Library folk mocha

Today was the first day in our internship that we didn't have class, so I took the opportunity to do a little more exploring on campus. The Science and Technology library is really fantastic. Their music section is larger and has more variety than our normal library in Pensacola. The architecture of the building is really nice too with lots of open spaces and natural lighting filtering through everywhere. After reading the latest IEEE journals they had on my topic, I checked out a book called Piano: Guided Sight-Reading, by Leonhard Deutsch. He was apparently from Vienna and a contemporary of Schoenberg. It was quite enjoyable and I picked up a number of useful tips -- and pieces -- to start using in my regular practice time. Gotta find it on eBay...

In other news, the Logan Yellow Pages lists a whole bunch of used book stores and two coffee shops, so the next few weeks should be interesting. There's also a couple delis and cheese factories that sound like they may have something cool in them. Coffee has again become part of my life now that I've bought a coffee grinder. All of these sales and low prices are going to catch up to me when it's time to ship everything back home.

Went to a local folk music concert tonight. The theatre is housed in the same fine arts complex that I've been practicing in. The concert is part of a series that's going on this week, but I think I'll save my money for some operas produced by the Utah Festival Opera happening later in July in the Eccles theater on Main Street.

Internship in Utah

Hey gang!

I'm back! Now that I have Internet access in my dorm, I can continue updating my journal and uploading photos so you can all see what I'm up to this summer. :)

This summer, I get to work in the Computer Science department of Utah State University in Logan. For the first three weeks or so, we'll have classes on graphics programming and neural networks to help prepare us for our actual research in the rest of the summer. Things are really intense already!

We've only had two class days so far, and Dr. Qi has already brought us up from (in my case) knowing nothing about graphics programming to writing my own mean filters in Matlab. Even though implementing my own image blurring/sharpening/enhancement algorithms is fun, I will use Matlab's or a professional graphic suite for performance's sake.

I got to sleep in late today and munch on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. My walking trip to Walmart two days ago entailed carrying back anything I bought 2 1/2 miles on foot. Today, I discovered the bus. Logan's public transit system is wonderful! The buses are clean, on time, and go everywhere in the city. On top of that, the buses are driven by knowledgable, native English speakers who are not only helpful, but very friendly. I've uploaded some pictures I took from my room. The mountains are right outside my window. There's still snow on the tops of some of them.

I have a room to myself, and have two suitemates. One is in the REU program. I've gotten to know the 3 other non-USU students fairly well so far, and they all seem like great guys. There are 8 of us total.

Time to go to sleep! I'm going to try to get up tomorrow in time for Sunday School at a church I found in the Yellow Pages and located through Google Maps. Sadly, public transit doesn't run on Sundays.

...Back to exploring Logan on foot!