Before the Presentation...
Today is a dark day: the last Thursday, the last day before the project is due, the last day to work feverishly. In the morning, we had the interesting discovery lecture about Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Then, we practiced (and failed miserably) on our presentations. Now, we just have to finish our poster. Oh joy! At the very least, our program works, sort of.
Some Time Later
Yesterday, on Tuesday, we had a pretty interesting lecture on structural engineering and how to build and rebuild buildings to protect against natural and man-made disasters. And we also covered the new jobs and careers associated with this type of role. After this, we've just been programing, except for this morning. We talked about not knowing what we do not know and knowing what we know. My brain hurts. We are getting close to finishing our final project though.
Last Monday Lecture
It's the last Monday we have here. =( . This morning, we had a very short lecture, where everyone presented a short speech about the programs we were assigned to research. And after that, we headed down to the computer lab to program. Our handwriting recognition program is not doing very well right now, and my head is crammed with new information. I must hold onto reality... Just kidding; I'm sure we'll finish our project JustinTime.
Late, but Here: Friday
Two days ago, Friday, was absolutely great! No lectures or anything, instead we took two field trips. In the morning, we headed to the Neuroscience Institute to look at the NOMAD, DARWIN, and soccer-playing robots that we saw previously in one of our discovery lectures. We saw these robots in greater detail, and then got to ride on Segways. In the afternoon, we took vans out to watch the new movie "Stealth". It was ok, but it was cool to go out and watch a movie.
Wednesday Afternoon and Thursday
Wednesday Afternoon - We had Christine do a lecture and a demonstration of sketch recognition and the challenges that befall it. It was cool, being able to use the PC Tablets to draw and all.
But...
Thursday, we had a cool time with a digital war: Rulers. We programed our rulers to command and build soldiers and peaseants and have them fight. We spent some five hours programming code and running simulated battles. Cool.
Also, in the morning, we had a fascinating discovery lecture on the use of different types of digital lighting to make more realistic digital renderings.
A fun day.
Logs, More Logs, and Still More Logs
This morning, Joe came to lecture, with gifts, although we won't be able to keep them =( .He brought abacuses and slide rules, and showed us through various test calculations and demonstrations, how everything is counted and arranged according to logs. We even delved into history a bit in talking about Pythagoras and how he said "All is Numbers".
Global Warming in the Morning, HCL in the Afternoon
In the morning, we had our Tuesday and Thursday Discovey Lectures. Today's was on the Science and History of Global Warming; the lecture was delivered by Professor/Doctor Keeling, the son of a Professor/Doctor Keeling. He chronicled the first notice of global warming by Servante Arrhenius, and how his father made detailed measurements. Quite interesting.
In the afternoon, our cluster went on our second field trip (still on campus) to one of the Computer Science buildings and labs. It was really cool. The professor showed us new projects that are and were being developed around the world, like projectors linked to the computer so that you could drag stuff from the screen into the real world and vice versa, touch pad screens utilizing electrical capacitance, and much more. Yeah.
