RIT Summer Internship Blog

Today was Joe's only day at work this week, Matt is taking over the morning meetings starting tomorrow. We talked about the outlines and Joe asked us to look over everyone's to get an idea of what theirs is so we don't try to critique it the first time we look at it. I went to the PhD Dissertation Defense at 10 today. The topic was the evolution of massive black hole binaries in rotating stellar nuclei and it implications for gravitational wave detection. Good thing there was a paper in the reading room stating the exact topic or else I definitely would not have remembered much more than "massive black hole" and "gravitational wave detection". The defense was interesting but really confusing and not to mention complex. I can't say that I understood much of it but I did enjoy it and I'm glad I went. I've been making image cubes for Roger all day. I also got a few PCI results and a few Overlay results that I'll add in later. I forgot to men...

This morning has mainly consisted of making our outline and trying to find Roger. He isn't a quick man but he hides pretty well. We got some notes about it and we've been trying to edit it to make it as wonderful as possible. Paige is leaving at 3 and I'm not sure what I'm doing when she leaves. Maybe cry? I'll post about it later. We plan to start thinking about the final presentation and putting images together for slides. I also want to copy our Selden Map presentation and then cut out the unnecessary slides, the ones that don't show too much information. Paige has been on the phone with her mom, Molly so I'm trying to make friends. I think it's going well. The rest of the day was mainly picking images for our final presentation and editing our outline after receiving more feedback.

Intro Background: We are working to uncover illegible text from the "Jubilees Palimpsest" and find corrections and later additions on the Selden Map of China     Purpose/Technique: We use hyper-spectral imaging (several narrow spectral hundred bands) and multi-spectral imagining (fewer than 50 bands) The images are digitally processed and combined to create images with more characters that are legible than those in the regular RGB image Processing tools include Principle Components Analysis (PCA), Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), Spectral Profiles   Selden Map Background: The Selden Map dates back to the early 17th Century during the Ming Dynasty The map includes approximately 15 countries and shows a system of navigational routes China, Borneo, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are five countries with the most significant results Focus/Results: Green corrections in Borneo, Korea, Taiwan, and Rivers of North China Missing texts and names of ports in B...

I forgot to write my blog last night so I guess I suck, I apologize. Yesterday was an exciting day! We did some work and took a little tour around campus and then went to the observatory! We didn't get to really look at anything but it was pretty neat stuff, even without the telescope. Henry did a really nice job of presenting everything and I would definitely come back to the Mees Observatory if I lived around here..

  Today's morning meeting was exciting, truly exhilarating. I have so much to report. Anjana told the group about what she is doing in her lab and why she requires charcoal. Nate told us a little bit about what he's doing in the kLab. He said he'll bring in his laptop on Friday to show the group some of his code and images. Paige and I were asked what The Jubilee's Palimpsest is, our latest project but we never received a concrete answer on that so we'll ask around. After the staff meeting, we went to help Titus and Aditi gather more information for their project. We went to the athletic complex and the ice rink with Peter and Ashley while tracking each others eye movement. The only thing I know about the experiment is that we were going to unfamiliar places. Pretty riveting stuff, I'd have to say.   Today I mainly made image cubes and got a few results that I'll post later. My computer has been acting up lately and it's getting really frustrating. It...

I have nothing to report about the morning meeting. We got new data from Roger and we spent a lot of the time just making image cubes. We also visited the 3D printer to make a part that Peter and Ashley needed while our files were loading. Today has mainly consisted of renaming things and making image cubes and asking David Lewis for help. Thank goodness for David Lewis. We haven't created any new images so unfortunately nothing exciting to post in the blog today..

During the morning meeting we just had a recap of the week, nothing too exciting. Paige was late so I was sad and lost until she showed up. I met with Roger this morning to discuss what we'll be doing with his data. He's been studying the Jubilee Palimpsest. His way of analyzing data and his explanations about each procedure are completely different from Dave's. I've been struggling somewhat to bring out the under-text, mainly because my computer has been stuck on the 0% done loading bar for the past 10 minutes but also because this project is such a turn around from what we've been doing with Dave. After a few days I'm sure I'll pick it up and understand what's going on but until then I plan to mess with functions until I know each of their use. It's like the first day again, confusing and scary. Roger has been in and out all day checking on us so it's been helpful with him answering questions and then cutting us loose to try and fail. Hopefully...

I honestly want to die, I just deleted my post. So in recap we looked at VNIR and SWIR but we helped Aditi and Titus and I was pushed around in a chair and Paige and I made a hat for Peter. I don't want to retype all of this so I'm sorry for the short post today, Joe and or Mom. UPDATE: Monday were switching to Roger and his work so I'm pretty excited. I wrote this post while I was really upset so i apologize for the dramatic and curt writing

The morning meeting wasn't too bad today, we finished up the abstracts and had a good chat. Paige and I had the most eventful morning we've ever had, we got to go to all four floors and visit all of the labs trying to find people. We also talked to Ryan to let him know how disappointed we were with him but he's fine. We've been putting the final touches on the presentation and it looks pretty good. Peter, Ashley, and Tristan came up for lunch and we analyzed life's deepest mysteries like if Peter's shorts were shorter than mine, which they definitely were, and each others social media pages. It was a pretty good lunch. I've been doing a lot of reading today in the absence of work. Going back and forth between a dry book and a semi-dry presentation is absolutely exhilarating. Paige has been making a lot of small changes to the slides and I'm good with that, they aren't major and she's right to do most of them so I'm glad she sees some of these...

During the morning meeting today Joe attempted to look up my house of Google Maps but unfortunately, the car did not drive down my street. We did three more abstracts today and they were all pretty good. Paige and I will be the second one done tomorrow so we'll give it a final review later today. Dave isn't here today so we're on our own and doing extra things to add to the presentation. I just finished a slide that has 12 chips of the map all compared to the red pigment of the chrysanthemums in Japan. I'll add that in at the bottom after I finish this. Paige is working on comparing chips of the map to a blue pigment and using the island off Southwest Sumatra as reference. Yesterday she did the same thing using green pigments and put together a map and I'm attempting to do the same but there are far less red pigment on the map so the SAM image is usually white with a small amount of black or grey. I'll add that image in later too. I guess all we have left to do ...

The meeting was kind of entertaining today. We read like four abstracts and reviewed them. Mine and Paige's won't be ready until probably Thursday or Friday. After that we worked on the presentation again. This time I added little explanations that were unnecessary but it's whatever. We also added more SAM results to the thing and Paige is building this nifty map so I'm pretty happy looking at that. I'm working on comparing the red pigments across the map, using the chrysanthemums in Japan as reference. Dave won't be here tomorrow so we're gonna have a fantastic time figuring things out. I literally cannot wait. We'll likely add more slides of red and blue pigment and see where that goes. I don't have an RGB images of Japan but here's a SAM result so you have some kinda of idea what I'm doing.

Today we were missing some people, I think three but that's not excessively relevant. People in the group explained their projects more and we decided to start presenting abstracts tomorrow. There also was like a one minute meeting in here for staff and students that interns were not involved in but again, not excessively relevant. Paige and I are still working on our presentation for Dave to take to England. It's coming along and it's a lot better than it was the other day but we still have a long ways to go. We had to redo almost every plot and add in more information to fill in some gaps. A decent amount of time has been dedicated to just making the graph look nicer, editing sizes, alphabetizing the names of countries, placing titles and labels in a the center of the page, checking grammar, etc. This seems like a school project that's not being graded and is actually important. The presentation itself is not bad but it's really obvious that high school students m...

 Document Restoration's main focus is to study old documents and analyze them using several techniques. We are currently working on finding corrections using pigment analysis and imaging enhancements on the Selden Map of the Ming Dynasty dating back to the 1600's. We will also be working with faded and illegible texts. These documents have either been erased, covered up, or have faded. Spectral imaging creates more precise and useful information than regular red, green, blue (RGB) imagery.   For example, hy per-spectral and multi-spectral imaging are used to make items more legible and more visible to the human eye. Multi-spectral imaging uses less than 50 color bands during processing, while hyper-spectral imaging uses several hundred bands during processing. Other analysis techniques used to get more information about a part of a document include Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), and Mahalanobis Distance. These techniques can also be applied ...

Today has been a little slow, I've been in the reading room alone all day messing with the presentation Paige and I have been making. I haven't had anyone to talk to, except during lunch when people come in. I got a lot done with the presentation, fixed some graphs and alphabetized the locations. I've been bumping to some music instead of talking which is a good time but I'd rather talk to Paige. I can't wait until Monday so she's back. My day is going to be cut short today, I'm leaving around 2. My brother and dad are coming to pick me up from here to take me home for the weekend. I feel bad for leaving and not having any materials to work on anything while I'm at home but it's not that big of a deal, I suppose. I haven't been home in a week so I'm a little anxious to make it back. I miss everyone, especially my cat, George. I'll try to work on my abstract over the weekend, it needs a lot of work so I'm a little bit panicked for Mond...

We watched another video in the morning meeting, less corny and all but it still made me laugh. Paige and I ran some more scans on new data for the Selden Map, VNIR 1 and VNIR 5. Neither of us found too much more information but got closer to finding out the name of the two faded ports. The Taiwan port remains a mystery because it was so unclear and difficult to read but the port in Banda is less faded and it's easier to trace. We found some more words that could relate to it; distant and dynasty being two of the most relevant. I don't think that we'll be able to get a definite answer on what the ports are named but finding characters that could relate is still relevant. Paige and I scoured the internet and several dictionaries to find these symbols and are making fascinating discoveries. It's kinda neat seeing how what just look like lines, come to form words with meaning. That sounded dumb, I know that all words have meaning, but I meant along the lines of what we...

We watched "What is Imaging Science" during the morning meeting today. Pretty corny video but not a bad one. We learned how to sharped and enhance images this morning so that was useful. After finding more images that might be Chinese characters, Paige and I printed, cut, and taped images together to see if we could get a more clear image of what we need. We took it to Dave and he thought it was funny, which it was, but it took a lot of time and effort so we deserved some more credit. We began writing our abstract about what we've learned and what the Selden Map project is. I'll keep y'all posted until tomorrow. UPDATE: It's only been like 10 minutes since I posted but Dave gave us a file to upload to look at Northern Rivers in China but haha I screwed it up in the process and we had to re-upload it so I'd have to say it was a pretty good time. We are probably going to look at it now but do actual work with it tomorrow. Talk to you 4 or 5 viewers tomorro...

Joe won't be here for the next week so Matt was in charge of the staff meeting. He was going to show us a video about "what imaging science is" but he didn't have speakers so we skipped it. Today I learn a new tool to use to study images but I'm not 100% about it yet so I'll see where that goes. I worked on North Java, Southern Borneo, South Japan, and Spanish Luzon today and found some interesting things. Going back to the Taiwan map, Paige found writing in one of the erased ports so we spent some of the day trying to figure out what it said and we found some words that would make sense. Maybe Di can help when he gets back.

The morning meeting was short today, only lasting about 10 minutes. We met Matt Casella, who will be standing in for Joe for the next week. After the meeting was done, Paige and I stayed in the reading room to study the Selden Map, I focused on North Java and Taiwan today. Dr.Messinger asked us to put our findings about Taiwan on a USB for him so he can show his undergrad students our work.

After the morning meeting, we went to our adviser's office and learned more about using Envi. We learned about a few methods of imaging and then went to the reading room to practice on an ancient map of Korea. After about five hours of staring at Korea I switched to an ancient map of Taiwan. A PhD student, Di, taught us a few new things to do with Envi and that lasted up until the end of the day.

Everyone met at 8:45 am ion the reading room and after the introductions and general guidelines of the internship we left for the Red Barn at about 9:45. At the barn we did team building exercises and got better acquainted with one another. There were competitions and group activities to make us work together and become friendly. After that we ate pizza and then met with our advisers and learned  about the projects we will be working on this summer.