Week 4: 6/25 - 7/1
This was a really good week, really productive! I feel like things are starting to pick up, so I'm really happy. :D
I got all the renders done! I also put everything together in Adobe Premiere, so now I've got 18 glorious mov files to work with. I know I won't be able to jump into testing subjects right away, but I'm getting ever closer... It's really exciting to see where things are going now!
I learned a little Perl in my Data Mining class, but nothing advanced, really--just basic syntax, weird Perl shortcuts and keywords, very rudimentary stuff about regular expressions--so I've been teaching myself that in the meantime. I'm supposed to look at a script that renders the movies on the animation cluster and then converts them all into movies, but there's a very small timing problem, which is big enough to be of concern. The code is actually lots of gibberish to me, because whoever wrote it wasn't kind enough to provide sufficient documentation, besides how to use it. Remember folks: comments are your friend! I admit, though, I was having problems with it (among other things), since I don't have a lot of experience with Unix... The last time I remember using the command prompt was way back in elementary school when I played a lot of shareware games in DOS. Ah, those were the good old days. I feel like this makes me lose a lot of CS cred (I never had a lot to begin with, anyway), but it's better to learn now than later or never.
I find that I've been having to learn how to use so many applications and other tools in the course of this internship, which is good; I enjoy learning things, and this can only help strengthen my skill set. I'm really starting to see how valuable this experience is.
In short, this was a great week. This weekend was go shopping with the girls (it's sort of bad when your best friends tell you it's time you got some new clothes because they're tired of seeing you wearing the same things for the past two years), saw Ratatouille (I think they sacrificed a lot of character development for the message, but it was a good message nonetheless--anyone can do anything, but it takes hard work, talent, and some luck to really be considered 'great;' one should pursue one's dreams; etc.) with the girls and lab buddies, and we all had dinner at TGIF's. I had the Caesar Seared Salmon Pasta, which was good, but I was eyeing Raye's Bacon Cheeseburger the whole time. I'm such a pig. :D
