Day 18

Today we made progress on the corvette sticker! Today, Dr. Roger Easton came back from Cambridge, and offered some very useful advice on what we should try on ENVI in order to extract more data from the sticker. He showed us how to blur one image, then divide the original by it. There were some very promising results! The text became much more clear. I now posses much more hope for the future of this document.

Mosaicking is moving as slow as ever, especially considering the fact that I stopped half-way through to work on the corvette sticker. The mosaick is progressing, each time I do it now it becomes more seamless and consistent.
 at I am really excited now for what I can get done with image processing. Tomorrow, I hope to get the mosaick done, or at least close to being done!

Day 17

Today I fixed the issue we were having with stitch together the two mosaicks for the palimpsest. All I had to do was crop out the portion with the black lines. What was causing our issues was the method in which ENVI Classic was saving the mosaicks. ENVI apparently does not save tilted images, so it would fill in the empty space around the mosaick to create a square. Therefor, when we overlay one mosaick on top of the other, the black portion which ENVI had filled in to make a perfect rectangle covered up parts of the image.
I was also having issues today with stitching, but for completely different reasons. One image, which I was stitching to the other, was stretched to a different range. This resulted in the mosaick having half be completely black. To remedy this, I had to load in different images which all were stretched to the same range.
Tomorrow, we are looking more into what methods we can use to possibly pull more information from the corvette sticker.

Day 16

Today I succeeded in nothing. I, again, spent a majority of the day image processing and attempting to mosaick. The issues we are having with mosaicking come from the second round of stitching. We can mosaick two images together no problem, but when we try to then stitch that mosaick to a second mosaic, a huge black line is in the center of the image - which, needless to say, is quite counter-productive when considering the whole point of mosaicking is to have one, seamless image. I have practically nothing to show for today except hours of Envi that resulted in no usable mosaicks. Hopefully on Monday, I can come in here with more motivation to stitch the palimpsest together, because as of today I have lost my patience with it. I believe the issue can be resolved with cropping, but that line of thought will have to wait until after the weekend.

Day 15

Day 15!

Today I worked more on using ENVI to analyze the Italian Palimpsest. I spent most of the day on it, and my time yielded more  results  than yesterday. I actually got the writing from underneath to become more legible! It is not ideal yet, but I hope that with more work I can pull the writing from underneath almost entirely, on the entire mosaicked palimpsest from Hudson.
I still cannot understand fourteenth century Italian, but I can recognize some letters! We are starting to think that the way we are analyzing it (shown to the right) is actually situated upside down.  This theory is due to the fact that there are clear accents depicted, which should be above the letters, yet are beneath them in the way we have been processing the palimpsest.
Hudson and I started to work on the outline to our presentation today, which is due on Monday. We plan to improve it tomorrow, as we get more of an idea as to what the rest of the summer entails. It is hard to believe that we are already half way through the internship!

Day 14

Day 14!

Today did not go well... I spent a large majority of it attempting to get anything from the Corvette sticker, to no avail. SAM and PCA were only yielding illegible images, and no matter what RGB band mash ups I made, the writing remained unreadable. We are starting to think that we will be unable to discover anything from this image without imaging it with ultra-violets that MISHA does not have. Mosaicking is also not going to plan, the images are lining up correctly, but the lighting appears inconsistent despite our best efforts with coding against that.

In conclusion, there was little progress made in anything I worked on today. Hopefully tomorrow goes better when considering the coding, but I don't think that any progress will be made on the Corvette sticker, simply because of the lack of materials we had at our disposal when imaging it, and the less-than-ideal condition it is in.

Day 13

Day 13!

Today, my partner was absent, so I had to do more learning than usual, so I can teach him everything I did tomorrow. Tyler - a PHD Candidate at RIT - showed me that Mosaicking is fairly easy to do on ENVI Classic, as opposed to the ENVI55 program which I have been using.

I also imaged a Corvette sticker today, which is owned by someone who is curios about the exact details of his car. Corvette stickers are slapped on the engine with paint, meaning the condition of this document is not ideal. However, it is interesting, and I am excited to test my skills in ENVI with this document. I hope what I find is pleasing to the owner.

More issues in my code occurred, which is starting to become a typical event in my day. Luckily Tania found a way to complete the task I was coding for in ENVI, so I do not have to deal with the issues that were literally tearing my code apart.

Tomorrow, I hope I remember enough to show Hudson how to Mosaick in ENVI Classic, or else we may be doomed!

Day 12

Day 12!

Today brought more hardships as Hudson and I battled our way through error after error. I worked on creating for loops that would splice new file names together from the given directories, and save the altered images to the new name. The method used to run through each folder within a folder does not save each image in the correct order. Due to this issue, we needed to create a way to correctly align each image to the correct white image. I attempted to create a for loop for this... First, I created two lists that held the wavelength numbers for both the images, and the corresponding white images. Then, I instantiated a variable within another for loop, which was running through the images wavelengths, called 'num.' Within the for loop, I created a while loop that said :

while i != whiteImagesWavelengths[num]:
 num+=1

Which would mean that the rest of the code would not run until the white images wavelength matches the actual images.

However, I am running into an issue with saving the images now. I keep getting an error that says the file directory I am trying to save to already exists - even when it didn't  before I ran the program. Hopefully, I will be able to resolve this issue tomorrow! I have a feeling I will be up all night thinking about it.

Day 11

Day 11!

Today was the day we have been preparing for! The palimpsest we got was Italian, from the 1400s. The original was religious script from the 1300s, but that writing was removed, the parchment cut, and covered with music. This document is from RITs Cary Collection, and was procured for educational purposes. As far as we know, today was the first time MISHA imaged an actual historical document. The front and back both have music written on it, so Hudson and I had to image both sides. Since this took most of the day, we have yet to process the images yet. I do not happen to be fluent in 14th-15th century Italian, so I cannot translate the script right away, but I am interested in researching more into what this particular document says, and possibly discovering what the music sounds like. It will take extensive research, however, so that is a task I will have to leave until it is ensured I have that kind of time.

Our code isn't quite ready yet, and we would like to be able to do more with it, so It may take all next week before we can use our own code to process the images we took today. I am really excited to learn more about this palimpsest in the coming week, and actually create some useful code that will assist in its processing!

Day 10

Day 10!

Today entailed more googling as to why our code is not working. We want it to be able to compress the images into a spectral cube, but the easy way for us to do this is prohibited by the fact that the necessary module is not on the server. Therefor, we must employ alternate, much more complex, methods of creating the spectral cube. I have made a series of for loops and empty lists that allow the image files to be input by a user without modifying the code, but what would be ideal is using the module that does this directly. However, that mod is also absent. Hopefully my hasty code, though horribly meticulous due to its requirement of the user to enter in every individual file name, will work for tomorrow. At 10:30 we are picking up the palimpsest, and I am really excited to discover what lies beneath the ink! We have MISHA as prepared as it'll be for imaging tomorrow, not counting the failing LED lights and the white-pixels on all the images from the camera being old.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow goes better than today!

Day 9

Day 9!

Today Hudson and I worked more on our code. Our progress is getting better as we become more familiar with what exactly we are trying to do. The code works now, being able to import an image, divide it by the white image, and save the new image in a datatype that ENVI can operate in. Now, I am working on a way to modify the code so a user can just input the filenames, instead of needing to modify the code each time you want to use a different image. To do this, I am creating an empty list, then running a for loop that will prompt the user to input the file name. Then, I will append the filename to the array until all the desired file names are entered. After the list is full, another for loop will run the variables on the list through our existing code, eliminating the inconsistencies in lighting in all the images entered, outputting them in a format compatible with ENVI.

We are having issues with the lighting on MISHA, as the LED lights are old and dim, resulting in inadequate lighting for imaging. Since the structure of MISHA wont allow us to replace the individual LED s that are acting up, we wont be able to fix this issue before Friday, when we are imaging the palimpsest-which we now know is from the 14th century.

Hudson and I only have tomorrow to resolve our issues, as we need MISHA and all of our code running to its best ability by Friday when we need to image the palimpsest. Fingers crossed that all goes well tomorrow!

Day 8

Day 8!

Today, Hudson and I worked more towards creating the code that will correct the Lens Falloff. We ran into a lot of errors, and spent a large portion of the day googling for answers. I discovered that the website 'stack overflow' has a lot of good resources, but none that helped us. We are trying to divide one picture by another, which would eliminate the brightness, but I cannot find any answers to the issues that occur from our attempts because no one is asking questions about dividing two images. Even though our answer did not come from that website today, I do think that I will be visiting it in the future when I hit a brick wall. After working on fixing one error for a while, another trickier one would pop up to impede on our progress. Needless to say, the program is not done yet, but I think by tomorrow it will be! At least, I hope so.

Day 7!

Day 7!

  Today Emma and I discovered a Ben and Jerry's on campus, and treated ourselves to the fantastic ice cream there. I also got a coffee from the Cafe Artesano, which was amazing.
  On a more work-related note, I covered the shiny metal of the beams that are holding up MISHA with felt. By doing this, I prevented light from reflecting onto the subject we are imaging and causing inconsistent lighting. The completion of this task required Emma and me to venture out in search of tape, and several clever cuts to successfully cover all of the metal. Hudson and I also adjusted the placement of the camera in order to have the best image, without any of the frame getting in the shot.
Hudson and I also looked more into the methods we could use to compensate for Lens Fallout, but we have yet to come up with a probable, working solution.

Day 6

Day 6!

Today was not the most productive... We spend half an hour ice skating as a team building exercise, which was really fun! After that, Emma and I went to one of the cafeterias on campus that's near the ice rink.

Today, Hudson and I solved the issue we had with the size document MISHA can fit within its frame. Using scrap beams, we constructed a frame that MISHA can sit on that allows us to slide documents beneath the camera without being limited by the size of MISHAs frame. The beams we used are thick and flat, made out of aluminum I believe, and there are beams like it everywhere around RIT. We set them up like Lincoln logs, so the sides are wide open to allow documents to be slid under the camera. Since, now that MISHA is raised, the distance between the documents and the camera has lengthened, we had to work on focusing the camera. After today, we can use MISHA to take in-focus images of documents larger than a post it!

Day 5

Day 5!

Today, Hudson and I started discussing how we will update MISHA.  Next week , we are going to image an actual historical document! However, the document is too big for MISHA to image it's entirety, so we must make some changes so we are able to move the document around so MISHA can image one piece at a time. The document is a palimpsest. Palimpsests are pieces of parchment paper from around the 13th century that had one ink writing scraped off in order to recycle the parchment and allow for new writings to be scripted there. Many of today's famous ancient writings, such as the manuscripts from Archimedes, were palimpsests. We can image the parchment, and using ENVI and image-processing, reveal what was once written on the Parchment. 

There are issues that we now must work on, to ensure that by next week Misha is ready to image its first historical document! Hopefully without too much error...

A page of the Archenemies Palimpsest

Day 4

Day 4!

Today, I mostly just went through the Code Academy Tutorials to learn Python. I am about 50% of the way through the content as of today, meaning that by Friday I will be a Python master! The further I go along learning Python, the trickier it gets. I know Java fairy well, so it can be confusing to relearn how to format functions I already know in Java. For example, "for loops" are quite different. In Java, I would format the initial statement as : for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++); , whereas in Python it is: for i in [list]: ... which is much different. Also, in Python there are "functions" that you can put tasks in to call upon using the function name, formatted as : def functionName(parameters), which again, differs drastically from Methods in Java, which look like:
public static *returnType* *methodName*(parameters)
I am getting used to it, but after a year of nothing but Java, it is taking a while for me to stop thinking in terms of brackets and semi-colons.

Near the end of the day, to test my fluency in Python, I decided to write up a code that would add up the amount of hours I work each day from my weekly time sheet. It took a while, I kept accidentally reverting to my old Java ways, but I ended up successful! Now, all I need to do to add up all the time I work per day is use my trusty program.

Day 3

It's Day Three!

Today, I trained on Python through the free trials on Code-academy. I already know Java, so the concepts aren't that hard for me to process, but the syntax, and some of the tools are much different than what I'm used to! Some of the biggest differences is Pythons lack of semi-colons at the end of each statement, that the types- such as "String"- don't need to be clarified at the beginning of each clarification, and that "Doubles" are called "Floats," as well as other somewhat-annoying specifics. I figure that in a day or two I will be practically fluent in the basics.

Other than ENVI, we are also going to be working on improving MISHA. MISHA is a small, portable imaging device designed by a RIT student 3 years ago. It is basically duck-taped and zip-tied together, but what it is capable of is quite impressive. Today we played around with it, taking some pictures, and getting more familiar with how to work it. The coding is a mash up of Linux and Python. The Linux portion of the code controls the camera and imaging process, while the Python processed the photos.

As of right now, the machine is rickety, but we are hoping to improve that over these six weeks! Learning Python is going well, and the imaging machine is already up and running in our lab!

Day 2

  Today, for the second time of my two days of the internship, I was late. :(
Tomorrow, I Think that I will leave at least a half-hour early, just to try and make it on time!

  When I finally got here, I met with Dave Messenger and got the run down on what we are going to do in the "Document Restoration Lab." There are many options of what to do with these six weeks, such as working on a rickety camera, improving its software and such, as well as analyzing historical documents and collections data with the program ENVI55.

 Since I do not yet know Python, today I am attempting to use ENVI55 to inspect two old maps, one from 17th century China, the other from medieval England. It is not going very well... I wasn't initially that great at using ENVI, I basically just clicked around randomly, hoping for something to happen. After a while off that, Dave Messenger finally came back and showed how to use some of the tools. Now, I am much more capable at touching up the images to see the faded writings and drawings!

Today was fun, and I a really excited to learn more about Document Restoration, and coding in Python!

Day 1

Today, we did a scavenger hunt around the campus as a team building exercise. I stayed at home base, compiling the videos while the other four inters paired off and searched for the locations on the list. We all achieved our goal of attaining Lanyards, so I think it went really well! I am excited to continue working at RIT this summer, and I can not wait to learn more about applying code to real life! This summer is going to be great, I can already tell!