Mail #2

Oh! I almost forgot! On Friday, walking in to the house soaked, I found another package, this time from Grandma and Gramps! Inside I found two ove'gloves; I am super excited to use these! I love ove'gloves! Along with some very tasty Biscotti and Salt water taffy :) A very nice care-package. Thank you Grandma! Thank you Gramps!

Mind-Blowing Idea #1 - Fourier Transform ++

Ok, time to push up your glasses and pull out your TI-89s. It is Enginerd time. I am guessing that most of you will not take much out of this; however, this is for the more technically minded.

Computer Engineers and Electrical Engineers should remember this, and I am sure James already knows this, but this guy Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1822 proposed that every function, continuous of discontinuous, could be represented by a series of sine functions, or varying amplitudes and phases. This in its self is ridiculous and mind numbing, but we learned this all in Nelson's Signals and Systems class. That is not what this is about. If you need to refresh, go to the Wikipedia page, and here. Boiling it down, you can "transform" something from the "x," or space, domain to the "w" domain, or frequency domain.

So here is where my jaw dropped. I was in lecture for Computational Photography, and the professor was going over different ways to filter an image. He was talking about Gaussian filters, step filters, media filters... ok, they are fairly unique, bit all fairly intuitive. Then he starts talking about Fourier, I was a little apprehensive about him bringing up something that I briefly learned from Nelson, I was slightly worried that I was going to need to know how to do a transform sitting there in class. Most Picture files in essence are a large array of data points, each one corresponding to a given pixel. This would be analogous to the space domain, each value maps to each pixel. Some crazy genius decided that he was going to apply the same idea of a Fourier series on a image. Now, instead of each data point corresponding to a pixel, each data point corresponds to a sinusoidal image. The center data point would correspond to a 'flat' signal. The the horizontal axis would be a series of sinusoidal images oriented left to right. The vertical images would be a series of sinusoidal images oriented top to bottom. Each step away from the center increasing in frequency. The 'in between' data points correspond to sinusoidal images oriented in off angles and varying frequencies.

From Efros (CMU) and Seitz

 So starting with this image:

Applying a Fourier transform we get this:

Looks like a star!

To note, I shrunk the image a but as to weed out some noise, and I darkened the output to show the highlights. So first thing to notice. Very strong vertical and horizontal lines, this would be because the camera outputs images in a grid system, so there are a ton of "up and down" "Side to side" patterns. Then the center is much more populated than the outskirts, this would "low" frequency things, things that we can easily see, the whole image capturing process weeds out things that we will not notice, and discards them. Now the amazing part, notice the lines that are converging at the center. They end up representing the major "perspective" lines of the image, like the sides of the road, the light rays from the sun, the horizon.

This is a reversible process, as in if I were to perform an inverse transform I could return back to the original image. I am going to change it a bit first. I am going to take and zero out the middle of the image, there by cutting out any "low frequecies" and leaving just the "high ones." These are going to be the ones with the radical changes, or the edges:

Now I am going to do the exact opposite, and take out the "high frequencies," and I am going to get an image without any clear definition:

I only just learned about this process, I don't fully understand how to use it, or how to perfect it. I will let you all know when that comes up, I am sure it will!

I can see how this might be a very poor explanation of this process, and I also recognize that it is really late, and my mine is like that last picture, fuzzy. So let me know if you have any questions, or want more examples!

"The more you know..."

I did steal that first image from my professor's slides,  Alexei Efros 2010

Report: The Fence

While working on my Computational Photography project, I needed to take some pictures of campus, so I headed over to "The Fence." When I got there, I decided that I could use the 3 guys there for my project, so while I was taking pictures of them I talked to them about this pivotal Carnegie location.

The Three gentlemen who answered my questions.

As per tradition only current CMU students can paint The Fence. Once you paint it you have to "gaurd' it. As long as you have someone with The Fence, no one else can take it. You have to hand paint it with normal brushes. No spray paint, no rollers, no sprayers. Generally students are free to put whatever they want on it. It has ranged from "Happy Birthday so-and-so," to a giant American flag (with hand prints for starts) for 4th of July, to Christmas themed, to a giant Buggy (another CMU thing... I will get there later), the Greek houses take it to announce new pledges, but commonly it is used to advertise upcoming events.  There have been times in the past where students have put not so politically correct things on it, so the administration white washed it, breaking all of he above rules. This apparently caused a huge fiasco, more so than the first issue of what was written. Generally students respect the fact that it is a central landmark on the campus (it is basically in the middle of the campus, everyone walks past it), and respect that it is a representation of the school. Generally you are supposed to just walk away when you are done, the next group has to be on the lookout for when this happens, but sometimes there is an unofficial 'call list' for people to call when your group is leaving.

Advertising. Notice the green pain on the ground, that was from the last guys.

At the moment it is held by a fraternity, Sigma Epsilon, they said that they are going to hold it until there large Labor Day BBQ, which they are using it to advertise. They said that a group of 80 or so people take shifts holding it. The group that had it the first week I was here had a little building set up next to it, complete with a AC unit for comfort.

Here are some pictures!

Notice the paint hanging down... it is a lot of paint.

For Detail. Again, note the layers of paint, and the paint on the ground.

Pasta and History, they go together like intestines and manuals.

So this morning as I was working on school work, Larry sends me a skype message (yes, when we are both in the house, we use skype to communicate) asking if I wanted to go see this. Down on the south side, right next to Heinz field, they docked the LST-325. It was a tank landing ship used during WWII and more specifically the battle of Normandy and after shuttling supplies and men across the English channel. This ship in particular was given to Greece, and then reclaimed by some old guys (really, it was crewed by a group with an average age of 71.5!) and bough back to the US and preserved as a museum. You can read more about it here as well.

It was all a very impressive event. We, Larry, His mother, and myself, got to stand in line for about an hour with a ton of people to get on. The ship could carry 30 Sherman tanks, or a bunch of troops, and it could float in 3.5 feet of water. It was the type of boat that would point towards the shore, drop anchor, and go full speed ahead to get up as far as it could up the beach. Then use the anchor (and the lightened load) to get back out to open waters. In side that had some decent displays and a bunch of cool photos, most of winch were taken on or of the ship. You could walk all around on the main storage deck, and up on to the main deck. They had some vehicles, some 'verteran' and some replicas that were stationed throughout the ship. All very interesting and enjoyable. If you want to see more pictures, you can go here. Gramps, I was thinking of you, we were right next to the confluence!

 So when I got back, I very quickly headed out to school. It is this time of the year. It is Never Ending Pasta Bowl at Olive Garden. I really enjoy this event, and seeing as I had no one to go with, I sent out an e-mail to all of the grad students (yeah for spamming mailing lists!) setting up an event. I told everyone to meet in front of Hamerschlag Hall at 5. We ended up having 9 people. It was awesome. Funny enough there was only one non-American, and she was a trooper. She spoke almost no English, but tried really hard to learn and figure out what was going on. It was good food and great company. They were a good group of people. All but one were Engineers, so the topics of discussion were rather uncommon, and odd, but it was a lot of fun. Don't worry, not nearly as cool as my Gonzaga friends, but still a good evening.

We all wanted to just lie down on the grass... we were so full.

Bring your Ponchos

Ok, let me start with where this story starts, and also where it ends.
Start: I walked out of the Gates building to a rather dark sky, and some strong wind in my face.
End: I stepped on to the bus with 90% of my clothing dripping wet.

Let's go back.  I walked out of the Gates building to a rather dark sky, and some strong wind in my face. As I approached the bus stop I was surprised that there were not more people waiting for the next bus. It was 4:00 ish on a Friday. My observation has been that the buses after 3:00PM are just completely packed. I think this has to do with Pitt and Downtown Pittsburgh being 'down stream' of CMU, so the buses are already full by the time they get there. So a few minutes after I arrive it starts to simply sprinkle, really like heavy misting, nothing I can't handle. Now this stop we are at has a covering, seeing as it is not really raining, I am still standing outside of its protective umbrella. A bus comes and takes everyone but 2 girls. So here we are the three of us, and then it starts to pick up, so I move to the underside of the covering. And then it starts to rain. And then it starts to pour. And then the heavens were opened and there was a water fall over all of Pittsburgh. It was some of the heaviest rain that I have ever been in. Yes, Drew and Holly, it reminded me a lot of that one night in Rome. Because my mother taught me manners and that Chivalry is not dead, I am standing the closest to the harsh elements, with the two girls huddled in the corner. As the down pour continues some more people trickle in (haha, did you get my pun?).

I am watching a common trend as it becomes apparent to me that there are some major pools of water running the length of the road way. Mind you we are on a hill, it is not like we are that the bottom next to a pool a standing water, we are on an incline and a pool of water is flowing past us. I watch people dive in to the bushes on the opposing side of the street to avoid getting splashed from the cars driving past. There were a few close calls, as cars would throw up water on the the ground under our protective shelter; me new Keens were starting to feel fairly squishy as they were absorbing more and more water. At this point I am fairly dry, my right leg is getting fairly wet, however my clothes are dry. Then I look up. A bus is heading in our direction. It looks full. Like in most cities, when buses are full they just drive past the stops until they have some room. This bus was not stopping. This bus was going to hit the pool of water that was building up in front of our little sanctuary.

It was like the splash zone at Sea World. There was no escaping the resulting tidal wave that assaulted the bus stop. The only people who were remotely dry were the two girls who had taken shelter behind me. It was not simply a splash. My glasses were no longer dry. My shirt was no longer dry. My shorts were no longer dry. My boxers were no longer dry. The ceiling of the bus shelter was no longer dry. That is right. For a brief moment it was 'raining' inside of the covering as the excess water that hit the roof dripped of. After laughing profusely with everyone there my bus was the next one. And I stepped on to the bus with 90% of my clothing dripping wet.

Seeing as I had no were to go it was fine, and that is was still fairly hot, it felt nice. Nothing in my bag got wet, no harm done. I made it home in time to see Agnes (the lady that lives across the street) doing some yard work, and we had a good chat. She thinks you are going to love it here mom!

Something good and a Refutation.

So after a lot of trial and error (but mostly error) I finally have my last picture frame up. Kirsten made me a custom picture presentation device for my birthday.

This is it on the wall:

No Auntie Donna, there are no pictures of you... sorry.

It was inspired by this:

If you know what that is, I salute you. If not, you need to watch some more Star Wars (Jamie I am looking at you...).

On to other topics. If you are not my lovely Aunt, you may not know that she has posted a rather large reply that I feel as though I need to respond to each action item, you may find it here.

1) No... I have not moved it. There is not that much room to move it around, it is perfect where it is! I agree it is a very functional space. The only problem is that there are certain spots that are a little low, like the threshold to the bathroom, that I keep hitting my head on.

2) "Every Tree Has Character,"  just like you!

3) Oh, you have this rank, don't worry:

4) I find it very amusing that you looked at the pictures that closely! I have had that for years! I keep wires and other electronic stuff in it.

5) Oh, I have a fan and a AC unit. I am quite comfortable.

6) I know, my amazing Pirate themed bathroom supplies did not come with me. I know exactly where it is in Spokane. It is with my Swashbuckling Trash can, my Grog Soaked Hand towels, and my Jolly Roger Shower Curtain. I think that I may retrieve it at Christmas time... we will see.

7) They make my head hurt too! There are a lot of really smart people here, it is really intimidating. But I know like Golf, school is a competition with yourself, do the very best you can do.

So there you have it, this is an interactive blog. I will try to respond if you have any direct concerns.

Now I must go to bed, get some good sleep before... THOR DAY!!!

The Death of an Era

Good ol' Reds are there on the right. This is on a boat to Poros!

 As many of you know, or have noticed, right after I graduated from High School I donned my first pair of Keens. Those Red footwear got me through everything that I could throw at them. Ran around at Youth Group. I went sailing with Chelsea (which for me = wet). I trekked across Europe! I hiked up Badger Mountain! I walked through light snow! They tread on the West Coast, they have tread on the East Coast. I did have to get a new pair around the end of my sophomore year, but the new pair were the exact make and model of the originals, it was like they added some new tread on the bottom, but other than that they were the same. They were faithful to me and I was faithful to them. Granted Lockheed Martin would be a temporary gap in the love from me, but it was not my choice! But after 5 years, my little shoes have taken a beating. Everything has held up, with the exception of the tread. On their underside, their tough black rubber has given way to the soft core of gray insole. It was time. They had to be retired. Only to be worn on special Fridays.

Fortunately my birthday gift from my parents was a new pair of tried and true Keens, Unfortunately they stopped making Newport H2's in red a long time ago. I had to settle. I had to go with their new and revised Newport H2's but in Bison/Wetsand. Yes they fit. Yes I will grow to love them. However my good old reds will always be there waiting for a good walk.

Not the same.... :(