Day 2

Today started out with planning for the cookout lunch that the supervisors scheduled for this Friday (tomorrow). After a quick, 15-minute morning group meeting, Madi and I split up so that one of us could grab our locker keys and the other could notify Mr. Messinger that the other was on the way. Madi forgot where Bob's office was so I ended up grabbing the keys for us and was a couple of minutes late.



During our morning meeting with Mr. Messinger, he told us of ENVI's origins and gave a quick overview of what Madi and I learned yesterday using ENVI's classification programs. Interestingly, ENVI was first designed by a duo in Colorado for geological use. ENVI was later implemented in the field of astrology in the 90's. It was around then that, Mr. Messinger came across the program (if I remember the story correctly). The program was eventually sold and the creators now live comfortably.


ENVI was originally designed to be used by Ph.D. knowledge-level professors, but later versions were written with ease of access in mind for a wider variety of users. Di had Madi and I try the new version available on the computers we were using (I think he said the version was something like 8.5) and they worked alright. The screen appears way more like Photoshop and, in my opinion, displays many functions more openly than the "classic" version. But Madi and I switched back to the ENVI -classic (I think it was a version 5) for we were originally given our first instructions based on this older version and none of us could figure out where some of the basic functions were located on the newer version. (For example, we could not locate "True Color" to change the original images from black and white to color.)

At 10 A.M., Madi and I went to see a Ph.D. defense by a woman named Lady. (My apologies for misspelling your name Ma'am and I am so sorry for walking into your presentation late.) Her presentation was about an application that would improve Remote Sensors. We could not understand the vast majority of the mathematics she was presenting due to our inexperience with college-level mathematics, so I can not justly summarize what Ms. Lady presented. (I am also not certain if any of the specific information she presented is considered to be ready for publication.) However, we both listened attentively and I tried to take notes on a few parts that I had somewhat understood. I still do not completely comprehend about half of what I wrote (5 single sided composition notebook pages written total) however thanks to Mr. Messinger's explanations over the past two days, I did understand Ms. Lady's idea of targeting pixels with like-color on maps and trying to eliminate a great deal of background pixels, false positives, and no matches. Mr. Messinger later explained that our research will eventually be moving towards that stage.


For the remainder of the day, Madi and I practiced using different Classification programs on the same image chip (picture-section) of the Gouge Map. I adopted Madi's idea of taking screenshots of our trials and documenting them as we worked on them to help us later when we will have to give final presentations. We both struggled with the labeling and organizing of our files and I know that some of my trials are lost as undecipherable files. (They were mostly trial command inputs so it was alright, I think.) We pushed through and did our best.
Mr. Messinger took a look at my files at the end of the day and pointed out what Madi and I should be looking for when comparing the different color-gradient image copies that we produced. A lot of the images I had were the same as Madi's. Whenever I look at the processed images, I see them resembling really flashy-colored wallpaper. Mr. Messinger's points just made me more interested in jumping back on ENVI and trying again. (I am still nervous when I am under observation though : I)


(OOH last little note: Picnic/Cook-out tomorrow! 11:45-1:00 last time I heard. All are welcome!!!!!! I bought what I volunteered to bring and a little more since I heard some of my other interns say they were not sure if they would remember what they would bring.)