Christina's COSMOS Blog

2006-08-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

Monday: in the morning, we came to the lab and worked on our final project. we found out that we had to do the poster on a powerpoint slide. it took me forever to understand how we were going to fit a tri-board size board info onto one powerpoint. but after changing the margins, it worked fine. sam and i ended up working on it for 1.5 hrs at night. but yeah anyways, after lunch at the price center, we went upstairs for our session with joe. we went back to a deep discussion of what is life. i really liked it. and then afterwards, we went to the lab again. i worked on the picture slideshows and the cool effects we could do with them. the night activities were really boring. evelyn, eric and i ended up watching the 2nd half of benchwarmers. then we, or i, fell asleep on the couch for like 5 min. when it was floor time, our suite attacked the other suite with a pillow fight. pretty awesome. but then the 1st floor suite copied us and went around with their pillows. lame.

Tuesday: in the morning we went to the lab and worked on our final project. we finished our poster, it looks awesome. on the computer at least. and then i finished my "law&order" intro slideshow thing. its pretty cool to be able to zoom out and stuff. lunch was fun with lucia. in the afternoon was more lab time.

2006-07-31T00:15:00.000-07:00

so i forgot to blog for the past few days. but a few highlights- we started our projects. we came up with a script and started to do a bit of filming here and there. i've done some stuff with pics for a slideshow type thing at the end of the video. i've been having an awesome time with the girls in my suite. we've gotten a lot closer, having lots of fun with roxanne and stuff. we had a floor party which was awesome. it was sam, roxanne, and me. we fooled around until 3. the san diego zoo was also a lot more fun than i expected. we also had a talent show tonight, which was pretty awesome. oh and last night, i played tennis with lucia, james, and james' friend. SO much fun. savages! haha. but yeah, im really bummed that there is only a wk left. enjoy to the max!

2006-07-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

in the morning, beth & roshni gave us some more codes. we got codes on how to make collages, make negatives, grayscale and crazy rainbow designs. then we went to the lab and played around. each of us made a collage. after lunch in the price center, we came back to the lab and worked on videos, with a little bit of tetrinet on the side ;)

2006-07-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

today was so much funn! the discovery lecture was alright-it was about natural selection and stuff. evelyn, tristan, and i ended up playing MASH. w00t. and then during our sesh with lara, we watched some more powerpoints. juan did his on corporations, which led into some really good discussions. so then we went to the computer lab to get our group camcorders. and then we played tetrinet again. eric, melissa, sam, and i stayed a bit longer to play. so we went to lunch late. but then after lunch was really fun. we went to the petco park. we got to see the stadium and all the behind the scenes camera work. then we got to full around with the cameras ourselves. and both on the way there and back, we were racing. lindsey's car vs james car. lindsey's car won the first time :), but then james won the second time. we were rocking the car and speeding, pretty awesomee :D

2006-07-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Sunday: so it was parent visitation day. but my mom didnt come until lunch time. so instead, i listened to some pretty awesome/crazy stories from sam (the guy). when my mom came, we went to eat lunch at this seafood restuarant and then went for boba. then we just went to a coffee shop and talked. it was pretty nice. and then after i came back, it was like dinner time. freaking full though. after a floor meeting, my group and i went to the computer lab to work on our mini movie. but we didnt get too much done because it took a long time to get the actual file.

Monday: in the morning we had a lecture on how to scale pictures. i actually got it this time, which was amazing, with some of tristan's help. in the afternoon, we worked on our mini videos. since my group finished, we played tetrinet! woot, i got everyone into it. we were kinda loud too. but it was so much fun. at night, we had a bonfire. right when we got there, evelyn, tristan and i took a "long walk on the beach". we actually walked really far. but yeah, the beach was really nice. the sand was soft and the waves were low. cant wait to go full into the water!

2006-07-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

we went to balboa park todayyy! even though it was extremely hot. there was this cool fountain that evelyn and i wanted to go in, but we didnt. first we went to watch this imax movie, Greece. it was kinda boring. lots of the guys fell asleep. i almost did. but the music was pretty awesome, and some of the scenery. i guess i did learn some stuff about ancient greece. afterwards, 5 of us went to the japanese friendship garden. it was SUPER hot and quite short. so i got this one guy to hose me. and then we went to the san diego museum of art, which was air conditioned. some cool exhibits like the andy warhol exhibit. we saved enough time to go to the museum of photographic arts. some of the pictures of current events like of what's happening in iraq were really eye-opening. so we got back to ERC around 4:30, and i was really tired. some of us brought out sheets and layed on the grass making friendship bracelets. after dinner, we wanted to play tennis, and walked to different sets of crts, but there was a tournament and crt cleaning. so i only played for like 5 min which was a disappointment. i havent played in quite a while. but yeah, when i came back, i got a spot to go get ice cream with lindsey. we went to downtown la jolla, got some ice cream and walked around. even though most of the shops were closed, it was still really nice to walk around and get off campus.

2006-07-21T15:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday: the discovery lecture in the morning was quite good. the speaker presented on tsunamis and the proper actions to take when a tsunami might be happening. the speaker walked around the stage, had some humor, and was thus an overall good presenter. afterwards, we had our sesh with lara, which was lots of fun. my group presented our ADHD powerpoint, oh man, lots of laughs there. and then mindi's & lucia's powerpoint was also hilarious. so it was definitely a time of lots of laughs. oh and i forgot to mention that gotcha had started in the morning. so at lunch, we were all running back to find out about the new safety. it was to hold ur nalgene bottle in your left hand. my target was running to her room after lunch, and i followed her. but she stopped on the stairs which is safe. but when she got off the stairs, she wasnt holding her bottle properly, so i "got her". and then my next target was juan in my cluster. i tagged juan on the stairs, which doesnt count, but i gave myself away :(. so the afternoon wasnt that interesting. we had a college fair, and half of it was about the SATs which was useless info. during our free time, roxanne toook some ppl from my floor to go get boba:) taro was sooo good. and then i brought some drinks back for other ppl-it leaked in the car. after our floor meeting, a couple of us wanted to go play tennis, but we couldnt. so i made friendship bracelets, which is prob my new fav thing to do, considering that i finally figured out how. pathetic, i know. so at night, we did karoke! which i also found quite fun. it made me want to go home and do it

Friday: so i just realized that 2 wks have gone by. thats really sad. i want my time at COSMOS to last as long as possible. i really really like the people here, and just the program and in general. but anyways, in the morning was our time with christine/roshni/beth. i got a bit fustrated in the lab cuz i couldnt think of the right programs. i get it after i see it written out, which is in fact useless. and then at lunch, i didnt feel like going back to cafe V, so some of us went to price center. our safety for the morning was to be tied to someone. so we all looked oh-so-cool. but yeah, then we came back and had our time with paul + nakul. i really enjoy the animation stuff/working with photoshop and stuff. we also received our assignments for our groups this morning. samantha, tristan & jon are in my group. im happy :) and we got our first assignment from paul-to make a 1 minute video was good effects. we planned it all out, its gonna be good.

2006-07-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

this morning was actually quite fustrating, though i did learn a lot. after an hour lecture with christine, we went down to the lab and worked on mirroring images horizontally and vertically. i get the concept, but sometimes i just have difficulty in actually carrying it out. and translating it into jython. but with lots of help from roshni, tristan and i did it!

so after lunch and some more clicking heels, we came back to the lab to work on animations. it's pretty cool and kinda a complicated process. first u have to play with photoshop. then transfer everything to adobe premiere. sometimes it can be a tedious process. so during the 2 hr lab time, i did some animation, powerpoint, goof around. pretty cool

2006-07-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

the discovery lecture was pretty interesting in the morning. the speaker talked about diabetes and these glucose machines. it's pretty cool that these devices allow insulin to always be circulating in the body. however, duirng the lecture, i did notice that quite a few ppl were asleep in the audience. but anyways, then we had our time with lara. and we went over some powerpoint etiquette. we got a little glimpse of her OC power point:) then we had three groups give us some bkgd info on the thursday speaker. mindi had tons of energy, as usual. and then she gave us a quiz. katie and forrest and melanie and gq had good presentations-informative & funny. instead of price center for lunch, i went back to cafe V. and in the afternoon we worked some more with slide rules with joe. pretty intense math with such a simple device.

at night, we had a jello fight! though there was only enough jello for about 5 minutes of fighting. maybe not even 5 minutes. but it was still fun. i've never done it before, or a food fight either. very sticky afterwards though. nothing that a quick shower and some laundry couldnt fix:)

2006-07-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

Monday: in the morning we worked with kermit. so that was a bit fustrating cuz im not that good at programming yet. i couldnt quite figure out the right combination of colors so that kermit would become blue without the bkgd changing color. but it was pretty cool. and then this is also the first day of liberalization! so we went to price center to eat lunch, when it started running with the sun bright. pretty awesome. in the afternoon, we edited videos. i really like the different things that you can do, as far as the effects go. the multimedia stuff is interesting. and the programming stuff is a challenge. so i think overall its a good combination.
at night, i made a duct tape wallet! this was pretty cool. evelyn made a wallet with me, and we both got confused by the directions. so we kinda did our own little thing. tristan made a rose and matt made sandals.

2006-07-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday: so i dont really sleep-in and ended up eating breakfast at the same time. then we brought out a bunch of extra bed sheets and lay on the grass. talking. music. chatting. pretty relaxing. oh and i did laundry too with tristan. what a cool guy (inserted upon request :) then james was cool and took us to play tennis, where i scrapped my finger. ouch. after lunch, i found a new love-soccer. lucia was doing all these cool tricks, which made me want to do it. pretty awesome. so it was tristan, lucia, and me playing for about an hour. afterwards, we these outback challenge ppl came. i was expecting a challenging ropes course, obstacles, rock climbing, etc. instead, we did a bunch of teamwork activities. i must say i was quite disappointed. and i got a BUNCH of tanlines from that afternoon. so after a quick shower, we had a barbecue. a bit later that night, some of the RA's were nice enough to take us to the beach to watch the sunset. very pretty. even though i've already seen a bunch. dance party at night. woot. extremely hot, with steamy windows. um, so at the dance party-stalkerness & confinement. some ppl know what this refers to.

Sunday: again, no sleeping in. the morning was actually pretty boring. actually, the whole day was. some ppl went to the beach but i didnt go cuz the beach is literally 10 min away from me back home and i prob shouldnt get my finger infected. so i ended up catching up with some friends back home which was pretty nice. instead of the beach, others went on a photo scavenger hunt-lots of walking. night time was playing some games. -cranium & elephant, though we changed it to horse-hos & hors ;)

2006-07-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

so the morning was pretty awesome. after a lecture/intro of manipulating pictures, we went to the lab and tried it out. im actually programming stuff, which is really awesome. i made a day-time beach picture look like a sunset, all red and stuff. then i made a green one and a negative. pretty awesome, even though i needed LOTS of help. hopefully, i'll get the hang of it soon

2006-07-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

so, yesterday was kinda boring ish lecture-wise. in the morning we did a stimulation exercise, acting out a program command. i was the greater than sign! w00t. afternoon lecture involved learning about pictures and pixels and binary numbers. this stuff is still over my head a bit. and then we went to photoshop (which i've never done before, sadly enough), and that was fun. um, and then last night, i listened to matt's ipod for like 2 hrs on the big steps.

today, in the morning we had a discovery lecture related to space and stuff. a bit overwhelming if you know what I mean, we're so small and insignificant in this ginormous universe. then off to another grammar lesson, which was alright. the afternoon lecture cool, we worked with ancient computers- slide rules. just think, 50 years into the future, that generation will be laughing at our computers now. at night, we went on a haunted tour around campus, where our tour guide talked about different stories that have happened around campus. the tour really wasnt that scary at all, kind-of a let down

tristan will fail in scaring me tonight on the haunted tours.

2006-07-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

today we had a super deeep discussion about what is thinking. what are we as humans? what distinguishes people from machines? is it emotion or ethics? someone in our class mentioned the "i think therefore i am" we are who we are because of this leap of faith. there is no definite way to confirm that someone else is thinking. we figure that other people are thinking because we know that we do it ourselves. so, im not sure if that made any sense whatsoever. but the discussion was really cool. and then we got into quatum mechanics, which i know very little about. so anyways, this happened all after lunch.

in the morning, there was a discovery lecture about brain devices, how to make an artificial brain. the machine was able to tell when something tasted "good" or "bad". it was a discovery lecture where a PhD researcher lectured to us. im still new at this programming stuff, so it seemed really cool what these scientists were able to make the robot do.

2006-07-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

Day 1 of Cosmos! We are in the computer lab for the first time, learning about UNIX stuff. me=no experience whatsoever. haha

later we got a tour of the library, which was okay. and then after dinner, there was some free time. we kinda started a book club, though not really. best phrase ever "computers are exceptionally dumb" and then ultimate frisbee, root beers, & bingo at night :)