Summary

This week, a new intern, Jingya, joined the SARA team--we now have six people (and representation of six different countries!) at lunch. I also talked to important people in a scary conference room (see "Research" for more details).

Things I Learned

a bit about fe/male names and declensions in German
San Francisco has a MoMA
Squirrel Hill is an upward trek from campus
how to use flatMaps
Pittsburgh has yellow-and-blue fire hydrants?
movie previews are no longer >20 minutes
Swedish Fish italian ice is a thing
fireflies were used as inspiration for LED lightbulbs

Research

On Friday, I gave a presentation on my work so far and what I plan to do for the rest of my internship (and as a result of said presentation, most of the week was spent panicking slash killing my voice slash not sleeping). The fact that I'm writing this now means that a) I survived, and b) I am just about halfway done with my internship, which is crazy. (Sure enough, my DREU midterm report, plus a more formal midterm report that I'm writing on the side, is due this week.) I'm still trying to decide what's harder to believe: that I've been here for half a summer already, or that I only have half a summer left.

Meetings

Reading Group

This week, we talked about what "research" actually is (as in, what goes on when people do research). We also talked about going to grad school and the sorts of applications and funding involved with going to grad school.

Team Meeting

This week, we talked about the design for a new "roboceptionist" (aka a new, receptionist version of Sara) in the works, which was fun (included: spontaneous ideas and sketch concepts).

Daily Logs

These are more or less lifted from Bitbucket, where I keep a README of these things.

Mon 6/26

Collected and analyzed more data to confirm existing analysis of data; worked on presentation; added to progress report.

Tues 6/27

Worked on presentation; started my DREU midterm report; fixed up some graphics.

Wed 6/28

Presentation prep; updated website; continued midterm report; collected data on incremental speech results.

Thurs 6/29

Presentation prep; figured out how to make analysis tool more efficient.

Fri 6/30

Gave presentation; submitted DREU midterm report; attended team mtg.

Not Work

Dusk Before Sundown

We went to a movie-at-the-park event! By this, I mean that our lab brought in food and picnic blankets, trekked over to Flagstaff Hill, and settled in for sundown (note: having a movie start "at sundown" is confusing and meant that we were eating and waiting for a while, because the sun (well, the earth) is slow).

Miscellaneous

also went to the movies (but didn't see the stars)
though I did see constellations during the movie-at-the-park outing--they were incredible
read Amazon book excerpts (an even worse habit than the Google Books thing), some old favorites (Our Town, anyone?), and some more Shakespeare
ate pizza for the first time in forever