Farewell to Anke & Caren

I’m so glad the semester is over! And I didn’t even have any final exams, for the first time ever! I only had the one class, Remote Sensing, and the final project for the class was due on Wednesday of last week. For awhile I was pretty frustrated by everything, because the documentation of what’s actually in these MODIS data files or how to use them is pretty much non-existent. Fortunately I stumbled upon some University of South Australia student’s paper about MODIS fire detection algorithms, complete with their Matlab source code! So I played around with that for awhile, familiarizing myself with a bit of how to access the MODIS data, but then I discovered that aside from that person’s fire detection algorithm not detecting any fires in my selected image from southeastern Australia on 12 January 2003 (which I *knew* had quite a few bushfires in it), it was just really convoluted and too-complicated, which caused it to break before it could do much of anything useful. So a couple nights before the project was due, Isaac helped me to write an algorithm that was much simpler and more sensible, and actually worked! In three really simple tests that I coded up, I was reasonably successful in detecting known fires (marked as red pixels in the image above, both northeast of Melbourne in the Australian Alps and on Flinders Island just north of Tasmania) while not having a preponderance of false alarms. So I actually had something to present for the final project, it all went well, and now I might have the basis of something to do as a bit of a side project to my main PhD dissertation research for the next couple years. And with the completion of that final project/presentation, I finished up my sixth full semester of grad school here at Penn State. In some ways it really doesn’t seem like I’ve been here that long.
And with my third year of grad school wrapping up, we’re hitting the time of year where some of my friends are moving away to start jobs in the real world (it’s a relief to know that jobs seem to be more than just a rumor out there!). Just last week we all said goodbye to Caren, who got a job up in Rochester, New York, and to Anke & Dave, as Anke found a job out in Fort Collins, Colorado. A couple Saturdays ago a bunch of us got together at Beulah’s for a farewell dinner for Caren, Dave & Anke. Caren even made three cakes (decorated with knight action figures and the like, haha) and brought it to the restaurant, that was cool. It was a really fun evening, but it’s always sad to say goodbye to friends.
Let’s see, what else has been going on the last couple weeks… Oh yeah, I finally decided it was high time to go to the dentist for the first time in, well, let’s just say a really long time. I had a stellar record going of never having any cavities, or had any dental procedure done other than a standard checkup/cleaning. But sure enough, the streak is over, and they found three really small cavities that’ll need to be filled later this month. At least they didn’t find anything more serious than that, I guess. It seems I’ll be getting quite familiar with the dentist this month!
Last week I also went to see “Expelled” for the second time, but this time it was free because a local company, Good Steward Software (they sell energy-saving software to large corporations), bought out the theater and gave away the tickets for free. Having read a lot of information critical of the movie, both on Richard Dawkins’ blog and on the National Center for Science Education’s website, “Expelled Exposed,” I was watching the movie with a critical eye, to see if their criticisms stood. And I must say, Richard Dawkins’ account of his interview (of the parts that made the movie!) really does not jibe with what’s shown in the movie. Dawkins, for instance, claimed he was more or less forced into unwillingly mentioning his panspermia hypothesis as the only possible form of intelligent design he could accept, but it sure didn’t seem that way in the movie. Comparing what he (and other staunch atheistic Darwinists) said in the film to his portrayal in his blog, his blog account seemed like a frantic backtracking attempt at saving face. That’s my take anyway. But having watched the film the second time, I still think it’s a good movie overall, and I still think the statements of the scientists in the film build a pretty strong case of intolerance. (And on Sunday I posted a long comment in response to Josh & Jacob’s comments on my previous blog entry about “Expelled.”) It’s not in the theater here in State College anymore, but I do plan on getting the DVD when it comes out. I sure hope there’ll be plenty of extras on there (more complete interviews would sure be nice!).
My church has been doing a program called “Overflow” for the last several weeks, centered around having everyone in the church read through a book called “Outflow: Outward-focused living in a self-focused world.” The main thrust of the book is to encourage people to overflow with God’s love toward family, friends and the community in all sorts of ways. As a result, our church has had several community-service projects recently, including a water bottle giveaway at several locations on Blue/White Weekend, neighbourhood cookouts a couple weekends ago, and culminating this past weekend in myriad other projects around the community by each life/small group in the church. The life group I’m in chose to split up into three smaller groups, go to different places on campus, and give away free orange juice and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee at various locations around campus on Saturday, since it was the weekend before final exams. Ryan, Sarah, Matt, Olivia & I first tried the HUB, but there weren’t many people there, so then we moved up to the East Halls bus stop on Curtin Rd. There was a steady stream of people there, so that was good, and we were there from about 11:30-3. I was a bit surprised at how many people either didn’t want free coffee or OJ, and especially at the number of people who simply ignored us when we asked as they walked by. But I was more encouraged by all the people who did let us serve them with free coffee or OJ, and how surprised and thankful almost all of them were. When we first showed up at the bus stop and asked if anyone wanted free coffee, there were three freshman girls who immediately and enthusiastically said, “Yes! This is amazing, I need coffee so bad, it’s like someone sent you here!” 🙂 It was also pretty funny when a car with three guys drove by, saw our free coffee sign, did a quick u-turn, pulled into the bus stop and made a drive-thru order, haha. When students and other passers-by throughout the day would ask why we were doing this, we just told them that our church was doing a bunch of service projects around the community to show Christ’s love in small but tangible ways, and that we decided to give students on campus a bit of a pick-me-up as they were cramming for finals. Hopefully many people came away with a much better image of Christians and the church in general as a result!
Yesterday we had the season opener for church softball, and we went up to Bellefonte to play Calvary Bible Church. Let’s just say it was a bit of a rough start to the season. Our team hit into a double play in the top of the 1st to kill any potential scoring opportunity (the first of three double plays our team hit into in the game, ugh!), and then in the bottom half of the inning we had all sorts of defensive lapses, including two would-be running catches that I dropped in left field (can I blame those drops on my new glove not being broken in yet?), and let them jump out to a 13-0 lead with all those extra outs. Ouch. In slow-pitch softball, you can’t get away with giving the other team extra outs, especially when the other team is stacked with good directional and power hitters. Oh well. But after that we tightened up defensively and played them tough, eventually losing 19-4. I managed to catch the other two fly balls that came my way (not adventurously either, for a change!), and went 1-for-3 at the plate, with one of my patented squib hits that went about five feet in front of the plate down the 3rd base line for an infield single, before fouling out to 3rd and popping out to short center. I was about an inch away from really driving a couple of those balls, too, it was so frustrating. After the game a few of us went to Chili’s to have a margarita and plenty of chips and salsa to celebrate our first loss Cinco de Mayo. I wish we had a real Mexican restaurant closer to us than all the way down in Altoona!
Okay, that’s quite enough bloggish activity for now. I have other things I need to attend to. Hopefully I won’t have a two-week lag again anytime soon, though. 🙂