Day 65. Today we have been working on our research paper. We are almost finished with it tonight and will submit no later than 5pm. We received the prints of our posters today and they look great. Tonight we are all going to be relaxing, playing games, working out, and getting ready for a day of video recording and presentations tomorrow.
Continue reading →Day 57. Today we have agreed on a long work day. We are working on our blogs for another 10 minutes. Then we will all collectively work on our poster for 30 minutes until the meeting at 2pm begins. From there we will proceed to work on the paper for an hour and unity for an hour after that. Once it is 5pm we will then proceed to create and consume pasta for two hours. After 7pm we will commute back home to continue working on the paper for an hour, publish a draft for revision, split our slide show for presentation, and then read the assigned case studies for our ethics course tomorrow. All in all our work day … Continue reading →
Day 56. This weekend was calm. Not much occurred. Today, Monday, we are working on the presentable for the project, so the power point and poster that are due later this week. We are also working on the research paper. We are on track to be able to get everything done. It should be a calm week and next week will a chill end to the ten weeks here.
Continue reading →Day 52. There are many different things that hold my interest, but the main three are as follows: A research question based around these three topics might be along the lines of: How does spending a significant amount of time in driving-based video games effect driving skills and habits in real life?
Continue reading →Day 50. When considering my application and how people bring biases into any decision made, I found that the following three heuristics seemed highly likely for the target audience for our VR application. While these are all common for all users, I felt that addressing these three would make our application as strong as possible. Anchoring – overly influenced by initial information we learn Familiarity – favorable opinion of things, people, or places experienced before Availability – opinion based on ease of recalling relevant information, correct or not In several of my degree courses we discussed the 8 golden rules of design as suggested by Ben Shneiderman (https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/goldenrules.html). I picked the following design principles based off both his suggestions as … Continue reading →
Day 46. Last night we worked on the paper for our project. Today we are working on our project some more. We were able to overcome some of the errors we were receiving yesterday during work. We are making decent headway towards finishing our project.
Continue reading →Day 43, 44, & 45. Here are my notes from today’s lecture on technical ethics and from our guest speaker during our luncheon lecture. There is never a 100% correct answer to ethical dilemmas Capital System works if Gross Revenue > Expenses otherwise your out of business Recognize when there is an ethical dilemma & create a standard for going about answering it Loss of reputation: Back room conversations about work & employees do happen and can be detrimental to careers TECHNICAL ETHICAL GUIDELINES Ethics are achieved by following a mixture of moral, legal & personal Values Important Quotes: On Wednesday we… Data structures And many many pages of changing notes on the project. Today: Running out of time to … Continue reading →
Day 42. We had a presentation about poster presentation preparation. Here are my notes from today’s lecture: Presentation Date: July 30th Why a poster? Key Elements of a poster Q&A Based off this presentation and the presentations from the other groups, here are my questions: Comm Heat: Curiosity:
Continue reading →Day 37. Today we have been working on presentations of our deep dives. My slides are finished, and I am ready to present. While I am waiting for the presentations to begin, I am working on other work for the STEM XR group project. We have considered researching in the realm of Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. Other than that, today has been calm and we have the weekend off.
Continue reading →Day 36. Today we discussed the rural communities of Iowa, why they exist, what their mind set it, and why they are shrinking. We discussed various budgets including how college football coaches make in the realm of 4 million a year. Here were my notes from today’s lecture on risk analysis:
Continue reading →Day 35. This morning when we arrived at VRAC we continued to work on our MCA presentations. They are getting close to completion and should be ready by Wednesday for presentation. Our Machine Learning models have not yet been created as the computer to run them has been occupied over the weekend. Lunch today was rice, meat, cheese and a soda. We spoke to the other REU interns from other SPIRE programs. It was excellent conversation. I predict this afternoon should be much of the same with a calm evening.
Continue reading →Day 32. On the way to lunch today we discussed our meal plans for the weekend. I believe someone is going to make brisket. We then ate lunch. I was informed of some typos on my previous blog post which I will now return to and correct. This morning my group worked on the presentation for our Deeper Dive topic which we will be presenting next week. Today has been efficient.
Continue reading →Day 31. If I were to design a phone and driving experiment, I would test the GPS mapping functionalities. Stephen mentioned a school shooting and direction detection experiment here at Iowa State and I think something like that would be excellent for testing phones while driving. Question Does GPS type (audio vs visual vs combination) affect distracted driving level? Variables Independent: The type of GPS and the type of driving environment Dependent: The level of distracted driving Design We will have two lists of routes: a list of cities with high, but similar, traffic styles. we will also have a list of long distance routes with complex directions, long stretches of roads, and similar traffic and stops. We will select … Continue reading →
Day 30. here are my current notes from yesterday and today.
Continue reading →It is day 29. Today I will include my notes from this morning’s lecture about blogging: Furthermore, I will share my notes about plagiarism also from this morning’s lecture: Later today we will be traveling to the City of Storm Lake to converse with a teacher and students. I will also plan on taking out the trash sometime tomorrow.
Continue reading →Day 25 and I am falling asleep. So I’ll make this short. The question of the day is: have you ever shaved a cat?
Continue reading →It is now day 23. There was rain last night. There was rain again today. I like the rain, the rain is good.
Continue reading →It is day 22. A ponderance upon the self was embarked on. Elodin once asked who art thou? And only through the ramblings of the wind and the journey of names can one discover themselves. For while Tom Petty is claimed to have once said, “You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You’ll never remember class time, but you’ll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don’t have. Drink ’til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does” you must question the wisdom of his ways. For Epistemologists’ … Continue reading →
It is day 21. It is a Monday. I received an email from my brother detailing the unusual activity he encountered over the past week. However, since his stories are not mine to tell, I will leave the story at me having read an email. I spent many an hour in the world of Minecraftia. I cooked some rice.
Continue reading →There have been several bad UI’s that I have encountered. But the worse two are as follows: -NASA’S website -Delt Airline’s Phone Application The thing that is awful about the NASA website is that there are layers upon layers upon layers of nested menus which seem to have no end. You get to one page of the site then immediately are presented with a another set of buttons which bring you to even more pages which are sometimes circular. One example is when you scroll to the Contact NASA button and select it. You are then presented with a very odd customer service page, as in, there is no real customer support. Instead it fulfills the duty of an FAQ … Continue reading →
Today is day 17. It feels like the Thursday it is. Thursdays are bad days– it is the day the world ended in the popular novel where the key part of hitchhiking is always having a towel. There is nothing wrong about today, today has not had anything go wrong. But it is a Thursday so, therefore, today is inherently a bad day.
Continue reading →It is now day 15 in the wild Ames. The elusive ChuChu was last spotted outside the window on a velocipede and the daring Rodney explored the alternate world of the Apple. Bakugan were exchanged and syrup based bubbly beverages were purchased. On the daring 3 Blue bus-ride, the return began well into the night. It had faded between light to dark in the time between passenger delivery and retrieval. Once the bus had been boarded and passengers seated, the journey began. The first stop was driven past as there was no one waiting, and no one requested a stop. We then stopped at what is believed to have been a transfer station. The bus came to a halt, the … Continue reading →
It is now day 11 here in Ames. The scenery is very much still the same but the weather has dried and the temperature risen. I have risen above the ground upon the face of a boulder and spent many an hour running through hills in search of the legendary Minecraft Dark Oak. Walmart Shopping List: We meandered along the main streets of Ames to view the arts of the city. We consumed subpar food at the local cafeteria– the only food place we can find open that accepts our meal swipes so far. Photos were taken, roofs were not walked upon. A Journey to the Center of the Earth was began. Goods were ordered from the mystical Amazon and … Continue reading →
It has been 10 days now here in Iowa. A spider ate my cookie.
Continue reading →It has been 9 days. The logic trees have grown and code born from its brain thoughts. The elaborate colors on the black page show the efforts of the mind. We converse upon the wonderous question on how to help rural communities with their STEM education. The hopes of the many to persuade the few to pursue the curriculum in places of higher learning. But the question remains– how. The Freddy’s of the burger world holds a warm place in my heart, a reminder of home with its fry sauce and steak-based patties. Shoe string fries coated in the seasoning of the burger pantheon. Oh how I miss the wonderous food from my home afar.
Continue reading →It has been 8 days in the humid forests of Vietnam – sorry I meant Ames, Iowa. Survival is proving difficult here as the bus system refuses to show when the 6 Brown South bus is arriving. The options are to wait for a potentially non-existent bus or walk through the thick warm forests to the cool center of survival (VRAC). The days grow longer and sleep scarce – this definitely has nothing to do with video games. We have conversed upon the statements of question regarding the most important topic of the universe—how to create XR STEM curriculum for rural communities—and have experimented with mystical technology—Microsoft cloud programs. We have heard from the mystical industry & academic leader James … Continue reading →
It has been 7 days since we have arrived here in Iowa. There is significantly less corn and corn paraphernalia than I expected. There are trees and hills which make biking difficult since I am unpracticed in distance biking. We have learned the ways of Aldi and I now possess the ever-important Aldi cart quarter. Time is a cruel mistress– especially when trying to write code to display the hours, minutes, and seconds when you are only provided user imputed seconds. You must learn quick to survive out here in the forests of Ames– for example you must not take the 6 Brown North Bus to try to get to the VRAC, you must take 6 Brown South Bus which … Continue reading →