Day II: The Experiment Begins

Today was a day of progress for the Visual Perception lab. We began by learning the simplistic, yet tedious process by which ISCAN compiles and calibrates the two video signals into something we can use. I actually never got to try my hand at it, unfortunately. The girls worked with that (to mixed results initially, but they got it by the end) while Matt and I learned how to operate the far easier ASL remote tracker. By the time we were finished, Jane and Erika had begun transferring the finished video. That took a half-hour, so we'll get our chance some other time.

We've actually got homework now. Jon printed off a twenty-odd page paper on the history of eye tracking and the related research that we have to read by Friday, and we spent awhile reading that. In the meantime, Leanne worked on setting up her experiment for when we returned from lunch.

At noonish, we broke for lunch. Erika ditched us because her Mom had her money, but Jane, Matt and I went over to Crossroads again. None of us exactly remembered where Crossroads was, however, so we meandered our way across campus until we found it. Food was good, again. They serve excellent subs. It was a significantly shorter walk back when we realized where we were.

After that, Leanne took Jane and I into the main lab for the experiment. I'm not entirely sure that I can talk about it yet, so details will be forthcoming when I learn more. Suffice to say it involved the 007 eyepieces, Skype, and videoconference screens. It was pretty cool.

When that was concluded, we realized that Jeff Pelz had arrived in the lab. Turns out he's teaching a class this week and is rarely able to make it into the VP facility. He'd come in to help resolve some electrical issues, and ended up discussing their new portable tracker, which is more efficient, easier to use, and produces much higher-quality video than the 007 setup. (it doesn't require 'plexing, you see) Unfortunately, they're having problems with Macrovision, among other things, and the system is still improving. Actually, Jon is tinkering with it right now in an attempt to solve the Macrovision issue.

Speaking of Jeff, I talked to him about Philmont, but he said basically 'We'll work something out later.' He seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing, which was nice. I'm sure we'll be able to work something out.

Today also saw a lot of logistics issues, also. To our dismay, when Matt and I attempted to activate our cards to get into the computer lab and the front door, our cards wouldn't respond. There's also the minor issue of the timeclock not registering our swipes in and out. Joe Pow has been inserting our hours manually for the last day and a half, so we went down to the registrar to fix both of these problems. Turns out that when Matt and I registered for College & Careers, it generated a second University ID for each of us. Our cards, therefore, used those numbers instead of the ones that Joe Pow assigned to us. Eventually, the problem was resolved and we were issued correct cards. But it was still a pain.

Well, that's that. Nothing earth-shaking or ground-breaking today, but we've gotten started and everything is going well. Just remember the mantra of Visual Perception, and you'll do all right; "That's the only one in the department, don't mess it up!"