Interning with the Stars

LAST WEEK!

2008-08-22T13:57:00.003-04:00

So, I'll sum up this week (tuesday-friday):

Tuesday and Wednesday were days devoted to working on our presentation. On wednesday, we practiced for Jake and he gave us some good feedback.

Thursday we spent the day practicing at UR with the interns over there. I think it was helpful but it took just soooo long!

Friday: PRESENTATION TIME!! It was a smashing success! Astronomy went so good! We actually seemed fairly competent in what we were presenting. After the presentation we went out to lunch (on Jake =]). I can't believe this summer is finally over, its been long but I must say that I wouldnt have done it any other way! And whats better is that I'm working for Jake during the year, except I'll be getting credit instead of money which is basically the same thing b/c college will leave me broke!

Day 30

2008-08-18T17:42:00.003-04:00

Soccer has officially started, so this week will be busier than ever. I have tryouts all week from 8-10 and then 11:30-1:30. So for monday-wednesday I'll be at RIT from 2-6 or maybe 7 if i feel up to it.

Today, for when I was here, I worked on finding xray wavelengths. I've got almost all of them done so hopefully It'll be done tomorrow. Today there was also a thing for girl scouts in the lobby. Basically a bunch of organizations came in trying to get girls into science/math/technology. Bob thought we should have a look around so me and nicole ventured off. It was actually really cool. There was a lot of stuff on fuel cells, they even had a fuel cell SUV. General Motors has a branch in HF-L where they do all there fuel cell research. I'd really love to see fuel celled cars out on the road with in the next 5 years. They'd make such a difference for the environment. I'd go through all the positives, but I need to get back to work!

basma

Days 29+30

2008-08-15T15:52:00.003-04:00

Thursday was spent working on the poster, of course. Chris O'Dea gave me some helpful feedback so I did some editing on my poster. Jake was pretty much gone the whole day so I didn't get to ask him anything.

Friday: we started to plan out our presentation. Its going to be interesting...Somehow we're going to fit 4 mini presentations into 1 big presentation. Oh dear. Today I also started to find the xray wavelengths using planks constant. I really hope i finish my plots by wednesday. I think Jake gets mad when i ask Bryan for help with plotting. I don't know why, its not like i was born with plotting capabilities...I guess thats what IDL help is for. Team building today is going to be snowball fight by the ice rink. Its been a while since we've team built so, I'm semi-excited.

Well one more week left! Next week is going to be busy, between soccer, plotting, making our presentation (I'm missing the practice session at UR..crap). Its going to be hectic and I'll have to put it in overdrive to finish everything!

weekend time :)

Basma

Day 29

2008-08-13T16:55:00.002-04:00

Today we went on a field trip to Optimax. They're an optical manufacturing company in Ontario. They gave us free stuff, and like all interns, free stuff is great. They gave us some sick shades, a little glass lense, and a cozy for drinks..We had lunch at Amiels...Must say that i wasn't too impressed with my chicken parm sub but now I know never to order that again.

When I got back to CIS, Bryan and I worked on more plotting. We made a code! I'll be able to put in my flux/wavelength data and it'll plot my graph for me.

meeting time!

basma

p.s. I took another look at my poster and I'm definitely going to have to go back and do some major editing..

Day 27

2008-08-12T16:26:00.002-04:00

Today went surprisingly fast..Not exactly sure how that managed to happen, but all of sudden it was 4:30. Maybe it was due to my astounding amount of productivity! I completed my poster. Its not bad, not entirely satisfied but it'll suffice for now. Bryan and I started the plotting process. It was long, tedious, and frustrating. Sure enough with in a half an hour we decided it'd be best to talk to Jake for some clarification. I think we have a pretty good idea for how to do it now, so tomorrow, after we get back from the field trip, I will devote my day to plots, plots, and more plots.

bananas in pajamas forever,
basma

Day 26

2008-08-11T22:13:00.002-04:00

So today's focus was mainly on my poster. I pretty much have it all done with some exceptions. Besides making it look pretty, I need to type up the section on the processes behind my work and how I did it all. I'm using publisher to make my poster and its pretty easy to use. Joe said that Illustrator would be better, but we don't have it downloaded on the tablets so publisher it is. The rough draft is due wednesday, so tuesday will be basically me finishing it up. Presentations are due by next wednesday, thats really what I'm worried about. I think that Kevin, Tom, and Nicole are doing their's together cause they mainly did similar research but, of course, I was the oddball doing different research. So, it looks like I'm flying solo for this one.

In other news, I passed my road test! yay!! It was probably the best feeling..ever. Now, if I only had a car.

Day 25

2008-08-08T16:43:00.002-04:00

So, today was the undergrad symposium. Essentially the ugrads, who stayed at RIT for the summer doing research, presented either a poster or presentation on all the work they've completed thus far. Brad, Bryan, and Greg(who wasn't present) presented on starformation and Karla presented on the FRI/FRII galaxies. They all did a great job and I'm super glad that I never have to answer a question from Dr. Robinson, or any other British Astro-physicists. We were there pretty much all day. When we eventually returned back to CIS, I did some more flux crap and worked on my poster -- they're kinda due by next wednesday so I'll be cramming that in next week..

TGIF!

basma

Day 24

2008-08-07T16:35:00.002-04:00

Alrighty then, today I spent time calculating/looking up more galaxy frequencies and wavelengths. I have all the radio data frequencies, which apparently is not the same as the wavelengths. So, I had to figure out the wavelength based on the frequency. It basically was an equation and some unit conversions.

Today I also worked on my poster a bit. I pretty much know what I'm going to do for it. I figure I'll give some background about my work, explain what I've done, describe the purpose of my work, and how I accomplished my tasks, plus acknowledgments etc. I think I'm going to pick one galaxy and have pictures of it at 3 wavelengths. Then I'll have another image with the 3 images layered on top of each other so whoever is looking at the poster can see where the wavelengths come together.

We also watched the undergrads practice their presentations for the undergrad symposium which is tomorrow. They came out well and it was cool to actually understand(somewhat) the thing that they talked about and referred to.

Today I also volunteered in the visual perception lab. The interns up there are running their own study. They had me look at where's waldo pictures and try to find waldo. Not a bad way to spend a half hour. They also had a lego experiment where i had to find certain lego pieces in the image. It was cool to see them running their own types of experiments.

meeting time!
basma

Day 23

2008-08-06T16:11:00.002-04:00

Today I finished calculating the flux's for the x-ray galaxies. However, the packet Jake had given me didn't have the nuclear data for all the galaxies I've been using. I figured I'd check it with Jake at lunch. The college of science held a picnic for everyone in cos which was pretty cool because interns love free food. I didn't get a chance to really talk to Jake so I found him later in the afternoon. He gave me another paper that had all the Radio information that I would need. He also told me how to find the other x-ray data that I don't have. So now I have the information, all I have to do is figure out how to find the peak flux's...It wouldn't be so hard if everything was in the same units and if all the data I had was the same..When I did the green/red galaxies it was really easy because the information i needed was in the header and all i had to do was plug it all in an equation. The first batch of xrays wasnt too bad either, all i had to do was some conversions and use another equations. The remaining x-rays/radio galaxies are different so who knows what I'm going to have to do. Well, Bryan probably does so I should talk to him tomorrow.

Today I also spent some time thinking/working on our posters. Joe and Bob want us interns to make posters that we can take back to our schools to be put on display. If they come out anything like the posters around the halls and in the astrolab, then I'll be satisfied for sure. I asked Jake what program he used when he made the posters upstairs. He said they used power point and Illustrate..I think Power Point will be my best shot. I thought about publisher and word but I think they'd just be frustrating, or at least word would be. I think that I'll put up a lot of the images of the ugcs i worked on. Maybe pick like one set of them and show what they each look like at different wavelengths. Probably a chart of the electromagnetic spectrum and hopefully the peakflux vs. wavelength graph that i'm supposed to plot eventually...oh dear

thats enough for today,
basma

Day 22

2008-08-05T16:21:00.002-04:00

Today seemed to go on forever, mainly because I was extremely tired. I spent the morning procrastinating calculating the flux's for the x-ray files. I honestly was pretty clueless as how to actually figure it out. Jake told me what to do but, like most thing Jake says, it went in one ear and out the other. We had our Tuesday meeting with Stefi and I explained to her what I was doing with all the flux's. I told her about the missing Infra-red files, so she emailed whoever had the original files. She thinks that they could have been accidentally deleted when one of the servers went down. I may end up having to get the files from another source which hopefully wont be too painful...I have the feeling that I'm going to have to go on an infrared scavenger hunt and I foresee some chronic frustration..yes! Anyway going back to the x-ray files Bryan came down and was my savior(once again). We were able to actually figure stuff out! It was a pretty good feeling. I must say I'm rather fond of not being confused all the time! I'll probably finish the x-ray files by tomorrow and begin to tackle the Radio files. Meeting soon..I'll run by our process for the x-ray files by Jake. Hopefully he wont object too much.

-basma

Day 21

2008-08-04T16:25:00.002-04:00

Today we visited ITT. Its an international corporation with a branch in Rochester where its imaging science hq is located. I found out that they're the ones who make the transmitters for all gps systems. They do a lot of work for the military and department of defense. They also made the mirrors on the hubble telescope and do a lot of work on the Chandra and a few others. Everything was essentially classified and they made sure you knew it. All over the walls were posters telling you to protect the secrets of the labs. It was pretty intense. We saw a lot of glass and the process in which the glass was pressurized into this honeycomb-type shape. On the way home we stopped at Dibellas for some tasty subs. We got back to cis and had some serious intern bonding over lunch. It was pretty funny.

When I got back to the lab, Bryan told me where I could find the orginal xray/inf files. Sadly, when we opened the folder that was supposed to have the inf files they were mia so I'll have to search them down. Jake printed out an 80 page packet and pointed out some tables that had Xray info. He explained how to do something with the flux and converting the units but naturally I was left confused and clueless. I decided that working on making the T-shirt would be better. So, Tom and I went to the second floor lab to use the macs up there. We ran in to Meghan who was working on the shirt too so we all collaborated to make one. It looks pretty good so far, Jakes face is embedded in a galaxy.

Meeting time soon...I'm looking forward to napping through it..

basma

day 20

2008-08-01T15:26:00.002-04:00

So today was pretty slow. I'm thoroughly confused on how to find the flux's of the UV's. I have an equation that finds the flux in Jansky but I don't know if my photflam/photplam are in corresponding units. If those words aren't familiar to you, don't feel to bad, your life will be completely unaffected by them. At 1 o'clock, the interns and some other imaging students went to a IS and T meeting. Its a group for imaging science students. They meet during the year to discuss imaging stuff...There was free pizza(of course) and Dr. Easton from the historical document restoration dept gave a "short" speech. It probably wouldnt have been too bad if I hadn't already heard the same speech about 2 other times. Easton is one guy who definitely has a lot to say. Nonetheless, it was interesting but I'm not sure I could sit through over an hour of it. When I returned to the office I spent the afternoon looking for Jake and reading up on more flux stuff. At 4:30 we have to go listen to the Journey of the Photon kids give a presentation...I'm looking forward to heckling them! hah just kidding.

TGIF!!!

basma

Day 19

2008-08-01T09:09:00.002-04:00

Today we visited the U of R to see what types of work the interns over there were doing. When we arrived at RIT we were a bit early so we decided to peruse around. It just so happens that we managed to stumble upon free donuts! There were a bunch of students giving presentations on their research. It was pretty interesting to see their posters, it gave me some idea of what our posters should look like (somewhat). After our raid on the food table we met with Dr. Pinto who led us on our tour of UR. The UR interns are mainly doing bioengineering research. Each group was at a different level of research. There were some at the molecular level, some the cellular, and others at the systems level. We saw so much cool stuff! They too do a lot of hands on types of research.
One lab, which was more physics related, had a person connected to infra red detectors seated in a chair that moved sideways. They had the infra red cameras connected to the computers so they could see the movements of the test subject. They could see how the head was always delayed to move, when the chair shifted to the right the body would move with it but the head lagged and moved after the body. It was pretty neat. They did this test with the subject wearing various types of helmets (rugby, football) to see the effect of different weights.
The next lab we visited was researching the effects of epilepsy on rats. A lot of it was based on neurology. They explained how they evoked the epilepsy in the rats and we got to see the brain of the rat. They do a lot of animal testing at UR and that rat brain was only the beginning of our animal exposure...there would be a lot more to come.
We also got to see the types of imaging that they used at UR. While it wasn't as incredible as IDL, it was still cool to see other labs doing some type of imaging that we could all semi-relate to.
Then we went to everyones FAVORITE lab! We go to see the complete decapitation of a lab mouse! Hah when I asked whether they had a guillatene for mice I was disturbed to hear that they actually did! In this lab we got to witness the intern removing a mouse brain from a passed out mouse. She first made an incision in its middle so that most of the blood would be emptied. Next she took a razor blade and cut off its head. I asked her if she was phased at all by what she was doing, but she said that after you've done about 20 you learn not to feel too bad. She proceeded to cut off its head and then carefully removed the mouse's brain. She stored in a bottle of formaldehyde and passed it around for all of us to see. It was much smaller than the rats brain that we had seen in the other lab.
The last couple labs that we visited were working on something about the metastasis of cancer...I kind of got distracted in that lab by the meow-mix cat clock on the wall, the italian music that was playing, and the fish tank. But what I did hear sounded really cool. The last lab we visited was trying to find away to strengthen artificial cartilage. For patients who have arthritis, cartilage is really important as a shock absorber, alleviating a lot of pain. But for patients who have declining amounts of cartilage and artifical replacement is really important. They were doing different types of experiments to see what would make their cartilage as strong as normal cartilage. If they could come up with something it would mean a lot to the many people who have to suffer from arthritis pains.
I'm really glad that we got to visit UR. Bioengineering is something I'm really interested in and to see that high school kids (some were even younger than us) were doing such amazing research was an eye opener. Living in Rochester with a place like UR right down the road makes me want to look for opportunities like the ones that UR interns got to experience. Maybe I'll get in touch with Dr. Pinto, or someone else at UR to see if they have any intern/research programs available during the school year.
We ended our tour with free pizza! It was really good, buffalo chicken pizza. Need I say more? When we got back to RIT I attempted to find the flux of the other files that Jake had in his folder. But, before I could do that I had to find the names of UGC galaxy that corresponded with Jakes files. Galaxies are often have many different names and the ones that Jake had weren't the same as the ones I had been working with so thankfully the good people at caltech had a website that listed the many different names of almost every galaxy (or so it seemed).
It was also Chris' last day so we had team building as well. It consisted of an office sing along to Hoogie Boogie Land (youtube hoogie boogie land, trust me. Just do it) Its going to be weird not having Chris sitting next to me being a complete pain in the ass(and I mean that in the most loving way). Our other team building idea (well chris's idea) was to play 3-legged duck duck goose with duck tape holding our legs together. For some strange reason no one wanted to play..bizarre.

-basma-

Day 18

2008-07-30T16:05:00.002-04:00

Another day at the office...Today the interns from UR came to visit. They toured around to everyones labs learning what really what went down at CIS. They're doing more of a biology focused internship at UR. I believe something dealing with neuro-science. I'll find out exactly tomorrow when we go to visit them. We also had lunch with them, free pizza, a definite plus.

As for work that I accomplished today, I finished converting the red and green flux's to Jansky, which was extremely tedious. And that was only the red and green images so I'm still going to have to convert the other wave-lengths..

Today I also helped out in the color science building. They needed volunteers for research so I gave up an hour of my day to look through a series of images and grade them on overall image quality. Not a bad way of getting paid if I may say so. I got free chocolate to do it and I'm not one to pass up chocolate!

-basma

Day 17

2008-07-29T16:26:00.003-04:00

This morning we started off the day with a tour of the color science building. It was pretty cool, they were once in the imaging science building but they grew so they got their own place. The guy who gave us our tour told us its mainly graduate students in the dept so if any of us wanted to go into color science it'd probably be for grad school. Color science, despite popular belief, is not merely the science of color. That would be colorology according to our tour guide. Color science deals more with taking images from your computer or whatever your displaying it on and perfecting the color so that when you printed your image it wouldn't be distorted and would match the exact shade that you had on your computer. Or at least that's part of it. They seemed pretty chill in the color science building, seeing how they had a room with only a ping pong table and some rolling stones magazines..

We came back to CIS and I got back to recording the photflam data for the UGC galaxies (which I would soon find out that it was completely unnecessary). Coffee today was prety hilarious. Only Brad, Tom, and Nicole came so we were the only ones who go to experience the amazing 80's music that java was blasting... I'm pretty sure they took the worst songs of the 80's and put it on one super mix. Rockin' saxophone solo's, excellent percussion..what more can be said.

Lunch was at noon because we had our meeting with Stefi at one. At the meeting I actually got some kind of idea of what to do with the photflam/flux issue. After the meeting I used the flux equation that I found online to calculate each flux in Jansky. Jake helped with that, hopefully by the end of the week I'll have calculated all of those for each galaxy. Maybe I'll have some type of plot graphed by friday...but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Now that I've written my longest blog so far, I do believe its almost time for our 5 o'clock meeting.

-basma

Day 16

2008-07-28T16:37:00.002-04:00

Hopefully today wasn't a preview of what the week is going to be like because if it is I'm in for quite the week...My morning was pretty slow. I reviewed the assignment that Jake told me to do and realized that I had no clue how to tackle it. So, I emailed Bryan in hopes that he would have internet access wherever he is. Sadly, i found out that he forgot to bring the charger for his laptop so it appears that Bryan is out of the picture for the week which means Jake will be my go to person for the week which means that I'll be thoroughly confused seeing how Jake is constantly busy. Oh well...I did manage to find the photflam of the original UGC galaxies (with help from Jake).

In non-astro related news, I participated in an eye tracking experiment this afternoon. I had to look at a stream of images and click on certain points that I saw. It wasn't too bad and it did not take too long. I'll have to go back in a few weeks for some type of before and after experiment.

basma

Day 15

2008-07-27T22:01:00.002-04:00

Friday! Today was a pretty good day. Jake gave me a list of new assignments to tackle which will definitely keep me busy for the next week or so. He wants me to create a graph of peak flux vs. wavelengths for each of the galaxies. Eventually I'd the find the luminosity distances to each galaxy and convert the fluxes into luminosities. Not exactly sure what it all means but I'm going to have to figure it out by myself because Bryan wont be here next week to assist me.. I spent most of my day finding the peak flux of each galaxy. I wish I had known about it before because I could have easily found it when I first went through the galaxies and ran gauss2dfit, but nonetheless it had to be done.

Today was also team building day. Zosimo brought in a set a domino's and told us how to play some weird game but we somehow ended up playing cards..It was in the second floor library so there was a lot random stuff to play around with like the nerf guns that were under the couch..I like nerf.

-basma

Day 13

2008-07-23T16:02:00.002-04:00

So today I left early to take my road test...wish I could say that i passed but that wasn't the case. When I got back we went to the lunch talks. It was cool because they presentation was projected on all the walls of the auditorium. Free pizza was also a plus. I spent the majority of the afternoon finishing my write up for the ugc galaxies. Basically just wrote down points of interest for each galaxy. We were supposed to have our make-up team building from last week today, but mother nature thought she'd rain our parade. ha ha ha...Playing outside in thunderstorms doesn't exactly sound to appealing so thats that.

-basma

Day 12

2008-07-22T16:26:00.002-04:00

Today we went on a field trip to Baush and Lomb. We go to see how they made contact lenses, met a bunch of engineers, and saw the work that went on in their on site clinic. I'd love to give more detail however I fear I may expose some valuable trade secrets and think it best to leave it at that.

When we returned to RIT we went to our Tuesday meeting upstairs in the insight lab. Basically sat there while Brad, Bryan, and Greg worked on code stuff with Jake...There may have been a slight possibility of certain interns falling asleep but I can't say for sure. Jake told me to look through all my colored images and look for trends with in them. I opened them all up on word and used the circle tool to circle important looking parts. I haven't gone through all of them yet but I suspect I'll finish it tomorrow morning.

Meeting time is soon so, bye!

basma

Day 11

2008-07-21T16:00:00.003-04:00

Today was very productive! yay! I finished adding color to all the UGC galaxies. It took forever because every galaxy has different wave-lengths; some more than others. I had to use different combinations of wave-lengths but in the end they came out looking pretty cool. If anyone wants to see them see the link below. I updated my flickr account with the completed images and put it up on the wiki. Jake will be happy...He loves that wiki.

Tomorrow all the interns are going on a field trip to Baush and Lomb. It'll be pretty interesting. We have to wear some type of gown/cap thing...That'll be funny for sure. Plus we get free lunch tomorrow so thats always awesome. Meeting is soon so I better get going.

-basma

P.s. If I have to hear any more arguments about the pros and cons of kevin's prius, I may just lose my mind...I'm not joking.

http://insight-research.pbwiki.com/Basma-Eid

Day 10

2008-07-21T15:57:00.002-04:00

I left early Friday morning so there's not too much to say. I started adding color to the UGC galaxies that I had been working with before. Still layering them and what not. I put the ones I did on my flickr account. I Left at about 11 so I didn't have too much time to work. This past weekend I did a soccer camp at U of R and it started friday Morning hence the leaving early.

day 9

2008-07-17T16:16:00.002-04:00

Today was pretty decent, work wise. Bryan was very helpful and figured out the remaining UGC galaxies that had yet to be deciphered. I added that new data to the spreadsheet and calculated the area's for the recently discovered galaxies. After lunch I began my new task of adding color to the galaxies, which required learning a new program for IDL (yay). You can either add blue, green, or red to the image. I'm overlaying three wavelengths, such as red, green, and, x-ray, for each galaxy. I'm not exactly sure what wavelengths should be done for each galaxy, I'll check with Jake at the meeting. I also learned to save those newly colored images as j peg images. They'll eventually be up on flickr..

Oh yeah, this morning Bob put up a word scramble on the board during our morning meeting. Unscrambled the word spelled out "Astoria". Our job was to find out what the significance of the word was to RIT. Well we found a plaque that had Carlson (building is named after him) holding something that said Astoria on it...Not entirely sure what the importance of it but i'm assuming it has to do with Carlsons life. In 1938, Carlson "succeeded in obtaining his first 'dry-copy' in Astoria NY" (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/carlson.htm).

-basma

Day 8

2008-07-16T15:34:00.003-04:00

I'm not going to lie, today was a very umm a very slow day. Bryan wasn't here today so I was completely clueless as to what to do with the remaining ugc galaxies. Didn't see Jake till lunch at noon. He told me to email him the files of said galaxies. Emailed him and waited for a response. He's teaching classes all day so I guess its not surprising that I have yet to hear from him. I spent some time reading up on IDL, gauss2dfit, that got boring pretty fast so I decided to finally put my spreadsheet on the wiki. Despite the fact that its not completely finished I decided I'd rather have an unfinished spreadsheet up than nothing at all...Perhaps before 5 o'clock I'll find something to do so that when Jake asks what I've done all day I can say something that doesn't include facebook or stoneage sam....

-basma

day 7

2008-07-15T16:13:00.003-04:00

This morning we started off with a tour of building 17, the remote sensing lab. It was cool, they had camera's that could detect gases. They're working with RGE to find gas leaks and such. After the mini-tour went back to working on my spreadsheet for the UGC galaxies. I essentially finished it with a few exceptions. Out of all the images there were about 10 that were giving me some problems so they have yet to make the spreadsheet...

After lunch we had our weekly meeting with Stephi and Chris. Told them what I had been working on, lucky for me they didn't ask many questions. After the meeting, Bryan and I started to tackle the problem galaxies. Some of them had their center points off, so we altered the window so it would give us the correct points. That was pretty much as far as I got for today. I'm going to have to check with Jake to see what happens next and how to deal with those galaxies that were not cooperating...

so long,
basma

Day 6

2008-07-14T16:33:00.003-04:00

Mondays...well, I can't say that I love them but today wasn't too bad. Had a pretty slow morning. After Coffee I spent the afternoon calculating the area's of the ellipses (for each galaxy). The area of an ellipse is the length of the major axis times the length of the minor axis, in case you were wondering. After that I was kind of clueless as what to do next so I ventured upstairs to look for Bryan but ran across Jake instead. He told me to make a spreadsheet of all the data I'd collected so far. Yes! My favorite thing...excel. Seeing how I've never really used excel I was kinda just going off what I could figure out from just looking at it. Looked some stuff up on google and Nikki helped too. Hopefully this spreadsheet wont come out to terrible...I wouldn't be surprised if after I finish it I come to find out that its completely wrong(thats just my kind of luck).

g'day

basma

Day 5

2008-07-11T15:37:00.002-04:00

Friday! Woot made it through the first week and I've got to say that it wasn't completely over my head! The morning meeting was good, mainly due to Bob bringing in delicious donuts...I spent the day finishing looking at all the ugc galaxies and recording their centers and such. Not exactly sure what Jake wants me to do now that I'm done, figure I'll check on that at the 5 o'clock meeting.

Lunch was good, ordered piatza's(mm buffalo chicken pizza). We were supposed to do our team building today but not sure if thats going to happen, weather's been a bit rainy but we'll see.

As for the assignment that we were assigned this morning(pick a job of the bulletin board that you'd want to do), I'd want the job as the ethnographer. It sounded the least boring out of all of the listed jobs and there's a lot of human interaction(not that I don't love staring at a computer all day or anything).

TGIF!
basma

Day 4

2008-07-11T08:10:00.004-04:00

So todays morning meeting was pretty interesting. Bob took us to a dark lab and we all had to just sit in the dark for about 8 minutes so our eyes could adjust to the settings. We then were told to attempt to walk around the room with out walking into anyone or anything for that matter(a lot of equipment). After successfully making it around the room and back to my original seat, Bob told us to cover one eye completely and he then made us walk around the second floor with one eye covered and the other open. After our walk we returned back to the room and were told to open the eye that had been shut. Because the eye that had been shut was used to the darkness and the uncovered eye had already adjusted to the light, we could see through the covered eye much better...thats all I've got to say about that

Back in the the astro-world, I pretty much spent the entire day doing the same thing as yesterday, working with 2dgauss. Still have about less than half to go so hopefully that'll be done by monday..

so long,
basma

Day 3

2008-07-09T16:18:00.002-04:00

So another day down. Today I learned a new application on IDL, gauss2dfit, which pretty much lets you see the brightest part of the galaxy and allows you to calculate the center of each image(I think). Eventually I'm going to have to figure out the area of each galaxy...that'll be fun. We tried to get free pizza at the lecture today, but of course when we got there, there was no more pizza. Super. So after we went to the Ritz to get lunch. Had to wait like 20 minutes for my panini...not cool(hah didn't even mean for that one to happen). Came back to the lab, continued my quest on IDL and thats pretty much it. Rest of the week shouldn't be too bad, at least now I've got a general idea of what needs to be done...

adieu,
basma

Day 2

2008-07-08T21:20:00.005-04:00

So today was my first actual "work" day. Jake paired me up with Bryan to work on the UGC project. Basically I spent the morning copying files from Bryan's folder to mine. The copying wasn't too bad considering I'd never used IDL or a sun computer before (Bryan helped). The files I copied were a bunch of images that Bryan had used last year. The galaxies were pretty cool, especially when you could see the same image at a different wave lengths.

Then I experienced my first coffee break, which consisted of Jake getting some coffee and Chris drinking way too much espresso. We all kinda just sat there until we had to go back to work. Perhaps tomorrow during coffee I'll bug Brad and Bryan about team building stuff because apparently one of my jobs for the summer is to nag the team builders to get team building events together.

After coffee we went back to Carlson and kinda hung out for 20 minutes because lunch was at 12 today. On Tuesdays we have meetings at one, hence the early lunch. Lunch was alright, crowded and rushed as usual. The meeting at one was basically for the undergrads to tell Stephi what they've been working on. Stephi is one of the big kahuna's of astronomical imaging apparently so its probably wise to be on her good side. She seemed pretty nice so I'm good.

After that the fun really started. We went to the downstairs lab and pretty much spent the entire afternoon messing around on IDL. I was basically trying to view all the images in appropriate windows, messing around with the arrays so that I actually saw something other than just a black screen. At the point Bryan and I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing for Jake so I kinda just played with IDL for the day.

Had our daily 5 o'clock meeting, shared what we were doing all day. Jake explained to Bryan what I was actually going to be doing(which I still don't really know) but I do know that tomorrow will probably be less chill than today.

And so it goes,
basma

Day 1

2008-07-07T16:46:00.002-04:00

Alrighty then...today was my first official day as an intern here at RIT. We started the morning off with our daily meeting, which I of course was late to (RIT time is ahead of normal time), basically Bob and Joe gave us the quick run down of our day. We went to the red barn, did a bunch of "ice-breaker" activities. Then we went to lunch at crossroads, had a pretty decent quesadilla. Next a couple undergrads took us on a tour of basically the entire campus...good times there. Came back to Carlson, met with Jake and other astronomers, found out what kind of projects they're working on. Jake assigned us our projects (basically), downloaded "putty" and "Xming" on the laptops(took forever) and then essentially hung out for 20 minutes. Now we've got our 5 o'clock meeting with everyone else upstairs.

Until Tomorrow,
basma

hello world

2008-07-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

Well, that took entirely way too long...Can't say I've ever thought so hard on coming up with a name for a blog, which will detail my internship this summer at the Center for Imaging Science at RIT, but it did because I'm a sucker for corny play on words. I'll be working on astronomy-related imaging (not that I know what that means) but it's definitely going to be interesting. I don't start till Monday so we shall see...