Weekend

Saturday I got the girls and 1 guy to go to Reiman Gardens at ISU. The college has this nice garden on the other side of campus and it has a butterfly wing where they have all sorts of exotic butterflies. I think everybody liked it. Then we had lunch and met up with some more people. We went to "Memorial Union" which is a place on campus with a food court and downstairs they have a bowling ally and air hocky table, pool tables and DDR and some arcade games. It's pretty inexpensive, it was 3$ an hour to rent the pool table, so we played a few games. The first game I played, I didn't sink any balls. The second game I played, not only did I sink 3, but I sunk the 8 ball at the end and won the game! Yay! Since we had a bunch of people, we played in teams. It was fun. Then we got some liquor and played spades (it's like hearts).

Today we had a BBQ, since the meal plan doesn't cover sundays. Some people are playing cards in the common room right now, but I'm going to start looking at the C++ tutorial.

Affinity Research Group

Today we spent the morning with the ARG learning how to work in teams. Some of the information was more helpful than other information. However, the discussions we had with our research groups about our goals, tasks, and deliverables were extremely helpful. Our group has a much better understanding of what we are doing now.

Research Question: What is the effect of the domain on the decision making experience? There are 4 domains we are looking at: reality, virtual reality, 2D, and augmented reality. We will need approximately 60 people to go through each domain experience for when we conduct the experiment, and we made a draft of a timeline to help us determine when we will be doing different parts of the research. For instance, we have to make the instrument to measure the decision making experience (i.e. survey of some sort) soon so that we can sent it to the IRB (Institutional Review Board), which has to approve all experiments in which people are involved.

We also saw some examples of AR on youtube, and it was really really cool. You wear a headset and hold a square with a symbol on it, and the camera detects the square piece (its like a marker) and creates an image on it in augmented reality. So one student at ISU made an application in which you could command the images to do different things, and he built a wheel. It's hard to explain without seeing it.

Here is a link of an augmented reality demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2gqshFr4AI

This is a link to an application of augmented reality in the car industry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9KPJlA5yds&feature=related

Also, the faculty mentor of the program is really nice. His name is Nir Keren, and he is from Israel. He is possibly the only other Jew on campus, and told me that Manoim in hebrew means engine. He lived and worked in Israel, in Beersheva. I told him about my family there, so we had a nice little discussion about that.

C++

I just took a pre-test in C++ to see how much I know
I think I got a few questions right
most of it I didn't know the syntax translation from Java to C++
but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be
I understood some loops and assigning variables and stuff
which was cool
anyway this teacher is going to teach us C++ next week with a crash course. so that will be good. everyone has different levels of programming, some have never programmed at all (they have only used programs like dreamweaver and adobe)

all is well
lunch will be soon (in half an hour)
the cafeteria is nice
i like the horses a lot
they are so friendly
one waved its nose at me on my way back to my dorm yesterday, and it let me pet it
it was so cute. it was eating grass. chomp chomp

Update:

We also learned about the different projects everybody is working on. It was really interesting, all of the projects are so COOL. Right now I don't totally grasp my project on decision making in augmented reality. I'd like to have a clearer sense of the goal and what is do-able this summer. We should have timelines soon of what is expected. I'm looking forward to getting into the project though, right now the concept of the 'decision making process' is abstract. My group seems to agree. How do you employ these technologies to understand how people make decisions? It seems like decisions are made so quickly, in times of emergency especially, so how can you predict the outcome of your actions in order to made the best decision? Also, natural disasters, fires, can you predict how a fire will spread? It's very dynamic, no two fires are exactly the same. Would thinking about your actions impede the natural instincts you have and the urgency to run? I understand the main goal of the project is to learn how people make decisions, and the second goal is to help people make the best decision. I guess it just seems very instinctual to me. Take a fire for example, you take some factors into account, i.e. is a beam about to fall on my head? do you hear someone screaming for help? could there be kids hiding under their beds?, and then you take in what is around you, instantaneously, and then you move move move! How can you slow down to analyze how you choose to do the action you choose? All in all, there are many interesting questions to look at. Thought provoking.

Gary Klein wrote several books about this type of research, "Sources of Power" and "The Power of Intuition." I wonder if the library has copies of these books?

Tired

I'm exhausted. What I did today:
1. breakfast (bagel and cream cheese)
2. forms to fill out
2.5 tour of building and labs
3. ID cards
4. back and forth to dorm to get ID cards
5. more paperwork?
6. photos
6.5 lunch
7. internet login issues, singing up
8. orientation (what is HCI, gumdrop spaghetti teamwork)
9. bus tour of Ames with a stop to the bank to cash the first 200$ check they gave us but I didn't cash it because I already have cash and don't want to carry that much cash around.
10. dinner
11. walked back to dorm because bus was taking too long (20 minutes) and we passed the horses and I pet one on the nose and it was very cute

Iowa State University has a beautiful campus, and a great public transportation system. They have a great gym too and a million buildings on campus.

8:15am

I had to wake up at 7am this morning, to the tune of 'when I was a young warthog' to go to breakfast at 8:15am.

When we arrived yesterday we got a bag of some things.
1. a notebook
2. lanyard ID holder
3. blue oversized (apparently Medium) ISU HCI shirt
4. 16GB Memory Stick
5. pen

This is me right now.



This is my room.


Today we are going to get an orientation (sucks, it is raining again).

Iowa

I arrived in Iowa today. The plane ride wasn't too bad. The first plane to Chicago O'Hare was an hour and 45 minutes, and the second ride from Chicago to Des Moines, IA was 45 minutes (of course, we were delayed). My sinuses hurt on the first plane ride a lot, the roof of my mouth, the back of my neck and throat, they all felt a lot of pressure in the plane.
I ate a cheesecake slice for lunch in Chicago at the airport, it was good.
Then a white limo arrived to take us on a 45 minute ride from Des Moines airport to Iowa State University campus. It is raining extremely hard, I'm glad I brought an umbrella.
The other kids brought so much luggage, 2 or 3, massive checked bags each, plus some carry on luggage. I only have 1 bag, weighed in at 46.5 pounds. (And my carry on backpack)

I think I didn't forget anything...maybe just soap.
:)
I'll write more later.

Oh, the calendar of what we do every day is here:
http://www.hci.iastate.edu/REU09/bin/view/Main/GoogleCalendar

Cake and Lettuce

This is the cake noah and I baked to celebrate the end of the semester. It is a chocolate angelfood cake with vanilla frosting, blackberries and sprinkles.

This is the lettuce we planted in noah's backyard. I hear it has gotten much bigger since these pictures were taken.

Week between

I have a week between getting done with sophomore year and starting Iowa, and it's the end of the week but it was really fun. I hung out with a.j. and todd a bunch, saw james, scott, and some other people. I went to the shore- Point Pleasant, and I went glow in the dark mini-golfing, and to the flea market at East Rutherford. I also went to my dad's twice and saw my grandma. I watched the movie, The Bubble, that my cousin sent me from Israel, and 'The Perez Family', another good movie. It has been a good week.

Plants

Partial Shade plants. The following crops will produce with three to six hours of sun, or fairly constant dappled shade, per day.

1. Salad Greens, such as leaf lettuce, arugula, endive, and cress.
2. Broccoli
3. Cauliflower
4. Peas
5. Beets
6. Brussels Sprouts
7. Radishes
8. Swiss Chard
9. Leafy Greens, such as collards, mustard greens, spinach, and kale
10. Beans

It is good to plant marigolds around tomatoes to repel the ugly green hornworms. These big insects can devour an entire tomato plant in one night. Plant marigolds around your entire vegetable garden to add bright color and repel insects.

There is a companion plants chart located here. Which plants are best next to other plants, and which should be avoided next to each other.
Lettuce will keep producing all summer if shaded by almost any taller plant. Early harvested crops, like spinach, radishes and peas, can be planted with slower growing crops like broccoli or peppers, which will take over once the spring crops are gone. Companion planting is an art and it can be one of the more fun challenges of gardening.

Finals

Its finals week and I have a ton of things to do.
Today:
1. go to post office
2. present reading in Mexican history
3. work on Theory test
4. work on Mexican paper for Thursday
5. do discrete homework for Thursday

Well I guess its not that much but it seems like a lot.
Speaking of which, I hope I never have to take another class ever again where I have to prove things. Theory and Discrete proofs are not my cup of tea. Luckily, my teachers are great and got me through it with relatively a minimal amount of pain. It could've been much worse.

I'm looking forward to the summer, but also dreading missing Noah. I mean, I know its only really 2 months and a little extra that i'll be in Iowa, but it's still such a long time to be away. I get antsy when i'm away from Noah anything over a week.

Weekend in Sag Harbor part2

Courses

Classes! These are the classes I'm taking next semester.

CMSC 305 Design of Programming Languages

CMSC 360 Intelligent Robotics and Perception

JS 120 Jewishness Beyond Religion

Heb 101 Beginner Hebrew

Update: Here is the official course list!
http://inside.bard.edu/academic/courses/fall2009/

Plants

Tomato Plants- wild and bushy


Chamomile Plant (tiny and slow growing)

Watermelon plants (2)! (Check out the tiny flower bud)



Cucumber plant! Its the youngest of the plants, but growing big leaves.

Weekend in Sag Harbor