Just a quick blog on our recent activity within the project: as I have began to download all of Texas, haha, we quickly realized that all of those files need to be stored somewhere... The answer is Wrangler. After having Jordan's laptop crash many times due to file size, we decided that we needed to use our HPC (High Performance Computing) resources to handle the large sized files we needed to convert. After submitting an allocation request, we now have an active allocation on Wrangler, one of the newest HPCs available. Thanks TACC!
This past weekend some of the Game Changers and I (with an added friend), were keeping it weird at the annual Keep Austin Weird Festival and 5k. Honestly, it was the most fun I thought I could ever have at a festival with gummy bear spittin', big toe wrestlin', and armadillo races... The festival had awesome vendors, from dream interpreters to a business that handcrafts watches with real flower petals (it takes 86 hours to make one watch)! There was also live music, and yes, I did become a fan of one band.... Holiday Mountain which is a modern swirl on basically all genres and Electronic Dance Music in one.
On to the 5k, personally, I'm not a runner... like at all; so, I was hesitant to sign up. This, however, was no regular 5k, it was The Slowest 5k equipped with ten stops ranging from the Cliff Bar Slip'n'slide to Beatbox wine in a bag (which I did not partake in by the way). My favorite stop was obviously the slip'n'slide. It was an old fashioned generic tarp covered in dish soap and doused in water via the hose volunteers... also the reason why we have random soapy spots on our clothes, if you were wondering. After the first few weeks of training and finally getting down to starting on our projects, most of us Game Changers came together to cool down at one of Austin's main attractions, Barton Springs, which has a direct connection to my project! Barton Springs plays a major role in the groundwater system, and according to Barton Springs/ Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, roughly 50,000 to 60,000 people depend on the water coming from Barton Springs; also, the Barton Springs complex is the only known habitat for the endangered Barton Springs salamander and also the Austin Blind Salamander.
After meeting with my mentors, we all decided that there were a few things I needed to be exposed to in order to complete our project. Being a Mathematics and Geoscience major, I had absolutely no background in any coding language or even experience with them. Instead of letting that be an obstacle, my mentor made various training modules available to me including Git-it, Javascripting, and Learnyounode. These modules had instructed tasks to complete that varied in the amount of instruction provided and difficulty. The one pictured is a javascripting module which shows you an example of how the tasks are set up and verified. I feel like I finished every module with a grasp on how each one works and why... thankfully there weren't too many frustrations in the modules, now to move on to the real thing.
June first marked not only a new month, but also a new journey for me and nine others, as we had been chosen to be ICERT Game Changers. No new comer to flying, I was super excited to be heading out to the Lone Star state on Saturday... The following Sunday we all gathered for a trip down to the capitol, this was one of the most beautiful capitols I have been to (everything is really bigger in Texas). After we got a chance to explore the city with a much needed stop at Puebla Vieja, a taco truck just past 6th street, that was amazing; I highly suggest the chicken Guac Tacos!
The following week was slightly more eventful, with three days of training on languages like R, C++, and things like parallel computing. These were super interesting because, coming from a background of no coding experience, all of the information was new., but i still felt like I could grasp what was being reviewed. By the third day, I was able to meet with Jordan, my fellow student, and my mentors Dr. S. Pierce and John Gentle, both faculty at TACC, with their guidance we have decided to take on this challenge which has brought here to my very first blog on the journey to The Pipeline of Interactivity! |
AuthorI will be blogging breakthroughs, obstacles, and the like throughout our research journey. Categories |