I arrived on the Campus of Clemson University on May 27, on my arrival I was warmly greeted ny the staff in the School of Computing located in McAdam's Hall. Every concern I commented on there was an answer for or a direction to where the answer could be found. I had introductory meetings from both my mentors who further made me feel welcome by asking first how was my trip what are my expectations and concerns. Topics covered in the meetings were a timeline guide to allow me understand how the time would have to be shared on the projects and the goals for the research projects, goals for being featured in a publication and how the projects give contributions.

The Arduino Esplora micro-controller was beginning to come along as learned the basic functionality of the micro-controller also the Game Maker IDE (Integrated Development Environment).I believe my greatest marks for the week were achieving integration of the micro-controller with a prototype circuits worked as expected and understanding basic functions and syntax style of both Arduino and Game Makers IDE. In regards to the HRTFs (Head Related Transfer Functions) for spacial audio analysis there I was able to read up on the processes involved in creating and understanding HRTFs. I made lesson plans for the students and ran them myself to see how they would flow and how I could allow for students that were at different levels of proficiency could work at roughly the same pace without noticing the difference. My lessons plans flow was focused on getting the students to work on circuits and to understand how the same skills they used in circuit design relates to the same skills needed in programming their micro-controller.

This week was so awesome this was week of the Summer Scholars Camp which is an applied business model designed by Dr. Gardner McCune and her husband and herself. During the camp I was able to apply my tutoring and camp counselling skills to aid my delivery of the lesson and activities. The week started of with getting the know the students and their assessing their skill levels and general personal strengths and weaknesses. Their was only female participant which was disappointing thing to me because I believe this is a field that females make great progress in given their keen attention to detail and flow.

This week was a week of recuperating from the week with of camp with the kids. Finally get to balance work loads for both projects. I spent the weeek revising the lesson plans I delivered to improve on content challenge and my delivery. The camp attendees gav me good feedback on their surveys, which reassured me that they got something from the camp. In regards to the spacial audio project things are grinding because of MATLAB install and license concerns. On a different note my wife and I have been using our midday breaks to go different spots on campus to eat, tried some '55 exchange Clemson Ice-cream. That's some good ice-cream.

This week was all about revisiting the drawing board for the approaches to Physical Computing and Spatial Audio projects. This is in my nature as a Computer Engineering Major I have a drive to make my work be as efficient and robust as possible. For the Physical computing camp my mentor and I realized that even though the went well there could have been some improvements to the content in the form of including more visual style explanation and having fully worked examples so people of faster pace could move on as they please tp prevent them from being bored, loose interest and drive.

The High School students are coming in next week looking forward to getting know them and working with them. Been spending the week finalizing the tutorials and activities.

Phew what a week, had to deliver lesson plans for the High School Participants in the Physical Computing Camp. We had four young ladies in out group this time which made me happy because I know females do really good in the field once they are encouraged, we had a student all the way from China, like serious the dude heard about the program from China left their with his pocket Casio Translator to do one week camp, that's some faith right there, two African-American students participated this time double the number from the middle school camp. Now onto the proceeding throughout the week, to me compared the previous camp the older students were more bold and team oriented and my conclusion was that since they were in high schools there experiences with assignments and classroom settings in High Schools vs. Middle School accounted for it. The week started off a little slower than intended as the High School students spent a lot of time in the planning and layout section before they moved on to functionality and game play. Never the less this attention to detail paid off as the their intended look and feel of their games where closer in the game play. Had to get really creative with the schedule to make time for them to develop their games; we had to rotate groups through the activities and for personal assistance with scripts in GML(Game Maker Langauge). I felt so happy when the finally presented their games in poster and demo form.

Well this week had to make a trip to Orlando, Florida with the Clemson Prime III team to assist with the NAACP election using the Prime III voting system. The trip to Orlando was nice, I always enjoy flying minus the turbulence on the way back, that had everybody scared a little. While in Orlando however their was only one candidate which means no voting necessary, so Dr. Gilbert and the team had to huddle and make the best of the project preparations prior to finding out the bad news. The decision was made to have a mock elections on gun violence to at least show the functionality of the Prime III voting system. Whats the point of being somewhere new and not experiencing the scenery and hangout spots after all,"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". So at the end of each day when we had no project updates me and my wife Jade would walk the streets and catch conversations with people we meet take local bicycle carriage rides, always making sure to leave a generous tip because I can imagine its hard pedaling to pull my 240 pounds around, LOL. I enjoyed the climate their kind of similar to the type back home; warm with cool breeze no need for jeans pants or the likes just some trunks :). I really enjoyed just view of the city, couldn't get to go the theme parks but I will be sure to take a personal trip to Orlando and Disney World and Holy Land or topping the list.

All about tweaking and finishing strong this week, from analyzing data on the HRTF profiles, conducting studies and so forth. Time seems to be going faster as my tenth week comes up next week. Been spending a lot of time seeking words of wisdom from grad students and professors pertaining to graduate school; the environment in a typical graduate school experience and best practice for a good experience.

After all the research, notes preparation, delivering lessons, analyzing data and meetings with mentors its now now on to the bell lap. This week was very productive had a lot of time to work on our final presentations on our summer projects for the Department members. Before we went to present both my mentors and all their mentees also their graduate students, it was a nice lunch especially since it was my first time eating Thia food; delicious. Finally on to the presentation, for me it was good experience to see the projects of the other REU projects I learnt a lot from their presentations also to see some of the people who hardly spoke present so boldly made me smile. Well I was basically the final REU student researcher to present my presentation didn't have a background in my slides but has images to keep it more eye catching. I presented on my material and I believe I did a good job in tying the background of the research to the problem and our solution. Next it was on the to "goodbye for now moment" we took pictures of the group complemented each other on our projects and talked about our experiences, definitely going to miss the team at Clemson hopefully be their in fall of 2014 so I can get back in the atmosphere.