Day III: Pizza, Posters, and YouTube

Well, our day began much the same as the two previous ones; sitting in the meeting room with Bob and getting more dates to remember. Don't tell him, but I multitasked and finished the 'History of Eyetracking' paper that we were assigned yesterday. One thing that he did say was that we should consider carpooling to work if possible. Good idea, I thought, and since Kevin lives right down the road...I'll have to look into that.

Since both Jeff and Andy (Our advisors/department staff) are both frequently or totally absent this week, there was little for us to do today. Jane and I began with the attempted calibration of the video recorded yesterday, but there was an experimental error and most of the data was useless. The video calibration points were set too far down, and looking at those points moved our eyes into a position that was unscannable. I blame my long eyelashes. Jane and Erika suggested that I use an eyelash curler, which I flatly refuse to do. I mean, come on! Everyone else was amused, though, so I let it slide. This time.

Since calibration was a bust, we were assigned a stack of seven cassettes to digitize and upload onto the Virtual Perception Twiki. This was a simple process, once the correct equipment was located. (The lab seems to have exactly one of every important piece of tech, and locating it is often a scavenger hunt across three rooms) Unfortunately, digitizing each tape took about a half-hour, so we were left with quite a span of time in which to amuse ourselves. This quickly turned to YouTube, and we watched a good number of very funny videos (Example being Dimitri Martin's 'Large Pad' sketch)

After two such tapes, Jane and Erika were tasked with posting fliers advertising Leanne's study. $10 for each student who participated in her eyetracking experiment seems like a pretty good deal to me. I'd sign up, if I wasn't being paid hourly to do the same thing. Meanwhile, Matt and I kept the iMovie rolling and YouTube playing.

Shortly after the girls left, John gave us another assignment to keep us busy. He's part of a group working on a paper about how babies process what they see. In creating their experiment, they need the background work done by a couple of similar, previously-published studie. Therefore, Matt and I were given a 25-page paper to sift certain facts from. Fortunately, we were saved by Jane and Erika returning and summoning us off to the lunch seminar.

This was easily the highlight of the day. We walked over to the College of Science with a couple of the other interns at about 12:45 so we would have time to grab some free pizza before it ran out. The lectures themselves were pretty awesome. The first one was on the synthesis of a chemical called...something or other, all I can think of is 'elephant', but I know that's not the case. It was great, because I could actually understand what he was talking about, for the most part. Reminds me why I love chemistry in the first place. The second talk was much less interesting. Oh well. I'm looking forward to next week's seminar. (But more importantly, next week's free lunch!)

Upon returning to the VP lab, Matt and I were assigned poster hanging. We were grateful, because it got us out of the lab and out of analyzing the paper! (Apologies, Jane and Erika...) We went all over half of the campus and put up the rest of the posters. I hope that Leanne gets lots of volunteers.

Once we got back, Travis and Nick took us aside for an ASL pilot test. It took awhile to get the machine to cooperate, but in the end the tracking was extremely successful. I hope. After that, Matt had to leave, and the girls did soon after. I stuck around, and ended up looking on as Jon and Leanne tried to solve a problem with the projector/videoconference setup. The issue is this: If you make eye contact with the projection of your partner, your image on their screen will show you staring at the tabletop or their chest. Which can be awkward or inconvenient, depending. Looking at the camera will allow virtual eye contact, but you can't see your partner like that. It's an interesting conundrum, and one I hope I can help solve.