Week 8

To begin Monday off it was a very bumpy start. Coming off of Friday when Tia had e-mailed me stating we had fixed this problem before and I should've been able to fix it myself, clearly showing she was upset that I hadn't gotten any work done due to this issue. In her e-mail she stated that she fixed the problem easily and had done some coding to clear up other bugs. I should have been able to continue testing the pieces. However, when I went to run the program all I saw were errors. I had no idea how to fix them, and at this point I was afraid to tell Tia about my problems. After about 3 hours of worrying and trying to fix the problem, I swallowed my pride and e-mailed Tia that the program was still having problems. She was upset that I hadn't contacted her earlier, but with the pictures I sent her in the e-mail she could sort of tell what needed fixed. I had to comment some of the code out that she hadn't finished and then redo some of the other stuff, because for some reason it couldn't find the executable file. I finally got it running and was able to test the rest of the pieces. 

We began Tuesday off with a meeting of the minds. A Skype call to Professor Lyons, Moira, and Dean, while Brian, Tia, Chandan, Emily, and I all were in the same room. We discussed the type of map that would best be used, the size of the map, dimensions, and other things that we'd need to work on with the map. They looked at my chart that I had made with all the testing I had recently done to see what pieces would work the best on the map, what sizes, etc. We had also discussed using color recognition for the map pieces. Tia had stated this would be simpler to code. So later I will have to begin color detection and blob testing with the map and camera in the LSRI lab. There was also a lot of talk about how the public would react to the map. How would people interact if they didn't feel connected? Would one be more interested if this were considered specifically their street block? What are the differences between private and public investors? There was a lot of talking. After the meeting was over, Tia informed me that we wouldn't continue to code until Friday and for the rest of the day I should do gesture transcription. Sounds as fun as it looks. I had to go back through all of the videos that I had already transcribed and write in the nonverbal gestures that the users make. 

All day Wednesday and Thursday were gesture-transcribing days. The only thing that's good about gesture transcribing is you don't have to listen to them speaking and you can listen to music while you do so.

On Friday we returned back to the LSRI lab to begin coding the new code that was mentioned on Tuesday during the meeting. Tia was at the lab already when I arrived. She had begun working in the threshold code we had previously used. She changed what needed to be changed while I observed. We tried again to square out the fish angled camera, but we still couldn't get it perfectly correct. Once we finished to code necessary I could begin testing the white pieces on the black background. Using threshold images were much easier for the program to detect, rather than SURF feature detection. Once I finished that testing I had to change the threshold to search for black pieces on a white background. I thought this would be a simple process, but of course it was beyond difficult for me. I was so close, I could see the square in the threshold screen, but the program couldn't detect where it was. I sent Tia an e-mail and she suggested changing the last two values, and playing with them. I played with them for what seemed like forever, but still couldn't figure it out.