Intern Final Moments, Part 3: The Conclusion

Not long into the frustratingly lengthy 25 minute intermission, there was breaking news: the MIA intern was on her way and would arrive, supposedly ready to present, in about 10 minutes. Sure enough, she eventually showed up - but not so much ready to present. I did everything I could to get her mentally prepared (pep talk mode, activate!), and after getting her presentation set up told her she had 5 minutes to relax while I rounded up the audience and other interns from whatever far off places they had wandered away to. She would have 10 minutes to present, which would carry on straight through to the next group of interns scheduled to present, right on time. Ah, relief.

And the presentations carried on - though, despite making it past the major hiccup, my drama was not over. Perhaps I was still just worked up with adrenaline... but faced with another threat to the smooth operation of my event, I found myself quite upset. You see, a person (who shall remain nameless) showed up in time for the intern presentations from his research lab. However, he was apparently only interested in what one of the interns had to say, because he was typing on his laptop during the other interns' presentations. Now, this is a major pet peeve of mine; I think it is extremely rude to be on a laptop while someone is presenting, especially if you are typing (which creates noise and can be very distracting, not to mention discouraging, to the presenter). Not only that, but doing so sets a very bad example; and on top of that, I am very protective of my interns - Many of these kids were presenting for the first time in front of a major audience, especially one so distinguished, and they needed all the support and encouragement they could get. As if that in itself wasn't enough to get my goat, what do you know but a grad student (who shall also remain nameless) walks in, sits down next to noname #1, and starts whispering questions to him! They engage in a full-on whispered conversation of significant length, all while an intern was trying to present on her research. If I were a cartoon, you would have seen my face turn red and steam blowing out of my ears. At the conclusion of their whispered powwow, I shook my head in disappointment and mouthed to the grad student, "NOT. COOL.", to which he tried to whisper some excuse of "he's a hard guy to find, gotta take advantage of every opportunity." I mouthed another "not cool" and added on something like, "that behavior is unacceptable", but it was over at that point. Grrr, even a week later, I am still getting worked up about this. How disrespectful!

Anyways, from then on the presentations proceeded without any more notable hitches or disruptions, until finally it was all over. PHEW! Well, almost over - we still had one last thing to do before cutting the interns loose.

In past years, once the presentations were over, the interns all just said quick goodbyes and went their separate ways. I always thought this was kind of sad - no final celebration? No after party? Not even a real goodbye? So this year, we decided to host a final pizza lunch for everyone so we could unwind one last time and do a little celebrating. This also worked out well for the conclusion of the Intern Challenges, since we planned the last one to be a video meant to serve as somewhat of a closing credits to the whole summer. Not everyone chose to stick around, but those who did presented paper plate awards to each other, watched the final videos, and enjoyed pizza one last time together as CIS interns. A lot of the videos were really great (and practically tear-enducing), but we had to pick winners and present one intern with the final GRAND PRIZE for all the challenges (congratulations, Henry!!!!!). After that, it was time for goodbyes. Some were reluctant, others were awkward, many were sad... It was a long time before everyone was actually gone. I'm happy to say though that I did get a few hugs. We had a great group this summer, many of which I expect to go on to great things (hopefully here at RIT ;-) )... I hope they keep in touch. I already miss them.

And now we can time warp back to my original post from the last day of the summer intern program 2012, and all is back to how it chronologically should be. Poof.

Intern Final Moments, Part 2: Season Finale Cliffhanger

And now for some recap of the Interns' final day: PRESENTATION DAY. Well, it all comes down to this, folks. The chance to really show what you've accomplished all summer. Needless to say, there were interns that blew us away, and there were interns that... well....

I got in early to make sure everything was set up and ready to go. Of course I was receiving finalized presentations at the very last minute, so it's a good thing I was expecting that and was available before the presentations were slated to begin. We had refreshments (coffee, tea, bagels) in the Fishbowl for any break times in the schedule. In the past, we intermixed interns from all the groups in an attempt to get everyone to stick around all day, but in retrospect that didn't really seem to work and just seemed to irritate people. So this year, we grouped the interns by research lab and didn't schedule any breaks, knowing that not all of the interns would use their full time slots and we would end up with spare time between groups (thus allowing for breaks). The only hard set times were the start times for each of the groups; that way we could avoid the "I showed up for my son/daughter/student/intern's presentation 10 minutes early only to find out it already happened!" frustrations that we have experienced in so many years past. While this all sounds great in theory, well, it didn't exactly work out as planned.

The day of presentations started at 9AM with some opening remarks from me. I've never really had to emcee such a "formal" event, so I was a little more nervous than usual, but it went alright. The MVRL group started us off and moved along at a nice pace. All 4 presentations went very well and received insightful questions from the audience. However, each intern was given 10 minutes to present and 5 minutes for questions, and by the time you get to the third and fourth presentations about visual perception the general questions start to run out. The group ended almost 15 minutes early, which allowed for a nice little break. 

I dismissed the audience and welcomed them to enjoy some refreshments in the Fishbowl, and the entire auditorium cleared out. But this first break pretty much signaled the start of the DRAMA. Our intern that I attempted to console out of a meltdown the day before had sports practice in the morning which included taking team pictures... I honestly wondered whether she was going to show up at all. As of break time, she was still MIA and no one had even heard from her - and her research group was up next. Considering the rigidity of the schedule, there wasn't a whole lot that we could do to cover, and we certainly could not rearrange which group presented next. What seemed the best idea was to rearrange the order of the presentations within the group, which would hopefully buy enough time until her arrival. So as the audience filed back in from their break, I had to explain away a slight change in the printed program, and keep moving forward.

Well, to make matters worse, the other two interns from this lab not only ran short on their presentations, but had very few questions asked of them... So they were done after about 20 minutes in to their cumulative allotted time of 45 minutes for the entire lab - and their compatriot was still AWOL. So I dismissed the audience once again, apologizing for the fact that it was time for yet another break, this time for possibly upwards of 25 minutes (!). The mass sense of irritation was impossible to ignore. Since I was a main organizer for the day, and emcee of the event, this was absolutely mortifying. Insult was added to injury when a couple voices from the crowd yelled, "Press on!!!" and I was forced to make excuses in front of the entire audience, making us look even more disorganized. What was most frustrating about this particular happening was that the voices both originated from people from within CIS - people who should have known why the schedule was set up the way that it was, and why we could not simply move up the other presentations for theirs or anyone else's convenience. Why would you throw one of your own co-workers under the bus like that? Not to mention it was rude to yell out in that manner. Obviously I'm being a little over-sensitive, but it really added more tension to the day which could have been easily avoided.

Who invited them?

Up next: Did our AWOL intern ever show up??! Was the next break really going to be a completely useless 25 minutes?! You'll have to stay tuned to find out.

Big fish in a big pond

So after writing my last post (which may be one of my favorites, I've decided), I went out for what was supposed to be a little stroll so I could stretch my legs and enjoy the beautiful day outside (about 20º cooler than my move-in day, which if you'll recall was TEN YEARS AGO wah). Campus was abuzz with activity but at the same time seemed very quiet, probably because all the bumpin is really going on on the residential side. Sure enough as I got down towards the res halls I could hear the bass, smell the grills, and spot the pole sit, but instead of heading right into the belly of the beast I chickened out (probably because I didn't want to feel out of place, what with how OLD I am) and veered off the quarter mile down past the field house, and started heading back towards CIS. 

Turns out this detour was rather serendipitous - as I passed the ice rink I looked ahead and thought I recognized one of our incoming students with his mom. Sure enough, they had already spotted me (go figure, I mean, pink hair is so hard to spot from long distances) and were waving. HOW, out of the THOUSANDS of freshmen and their family on campus today, do I happen to run into one of our 15 freshmen? It turns out they had actually been looking for me, and were disappointed to find I was out of my office - and then just so happened to take the same walkway (not the main one) as I, so it ended up working out perfectly. 

We chatted excitedly for a bit, and then before you know it, along came ANOTHER parent of one of our freshmen - so he joined the conversation. And then ANOTHER freshman showed up - and then HIS mom appeared and joined. As if this didn't seem to be beating the odds enough, to top it all off along came another seemingly random guy, who as it turned out was actually the parent of the roommate of the first freshman I bumped into, and had already heard all about the pink haired girl. And this all happened during my random 2:15PM stroll off the beaten path...Again, I ask, how? It just goes to show how huge and how tiny RIT can be all at the same time. Pretty awesome.

Photographic evidence of the random rendezvous outside Ritter.

Anyways, we all had a great chat about RIT, Rochester, Charlotte and the LDR Char Pit, and local cuisine, as well as how excited the freshmen are to be here and how much they love it already. (I also remember parts of the conversation that included, "We really didn't want to like RIT, but then we came here and we knew it was the one!" - quote of the day right there. Oh, and it also included a few "Thank you"s, for the record.) The air is ripe will all kinds of excitement and anticipation for the new school year, and I can't help but be really excited for all of our incoming and returning students. Even if they do make me feel old.

And with today's freshmen move-in, it hits me: I'm OLD.

10 years ago I was a freshman moving into RIT, and now I feel really weird because if I think of the students who would have been moving in 10 years before I did, they would have been high school class of 1992 and those people are obviously OLD. So now that means that obviously I am OLD in the eyes of these freshmen. But instead of moving in as a freshmen during super old things like the height of grunge, the last year of having both the summer and winter Olympics, and using Windows 3.1 as the premier operating system, I came to RIT during things that seem pretty old to today's college freshmen like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera actually being popular, the emergence of MP3 players and the first iPod, and, well, the aftermath of 9/11, which really dominated all else at the time. When I was a freshman we all used AIM and livejournal and DC++ and played PS2 and wasted time with Homestar Runner... Now it's all Facebook/Twitter/txting and iPads and YouTube. TVs still had tubes and I'm pretty sure I brought a VCR with me; my dorm had a land line phone; my roommate used a desktop tower, NOT a laptop; and Zip drives were where it was at for high capacity storage (we didn't have thumb drives until I was a junior or senior, and man were they pricey). OMG... I'm OLD!!!!!! :*(****

My dorm room on move-in day... Just check out those state-of-the-art electronics.
My printer still used a serial port, and I had to install an ethernet jack card in my laptop. However, I did have a fancy brand new technology called a cordless optical mouse.

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened today on the way to the forum (better known as Facebook):

I love when randomly perfect juxtapositions appear in my newsfeed.

Intern Final Moments, Part 1: Wake up call!!!

By now my beloved summer interns have been gone for a couple days, so the dust is settling and I finally have the time and energy to recap our final days together. It felt like about 4 days worth of work happened in those last two days, hence why I haven't had a chance to sit down and put it all into words, and why I felt so drained until now. This is going to take a few blog posts, so I'll begin with Part 1...

The entire day Thursday was spent going through dry runs of everyone's final presentations. We encouraged all of the interns to be there the whole time so that they might benefit from hearing some of the advice and constructive criticism doled out to their peers. While this seemed like a good idea to us veterans used to these sorts of abuse, it came as a shock to many of the interns who were suddenly facing a hard reality that, oh crap, this is going to be taken seriously! I don't know why that came as such a surprise... You have been performing research on a college campus all summer, like you think you're not going to be held to some responsibilities that come with that? Many of the interns seem to forget that we're not merely giving them our work to do and paying them for it out of the kindness of our hearts... The point of the whole program is to give them real experience and to learn important lessons. This summer is meant to be a time of growth and learning, not just about Imaging Science but learning about performing real research, dealing with 40 hour/week schedules, behaving like an adult, working in teams, experiencing the rigor of college, and most importantly, learning more about themselves. I know several of our interns get that, but there are also times that it becomes blatantly obvious that many of them don't. And to me, the argument of "I'm only a high school intern" does not cut it, because you were chosen for this program because you represent some of the best of the best, and let's face it, in one year you'll be going off to college where this level of work will be regularly expected of you...

Anyways, I got off on a bit of a tangent there, sorry about that. Long story short, most of the interns were shocked and scared (check out their blogs, and you'll see). One intern had a straight up meltdown just from seeing how the other interns did and what feedback resulted (that was a fun new experience for me to try and make better...). Honestly, though, the feedback was NOT that harsh. Graphs were mislabeled or missing units or poorly scaled, data were included that didn't support any hypotheses or illustrate any points, works were not cited, images were not viewable, conclusions and/or background information were omitted... And this doesn't even cover powerpoint basics like, "Don't use too much text," or, "Don't read aloud what your slide says," or even, "Check your grammar"... Overall, really, it was a mess. Out of the 13 who practiced, I think there were only 3 or so that didn't receive any of the tougher constructive criticism (in fact they were practically in another league - those that did well hit it right out of the park). I know it hurts, but, sorry. None of what was said was overly harsh or undeserved. Now I think we must have some understanding for how Simon Cowell must feel (though I think he lacks any sympathy whatsoever).

Anyways, that was my entire afternoon right up until quittin time, except (much like the interns who then had lots of edits to make on their presentations) I had several hours worth of more work to do before the final presentations, which I ended up doing all night at home. Not to mention I was receiving last minute edited powerpoints all night long. Got to rally to make it to the finish line...

In retrospect, despite our constant reminders to work on their final presentations, it seems that most of the interns had to really struggle to get through their dry runs, and then had a lot of work to scramble around doing at the last minute before the final day. Part of me feels bad, and thinks that we should do more along the way - maybe do a half-way mini presentation, or require that stages of presentations be submitted every couple of weeks to ensure everyone is making progress. But at the same time, I don't feel any sympathy - we told them all summer long what to expect, plus we made initial presentations due a week ahead of time, so really there's no excuse. Background data and scope slides can be completed within 1 or 2 weeks of starting; experimental, weeks 3 and 4; data, weeks 5 and 6; and conclusions and future work can be put together in the final week leading up to the presentation. 

I suppose that we could lay out deadlines that require those parts be completed according to that schedule, but I don't really want to hold the interns' hands like that. They are on the verge of becoming college students, and they should be given more responsibilities and higher expectations. Scheduling and time management are important parts of that and things they need to learn how to do themselves without a recipe. But I could probably be convinced to change the dry runs to Wednesday next year, so that the interns have another day to make their edits instead of scrambling at the 11th hour (though on the other side of that coin, they should have been better prepared for the dry runs to begin with, and not needed that much extra time). I might also put some consideration into mid-way mini presentations, since that simultaneously presents an opportunity for the interns to learn more about what's going on in each other's labs.... Although that's yet another thing we encouraged them to do on their own all summer long, too.

Stay tuned - Intern Final Moments, Part 2 is up next...

Great, now I have that "Bittersweet Symphony" song stuck in my head.

I haven't written in a while because most of my time has been dominated by wrapping up everything with the summer intern program and getting all the interns ready for their final presentations - which were today. Everybody presented individually, so we had 3.5 hours worth of presentations (for which I was mistress of ceremonies), followed by a pizza lunch and viewing of videos submitted for the final Challenge (for which I was also "MC"). So... to say I'm exhausted is putting it lightly. I just don't have it in me to write a detailed blog entry yet... In the meantime, I've auto-edited and uploaded all of the pictures I took from today - so they will have to tell the stories for me until I have the energy to put into words all that happened yesterday and today (TGIF, because I probably need the whole weekend to recharge): Summer Intern Final Presentations

And, I'll share interns Christina and Henry's entries for the final challenge (a video summarizing the summer). They somewhat help to explain the bittersweet joy I feel now that our 7 weeks are over:

And for a real tear-jerker (by the end)...

 

:*/ 

Life lesson #254: Some setups just aren't really conducive.

Today I hosted a group of eleven 6-to-9 year olds from the Rochester Christian Daycare. You are probably thinking, "WHAT! Was she crazy?!" Yes, yes I was.

I won't get into detail about how this day came to be or what my mental state was throughout the planning process... Let's just say I was embarking on some charity work, and besides it's in everyone's best interests to get kids excited about opportunities in higher education (even if they ARE way too young to understand what that even means and will never remember that one awesome day they spent at the Center for Imaging Science at RIT*). Every little bit counts, right? Anything that can be done to keep kids on the right track to a successful future should have every effort made to come to fruition. And, I'll try anything once. And so, I agreed to give these kids a fun day.

*Then again, maybe they will. One of the kids is already convinced she is going to Nazareth for college - reason being, she saw a stage production of Frog & Toad there and really liked it. (Admittedly, I have always loved Frog and Toad, too - so I can understand her logic.)

Luckily, I had a lot of help today - I can always count on Bob to be there (thank goodness), and I promised a free lunch to any interns who had some spare time and were willing to assist (and 4 of them actually fell for it!

Don't they look excited? Buck up, gals!

...j/k! THANK YOU Cassie, Olivia, Kaila, and Sadie!!!!!). 

We started off with a color spinners activity, where the kids could color in wedges on a circle cut out of a paper plate. We adults would then tape them to a cardboard disc and punch holes in the disc to thread through some string. The kids could then hold either end of the string and wind up the spinner to see how the colors combine as the string unwinds and the disc spins.  

I wove in some lessons about color: how color works, how we perceive it, how colors combine, etc. Listening to me talk wasn't as much fun as doing the actual spinning, though, so we moved on to the next activity.

For the "Colors Change Appearance" activity, the kids started out by drawing either a red or a green square on a piece of paper. They then had to stare at it for 1 whole minute, after which they would look away to a white piece of paper and tell me what they could see.

No, they're not sleeping - they are starting intently. The only periods of complete silence we got all day.

We recorded their observations, and then the kids with red squares switched with the kids who had green squares, and we repeated the experiment. This whole process was pretty interesting - some kids were very, very slow at coloring and had to have their drawings be JUST RIGHT. Other kids could not sit still long enough to stare at a square for 60 seconds. Other kids could sit still but stared directly at me and not at their square. And then once the minute was up and they were looking at the white sheet, they whined about not being able to see anything... and when I told them it was because they didn't stare at the square, they vehemently denied it, even though I watched them and knew they weren't following directions. Ah, the joys of working with children. Anyways, eventually we figured out that staring at green makes you see red, and vice versa, and I taught the kids about opposites and complementary colors. We had another color appearance activity that we tried which involved drawing three squares of the same color and then drawing squares of other colors around them, but the kids were getting antsy and not really following along anymore so we decided to get ready to go for lunch. 

The kids were teamed up in pairs and each pair was given a single-use camera that they were encouraged to take pictures with. And with that, we were off to lunch.

Taking pictures in the quad.

The kids were LOVING the cameras.

Howdy, neighb- hey wait, how did Jeff and Bo get there?

Lunchin' in Global Village.

A rare moment with all the kids actually sitting down.

A picture with everyone in front of the fountain, and then it's off for the mini campus tour!

I've never seen this many people interested in the Global Collaboration Grid.

Even something as simple as walking across a bridge is exciting when the average age is 7.

On the other hand, clean rooms are exciting at any age.

We were going to take a picture with the Formula car, but the kids couldn't keep their hands off it, so we took the picture from outside instead.

Apparently the kids needed some time to work off some excess energy, so they started running laps around the Infinity Loop. Then they needed refreshment.

After we got back from our little outdoor adventure, it was time to get started on the camera disassembly. Each of the pairs of kids was given an adult to work with to do all the dangerous stuff, as I led them through the procedure. This was pretty slow going, but it was worth it for the exciting part:

The kids had a great time with this, and had a lot of fun playing with all the parts of the camera once it was safe to do so. Most of the kids even wanted to take the parts home to play with further, which is cool.

With limited time left, we had to squeeze in play time with the FLIR. The daycare instructor had mentioned ice cream as a treat earlier in the day so after lunch I went into Crossroads and bought some, knowing it would double as a fun experiment with the FLIR.

Doesn't ice cream look delicious in the thermal infrared?

The kids had a BLAST drawing on themselves with ice.

The garbage bag trick is always a fun one. Here she was holding up fingers for us to count.

And the good ol' glass trick. OooOoOoOoo

The kids practically had a riot during this exercise, they loved it so much. There was screaming and hysterical laughter for a good 15 minutes straight - I can only imagine what the folks in the nearby offices were thinking (if any of you are reading this: I am SO sorry.). Each of the kids then got their picture taken and printed out for them to take home with them. The FLIR was definitely a great high point to end the day on, and all the kids left excited and happy. Especially excited.

All in all, this was a good day - The kids obviously had a lot of fun, and hopefully they even learned a little something. I heard some of the kids exclaiming that they would definitely be coming to RIT for college - we'll see whether they really follow through, in only about a decade or so ;-). As for me, I am ending my day with a headache and a heavy sigh of relief... Am I glad I did it? Yes. Will I do something like this again? Probably not (sorry!). Has this taught me how to say "no" to events that don't really jive well with what we do here? Hopefully. Will I ever have children of my own? Remains to be seen...

For a dose of honesty you won't get anywhere else: 
Cassie's blog from today
Kaila's blog from today

Urban League Summer Camp: Day 5

Today was my last day of involvement with the Urban League Summer Camp! *tear!

We started the session by watching the video I made last night and going through the powerpoint slides I was asked to prepare. The groups then took a half hour or so to finalize their parts of the presentations. Team Thursday actually had prepared slides that they brought on a thumb drive and added in to the presentation, so they were able to kick their feet up and relax. I was really proud to see that they had taken initiative like that. Meanwhile, Team Tuesday had done a bunch of research and collected imagery, they just had to put it into the slides, so that was impressive too. 

Putting on the final touches.

Team Wednesday did a dry run of the 3-D demo, and it all went swimmingly. Team Monday kind of cruised and figured they were ready, but their lack of preparation and organization compared to the other groups would become apparent in the presentation (but it still wasn't BAD, by any means). 

1:45 came around, and it was time to present. I was hoping a larger crowd would have gathered to watch, but the kids took it seriously nonetheless and put on a great show:

Jordin emceed.

Captivated audience

Watching the video

Presenting on 3-D head scans. They even went into detail about colors and wavelengths and how you could integrate IR as well.

I tried to capture video of the presentation, but we had a number of technical difficulties, not to mention that room is way too dark (with no illumination on the speaker) to be able to capture anything that actually looks decent. Oh well.

Overall, the campers did a FANTASTIC job. They totally exceeded my expectations and definitely showcased themselves and how much they learned. It was clear to me as well as the visitors who came for the presentation that the kids had a really great time and really learned a lot - what more can you ask for? At the end of the presentations when it was time to go, the kids told me they were going to miss me and a few of them even gave me hugs! I gave them all lenticular postcards with my e-mail address on them; I hope they keep in touch, because I'm going to miss them too.

ImSci Intern Challenge #3 Recap: Strange Case

With today came the conclusion to ImSci Intern Challenge #3, and I am happy to report that all of the interns completed it (as they should have - this one was definitely not as tricky as last week's). This may be my favorite challenge so far because not only was it fun for us to make, but it also required the interns to have to make something as well - so instead of the usual decode/find/figure out X, this time there was also the requirement to create something of their own.

So you may have noticed a somewhat random blog post last week called "Butterface", and if you follow my Twitter as well you may have noticed some pretty random tweets. These were actually all of the clues for this week's challenge, with the intention of getting the interns to connect with my twitter/blog. To describe the rest of the challenge, I refer you now to this video just made by Kyle in the late hours of last night to describe the process he used:

As it turns out, there was actually another solution - BY BEATING THE SYSTEM! To explain, I'll just borrow Kaila's write up from her blog (since she did such an excellent job; btw, the links are worth clicking.):

Once upon a time...

Just kidding.

Well I'll admit, we certainly started off completely clueless. For the longest time I honestly didn't even know what the goal was. This lead to completely random searches and evidently interesting videos, like such: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZElqfHyjMw. Fascinating as this was, we were prettyyyy sure that was not the solution. Deciding to take the fact that we needed info from the last challenge in mind, we thought maybe we would use third eye for another watermark. With this in mind, we went to the CIS website. Having already figured out that sailvu topcreepin was clearly visual perception, we searched such in the link. The internet hated that, and nothing appeared for whatever reason. So instead, we tried just perception. Lo and behold! We found the page: http://www.cis.rit.edu/nomoregreek! This was clearly the end of the challenge, once we made the image that is. When we went to make sure photoshop was an okay program to use, however, we were informed that we had beat the system! Alas, this in itself was not impressive enough, so we proceeded to attempt to figure out how we were SUPPOSED to get there. Ice mark, the blatant hint, lead us to another watermark program! (this was after the discovery of a random physicsist mountain climber author of course). Oddly enough, finding the image was the hardest park. We had attempted to use the hybrid Bethany-Bob, but it didn't work. With the gracious help of Bethany, however, we realized this was because we weren't creative enough with the settings on the left. Seeing that a key may be necessary, and knowing that we were probably looking for the URL to the page we accidentaly found, I switched the setting to text and tried a few different passwords, butterface and icycle included. Then I realized we had yet to (properly) use the visual perception hint. Excitment making hearts race and adrenaline pumping, my fingers flew over keys to pound in the 17 characters, everyone staring at the screen in anticipation....VIOLA! The key appeared! We had beat the system AND followed the rules to complete the challenge!
It was then cake to use photoshop to make the image, a high pass filter was applied to Maddie's face and a gaussian blur to mine. The high pass filter was also set as an overlay, and then merged on top of the gaussian image, creating the beauty that I have attatched for you.

And that is the thrilling and exciting tale of how we completed the challenge.

Also Sadie helped a lot.

The end!

 For the record, the "gracious help" from me referenced above was given in return for this bribe:

Some kind of brownie cupcake deliciousness with a peanut butter cup in the middle. A-MAZING.

So it's not like I'm SUCH a corrupt Official that I give out hints and play favorites - I am only so corrupt that I reward bribery. ;-)

At any rate, here are the hybrid images as created by the interns:

Denise + David
Note the Icemark Trial Version watermark - They sent me back a steganograph with the phrase, "bethany is awesome!!!" encrypted in it!

Kaila + Maddie

Henry + Christina

Nick + Sadie

Olivia + Brennan

This would have been Kyle + Mike but Mike was out on vacation, so it's just two faces of Kyle.

Jarek + Cassie

Which one is your favorite? (We picked Denise and David's as the "best".)

 

As it turns out, this is the last challenge to be performed in teams. We were going to have one more team challenge, but I have been so busy all week with the Urban League on top of everything else that I haven't had time to develop another problem to solve. Also, the final challenge will be pretty time consuming, so we've decided to give the interns two weeks to work on it. So at this point, it's still anybody's game - especially because they have complete control of their own destiny now (challenge-wise). So, it's on to the fourth and final challenge (which I am going to go post right now)...

Urban League Summer Camp: Day 4

Well it's after 9PM and I'm still at CIS.... YIKES. Don't you ever question my dedication to this job.

Okay, threats aside... Why am I so busy, anyways? Today was the second-to-last day for my portion of the Urban League Summer Camp 2012, which means that tomorrow is presentation day, so I've been busy getting everything ready for the kids to assemble tomorrow. It may sound like I'm doing all the work but I promise I'm not... Let's rewind and start over from the beginning of today.

We started out with looking at all of the anaglyphs that were created yesterday. We decided which ones looked good and which didn't seem to work, and what some of the causes for them not to look good might be. More often than not, the red and cyan pictures were too far apart from one another, so we weren't able to resolve them into a single image without giving ourselves headaches. I showed the flower example, and at first everyone thought it looked good - until I pointed out that the flowers in front perspective-wise were actually showing as in the back depth-wise. One sharp student noticed that if you switched the 3-D glasses (so, left eye looks out cyan instead of red), it seemed  to correct itself. Huzzah! I then showed the corrected image I made, where I fixed the left/right red/cyan perspectives, which garnered many oohs and aahs. Yeah, that was pretty cool.

Before we knew it, Nadya had arrived to give her presentation and demo on LiDAR (in keeping with the 3-D theme). She presented on her summer research measuring plants grown under differing soil/compost/worm power conditions and described how LiDAR works and what it's used for. Jan also went over the concepts of reflectivity curves briefly, and how the LiDAR system uses near-IR laser pulses to measure the distances of objects 360º around it. Then, the group from DIRS gave a demo with the LiDAR system:

 

After a little processing, we had a chance to view the 3-D point cloud that was measured:

Whoa! It was super cool to be able to enter through the point cloud door and move around through the entire room, including looking up at the ceiling and up into the recessed lights. The detail on the faces of the kids in the front was really amazing, too. Needless to say, this really got their attention, and we had so much fun with the first one that we did a second scan (this time with the lights off, so that we could try recording in digital cameras to see whether the CCDs would be able to detect the laser):

This time there were some technical difficulties getting the data processed, so in the mean time I was able to revisit the 3-D analgyphs and show the kids the two that have just been received from the new Mars Rover, Curiosity. It was really cool to see how actually relevant data and exercises like that are, and let's be honest, anything involving the Mars rovers is always awesome. I was happy to hear that pretty much all the kids were following the news of Curiosity (even with the Olympics going on, YES!), but some of them were not convinced that it was really on Mars - so I went through a few slides of one of my normal presentations about the "Mars blueberries" and how spectral sensing can be used to identify materials on the surfaces of other planets. The talk really held the kids' attention, too, which just goes to show how cool Mars is.

The end of my little tangent talk coincided perfectly with the data processing wrapping up, so then we had a chance to look at the second LiDAR point cloud:

And with that we gave Nadya et al a big round of applause and many thanks for showing us all their cool technologies. The LiDAR definitely went over really well!

After that we didn't have a whole lot of time left to get started on planning for tomorrow's presentation, so it was really time to hustle. I explained what the plan was for tomorrow: we'll have about an hour to prepare, and then will start the presentation around 1:45. I also made it clear that I will NOT be the one giving the presentation - after all, I've been doing all the work all week! This time it will be their turn. After some initial chaos, I was proud to see things naturally settle and start progressing with minimal suggestion from me. A few natural leaders stepped up: one student asked right away if she could be emcee tomorrow because she knows she's good at it, which I thought was an excellent idea; and two others were eager to help organize into groups and take control of the whiteboard. Everyone decided they wanted to divide up according to the days of the week, so there would be 4 groups (to represent Monday - Thursday). Once the groups were determined, they had about 10 minutes to strategize about how they wanted to proceed with the presentation. I promised to have the truths/misconceptions video clips assembled for tomorrow, and also reminded everyone that I had pictures and videos from all of the days to help support their presentations. The groups got right down to business with planning, my role being facilitator. 

With a few minutes left in the session, I asked the leader from each of the groups to share with everyone what their plan is:

• Monday's group plans to first ask the audience: "What is Imaging Science?" This will be followed by my video, after which they will explain what Imaging Science is and use the platypus as an example. 
• Tuesday's group is planning to explain much of the theory behind 3-D head scanners and how they work, and will show videos of themselves getting scanned. 
• Wednesday's group is going to do a demo where they will create an anaglyph in real time (what a great idea!!!!), and then will go through the existing images and also explain the example of the flowers. 
• Thursday's group plans to show the Mars images and describe all the LiDAR excitement from today, using the videos above. 

I know at least one of the groups said they might throw a rap in there too for fun, which would be awesome. I think these are all really good ideas - I am excited to see it all come together tomorrow! I am really proud of this group and confident that they will pull off a fantastic presentation. They did a wonderful job today - I admit, I will miss them next week...

And that brings me to where I am now - almost 10PM, holy cow! I spent hours getting the video all made (which if you recall, the slides and format for the video were chosen by the kids on Tuesday), and then got started on the Powerpoint slides that were requested by each of the groups while the video exported. And then I wrote this blog post, which you can guess took a while. I really wish I could post the video I made here - it is hilarious (sound effects FTW), but like I said the other day, a bunch of people didn't want to be online, so I shall respect their wishes. Anyways it really is too late, so I am getting out of here. I predicted this morning that I would be there until 10PM, but I didn't really expect to be so accurate...

Urban League Summer Camp: Day 3

The next chapter in our 3-D journey today was... How to make your own 3-D Anaglyphs! We started out by viewing a few examples from last year, talking about which ones worked well and which didn't, and what the possible reasons might be for some being more effective than others. 

I then gave a simple overview on binocular vision and how that allows us to see in 3-D. I connected that to today's activity by describing how we can emulate binocular vision by taking two pictures: one to represent the view of one eye and the second to represent the other eye. The color properties of each picture are then manipulated and the images are viewed through filters, so that one eye sees only one perspective/picture and the other eye views the other perspective - essentially, the left eye receives the left eye view and the right eye sees the right eye view. This is then combined in our brains into a picture that appears to have depth.

After showing the kids how to take these pictures with our D50 cameras, groups of three each took a camera and went off to venture around RIT and capture images to make into anaglyphs. Upon their return an hour later, Bob and I (along with two helpful high school intern helpers!) got all of the groups situated in Optics Labs where they could then start processing and combining the images. 

HS Intern Christina lending a hand!

HS Intern Nick was a great helper, too!

 

These kids were really on top of things - they followed the directions really well and were surprisingly self-sufficient - though I don't want to take all the credit away from Nick and Christina, who both were a huge help. Everybody did a really great job today, and hopefully learned a lot (and I should think had fun doing it). Check out some of the results (don't forget to grab some red/blue 3-D glasses!):

This might be my favorite.

 

I'm not sure about this one... Once I go googly eyed enough to resolve a single image, the parts that ought to be in the foreground actually appear in the background (this is obvious in the areas where flowers overlap, so your mind knows which should be in front, but the 3-D image is not in agreement). HHHMMMM...

Sure enough, the team had the left/right images reversed. Here's a fixed up version.

 

Tomorrow we'll have a chance to look them all over and pick out favorites to use in Friday's presentation. Hard to believe there's only really 1 day left!