This is going to be a really long post…there’s a lot to catch up on

On Friday, not much happened. Harrison, Sophie and I worked on our abstract and literature review. I was hoping to accomplish more for our project, but it’s okay. We’re still learning how to collaborate efficiently on this research project. We’ve quickly come to realize that working on a team to do research for the summer is much different than working on a team to make a presentation for a week because there’s no right way to do things and the end can seem so far away at some points. After work, I went for a bike ride around campus and a nearby trail to get outside. I forgot how much I enjoy going on bike rides, and how peaceful they can be. 

Friday is when I really started to feel stressed from all the things we need to get done in a few weeks. That night, I think Rodney picked up on my flustered/stressed vibe, so he and Angy sat down with me in our kitchen to talk about my project and just think about ways to keep things moving. It’s so interesting, and also funny, to see the different types of workers here. You have the people who stress out about things that maybe don’t need to be stressed about, and then you have other people who bring you back to reality. 

On Saturday, we all went to Des Moines for the day. We made it into town around 10, and went straight to the farmers market. I found some sourdough (yay!), a really good cinnamon roll, and some more tomatoes. After the market, we went to Gray’s lake to lay out in the sun. Angy and I went swimming, which felt so good because Des Moines was under a heat warning. I feel content now that I’ve had a beach day. Back home, beach days were a staple during the summer, so I’ve been deprived. After the beach, (sorry, “beach”, according to the people from the coasts…), we went to get ice cream. I got a mango sorbet and coconut, and it hit the spot. Very refreshing. When we got back to Freddy, we all showered, Harrison and I made caprese salad with some of the tomatoes that I picked up at the market, and then we walked to a park nearby to have a grill out dinner. We grilled corn and hotdogs, and then had a random lineup of sides. The night would have been more enjoyable if the mosquitoes weren’t there with the intention to absolutely kill us. I can’t even tell you how many bites I have on my legs and back. Oh, also, I caught my first firefly :0. Harrison tried to take a picture of me holding it, but he was always too slow, so I kept trying until I finally gave up on his camera skills after 4 fireflies. So we’ll blame Harrison for not documenting the big moment. That night, we also decided to finish watching the movie that Harrsion, Ruby, and Andrea had started the night before called Pulp Fiction. I was so tired by the time we sat down though so I was snoozing through most of it. 

On Sunday, most of us just did work for our projects. I made some progress on the communication between the EEG headset stream and the VR stream from Unity. For context, the plan was to use something called Lab Streaming Layer (LSL) to sync the EEG data stream from the Muse 2 headset and the event markers stream from Unity because LSL comes with packages that can collect and analyze those streams. The question was then, how can we get that stream from Unity. So, I found a package called LSL4Unity that allows you to create an LSL stream from an event that occurs in the Unity scene. More specifically, I was able to output event markers every time a sphere collided with, or entered a cube and every time the sphere exited the cube. The LSL stream from Unity could then be synced with the LSL stream from the EEG headset using something called LabRecorder, the default program for recording and syncing streams in Matlab. That night, Harrison and I also got a good start to our methods section for our research paper. Overall, I’d say it was a pretty productive day. It felt good to make some physical progress on the VR-EEG headset communication. 

On Monday morning, we worked on our presentation for the event with CUNY next week. Then we switched gears to work on the stream from Unity. We ran into some difficulties, though, because I wanted the event markers from Unity to show up on MATLAB instead of just the terminal, but the version of MATLAB wasn’t compatible with the version of python we were using. At around 10:30, Aron came so that we could touch base on everything that happened this weekend and discuss future directions. This was a really productive meeting because we came up with a new way to line up the EEG data stream with the event marker stream that seems more feasible to complete in our time frame. Something I’ve had to learn this summer is that my contributions don’t have to be groundbreaking to matter; that it’s okay to start small and build from there if that’s what gets you moving. In our situation, we just don’t have enough time to make everything work perfectly and efficiently, but if we can get some results, even if it’s manually lining up the two streams, for example, that’s progress in the right direction. Also, something cool: we were finally able to take a look at the data we collected from the Muse, and we saw that there are blink and jaw events recorded at certain times. Woah. This changed the game. We immediately pulled out the Muse headband again so we could test to see if the time at which the participant clenched their jaw was delayed from the time at which it was marked as an event in the output file. Turns out it’s not! From here, we think we can have the participant clench their jaw at certain times during the experiment to help us line up the two streams correctly and ensure they stay lined up. After lunch, Stephan gave a talk on how to apply to grad school. This was really helpful because, while I knew it’s different from college, I didn’t really understand how. He also gave some advice on what to look for and how to look for those things. That night, a few of us went bowling because it was only $1/game, and we’d been meaning to go for a while.

Yesterday morning, we met all together with Yvonne and Heliya from 9-11 to practice our presentations for the CUNY event next week. They gave some really great advice to help make our presentation stronger. Afterwards, Alex spoke with us during the lunch and lecture. He shared his life, starting from undergrad, to what he’s up to now. After lunch, we met with Aron to chat more about our plans for these next few weeks. Last night, Harrison, Ruby, and I finished watching The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, a documentary we were asked to watch for our ethics class. It was really interesting, but also scary to see how far manipulation and lies can get you in Silicon valley specifically. 

This morning, we had ethics class with Eliot. I honestly really wish we had more time in this class, because I’m really enjoying the conversations we’ve been having. The rest of the day was spent working on the functionalities that we want to implement into our Unity scene, and more work with the streams. A few setbacks and roadblocks today, but we did get some things done, so it was an overall good day.