Saturday, July 9, 2016

Day 3 (July 8th)

Madi and I are quickly assimilating to a kind of routine by now. The group has the 15 minute opening meeting, then Madi and I have a morning meeting with Di and Mr. Messinger about our progress with the Gouge Map, other interesting parts of the map they have found thus far through their research with Oxford, and what ENVI programs and tools Madi and I would be working/practicing and all of the details behind the programs. The rest of the day would be used running the ENVI programs we know on different image files that contained sections (chips) of the Gouge Map. Di would check up on us about every hour and a half to check our progress (or whenever Madi or I called him because I thought I froze the computer : | ) and we end the day with a 4:00 meeting to go over the day's work.

There was another Ph.D. defense at 2:00, however neither Madi nor I felt up to going to it after being fascinated and somewhat lost by Lady's presentation on her work (see Day 2). Even though it would have probably been interesting to check this one out, we couldn't find the room until Mr. Messinger told us we were on the wrong floor and we just felt the need to get back to the chips we were working on. I reasoned that we had an hour and a half lunch period for the Friday cookout and volleyball in the muggy weather and a stroll around the building was the only afternoon break that we should afford. It was a pretty good day for the planned event and it was interesting to chat with some of the attending college students.
In my opinion, my work on the chips was not as fruitful as Madi's thus far. But this is just my perspective and it has only been the third day of work for both of us. (Love the steep learning curve [double thumbs up].) She did clean up an image to find hidden writing at the end of the day which was extremely exciting for the both of us. It looked like original town names that were smudge out by an excessive amount of map-use and then someone rewrote the names with the red ink used to label all of the other towns and cities on the map. Another "stick man"-like blob also appeared. It kind of resembled the one that Di had discovered on another portion of the map before Mr. Messinger's meeting in Oxford.

To Madi and I, the resulting image with the discovery looked like a mistake. Madi had the program identify six different colors but an overall image with the six "false" colors, used to mark the areas with similar color shades, wouldn't process through ENVI. Only black and white images of each color detection would show individually. Her results also did not in any way resemble the work results I had from the same chip. I should not have been so quick to regard the result as a mistake. Mr. Messinger's explanation of the significant finds really surprised Madi and I. He continued to talk with Di about further work on the chip and area of the discovery which both excited and overwhelmed us interns. Every time we have a meeting, Mr. Messinger readjusts what Madi and I should look for on the Gouge Map during program processing and how it can be done. There is a "program processing" phase and an "analysis of the results" phase. Madi and I have been working on the "program processing" learning. For next week, I am eager to continue refining the ability to effectively analyze the results of the program processing.

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