Musical Visualization

As the final project for my Media Studies class, we had to create an approximately 2 minute abstract video. I chose to create one based on the song Intro by the xx and the result is shown below:

The process of creating this video was long and tedious at times. I began by listening to the song multiple times and identifying the time at which each major note occurred. I placed these times along with the sound which goes with them in a huge list in an Excel spreadsheet:

Then, I had the complicated process of selecting the shapes which would be used and determining their location on the screen so that I could enter the information into the animation software which I was using, POV-ray. I first determined all of the information I need within the same spreadsheet as shown above. I then entered the information into POV-ray which I could then use to render the necessary frames.

The problem with this process was that it was really easy to enter information incorrectly which could cause the frames to appear incorrectly. In the example below, the three frames should be nearly identical but due to an error in the code, the third frame experiences an unexpected jump.

I had a really hard time figuring out this problem, but with help from my professor I was eventually able to get it working correctly. Then next problem I encountered was in actually compiling the frames into the final product. To do this, I used Windows Live Movie Maker. However, it seemed at first that the only amount of time each frame could be displayed was 0.03 seconds per frame. This caused a problem because when all the frames were compiled, the movie was about 1 minute 50 seconds long instead of the necessary 2 minutes and 3 seconds. This caused all of the timing to be off, which was extremely frustrating. However, I soon found that I could set the movie to play at 0.03333 frames per second, which ultimately achieved the desired effect.

The final project consists of 3700 unique frames, about 2,500 lines of code in POV-ray, and multiple days worth of work. However, I am ultimately very pleased with the final product.

New Phone, New Room

This has been a week with all sorts of new stuff going on. Early in the week we completed room draw (the process in which we select our rooms for next year based on year and a random number - mine was 110). Lucky for me, I got the room that I wanted! Next year I will be living in a suite similar to that of my freshman year in Atwood. I will have a single along with Katie, Madeline, Carling, and 5 incoming frosh. We were all so happy that we got a suite together and that it worked out so perfectly.

I also got and activated my new phone - the HTC Amaze. I have only had a little time to play with it, but so far it seems great!

I also found some new music, Hush Sound, The xx, and Explosions in the Sky all of which is wonderful!

That's about it.

San Diego

For USLI we are required to conduct a series of educational engagement events. For these events, we are supposed to work with younger children with some hands-on activity in order to boost their interest in rocketry. To do this, Tessa and I met Jeb in San Diego in order to conduct an event with some kids that his mom found for us.

We drove out to San Diego last night and stayed the night at Jeb's house. This morning we conducted the event with a small group of home schooled children. It was a very successful event overall and all of the kids had a great time building and launching their rockets. The only problems were a couple broken fins, singed parachutes, and a few which landed in the empty pool nearby.

After the rocketry event, Tessa, Jeb, and I decided to spend some time hanging out around San Diego. Jeb took us to the botanical garden which was beautiful!

After the botanical garden we visited Jeb's grandparents at their house so that he could say goodbye before coming back to Mudd. Then, we headed to the outdoor mall for a quick bit of shopping, but did not find anything particularly interesting. We concluded the day with some dinner with Jeb's family. Jeb's dad then drove us the two hours back to Mudd, thus concluding our trip to San Diego.

Aquarium Trip

Today I went to the Aquarium with a bunch of other Mudd students as a spring break event. It was a bit of a drive to get there from Mudd, but it was a nice way to spend some time over break. There was a lot of the normal stuff: all kinds of fish and some marine animals.

The aquarium also had otters which were adorable! But they were really difficult to photograph, as usual.

One of the more interesting things at this aquarium were the baby sharks. The aquarium does this thing where it cuts open the shark eggs and inserts a clear plastic screen so that you can see the sharks growing inside. It was absolutely fascinating since you can see them moving and everything inside the egg.

Finally, the aquarium also had a few other random animals which seem to have nothing to do with aquatic life:

Abstract Symmetry

This semester I am taking a class called Harmony of Sound and Light in which we explore the combination of music and moving forms. For our midterm project we had to create a silent film which explores some of the concepts of color and form which we have discussed in class. I am really happy with the way mine turned out:

Summer Research

This summer I will be staying at Mudd to do summer research with one of the CS professors at Mudd, Prof. Z Sweedyk. I working with her and about 10 other students on a project which is polishing and testing educational video games for middle school students across the country.

Prof. Z teaches a class here at Mudd in which students for large groups to design and create a educational video game. Schools (and classes) from all around the country suggest a certain type of game or idea that they would like to introduce into their curriculum. The class then works on these projects throughout the semester. At the end of the year, Prof. Z hires a summer staff to polish these games and work with the students to test them.

This semester there are 14 games which have been / are being created. At the start of summer research, we will test the games ourselves and decide which games seem the most promising and what issues need to be addressed. We will also meet with students from some of the schools to have them test the games and gather feedback on what improvements they would like to see. Then, we will break into small groups and work on polishing the games over the course of the summer.

The games are most commonly developed in Python, which is a fairly easy language to pick up and work on. There is also the possibility that we would have some sort of game development workshop for children which we would organize and put on during one week of the summer.

One of the classes which has a game in development is a middle school computer science in Hawaii. There is a chance that if we decide that this is one of the games we want to work on, we may travel to Hawaii to have the game tested by the students there. However, there are also games being developed for schools in California and other mainland states.

It sounds like we will be working from about 10 to 3 everyday, and longer depending on need and how we are feeling about our projects. Prof. Z has also suggested that we will have a number of fun events as a research group including dinners and potentially a concert at some point during the summer.

I am so excited to be working on this project and it will be fun to see what California is like in the summer! I will probably be living on campus with the other research students, which should be a lot of fun. I know it will be a great experience and a nice break from school.

Tie-Dye with Dad

Today, Liza, Nick, and I went over to my Dad's house to make some tie-dyed shirts! Dad's tie-dye is the best you can find, so we thought it would be a lot of fun to learn how to make some of our own! We each took turns first tying and then dying the shirts (after learning how it is done, of course). It was a lot of fun, and I hope that the shirts turn out well!

Nick decided to make a black spider shirt:

Finishing up the shirt with rubber bands.

Adding color to one side of the shirt, the other will be black.

Liza had three shirts to make, but it all went well!

Dad helping Liza get started.

Dad and Liza tying her first shirt.

Liza's second shirt.

Liza's third shirt.

Liza adding color to her spider shirt.

Nick's shirt is the upper right, and the other three are Liza's shirts.

I decided to do a nice green and blue ribbed shirt:

Checking the edge to keep it straight.

Tying my ribbed shirt.

Dad helping me with the sleeve of my shirt.

Adding color to my shirt!

The (semi) finished product :)

Tie-dying is so cool and very pretty! We got to see Dad work on a bunch of different shirts as samples throughout the day! Overall, it was really fun!

Dad's example for a ribbed shirt.

A bunch of the dye bottles lined up in rainbow order.

The clean white shirts after being tied.

Dad adding dye to the white shirts.

The finished first side of some rainbow ribbed shirts.

The second side of the ribbed shirts before adding more dye.

Dad adding dye to the second side of the shirts.