I gave myself a haircut today (that’s the picture that accompanies this post). It turned out pretty well, considering I can only see the front and sides of my head in a mirror.
In other, more exciting, news, I spent my first day in Denver in preparation for the neuroscience research I mentioned in the last post this past thursday. It was mostly just a setting-up-a-work-area and meeting people day; I got to meet Dr. White, who is the main guy I’ll be working with, as well as a doctor in the Hospital across the street, with whom it is our eventual goal to apply our results to the work that he is doing to actually help real people. Dr. White (Andy) is quite a character.
My current work related to that is mostly involved with getting a file format (EDF – European Data Format) for EEGs to work with MATLAB. I have the additional goal of finding a way that both MATLAB and Python can interface with the files, as I am more comfortable with Python (not to mention that Python, while being a high level language like MATLAB, is easier to integrate into practical sitations where the MATLAB licensing, cost, architecture, and processing overhead are prohibitive). I am eager to get to work on more brain and vision related tasks, but for now I have to put that on hold for a bit to finish up semester projects and such, as well as take the second half of the Ph. D. Qualifiers this coming friday.
I also intend to purchase a car in the coming weeks so I can commute to Denver by myself as my schedule permits, so I don’t have to inconvenience Rory too much. By that time, I’ll be able to afford at least a substantial down payment on a used Subaru Outback; the local Subaru dealership has a nice one that will most likely be my purchase, assuming someone else doesn’t get there first.
One of the things I noticed about the medical campus that is not apparent at UCCS is that the people doing research actually seem to care about what they’re doing. I don’t know what it is, other than that they’re probably more interested in what they’re doing. It’s really quite a shame that the same work ethic is not evident in the VAST Lab and I’m not sure how to inspire it in my coworkers, especially since many of them are there by choice (i.e.: they are using this research for the eventual goal of a Master’s thesis or similar). I feel like the quality of education at the Anschutz Medical Campus is likely higher, as well, since the subject matter is a bit more serious; a bad doctor could spell life or death for a patient, whereas a bad programmer could only mean a few extra bugs in a code base. I may try to take some classes up there, both to augment the “Computational Neuroscience” direction I’d like to take my Ph. D. as well as to immerse myself further into what seems to be a more academically serious atmosphere.