URECA, the log

The jellyfish is back! This is a URECA log.

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26/8, Tue: Jeff accepted the URECA project.

Awesome! I am officially a URECA undergraduate!

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1/9, Mon: Borrowed the Mean Sea Level book.

Never thought I would have to touch Geog again. Here goes, reading the book! 

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15/10, Wed: The 1-hour URECA workshop on how to find info better.

Wow. Apparently NTU online library catalogue has more things than can be imagined. Interesting.

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19/10, Sun: I am halfway done through the MSL book!

Random hours looking through the first few chapters and summarising. @_@

Must be around 2h30m - 3h per chapter... 4 down! Hopefully there exists some understanding!

I think this is where I learnt that books borrowed from NTU library can be renewed online. Cool!

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7/11, Fri: Chapter 5 is damn cheem.

1.5 hours reading the chapter, I think it's time to really go and understand the terms.
2 hours to write the summary. Thankfully it's done. -_-

Alright, another 2h30mins for chapter 6, tsunamis can be more interesting than I thought.

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9/11, Sun: I finally finished Dr.Meltzner basic reading.

Alright, finally I am done with chapter 7 (hooray!), and that seemed to be the most practical and related to this URECA project. I think it's time to really look through ways of measuring data, and see how they are really related to the project. The 1.5 page thing should start soon...

Total time spent on the whole book (reading, summarising, somewhat understanding): 21h (a nice number) XD

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10/12, Wed: Finals just finished, which means time to do URECA again!

Today Mr.Dat briefed me about a part of task 1, which is to extract satellite data with a better resolution, since the past resolution gave a no-conclusion graph.

Doing the 1 page thing seems easy, but sometimes it isn't!

Total time: 2h 30 mins, even though my mind dwells on this for a much longer period~~ >.<
(1 hour for meeting Mr.Dat, the rest for thinking about the assignment)

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11/12, Thur: I finally finished Assignment 1! ^^

That didn't take much time, if you minus off the slacking time and stuff. Need to think of what to write though, cannot anyhow bomb, =P

Total time reading a bit more, looking at explanations and doing Assignment 1: 3.5 hours.

Time to update the hours in studentlink.

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16/12, Tue: Read the AVISO tutorial, somewhat.

Don't think it's very efficient before I get the AVISO account, hope that process can be sped up!
Reading Mr.Dat's satellite info along the way~

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17/12, Wed: Reading the Satellite extraction guide, someewhat again.

No response from the AVISO team. Seems like it's more manual reading again, not that efficient in the late night.

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Christmas 2014

Extraction of AVISO data is not exactly as easy as I thought! Until I realise I didn't have access to that cruicial section -_-

There are many more MATLAB stuff than I thought!

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New Year 2014, 1 week before school reopens

MATLAB interpolation is definitely as fun as I thought! At least that's an experience! Luckily last time MATLAB finals didn't have these kind of questions. It will kill everybody =P

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9/1, Fri: Satellite data - CLEAR

The end of the holidays, assignment 1 done, and satellite data is done! ^^ AVISO data hasn't been that easy to extract and analyse, but with help and guidance from Mr.Dat, a few programmes (not that simple) have been created. Hope that is better than their previous weekly data set.

Many things that weren't taught in MATLAB are used in this program. I think it is just a matter of whether you are interested in finding out about different MATLAB functions and the amount of time you have to explore. Finally learnt about netcdf and csv file formats reading! Seems like that is more useful than reading some matrices .dat files. =P

Today Mr.Meltzner briefed about the tide gauge data (since the satellite data is completed) analysis, don't think that's any easier than the satellite. He shared some experience from his field trips (including rocky shores and scary tides), and how interesting it is to take data with a device tied to a rock with algae. I heard the term 'semi-diurnal' in the briefing.

From the data sets, there are lot of differences between theory and practical (duh). The data set he showed simply doesnt look like those described in the book! I reckon Mr.Dat understood what he was saying, cos I was just simply wondering how come the data looked so different! Must be a geog thing. =/

Poster submission in 3 weeks! Gotta do that soon!

Mr Dat: "Don't panic."
Keep calm and drink Vietnamese green tea. That's bitter! But not bad, I like it. :)

The EoS pantry looks cool! Tons of biscuits! :D

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14/5, Thur: Back to URECA Project!

Trying to do the project during semester seems like an almost impossible task. But hey, it's the holidays, and I am back! More fun than maths, wahaha. =P

Mr Dat is gonna have a child next month (June), omg congratulations!!!

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25/5, Mon: Mr Dat's 1st day of long absence

Mr. Meltzner seemed happy with the LL summary, but said that all the surveyed points analysis are all wrong. Gotta redo that again! -.- After wondering for so long, SLA is just the difference of two data, which was actually what Mr.Dat suggested. He is smart! I am just noob lol @_@

Anyway Mr.Dat is back in Vietnam, gonna take care of his going to be born baby. Hope he doesn't have a difficult time with the little princess! :D

Today Mr Meltzner showed some of the equipments he used for the surveyed points. There is a very cool prism, which you can see your eyeball from ANY angle. Awesome! There is also a rather expensive laser pointer that doesn't seem that impressive to me, but is apparently useful! While I was stoning, Mr.Meltzner suddenly mentioned about the machine using SPHERICAL coordinates. That brought back bad memories of Calculus 3...

Endure! A month left to go! :)

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12/6, Fri: Draft 1 is evaluated

It seems to be that there are errors everywhere in the draft 1, but apparently Mr.Meltzner said that it was a rather decent attempt. Hmm... Gotta write draft 2 properly! That's left as an exercise for the weekend! :D

Oh yeah, Mr Dat's baby is born on 3rd June, that's 2 days after my birthday!

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23/6, Tue: Paper submitted!

Alright! I have submitted the paper at 12.30pm! =D Hopefully that won't be rejected. One last task to do, the MATLAB codes >.<

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26/6, Fri: QUEST COMPLETE! :D

I have finally finished all the stuff! Well, the stuff which I know! =P Finally the holidays are here!

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10/7, Fri: Coffee with Mr.Dat

Mr.Dat is back to SG, after a month and a half of taking care of his baby. Well he said his baby is quite good, didn't cry much. Anyway, he bought me a cup of hot chocolate at Starbucks NTU. He also mentioned about the interesting life of a PHD student, which involved loads of hard work and hardly any rest. That sounds kinda scary, but I think that's the life of a researcher. :)

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31/7, Fri: PS901U - Passed!

Ah ok! I have officially passed the project! Yay? :)

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(End of the log)