Uncovering Ancient Secrets

Day 16

I did some image processing today on the St. Catherine's data. I found that I really enjoy the process. It is really satisfying to bring the under-text from indistinguishable to boldly visible. I feel like I am uncovering words long forgotten, and reading (or at least looking at) texts which have not been read in thousands of years potentially. Still no further on the challenge, although I have ruled out a few possibilities. I feel like all of us are over-thinking it.

Where O Where Can the Platypus Be?

Day 15

I essentially finalized the template today. Alongside that, Roger came downstairs and taught me how to process the data collected from St. Catherine's Monastery. It's a lot of steps, but I think I understand it well enough. Also, we got our second challenge today. Olivia and I are going to have to find the CIS Platypus, which apparently has been hidden somewhere. It seems much more challenging than last week, although I think I have some of it figured out. Good luck to all the interns, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Guinea Pigs

Day 14

A lot happened today. I figured out how to create a drop down menu for the website, and was able to optimize the HTML code. In the afternoon, I had a meeting with Roger and a grad student, in which I learned a lot about image processing. The images need to be compiled into data cubes before they can be processed however, and as the computer I am working with only has 1GB of memory, I am going to have to wait until Roger makes the data cubes before I begin processing. After the meeting, I did a perception experiment with Mike, Denise, and Nick which was kind of cool. I sat in front of a screen and infrared lights were projected onto my eyes. A sensor then tracked my eyes as I was shown a series of images. It was really interesting, but I was disoriented after sitting in the dark in front of a screen for 20 minutes. I am glad I was able to help them out though.

TED Talks and Templates

Day 13

Not much happened today. I redesigned the webpage template to make it more efficient and accessible. Also, I went to the Entrepreneur Video Lunch, which was much better this week than last week's presentation. It was a series of TED Talks which were on cool new imaging technology. Other than that, nothing much happened.

You Never Know

Day 12

You know how I said I gave up on Greek? Well today, Bethany and Bob started a new competition, in which us interns work in groups of two to solve problems involving imaging science. I was partnered with Nick, and lo and behold, the first task was to decipher an English message written in red, which was beneath a lot of green, Greek text. I realized right away that this was my time to shine, and quickly got to work scanning the image (Bethany had to help me set up the scanner, and I learned that she has a Perry the Platypus key-chain, awesome!). Anyways I got Nick, and with a few image level adjustments we were able to isolate the text. I was ready to finish up with that and submit our answer when Nick pointed out that the text was actual writing, not just gibberish. (Seriously, good catch there Nick because I never would have caught that) Optical Character Recognition was the first thing I tried, but it was unable to detect the Greek text. I'm not sure why but I set to work translating the text by hand. It took about two hours, but by the end I was translating it as fast as I could read it. It wasn't anything special, just a discourse on Imaging Science, but in the process of translating I learned something: Greek. It just goes to show you that you never know where the day is going to take you, and sometimes you stumble upon an answer to your problem when you least expect it. I now know every Greek character and its English counterpart, so while translating took a long time, it was a very worthwhile experience.

NOVA, ISS, and OSA(Other Similar Acronyms)

Day 11

Well, I have pretty much given up on the whole learning Greek thing. It has turned out to be  much harder task then I first thought it could be. On the flip-side, I finally figured out the mouse-over effect for the website. All the tutorials I found were way too complicated then they needed to be, and the answer was actually quite simple. So, I am essentially done with formatting and creating the website template, though I need to make sure that it is perfect before I copy it 500 times. Also, Roger gave me a DVD with a NOVA video on the Palimpsest to watch, and so I invited some of the other interns down to my lab. I seemed to be the only one who watched and enjoyed (or understood) it though. This morning, the Women Engineers at RIT (WE@RIT) had a HAM radio conference with Sunita Williams, a female astronaut currently maintaining the International Space Station(ISS). It was a very cool experience, even though we felt out of place amongst the school-aged kids who seemed to be the primary audience. The young girls in the program asked a variety of interesting and humorous questions during the brief 10-minute fly-over, the best of which was: "Do you age slower in space?"

Nothing New

Day 10

I almost finished resizing the jpgs and attempted (without success) to incorporate mouse-over effects for the website. Roger told me that his hardrive with the Saint Catherine's data crashed, and that I might be doing some processing to replace the images he lost from the Saint Catherine's Palimpsest.

Some days are good, Some are bad, And some are just confusing

Day 9

Yesterday (I am writing this on Friday) was one of those weird days where you get a lot of work done, but you can't exactly pinpoint one task you completed. All the .tif files are officially converted to .jpg now, and the folder layout and icons for the website are essentially finished. I really couldn't tell you exactly what I did yesterday, only what I got accomplished.

War: In and Out of the lab

Day 8

First things first, today was the first day of our assassin game (Codename: Derez). It was a lot of fun, until someone complained, and now it looks like the game might be cancelled. On the plus side, I managed to stay alive, and kill two targets (Sorry for the sneaky trap, Bethany). Although my computer crashed, (AGAIN) I was able to convert nearly all of the files today, which was really exciting. However, Roger isn't sure how Will Noel feels about the project, so the site may not even be published. Regardless of the outcome, this internship is shaping up to be a lot of fun so far. I have learned so much about science, and history. That's the great part about my project, I get to experience both. Also the people, especially the interns, are really nice and good-spirited. I really enjoy the camaraderie and the environment. And so, I leave you on that note my devoted readers. Until tomorrow!

It's all ελληνικά to me

Day 7

What a day! Roger was back and I was able to show him what I've been working on for the past few days. Also, I finished all the downloads!!! This simple fact, while very exciting, spurred consternation galore. You see, while I have converted a few files already, I didn't realize until today how long converting all 500 files would take. At the current rate, I wouldn't have them all converted until next Friday, and that's assuming the computer wouldn't crash AND that I worked on nothing else. So, I decided to find an alternative to Photoshop conversion. Luckily I found an easy program that will let me convert all of the files at once, so providing the slight loss of quality is not an issue, I could finish the conversion in one day. In the down time during the few conversions I did today, I found a website to start learning Greek. After about an hour, all I can say is WOW. I've got my work cut out for me. I have learned the alphabet, but that will only help me so far if I actually want to read the palimpsest. The language itself seems rather complicated so, I guess I'll have to do my best. Of course, this is all assuming that the modern Greek alphabet is similar to that of 2000 years ago, and that the translations are similar. If not, attempting to translate could end up being a lot like banging my head against the wall. Which is great if you enjoy that sort of thing, but cerebral contusions aren't really my cup of tea.

Welcome Brennan!

Day 6

Today was pretty standard  except for one thing. Brennan finally showed up, and I would like to officially welcome him to the intern team, so Brennan, if you are reading this blog, I hope your first day went smoothly. I almost finished downloading the images, I converted some of them, and I worked on the icons for the website. I also took inventory of which images I need to download and convert. I didn't have any time to do so today, but hopefully I can start teaching myself Greek tomorrow.

Grilling in the Great Outdoors

 Day 5

Today was really nice. In the morning, I set up some downloads to run, and went upstairs to the Insight lab to see what David was doing, and help him out. I feel kind of bad, because his computer has linux on it so I wasn't really able to help him. Later we went outside and had an amazing lunch of grilled burgers and hotdogs. I got some good work done on the template, and designed some of the icons, although I had to redesign them three different times. I also learned quite a lot about the palimpsest today, as well as the actual texts of Archimedes. At first, the task of this internship seemed a little daunting, but as time goes on I am finding myself increasingly immersed in the history and culture behind what I am working on. I really like the stuff I'm working with, my only wish is that I could actually read the text itself. So, at the suggestion of Jarek and David, I have decided that I am going to try to learn Greek writing, and actually decipher some of Archimedes work (It will be a nice time occupier while I wait for the files to convert). The best part of today though, is that I have downloaded over 60% of the files. Week one is complete, and I am well on my way to finishing this website.

Also, I thought that I would show anyone who hasn't already seen these images an example of what I am working with. On the top is a true color image of the page, and as you can see the Archimedes text is virtually unreadable. On the bottom is a processed image which shows the Archimedes text in red. Cool huh.

Is it just me, or does technology hate me?

Day 4

Today had it's ups and downs. I downloaded a good amount of the files, and converted some of them. I also ran out of disc space, which is ironic because there are at least 10 if not more external hard drives in my lab, each having at least half a terabyte of storage. My downloads crashed midway through because their target drive had no memory, and the computer was locked up for about half an hour. Luckily, Roger found me an old drive with some deletable files on it so that should cease to be a problem. I also had trouble getting into the reading room to get my lunch, and in full panic mode, I went back to my lab to email Bob. With no response, and my lunch break ticking away, I decided to head back upstairs and try the door again. My ID still failed to register, and even though I didn't say anything to him, a random guy stopped to help me open the door. That's why I really like working at RIT. People who I don't even know are willing to help an inexperienced newbie like myself. Later Bob came down to ask if my card was working okay, and told me he would encourage the other interns to come down and visit me. I guess whatever he said worked because naught ten minutes later Jarek showed up. I guess he felt like some company too, (he's by himself in the basement, like me) because he stayed and talked for a while. It was nice to have some company and to show another intern what I've been working on. So let that be a lesson to all you upstairs interns reading this blog: don't forget about us basement folks. All in all though, today was a pretty good day.

Templates (Yep, thats the only title I can think of)

Day 3

Well, I got a lot done today. I fixed the broken links from yesterday, and nearly finalized the main website template (Hoorah!). Also, I started on the long process of downloading and converting all of the raw data files for the palimpsest. I am making progress on the book Roger gave me (to read when the computer is agonizingly slow, or while files are converting) about the project. It's actually quite interesting, and has helped me fill in some of the background info on the Archimedes Palimpsest and its restoration.

Website Blues and the Frustration of Broken Links

Day 2

Today I went about the process of designing the main pages of the website. At first, I was a little lost with all the different file names, (of which there are thousands) and varying document analysis methods, but Roger helped set me straight on most of it. Also, it seems like one of the most time consuming parts of the website might be locating some of the files, which may require downloading from the current site. However, the current site is very inaccessible (if you don't believe me go to archimedespalimpsest.net) so that may be a bit difficult. So, without many workable files, my main task that I set to accomplish today was creating an image browser. I worked out a decent format, created some thumbnails, and was all set to go, but when I copied the files to their resident folder, none of the links worked. SO, to make a long story short, tomorrow I need to go back and recreate the base links so that I don't build the whole site on broken links.

How many interns does it take to find 36 random items on a large college campus?

Day 1

Today we had our first day as interns at RIT, and while the day was fun I am kind of overwhelmed. Right after the morning meeting we were separated into different groups for a scavenger hunt. Even though my group (And I know your names now; Olivia, Tyler, Denise, and Sadie) had some trouble finding the objects at first (despite the help of a list from Tyler's Dad) we still had a lot of fun getting lost. Now however, I can honestly say that I know more about getting lost than ever before! After that we were treated to some delicious potato pizza (I didn't even know that existed), and edited video clips from our campus wide escapade into a coherent mess of slow-motion and crazy antics. Sadly, our group lost, no wait, tied for second out of the three groups there, but on the plus side we won a plethora of paper plate awards. Once we had heard the judges verdict we each separated into our separate labs. I am working, as indicated by the title of my blog, in the Historical Document Restoration lab, which is in itself, a misnomer. In reality, the work of the lab involves visual analysis using various imaging techniques (such as ultraviolet light spectroscopy, and x-ray imaging) to uncover ancient texts which have been covered over with other writings. There isn't any real alteration or restoration done to the documents. Anyways, the focus of my summer will be on the Archimedes Palimpsest, an ancient manuscript written by Archimedes, which has been scraped off and used as parchment for a prayer book. Roger Easton, (for anyone who doesn't already know, Roger is one of the imaging scientists responsible for the work on the Archimedes Palimpsest) went over my goal this summer which is to create a decent alternative to the current website for the project, which will be more accessible for scholars. Although a lot of my work will consist of HTML programming and file conversion, I am excited (I know most people would probably not feel the same way). Like Roger said, even when the work gets tedious, it's important, and will be greatly appreciated. Plus, I get to work with images which, although I can't read Greek, are still really cool, and it's exciting to know their history, and the science that helped to produce them. Like I said it's a lot to take in. So now I will just sit back with a glass of ice water, and let the day's events sink in.