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Not much has happened over the past week to go in to detail about, so I thought I would turn this a little more introspective. But first... I did put together / take part in an awesome slip and slide event / barbecue / amazingness this afternoon / evening. We set up the slip and slide, made refreshments, made burgers, invited friends over, slipped, slid, built a ramp for the slip and slide, and consequently slipped and slid through the air. It was much fun. Also consequently to the slip and slide (and likely its airborne nature) my right leg is too sore to lift more than about three inches. But anyway, the evening is being concluded with some ice cream, some writing, and some coding.

Now on to other topics. This summer has already been an amazing experience. I still miss home, miss being around a lot of special people in my life that I am very close to; however, I am getting to know a lot of new people here from a lot of different places and that have a lot of different perspectives on life. I came to the realization a couple weeks ago that I am here, I put myself in this situation, this life, so I might as well take advantage of it. I would say that I really have been taking advantage, getting to see a lot of new things, working with a lot of distinguished people, and, once again, gaining a lot of new perspectives on life. I am extremely happy about all of this, but getting this chance has also thrown my plans for the future out the window and for really the first time in my life, I am questioning what I want to do with it.

I have always been the kid with the plan, that knows exactly what he wants to do when he grows up, and have been on a rocky, but distinct, path toward that. For at least the past four or five years, that path has been toward grad school, toward a PhD, toward becoming a professor. I am now starting to wonder if that is what I really want. Hell, I'm starting to wonder why it was this path I magically came up with and have stuck to for year after year. So now I am finding myself in the situation of essentially doing work as if I were a PhD student, and I don't know if its what I want. Getting a PhD means spending six years trying to focus in on some tiny, minuscule problem, and become the world expert on that topic. While becoming a world expert sounds awesome, I just can't see myself focusing on some tiny little problem for that long.

An undergraduate degree (and master's) is about breadth, its about learning the basis of an entire field so that you can then apply yourself in that field and fill some need. A PhD is about depth, its about becoming the world renowned leader in some tiny little area. I am working with these people, and I realize I am about breadth. There are a few people I am working with (primarily professors) that are geniuses, they just get it, their minds catch things faster and with more comprehension than anyone else, even if it has nothing to do with their field. But the vast majority of the post-doc department members (already have their PhDs), and PhD students really aren't that smart over all, they are just really super knowledgable in their sub-(sub-sub-)subjects. They are experts in their tiny area of the field, but as you get further away from their area of expertise, they know less and less. I am the exact opposite. I know a decent amount about a lot of things, but not a huge amount about any one topic. I find all areas of computer science (along with 20 million other areas you can find in and out school) interesting enough that I like to study them, I like to come up to date, I like to understand them, and use logic and reasoning to apply and expand that understanding, but I have no real interest in focusing on them. I have no interesting in spending 5 years figuring out why one fly's wing has a different pattern on it from another fly's wings based off in what climate their larvae developed. For that reason, I am questioning whether a PhD program is the right path for me.

Speaking of this, I am also questioning whether I want to focus on computer science, digital arts, or some blend of the two. One option I am considering is a Masters in Entertainment Technology (MET) degree. This is essentially a two year masters program that blends comp sci and digital arts to be geared toward the entertainment industry. The MET is a degree that is only offered in the US at Carnegie Mellon. I believe that they created it, but I am not positive. Anyway, they offer the degree through the Entertainment Technology Center (part of CMU) which is primarily based in Pittsburgh, but also has satellite campuses (that students can choose to attend for part of the degree) in Redwood City / Mountain View (CA), Portugal, Japan, and Singapore. The only thing remotely close to this program that I have been able to find would be getting a Masters in Fine Arts, focusing on digital media (but that drops a lot of the CS side of everything, something I really don't want).

So essentially I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I am working my butt off and getting to know a little bit about the world while I am here, so that in a few months I will actually be able to decide what I want to do with life, the universe, and everything.

The World of Music (and Other Wonderful Adventures)

Last weekend I went in to work because Laura and I needed to get some analysis done before the week started, and Laura asked me if I would like to go to the symphony. Apparently, a group from DRP was going, but Laura had actually bought ticket's with her boyfriend before the outing was planned. Anyway, her boyfriend is out of town, so she had the extra ticket. For the most part, I blindly accepted, and found myself running home a few hours later to change in to appropriate attire. I met back up with the group at DRP (down the street from CMU), and we all carpooled downtown to the concert hall. We got there with plenty of time, and spent an hour or so sitting outside talking. I didn't realize how massive the concert hall was until after we walked inside. There were two levels, with thousands of seats each, plus a third level of box seating that was close to the stage. As we walked in and took our seats, the Pittsburgh symphony orchestra was down on the stage playing some mellow music in the background. After sitting for a couple minutes, the lights dimmed, and the conductor soon walked out on to the stage. Within a few seconds the orchestra was tuned and they began playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony (aka Ode to Joy). They continued to play through all four movements over the next hour, which was completed by an erupting of cheers and applause. After the third encore, the applause finally started to die down and everyone filed out of the hall. Shortly after meeting back up with everyone I was in a car heading back home. The rest of the night ended up being a small social night at thee Sigma Nu house, that finally ended after a late night snack at a 24 hour restaurant at about four in the morning.

The next day I met up with a friend of a friend from Stetson who is doing an internship at CMU over the summer, as well as another intern I have befriended. We hopped on a bus heading downtown toward the Three Rivers Art Festival. It is a 10 day art festival (that I went back to on Tuesday, and will be going to again tonight) featuring a huge bunch of booths with local art vendors, as well as various concerts and shows. Once we got off the bus, it took us a while to actually figure out where the art show was, but after getting directions for multiple groups of people, we finally made our way to the show. It was primarily set up in a park that stretched out to the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers come together to form the Ohio river. There were plenty of food stands set up, and some other interesting art boothes, but nothing that really struck our eyes. Shortly after getting to the festival a band started playing on the main stage. They were just a basica rock group, witha slight country sound, nothing too special. After they finished their set, an awesome New Orleans Jazz Brass group came up, called the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. They got the entire field of people dancing for the next hour while they did their set, it was tons of fun! After their set was over, the park cleared pretty quickly, including us, and we hopped on a bus back to CMU.

I ended up heading downtown with some friends again on thursday. We got this delicious Baked Zitti Pizza from a little local pizza shop, and then walked back down to the festival. We caught the end of a country band, and met up with another friend. She was out with some over friends, so we combined our adventuring powers and drove down to the south side, after getting lost and circling around downtown twice, to a cool little ice cream place. It was just a lone building standing in the middle over nowhere that only took cash, had a gigantic menu of various frozen delights, and served giant portions. After devouring our ice cream we made our way home.

On thursday I went with the DRP interns to Kennywood, Pittsburgh's local theme park. We all met up at DRP at about 4:00, and carpooled about forty-five minutes to the park. We entered the park and started thee fun with the intention of all staying together, but within about one or two rides everyone had broken up in to group of 4 or 5 to go explore the park together. My group ended up staying at the park almost til close, crossing off the last major ride in the park at about 10:30. My only slight regret was getting on a water ride right as the day was starting to cool down, so I was still wet when I got home six hours later. Other than that, the park was bundles of fun.

Now for the next adventure, as soon as I finish writing this, I am going to be packing up a suitcase to head to Ohio for the weekend. A friend needs to go home to do some things for the day, so a few of us are heading down there for an adventure! Also, I have about 100 picture that I will hopefully get to upload by the end of the weekend :-).

The Research Project

So I am finally getting my research problem narrowed down. In case you are interested, here is what would essentially be the abstract to a proposal paper for the project:

We are planning to conduct an experiment to measure what parts of a Duchenne smile people use to evaluate if an animated smile is genuine or sincere. We are choosing to focus on the the dynamics of the smile, rather than static modeling methods or techniques. Previous work in this area has primarily dealt with the attack, sustain, and release timing of various elements of the smile. We plan to focus mainly on the intensity of a particular element, while matching the timing to actual data of people smiling. We will be recording people watching videos that invoke positive emotion, so that we can record the natural and sincere smiles produced. We will then record the people, while we ask them to respond to prompts, by voluntarily smiling based off a situation presented in the prompt. Using this data we will use Active Appearance Models to analyze various measurements, such as cheek displacement, eyebrow displacement, and upper and lower eyelid displacement. We also plan to analyze the existence of crow's feet and develop a quantifiable measurement that can be used for animation. Next, we will develop a series of smile animations, each with varying intensities of the previously mentioned elements. We will then use these animations in a survey, asking people to rate how natural, sincere, and genuine the smiles are. We will also keep track of the time it takes for people to make their decisions about each smile as another possible measure of analysis. Lastly, we will use statistical analysis to evaluate how much each of the various elements of an animated Duchenne smile affect a person's perception of that smile.