maggied’s blag

At the Museum of Science, for a limited time only! The group I am working with is conducting a study over in Cahners Computer Place involving our latest robot. The Computer Place is pretty fun to hang out in; when the little kids aren’t around, occasionally the UROPs will sit at the computers and play old games like (my personal favorite) Star Wars Pit Droids. I don’t want to spoil the study for anyone, but it takes about 15 minutes, and is a lot of fun.

I’ll be at the Museum Saturday and Sunday, probably from about 10 or 11am until 5pm. The Computer Place is to right next to the Theater of Electricity; starting from the entrance, you turn right, enter the theater and turn left and head up the stairs.  Pretty straightforward. Unfortunately the robot is out of commision pretty often; she is kind of tempermental and gets a little stressed out with all the people around. But we swear, she is a star. Anyway, if you are curious about coming to the Musuem, admission is free to MIT students, and the Musuem itself is also a lot of fun to explore. Be sure to give me a heads up if you want to swing by and I’ll let you know if everything is up and running.

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It’s finally here. And right when it needed to be. The end of term wound up being my most hosing time at MIT, through a combination of classes and extra-curricular activities. In retrospect, I’m starting to appreciate the idea that yes, even us MIT students can’t do everything they want, and we should try to keep ourselves sane first and foremost. Summer should help with that.

I’ll be working in the Media Lab with the Personal Robots Group. We will be working with the MDS (mobile dexterous social) robot and conducting a study at the Museum of Science. I’ll post back with more details of the study; you know you want to participate.

This past week after classes has been very relaxing; I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, and getting psyched for Bonnaroo. It’s June 12th-15th, and should be totally awesome. I might have watched 4 Seasons of the Office in under a week. Maybe.

Other things to look forward to: There are other concerts over the summer, including Journey and Iron Maiden. I am also looking into getting a new, lighter bike, and getting my endurance back. My computer is in need of an upgrade; I’ve had it for almost 4 years now (16th b-day present). I turn 20 June 21st. An underwhelming birthday at best. I guess the next big birthday is my 21st, then my 25th, and if my mother is right, once I turn 29 I’ll stay that age forever. Now that’s weird to think about.

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Before I say anything else, yay new skin! I like blue and black, so this one seems to fit nicely. I might tweak it if I have time, but for now it will stay this way.

I’m sitting in the Media Lab setting up a configuration file for the new Mobile Dexterous Social Robot that they are developing here. It’s interesting so far, but I haven’t done much yet.

This term is probably going to be the most exciting yet most challenging term yet. I’m sticking to four classes, but I’ve got a lot of extra-curricular activities on my plate. The classes I’m taking are: 6.003 (Signals and Systems), 6.012 (Microelectronic Devices & Circuits), 6.041 ( Probabilistic Systems Analysis) and 9.00 (Introduction to Psychology). The UA will pick up again this evening, and my term for that continues until the end of the year. Inauguration for the new East Campus exec is this Wednesday (I’ll be serving as EC VP/Room Assignment Chair). Then I’ve got the UROP I’m working on and (hopefully, if I have time), Concert Band again. I have no idea how crazy it will be, but we’ll see.

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Things with my UROP at the Behavioral Neuroscience Lab are finally starting to pick up (yay). I’m currently running analyses on data obtained after the MIT MRI scanner was upgraded. We’re testing to make sure that the upgrade was a reliable success. I’m also meeting with the grad student from the Media Lab later today to discuss the progress of the program I’ve been working on and get my paper work in.

I have been pretty busy with work, although I have been listening to The End of Faith, watching some Ghost in the Shell, and reading more Berserk. I feel like things are finally becoming more like summer. Everything is much more laid back now, and otherwise pretty awesome. I’ve settled into my new room, and am happily forcing Freeze Pops down people’s throats.
Additionally, my birthday is tomorrow, and it will finally really be summer. The sunshine makes me happy, so I’m really looking forward to it.

P.S. Vinayak is finally blarging!

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Well, I’m finally all done and settled in my new room. It will take a little while to get used to, but I’m rapidly getting used to the “team speak” and loud music that categorize living in Bemis. I set up my computer and my speakers, the only major thing I have left for my room is setting up the server Drew gave me.

Work is going well, although I’m rapidly running out of exciting things to do. Fortunately, only two more days and then I’ll be  able to get started on a real project this coming Monday. The grad student for work at the Media Lab finally wrote back to me, so I’ll be able to take care of that stuff on Friday probably.

As it turns out, I won’t actually be going home this weekend, unless something drastic happens in regard to my Grandfather’s health. My little brother is going to an Airsoft event in Massachusetts on Saturday, so my dad (and possibly other family members) will be driving up to the general area to hang out. We’ll probably try to go out to lunch and celebrate what we can for the few hours people will be around. It just isn’t worth going home on Friday, only to return on Saturday afternoon.

I should really try to be in lab by 10am today, so I will sleep Real Soon Now ™, but look forward to an exciting post about more than my life later today.

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Spend most of today reading the book Practical Python. I found it on the MIT libraries website. I still can’t get over how awesome the site is; it has access to tons of books that would be pretty expensive to buy in paper. I hacked together a simple interactive prototype for the Media Lab today. File input/output in Python wasn’t really hard at all. Once I run everything by the grad student I’m working with, I’ll pretty up my code and flesh out the software for determining the current state and we’ll be ready for data collection. That’s when the real fun will come around; I need to come up with effective means of analyzing the user’s input and apply that to the back-end software we have for determining the the user’s state.

Thankfully, my illness seems to be subsiding, although the antibiotics have been a little harsh on me. I’m getting my ear pierced this afternoon, and hopefully hanging out with some of my friends from home. The week has pretty much flown so far. I’ve been having a nice time, but I do miss MIT a little. I’m off to try to finish the Golden Compass.

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Spent a lot of the day napping today. The cough suppressants finally started kicking in, but apparently the side effect of that is sedation. I managed to get my stuff together and get over to the Science Research symposium. The nostalgia was interesting, but I finally realized that my time there is over. I also got to play pool later on which was pretty exciting.

On the way home, I wound up discovering that even though one of my close friends from elementary school and I had drifted, we still connect more than I had realized. We had a really nice chat about relationships and life in general, and it was really great to see that someone knew where I was coming from and could relate similar feelings and experiences.

The conversation really brought the fact that I’m done being depressed to the foreground. I’m sick of moping around or being sad about what’s in the past. It’s done and over with, and I’m ready for another chapter of my life to start unfolding. I’m ready to look on the bright side of things, and accept the fact that I’m currently living for the small things in life, be it sunshine, ice cream, and the people that I’m still close with. Even if it’s not something grand or epic, I’m not going to downplay that I am fortunate to be where I am in the world right now, and I live with no regret as to how I’ve lived my life in the past.

I’m starting work on the Commonsense AI project tomorrow during the day (hopefully the morning if I wake up in time). I’ll need to learn more about Python’s method for Input/Output, but I’m pretty excited about getting everything off the ground. I hope to finish reading The Golden Compass by the weekend. Then I might take a break and read a book that Carey let me borrow called The End of Faith. It’s about how organized religion causes humans to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise. It should be an interesting read. Maggie out.

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So I played around with a few different themes for the blog, but I don’t really like them all that much. If anyone spots a nice one, let me know. I typically prefer blue and darker colors as themes.

Today is my little brother’s birthday, so I’ll probably go out to dinner or dessert with him when I get back. Sunday’s hopefully going to be pretty laid back. I’m hoping to hang out with some of my friends then. Monday is my parent’s anniversary, and Tuesday is the science research symposium. Wednesday - early Friday will probably be just me hanging out by myself during the day and maybe the evenings depending on how lame or awesome my friends are. Friday I want to go into NYC, I have a party on Saturday, and then Sunday I’m coming back to MIT. So things look pretty reasonable right now; hopefully I will not die of boredom.

I figured out the rest of plans for the summer. I’ll be home for this week, and then at MIT from the 3rd of June through the rest of the summer. I might go home on a weekend or two. I plan on working for 11 weeks and take the week before rush off. I’ll be designing a new paradigm for the Behavioral Neuroscience Lab to test cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson’s Disease using functional MRI. The Media lab stuff is also still in order, so I should have plenty to keep busy. Might have some ideas in the works for an electronics project too…

In other news, today was pretty enjoyable, even though this damn cough makes it hard to fall asleep and I’m tired a lot. It was a little bit up, and then a lot down, but I’m pretty much okay again. Going home will force me to confront a lot of things that I haven’t been, which I hope will be good for myself, but this remains unclear.

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