After saying I could probably walk 15-50 miles without rest in my Engineering class, I decided to test whether I could actually do that or not. So today after church, I headed down the Seminole County Trail, a nice paved trial. The first 3 miles felt good as it was a bright, crisp, cloudless Florida day. At 5 miles, I was feeling a bit of discomfort, but not enough to slow me. At 7 miles, I was definitely developing some blisters. At 11 miles, I was seriously rethinking why I decided to do this. At 13 miles, I had multiple blisters on each foot and could barely walk. At 14 miles, every body part cried out to rest, but I was so close I just kept putting 1 foot in front of the other. That last mile was extremely difficult, but I made it! It took me a little over 4 hours, so that’s about 3.5 mph – not bad. On the flip side, I now walk like a crippled old person. People probably think I need those little walkers!
Halleluja! Yesterday I spent 2 hours in the library with classmate working on Physics homework (due today). We got a lot of it done, so we went home to finish it. However, we had no clue how to do this one problem. So after we submitted everything else online, we phoned each other and tried to work on the problem. 4 hours later at 10 PM, we gave up – not good since the problem was worth 30% of our grade! Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I thought of a way to maybe solve it. This morning I tried it and after an hour or so got it right! Praise be to God!
Today I coded more on the UCF Robotics system. The system is know capturing the data from one camera, displying it, classifying it, and displaying that. Of course, with my poor Celeron 2GHz laptop, I’m only getting 5 frames a second! Now add 3 cameras to the one I already have and well, you get the picture…
Because this weekend was a long weekend (today is Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday), I went home. I had a very nice and relaxing time. Now it is back to the grind. Hopefully I can catch up on all I need to do in terms of homework.
I meet with Dr. Gonzalez for my ISL project on Cased Based Reasoning. I got the impression that he thinks I should be moving a bit faster, so I’m going to have to finish up that 628 book…and I’m only on 398. Read, Brian, read! Homework, Brian, homework!
Today I worked more on my part of the UCF Robotics Team Vision System. In fact, I was up until 10:30 PM working on it. Of course, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided that the pictures comming in from the DirectX camera camera should be upside down and in the format BRG (not the standard RGB). Took me while to figure that one out! After I succeeded in hooking up the camera input to the system, I decided to turn in.
Today I was going to go to a Bible Study, but totally lost the directions. After driving around for a while trying to remember them, I finally gave up. I was not happy! On the bright side, I was able to work more on Simply KoolB. I’m getting closer to an alpha release.
I am getting over most of my cold, although I still have a nagging cough. Hopefully I’ll be 100% well by the end of the week. Anyhow, my first week at school went pretty well. I’m taking Physics, Chemistry, Calc II, and Engineering. Physics seems like it will be the hardest.
Happy New Year’s everybody! I wish everybody a much better year than last year (which for some of us in Florida wasn’t that good). Today I started school. I’m taking Intro to Computer Engineering, Semiconducting Devices, Networks and Systems, and Dynamics. Lots of fun, let me tell you. As one of my friends says: I’m ready for summer! On another note, I’m leaving Wednesday for Washington, D.C. for a conference. I actually have to present for 4 minutes – I think I’d much rather be in class!
Happy New Years everybody! A few days ago I got a bad cold, so I hope everybody is doing better than I am! I hope this new year will be productive for everybody!