Day 32

I finally got my dust map image to display on IDL!!! yay! Okay well, I worked on my presentation for most of the day. This morning I managed to create four slides. Unfortunately, that was not going to last if I had to present for about 10 minutes. Today I spent most of my time embellishing the weak presentation that I had put together. Now it seems to be about seven slides but I have no idea what I'm actually going to be saying yet... uh-oh! hmmm.... going to have to put some thought into that one. Jake wants us to meet with him tomorrow (Wednesday) to go over our presentation. I also made a list of all of the galaxies that I need to go online to get wfpc or R-band wavelength data for. That way I can go online tomorrow and try to figure out how to get them off of the website that Grant gave me. Wings tonight... bye!

Day 31

Sorry this is late, just didn't get around to posting anything on Monday. I mostly worked on the Final Draft of my poster, gave it to Joe Pow and now it is going to be printed. I checked it over and over again for spelling and grammatical errors, I hope I didn't miss any...
I also started working some more with the dust maps that Jake wants me to make with H-band filter and R-band filter data that will show us how much dust the galaxy actually has in it. It seems like I'm having trouble displaying the image after I have composed the dust map and saved it with a header. I'm going to talk to Jake about why it won't display the image right.
I talked to the other Astronomy Group interns and we might be going to eat wings tonight with the rest of the Insight Lab, sounds like it'll be fun!

Day 30

Well , today I was able to revise my poster with feedback from Dr. Chris O'Dea. However, I was not able to do more than that because I have not gotten anymore feedback *hint hint* from anyone else. I talked more to Grant today and he helped Kevin and I with our struggle in shifting the color mapping images so that they matched within at the most 10 pixels or so. He also worked with me a little on why the nicmos images off of the website he gave me didn't work as well as the archive ones that he didn't have all of. He told me that the one galaxy that I was trying to color map didn't have quite as good as a circular dust collection as the first galaxy I did.
This morning AJ brought in doughnuts, he said that Bob gave him some money for them. They were pretty good, I was sooo full after eating just one!
We had teambuilding today, for once! It was great, we went over and got some snow from outside the ice rink and put some on top of Kevin's car. It was great! I can't wait to see his reaction!

Until tomorrow.

Day 29

This morning I got in pretty early. There was no morning intern meeting because Joe and Bob were not going to be there. I still went up there this morning to say good morning to some of the other interns and wait until about 8:45 to go downstairs to work.
I attempted to work on color mapping with some of the files that Grant gave me, I practiced on a couple of the files that he already had a color map image for. After many unsuccessful tries I finally got the right combination and was able to recreate his color map image. I then went up again to show Grant my success and to ask him how to obtain the wfpc images. I need to talk to him today at the 5 o'clock meeting because the images nicmos images he told me to use instead of the ones on the archive look worse than the ones from the archive. We'll see how it goes. I didn't work on my poster at all today but I hoping to get more feedback tomorrow. Today was just in general a slow day...

Day 28

Today we went to Optimax for a field trip. Now, just like all the other companies we are technically not "allowed" to share any secrets. I know that in past blogs I have disregarded this request but shared limited information. However, because I don't have much to write about today nor do I have the ambition to write a full page about my trip and also because I liked the way we were welcomed at Optimax, I will not be writing about my trip in fear that I may say something that was considered secret. I can tell you that the people at Optimax were very nice and that I think because overall their work atmosphere was very casual and friendly.
On the way home where to my dismay we stopped at Amiel's instead of Dibella's. Not that I don't like Amiel's it's just that Dibella's is better. However, I must give credit where credit is due, Thank you Joe, for buying us lunch today, it was still good and very filling, that's all that matters.
I didn't get a lot done besides sending my poster to Dr. Jake Noel-Storr, Dr. Stefi Baum, and Dr. Chris O'Dea so they could give me some feedback on it for improvements. I also obtained a lot more work to do. So I've got a lot to do for the rest of the week, I won't be doing nothing here!

Day 27

Again, my poster took most of my time today as I tried to perfect it. I added in a few more pictures to fully cover the extent to which I worked with images during this internship. I also wrote more in detail about one of the most important processes that we used to filter the images I got from GALEX. I posted my earlier rough draft on the Wiki but I will be adding another one that is the most recent "final" rough draft. I will also send the rough draft to Joe Pow so that he can look over it and give me some feedback. Brad, one of the undergraduates, also proofread some of my poster and helped me with some of the details that I could include about the near and far UV images. I took some of his advice and added to, as well as, deleted some of the things that weren't so clear in my writing. I had a meeting today at one where we informed Jake and Chris O'Dea about what we've been doing for the past week. Jake mentioned that he has more work for us to do before we get too far into our posters and presentations. He said that the undergraduates had a few color mapping things that they needed us to do for them alongside our other work. It shouldn't be difficult it just means that we can't ignore the work that we have to do within the last two weeks. It's the last stretch, where you have to bring out everything you've got for the end, I know all about the last stretch. It's in those last 600 meters that you have to give a race the best you've got to make anything you accomplished earlier worthwhile.

Day 26

Today I transferred everything I had made for my poster from the PowerPoint slide onto a poster sized Publisher page. Hopefully it will work out better size-wise and the scaling will look feasible. I didn't really do much else than work on the poster today. Stephi did come down earlier and introduce a new person to the Astronomical Department. While she walked around looking at what we were working on she did mention to us interns to not put too many words on our posters or they would seem uninteresting to others. I don't think I've ever had too many words on my poster, but I will continue to spruce it up because right now it looks pretty barren. Maybe a few more pictures would make it look nicer and I have to think about how I'm going to group the information that I would like to incorporate into my poster. Just slowly adding more and more to my poster it's due by Wednesday, I'll definitely have it finished by then.

Day 25

Wow, two more weeks left, I'm surprised at how fast this internship has gone by. The next two weeks will most likely be very busy with us typing up our posters and creating our power point presentations that I won't even notice when they are over. Most people ask me why I would want to spend my summer working 40 hours a week. In a way, today at the Louise Slaughter building where the undergraduates were doing all of their presentations, my question was answered when a man, whose name escapes me, reminded everyone why they were there. Sometime, somewhere in their lives everyone of those undergraduates decided that they cared about what they were researching (passion) and put in the hours and the effort, the hard work, all for what? In a way I didn't even need an answer for that question, it's the reason I go to school everyday, to run all year round instead of just for the season, it's why I continue to practice my clarinet throughout the summer. The satisfaction, the hard work gives an unbelievable high, it is why I continue to reach for my goals and be the best I can. Anyways, that doesn't mean I don't like to have fun, so, TGIF!
The presentations were fairly good, I thought the groups from the astronomical department were exceptionally good. I could see a lot of the undergrads do the same things they warn us about throughout high school like talking too fast when you get nervous, unnecessary pacing, and over-exaggerated hand movements. The undergrads in our department practiced yesterday (with us as their audience) and seemed very calm when they actually presented. When Brad and Bryan presented there were about three professors in the room who fired what sounded to me like really hard questions, they answered a few of them coolly and the ones they didn't know they simply told them that they could figure it out. I hope I can present just as well on the 22nd, which is only 2 weeks from now!!! haha, okay, I'm done, see ya!

Day 24

Today I finished a bunch of last minute IDL excursions for the Undergraduates that have their symposium tomorrow. Lucky they have me, huh? Haha, well they know they wouldn't have gotten all those wonderful and colorful pictures if it weren't for us interns.
Other than that I have been working on my poster, again the only trouble I'm having is that I'm not sure how the scale is going to work out when they take it from a powerpoint slide and then make it 3 feet by 4 feet poster size. Jake said that I should take a ruler upstairs to check out the size of the other posters and figure out what kind of scaling I want. Too bad there aren't any rulers here... So I'm bringing one in tomorrow, and I will continue to piece together my poster.
Jake said that he and Stephanie talked about what us interns should do regarding the presentations we have to give on August 22nd. They suggested that we each do our presentations individually but all in a row so that they can tie into one another without talking for a full half-hour and losing the interest of our audience and without repeating things over and over again. I think it is generally a good idea, we just have to figure out how we're going to split it up. Another day... bye.

Day 23

This morning I finished writing descriptions for all of my eroded image galaxies. I noticed that the ones I had written yesterday were not any longer than about two sentences only because there was not a lot of important details in the images. The ones that I finished writing about today had more detail and more things to write about and point out. After I finished that I put it up on the Wiki so that Jake could see it.
By the afternoon I started working on my poster that I have to make to put up back at my high-school to show everyone what I worked on during the summer. I'm not sure how everything is going to work out scale-wise, but I put three pictures on it, as well as wrote a little about what I've been doing, why I've been doing it, how I've been processing the images I have, and thanked those who helped me . I'll probably finish writing about the process some more tomorrow and then send it to Joe for some feedback, before I tell him that it's done. I haven't started working on the presentation yet, but I think that Kevin and I are going to be working on it together, because we've basically been doing the same thing since day one. There are a few differences between what we've been doing but we'll just present accordingly. The third to last week is almost over, I'll definitely have enough time to finish everything before the end of the internship. I'm sure Jake will have more work for me to do by tomorrow, if not I have enough work to do for now with the poster and the presentation, either way I'm golden. Until tomorrow!

Day 22

Today was a long day of work. But in a way it was okay, I got a lot accomplished and am glad that I wasn't sitting here all day fiddling around with IDL. Actually I only used IDL for a few hours in the morning while I transferred all of my eroded images that were saved as tiff files into jpegs. I needed them to be jpegs so that I could put the images on a Microsoft Word document and describe each image separately. I went to the meeting at one o'clock with Jake and Stephanie and reported what I have been doing for the past week. They didn't give me anything else to do because I already have a task that I need to get done but I think I'll be done describing the images sometime tomorrow.
After the afternoon meeting I was able to write a description for the majority of my images. Tomorrow I will be able to finish them completely and see if my descriptions are sufficient enough for Jake. I described a lot of what data was what color for each galaxy. There are a couple images that I think will be kind of difficult to describe because they are not the "norm" where there is supposed to be a mix of optical (red) and UV (green and blue) data inside of a ring of optical data (red). Anyways, I just hope I can correctly describe them so I don't have to go back and do it all again, I only have about six left.
It's almost five, I've got a meeting and then a summer band concert to play in! I doubt anyone would read this in time to go but if you'd like 6:30 at the Henrietta Town Park (by the senior center). Wow, it's only Tuesday?

Day 21

Today we took a trip to ITT and learned a little about what they do to create and design mirrors for telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra infrared telescope. It was interesting to see the amount of work they put in to each and every mirror they produce. They told us that they buy their beginning glass pieces from Cornell as well as produce their own. Each glass mirror they produce goes through an extensive process where they grind it down with tiles, and a liquid with grit in it, also using a "pitching process" by running the glass over a solution and tile that can be tilted a certain way to shape the glass any way they want. It was really interesting to see the process to create these great pieces of glass, and to see the amazing detail that went behind the designs. They will soon be taking on a major project of creating a mirror that is about 8 feet wide. They are creating it in sections that will make up the final piece. Too bad we can't get to see the finished project. It was interesting to see that ITT has so many different occupational people working on the mirrors such as: electrical and mechanical engineers as well as more specialized positions. All in all it was a fun trip but it did get a little warm dressed up from our hair nets to our booties in the lab that was sanitized, standing up with all those protective gear on made me feel a little light-headed, good thing we left soon after I started to feel that way.
After ITT, we went to DiBella's and got subs to go. We ate them up in one of the spare conference rooms and spent almost an hour just hanging out together for our lunchbreak, it was fun.
I went back to work, finished up my last eroded image from friday and then am going to be spending my time changing them to jpegs for further work.

Day 20

This is the end of my 4th week as an intern here at RIT. I have another 3 to go but I'm thinking right now that they won't be too bad. This morning Bob was not here but Joe did bring us some yummy doughnuts, Thanks Joe. I also had to ask Joe what to do because somehow, yesterday I must've left my id card in my pocket and it must've fell out somewhere, and it is lost. Joe gave me the option of sending him my times everyday instead of buying another one, so for now I think I'm going to do that, if it's difficult then I'll probably just pay the fee to get another card.
Today, Tom and I used all of the information we have been collecting throughout the past couple weeks to finally erode the tiff files we saved!! Tom was able to write up a code so that we could both easily just input the code instead of going through the eroding process over and over again. I finished up all of my image except one, I need to go back and re-save the fits as a tiff, because somehow the pixel size of the fits, 882 by882, changed to 760 by 700 when I saved it as a tiff file. I need to see if I can redo it and fix it so it doesn't change and then erode it. Then I am officially done with this portion, well unless I have to do some other files, of eroding images!!! This has been a pretty good day, I need to post the images on Flickr and update the Wiki. At 4:30 we are going to an early meeting where we are going to hear the Journey of a Photon kids give their practice presentations on what they have been working on. Earlier I went to the IS&T meeting and heard about the Document Restoration Lab and what they have been acomplishing this summer. It was a really interesting meeting and I thought it would've been really cool to work on. It was intriguing to me, thinking of uncovering ancient history that no one has ever seen before.
I'm so glad it's Friday, I need more sleep, running five miles this morning wasn't nice to me today. Hopefully I don't forget anything over the weekend, I think I wrote it all down.

Day 19

Today we went to the U of R to meet up with the interns that came to RIT yesterday and learn about what they were doing in their labs. When we got there I was surprised to be walking into a building that I have known since it was built. My mom works in the admissions department for the Medical students. When Dr. Pinto came and got us we walked right by her office, she isn't there this week because she is visiting family with my grandmother, but now I get to tease her that if she had been working I would've said hi to her.
When we went to the first couple of labs I wasn't too surprised to hear that the U of R did testing on animals. However, I was surprised at the quantity of animal testing at the U or R. One of the labs was using a rat brain for their study of epilepsy. Another lab actually showed us the process from live mouse to mouse brain for their study of certain cells in the brain. That was the worst, I'm not necessarily squeamish when it comes to dissecting things, I mean I have dissected a fetal pig, held and examined a sheep's heart, and even watched a live knee surgery, but I was certain that I would never want to have that job. I understand that to make things like killing a mouse easier, the people that do it are usually very humorous about it so as to not think of it badly. But the whole time the girl who was cutting the mouse open, flushing out its blood, separating its head from it's body, and then cutting open the skull to extract the brain was commenting on her favorite parts and how "fun" they were. I have nothing against her for doing the research, but my early thoughts of "Oh man, I wished they didn't just offer the biomedical internship to city school kids, I would've loved that!" changed to, "I'm glad I couldn't even apply for that internship, I like it just where I am". Haha, even though I am hoping on getting into the U of R for College, I'm very glad that the RIT internship didn't involve killing animals everyday for my research, I think I love my computer and the infamous IDL program now. I think that they are doing a wonderful job with their research over at the U of R and that they must be very dedicated to come back to it everyday for the past month. One lab was studying movement of the body and its effects on the neck and head muscles. Another lab was researching different ways to increase the cartilage between your bones without invasive surgery every ten years, again with animals, they used pig joints. Overall it was a good visit, I just don't ever want to see an unconscious anesthetized mouse getting cut open and it's blood being flushed out ever again.
After getting back from the U of R, Tom and I enlisted help from Jake who figured out how to display the tiff file data on IDL. YAY!! We can now read tiff files!!! Did some more reading of the IDL help, we can erode a black and white jpeg, read even more. Unfortunately, we still can't erode a tiff file... tomorrow is another day.

Day 18

The U of R interns came to visit today, this morning, since I'm designated "timekeeper" I kept track of when we needed to meet up with them. There didn't seem to be too many of them but I was kind of nervous for when they would show up at our lab to learn about what we were doing. To get ready I signed into my Flickr photo account so that I could show them the images that I had already put together. Also while I was waiting I finished saving all of my data fits files as tiff files.
When the U of R interns showed up I didn't really say much because Tom and I are basically doing the same thing and he pretty much said it all. I was kind of disappointed I didn't input anything but I did have my images up so that they could see what we've been doing for the past three weeks. Someone asked Kevin what the bigger picture was according to the research that we are doing and I was so glad they didn't ask me. I probably would have told them that we were putting pictures together so that the undergraduates would be able to use them in their symposiums, but he came up with a better answer telling them about what the data in our images actually meant and what it could be used for. Brad, one of the undergrads also pitched in on explaining our research, it was great that he helped out.
For the rest of the day Tom and I spent our time trying to erode some of the tiff files we had just saved. For a trial run we tried to erode a jpeg file since Tom had done it once before. Unfortunately, when we went back and tried to erode a jpeg file again it was unsuccessful. This was a big step backwards because we thought that we were all ready to jump in and finish off our images. Wrong, back to the drawing board... How do you erode images in IDL?