On My Desk at MIT (3)

-Books scattered and accumulated over the semester.

-Presentation boards

-Sketches/Drafts of Thesis

-5 Empty water bottles

-A sleeping bag below my desk

I am currently putting together a slide show presentation for my 2nd thesis review here at MIT. How do I begin to talk about semantic networks, knowledge databases, robotic articulating arms, and 3 traditional and non-traditional case studies of architecture into a cohesive platform? Each of what was mentioned stem and cross-over onto each other forming a system that bridges the gap between high level design knowledge and low level construction knowledge.

Last week, I was invited by a good prof. to share my thesis research in the form of a presentation to sponsor companies for the MIT Media Lab, including Samsung, IBM, Microsoft, Steelcase, and many others along with some press like Popular Mechanics.

It was a great way to share my thoughts and describe the thesis in a nutshell to a crowd who may be unfamiliar to architecture, software, software programming, and artificial intelligence techniques.

On a side note:

I use the word “desk at MIT” to refer to two primary locales: the desk at my dormitory OR the desk in my assigned office that I share with my Beirut buddies (Beirut buddies = MIT colleagues).

As of this moment, it is the desk at the war office.

Signing out,

Rachelle

She did what?!

Not finish writing her thesis! …dun dun dun….The woes of a graduate student who’s very life is dwindling on the reflections and advice of the thesis adviser.

Seeking the Typed Word

It’s 1:28AM. On one monitor is this wordpress blog, on another, the first page of my thesis document. Thoughts fumbled across different pages in need of special glue, a sense of articulate cohesion.

At the Races

Funnily, I titled this day’s thoughts as “At the Races” – particularly because I am in a sense racing towards the finish line with the assignments at hand. I am nearly done with my portfolio to be submitted to the doctorate program at Harvard and PhD program here at MIT. Perhaps I can print early tomorrow morning.

Other than the Portfolio race track, I’m a competitor in the races for finishing my final project for presentation at my Harvard class on Friday. I have designed and partially built a physical device that can learn from my movement of an object – in other words, a robotic wall that mimics the movement of a prototype of that same wall. I’m using the easy arduino microcontroller along with an accelerometer. The microcontroller is the “brain” – it holds onto the written code I gave it and acts upon it, while the accelerometer is an electronic chip that can measure rotation, vibration, and tilt in the x-y axis. I’m only using a dual axis chip, the Mesmic series now excitingly available at Radio Shack for $30. Cheap, but hopefully it’ll get way cheaper.

I gave a small demo to my thesis adviser today, we had good discussion on my thesis direction as well as the direction to which I should investigate for the first chapter of my thesis book.

On a side note, I peeked into my house mail box today and saw a red envelope – Netflix DVD came in! I believe it should be Romancing the Stone (1980s) – as to why I’m interested in seeing this film? Perhaps its because my parents had always seem to talk about it when having funny conversation since I was a kid, this is the time to see what was so funny after all.