Week 3 and 4

Welp, I am going to be honnest here... I dont remeber what actually happened week 3.... but here is what I remember my group started reading papers and trying to figure out what we where going to do. WE had a meeting with our mentor late in the week. In the end we finally ended up deciting on continueing last years project. We are doing Particle Image Velocity (PIV) to determine the speed of waves in the ocean near the shore, followed with Inverse Bathymetry to calculate the depth of the ocean based on the speed of the breaking wave. The basic theory goes that waves are "connected" to the floor so any change in the floor can be seen in the wave speed. It took us to week 4 or 5 to start getting results though so you will see them later. We got all the scripts from last year and started testing them. On my laptop, the PIV script was going to take 72 hours to run... clearly unacceptable on a laptop. With the help of Seth, I got the scripts running on isoptera (this server). However, each processor on isoptera is not very much more powerfull than my laptop is and total processing time only dropped down to something like 48 horus... still not great for repeatedly running the script. So I multithreaded the script. And let me say, I absolutly hate python's Multithreading! SO anoying!

Allow me to explain. In regular coding languages you can multithread a program so that it runs on 2 or more threads and all the threads can run on a processor. (for the non coders out there, each processor is a like an intern.) Thing is, not every process can be multithreaded. Think of a task such as writing a letter, it does not help if 2 people are trying to write the same letter without talking to each other, you just end up with a mess and it still takes the same ammount of time. On the other hand some processes love being multithreaded like scanning documents. No matter how many interns you through at scanning they go faster if they each have their own scanner. So in most languages, you can just multithread a task. And as long as that task does not try to communicate with the user, or access any information that has changed since it started, the process will work fine on multiple threads, and you can make it work on almost any number. This is called beining "threadsafe" In Python however, if you try to multithread a process, it is limited to still only running 1 thread at a time.... apparently in python, the CORE of python, its os as it where, is NOT thread safe. So any threads you create are not threadsafe simply because the core is not, and they will REFUSE to run at the same time. To counteract this, python gives you Multiprocessing where you can start a brand new instance of python to run a thread for you.... this is kinda like building each intern their own entire multi floor building to scan papers in. Complete with street address. So frusturating. But I mangaged to get it working in the end.

TL:DR I hate python even more now, but I mannaged to hack my way arround it.

So we got that running on all 48 cores of isoptera, took about an hour or 2. And that is about it for week 3, at some point I took these photos. Like this one of a palm tree. And one of this palmtree with a bird nesting in it. I found out there is a pack of stray cats living on the campus. I would say feral cats, but as I understand it they are fairly domesticated by the students by now and love getting petted. No pictures of them though.

I dont remember if it was this week or last week, but at some point the electronic lock on our appartment door ran out of battery. And in a mannor supprizing nobody the battery was only accessable from the inside. Oh, and there is no manual key over ride. So the appartments sent up a guy who litterly had to drill out the lock, and completely replace it just to change the battery. And people ask me why I am agains electronic locks? Always remember, electronic locks are cool and nice, but they WILL run out of battery at some point, or the power will go out some how, and unless you have a physical override, you WILL get locked out. But who wants to carry a physical key to an electronic lock right? So just do your self a favor and make the primary lock a physical one. Only use electronic for remote access, logging entrances, or in an environment where the lock can fail open on power outage. Baring that, at least put the battery/power/aux power on the exterior of the lock, and for the love of everything make sure your credentials are using non volital storage (stuff that does not need power to keep going).

Some time mid week I got my first paycheck and went shoping. There was a bit of an internal cerfluffle about setting up payrole for us, something about not adding us as student or temp workers for insurance reasons and adding us as vendor instead. This trickled down to put us on a 2 week pay schedule starting from the first friday, but being modified by school policy saying that vendors only need to be payed within a month of the actual data.... sooooo random stuff ended up with the first check being 2.5 weeks late. Which was ok, since I was expecting it to be a week later than they said it would be, so really it was only 1.5 weeks late, and according to my friends, it was only 0.5 weeks late of what they where expecting sooooo stuff is complicated. Any who, complex internal politics asside I went shopping and picked up several things I have been waiting half a year to get. I ended up renewing my phone plan for a year, and a few other things. And I went shoping for the wonderfull list of things that has been accumulating in my trello since I got here. Including a new water bottle! It is a wonderfull 64 ounce vacume sealed stainless steal water bottle that is just perfict for filling with ice an water on a nice hot day. I also picked up a 5 gallon refillable tank and spout because apparently the water in the appartment is not the greatest for drinking. And a small vacume sealed wine cup that I use for decanting the 5 gallon jug into when I am at my computer and I just want a small drink.
In addition to those, I grabbed this wonderfull shot glass! I dont really care about the braning of it, but it is a teaspoon/tablespoon/ounces measure in addition to being a shot glass. Just perfict for liquid measures of all kinds. I also went over to the Goodwill and picked up a coat rack to hang my bath robe on. I noticed this chip in the pillar and had to snap a pic for my mom. This is as far as I can tell a styrophome pillar with a thin layer of concrete on the exterior... It may have a structural core hidden inside, but I think it is mostly decorative. Additionaly I purchased a parking pass for my car for the campus and filled up at the wonderful texas rate of $2 per gallon. An activity I am use to taking $42-$50 back home only cost $35! Man this is a great state! Natrualy I also went shoping for food and accidentaly went shopping on an empty stomach. I ended up getting so much food that I had trouble fitting in to out tiny freezer. Sad I know, but all of it was delicous, I just have to remember to get less at a time. Also, I found some REAL potatos! Take note dear mother, these are baking potatos ;)! Didnt end up getting any though, later.
And then the weekend happened. On Friday (according to the time stamp) I went to the Alamo Draft House Theater to watch Toy Story 4. Its a good movie, I would recomend it if you like Toy Story. But the amazing part is the Theater its self! It is what I would call a "Luxery" theater. To get a ticket you HAVE to go online and reserver one, and when you do you pick out your seat like you are flying on an airline or something. The first 2 rows of the theater are Recliners and I managed to snag one of those! For those of you who dont like to sit close to the screen, never fear, the first row is positioned about 1/4 to 1/2 the way back in the theater, so you are really in the 3rd or 4th traditional row. It is a great place, prioritizing experience. They have a strict non disturbance policy and anyone under 18 attending ANYTHING has to be accompanied by an adult. They have a 1 warning policy for noisy people/kids/cellphones and show a notice about it before the film. They also have a less strict "no late entry" policy where you can not enter after the movie has started, but you can still get a time exchange. In addition to being a theater, they are also a resturant. Right from your seat, durring the movie, you can order food or drinks and they will bring them to you. Infact they expect to bring them to you and ask you not to get up for popcorn refils. Each seat has a table and menu. To order, you find what you want in the menu using a convenient under the table light (which I wish you could turn off, but you cant) and then you write down your order on a peice of paper and put it vertically in a holder. A waiter will then notice it and come grab it. Later, the waiter will return with your order. They have most excelent burgers there and not bad Irish Cream. They claim to have exceptional Craft Beers and Coctails, but I didnt order either, so I woulnt know. In any case, 10/10 would recomend, and I am definitly going to see Spiderman, The Rerelease of Endgamem, and anything else interesting there. I absolutly must drag Dad there when he flys back. And that's all for week 3. On to week 4.
We managed to get the scripts all working, but we had no idea if they were actually working or not as they all generate a vector field... for those who dont know, a vector field when you draw it just ends up looking like a bunch of arrows on a blank background, kinda like this.

They are rather difficult to actually look at validate if you dont already know what you are looking for, or something else about your data. We didnt know anything so we figured, lets take the velocity's and overlay them on the actual footage used to create them. And we did. At some point we stopped using the 1080p120fps footage we started with and downsampled to 1080p15fps, which not only processes faster, but also seams to give us better results, so win win. here is the original footage and the video after we downsampled and overlayed the vector field on. Incase you dont know, long arrows are faster moving things and short arrows are slower things. In this video the blue arrows are areas with high signal to noise ratio indecating good data, and red is low signal to nois indicating possibly bad data. We still have much work to do with the results, as you can see there are some really long arrows that dont seam to actually be moving, but we will work that out later. For now we are just happy that it looks so nice! As you rewatch the footage, keep an eye out for the seaguls and the people walking. You can actually see where they are going just by where the arrows are pointing! Its great!
The 5th of 10 weeks is next week and on Wendsday the 3rd we have semi formal presentations explaining what we have done so far as if at a research comferance ish. So we are prepping for that. We have a plan for moving forward, and some ideas on what to do better. But I will talk about that next week, for now I will leave you with this. We implimented a reverse Bathymetry script and ran it on the 15 fps data. This is the resulting image.

The darkest sections are the beach and the peir, due to them not moving, the bathytmetry has no idea what to do with them and ends up thinking they are deep down. The light sections indicate sand bars, if you look at the video again you will see most of the waves break right where the edge of the light section is! That is exactly where we expected a sand bar to be! Unfortunaly, we currently dont know much about the conditions the footage was collected under so we can only speculate about accuracy and measurments. Still, this is prety cool all ready as one of our goals is to be able to detect sand bars and gaps in the same for finding rip currents. But this is all we can do this week, we are planning on gathering our own footage in week 6 so we will be able to do more then. And besides, we have a presentation to build next week! But boy is it humid here. I have aclimated to it durring the day so I dont really notice. However, there are 3 times you NOTICE!, first, at in the evenings about 8 or 9 oclock as you are leaving the store you will notice that your entire windshield is fogged up. This fog is on the out side and will reform as you drive requiring you to have your windshild wipers on to clear it. This is caused by the cool windshield from your ac blowing on it and by the cooling external temps (86 still) approaching the dew point of the air.
Next you will notice a similar dew point issue when you walk out of an air conditioned room and fog condenses on your glasses.
And lastly, you notice durring the rain, when it is so humid that the condensation will form on any and all air conditioned glass surfaces including the doors to buildings. One of the things I ddi this week was invest in an umbrella to keep the rain off. At first I went with a standard black unbrella with a push to open push to close button that worked quite well when I tried it in the store. Unfortunatly the moment I sepped out side with it and pointed it into the wind to block the rain the "push to close" features failed and the umbrealla collapesed under the wind. I fought my way out to my car to drop off my groceries and then promptly returned said umbrella and went looking for a different umbrella with one of those anoying metal tabs you have to push with your thumb to close, you know, the right angle ones. I couldnt find one. However, what I did find was an interesting design. I found an umbrella that opens inside out! That is the best way I can think to describe it. When folded up, the umbrella shows the inside rather than the outside, and the folds that usualy hold rain in and make the umbrella moldy get wider towards the tip rather than narrower allowing it to drain when placed upside down. And the points that usualy point towards the handle all point at the tip allowing you to just set it down and it will remain upright all on its own. Additionly it does have one of those 90 degree tabs to resist closing, but that is a rather moot point as any wind trying to close the umbrella actually forces it open instead! On the flip side, if the wind ever catches the underside of the umbrella it wont try to turn inside out, but will rather instanly collapse (if the button is pressed atleast). Here is a picture of the design I found online.

This design is ingeneous! It is hard to belive all umbrellas are not like this. In the event the wind trys to steal your umbrella, you just hit the button and all the surface area dissapears, it stands on its own, and resits the wind trying to collapse it when blocking rain. I dont think it can turn inside out like a regular umbrella, and as an addded bonus, the inverted mechanism means you can fold it up while entering your car. I tested it a bit, and you can lean it on your shoulder with your head up agains the inner fabric and it will still collapse with no issues. Such a great design. I had originaly passed this umbrella because of its blue and white cloud pattern and cane hook handle, but after trying the other umbrella and playing with the mechanism a bit, I emediatly bought this one (same price too conveneitnly). Best Idea EVER! I returned to the car nice and dry (well, my top half atleast). My only complaint is that they did not have a 2 person model of this so I could keep my waist dry too. Oh, I think I may have forgot to mention, the rain here falls at a 45 degree angle or worse here. There is no point to putting your umbrella over your head, that wont keep you dry, you have to angle the umbrella into the wind. This several times made me wish for the last improvement I would make... Clear Fabric so you can see where you are going. I can only think of 1 better umbrealla possible

Well, I guess it could be better if it was also a cane sword or bullet proof, but eh, lets stay reasonable eh? Any way, I will see you all in another week or two!