where the P & G product was going. We decided to try to finish up the first two sets of data for Friday, and turn them in to P & G. after lunch we worked out some of the problems with the plots but not all of them. At 230 I got to speak to a classroom of 8th graders in California over skype. I enjoyed telling them about the work I'm doing, they all seemed very interested.

8th day

           Today was the 8th day of the internship. This morning Mr. Callen tried to help me get access to the labs I'm working in, I'm not sure if it worked yet, I guess well see tomorrow morning. Today I finished my spreadsheets and all of my graphs. I went to a seminar on E-Coli, it was pretty interesting, but it wasn't quite what I expected. After the seminar I visited some of the other labs that the interns were working in, it was a nice break from working in excel. At 230 I went to the Color Lab to be a subject in an eye tracking experiment, unfortunately the eye tracker wasn't working. Im going to go back later in the week and try again. Once I got back to the lab Sue helped me with some problems I had encountered in excel. She also taught me how to add the standard error to my plots.

7th day

Today was my 7th day of the internship. We started with a meeting as usual, and then went right to our labs. My card still doesn't give me access to any rooms, but fortunately Heather (The lab manager) came in shortly after 9, and was able to let me into the lab. Once I was in the lab i worked on finishing the graphs for the fixations on the Dishwasher Detergent. I got all of the graphs done except those for the time to first fixation, which I am having some trouble with. After I finished my graphs I moved on to analyzing the data that Jake started before he left on vacation. I analyzed that data from 1 to 4, and got to the point were I was ready to make graphs of it; I'm planning on doing that tomorrow.

6th day

Today was the 6th day, the second monday, of the internship. We started with our morning meeting where Mr. Callen told us about a chance to be a subject for a study in the color lab, I think im going to volunteer for it, it sounds interesting. After the meeting I went to the visual perception lab and started working with my dishwasher detergent data. After redoing the analysis on most of the data I put it all into an excel spreadsheet. This took me the majority of the day. In the afternoon I started to make graphs of the data, it's very interesting to see the differences between the new and old packaging and the attention people give them. Oh, I almost forgot, today I went and got my I.D. scanned so hopefully I can get into the labs now.

5th day

I apologize that I couldnt make this post until now, but I just got home from visiting Villanova college in pennsylvania. I unfortunately didnt get a chance to write after work on Friday. Anyways, Friday started out normally with the lab meeting, Mr. Callen brough donuts for all of the interns which I really enjoyed. After my donut I spent about half an hour re-reading papers waiting for someone to let me into the lab. After I got in I finished coding the videos from thursday. After coding the videos I had to put different information about them into an excel spreadsheet, luckly Sue wrote an amazing program that did most of the work for me. It took me the rest of the day to get all of the information into the spreadsheet. I also spent some time with Mr. Pelz learning how to make and edit pages on the Twiki for the Nexus. That was pretty much my whole day, I left around 4 and went strait to Pennsylvania

4th day

I totally forgot to write this last night, so I'm writing it this morning. Yesterday we started with the normal meeting but then went straight to our labs. There was no one in the visual perception lab until about 10, so I read over some papers I had been given previously. Once a few people showed up we started moving furniture out of one of the lab rooms, because the floor had to be waxed. It was extremely stressful because we had to carry heavy, expensive, TV's across the hall and into another room. After getting into the lab I was working in I was taught how to code videos of fixations. It was interesting, and it was nice to finally be doing something that seemed important. At 12 I went to the visual perception area lab meeting which was really interesting. We discussed a paper we had been given, and just generally talked about eye movements during driving, magic tricks, and other things. After the meeting, around 2, I went to lunch. By the time I got to the crossroads it was closing so I just got a bag of chips and a soda for lunch. After lunch I coded almost all of the rest of the videos, and then went home.

3rd day

Today was the third day of the internship. We started just like the last two days, with a brief meeting; today we talked mainly about the coding course. After the meeting I went to the visual perception lab and worked on finishing some papers until I saw Jeff Pelz around 11. He gave us some instructions on setting up and installing software for an EEG, EKG, EOG, and many other function, machine. I didn't have much time to work on it, I went to lunch around 12 and was back in time for the 1 o'clock coding class. It went much better today, it was taught slower, and I found that I understood much more of the material. That was pretty much my whole day, I left around 4.

2nd Day

Today was the second day of the internship. we started with a quick meeting in the reading room, and then split up and went to our individual labs. I spend from 9 to 12 reading different visual perception papers, the first was for the lab meeting next week, the other two were on eye movement while batting in cricket and on eye movement while walking on a preset path. I went to lunch at 12 and returned around 1245. At 1 all 14 of the interns attended a programming class until 4 o'clock; right now I'm in that class. Its pretty boring and really confusing but i think i understand the coding alright. Im hoping to leave right after this class at 4, but I might have to help the grad students in the visual perception lab move some furniture across the hall

1st Day

Today I arrived at 835 for the 845 meeting. we started right at 845 and were split up into 2 groups and sent on a scavenger hunt. We were told to find and videotape 42 obscure objects across campus that we were given pictures of. We were given two and a half hours to find the objects, we only found 26...the other team found 30, they got t-shirts. After the scavenger hunt we went back to building 76 and had a meeting for a while, we got free pizza. The meeting was interrupted by the fire alarm about half way through. After the interruption I walked down the quarter mile for the 3rd time in the day and got my parking permit. After building 76 was re-opened, it turned out a battery had melted down in the server room, we split up and met with our area supervisors. I met with Jeff Pelz in the visual perception lab and was given a brief tour and overview of what I would be doing. Soon after I was left to read a 30 page paper, i finished around 440 and went home.