Pockets of Blue

musings of my mind

Month: June 2006

Still here

No, I didn’t forget about the blog.  Just haven’t had much to post.  Over the past weekend I was in Michigan to attend my cousin’s wedding.  It was great; I met my folks there as well as a lot of relatives I hadn’t seen in awhile.  The wedding itself was short but sweet, and the rest of the weekend a lot of fun. 

A few weeks ago I promised to post some of the stuff I had been working on in the spring.  I had to do a bit of cleaning up and refactoring with my checkers project which took longer than I had thought.  I also included scripts for starting the server.  Everything can be found here, including source and executables for both Mac and PC. 

I also posted my astronomy poster here.  It is the culmination of ten weeks of work, maybe 80% of which was spent processing over 300 astronomical images to create the four displayed on the poster.  The resolution is pretty poor due to the compression of the images in the telescope’s camera, but I think they’re still pretty interesting.  You may want to download the file rather than viewing it in a browser, because it’s pretty big.

The summer’s going pretty well thus far.  I will be doing some hiking in the near future and will be working on some projects (reformatting the PC…) so stay posted!

Oh, and if anyone has pictures from the wedding, please send them my way!  Maybe I can even host them online somewhere. 

Panorama bla-jamma

I spent most of the evening tonight working on an old panorama photo I started compiling last fall after a trip into the ‘daks.  It is a combination of eight images, comprising the most fantastic view I have experienced on a high peak (from the knife-edge summit of Dix).  Here it is in its full uncompressed glory, and again in an easier-to-handle version.

Foolishly, I used the camera’s auto settings to capture the images, so there are significant portions that were washed out, and huge exposure differences throughout.  However, I think the image is still pretty good.  Yeah, it could be better: give it a shot if you’re a photoshop whiz, for I’m not.

Commencement +

I have graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology.  Well, almost.  As part of my degree, I need four quarters of co-op experience, and as of now I only have three.  After the summer this will have been taken care of, and my degree will be in the mail.

Commencement was overall a satisfying experience.  Hardly any of the CS students showed up for the actual commencement ceremony, but of course everyone was there for the actual graduation ceremony (y’know, the one where they hand you your degree).  The speaker, Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway among many other things), delivered an excellent message focusing on technology and how it can be used to aid people.  We, as degree-holding students in a technical field, are empowered with the knowledge necessary to make a difference in the world, and should strive to do so.  He, of course, said it more eloquently, but the message was largely the same: Use your degree as a means to give back to society, not just to earn a hefty paycheck and accumulate "stuff."

Mom and Dad came up for the ceremonies and we all had a great weekend together.  On sunday I headed back to Lowville to embark on a journey into the wilderness: a thru-hike of a portion of the Northville-Placid Trail, specifically the section between Long Lake and Lake Placid.  We encountered pretty rotten weather along with an army of mosquitoes, but it was still a blast.  Nothing can keep me from enjoying the wilderness, not even a rash of bug bites reminiscent of a chicken pox victim.

So tomorrow, I guess, is the start of my work life.  It feels kind of strange saying that, for I know that there will be plenty of activities distracting me from such work in the near future.  The future is bright, and I’m looking forward to an awesome summer.

Oh, and today’s my birthday.  Happy two-two to me!

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