Day 18 - March 19

Friday - Obscura Digital

Today I was given smaller projects to work on. This involved researching a few different components and attempting to factory reset them so they could be used by Obscura for one of their projects. It turns out that it is substantially easier to work off a clean slate (the factory reset version) than trying to figure out how something was used last and work from there. In addition, some devices (especially those that deal with cyber security), have reset buttons in the back that are made not to work and throw off simpletons. Anyways, I'm glad to say that I stuck with it. I was then given a challenge to try and program a script that will sort through the computer's directories (folders), list the ten largest folders, list their file paths, and list how much space they take up. This would have been substantially easier had I known or been familiar at all with the what I was working with. It took me the rest of the day to utilize various online sources to do sufficient research so that I could actually create the script. That being said, I was very diligent about doing so and flet very accomplished with my results. Today was my last day so I personally said thanks the people I had talked and worked with throughout the Systems department (everyone), except for my SH. Even though I did wait for a good amount of time for the man who set up my internship, I had to leave to work on my project. However, we did exchange meaningful text messages. I felt very validated, proud of all that I had done, and thankful for the opportunity to work at Obscura with their phenomenal staff.

Here's an excerpt.
Me: Unfortunately, I actually have to go home to study. Thanks so much Sean for the opportunity to intern with systems at Obscura as well as the chance to talk, meet, and assist others at Obscura too. Also, thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to talk to me and make me feel welcomed.
SH: No problem. Glad I was able to give you the opportunity. Sorry I wasn't able to say bye. I think you kicked a$$ here ... I really believe that you'll pursue your passion and succeed. Your maturity shows. If we end up with a real internship program I'll keep you in mind.

Home

After more grinding, I finally fixed the instantiate. It turned out that I had been implementing the instances in global space versus local space. Global space is all relative to a specific set of axes, while local space is relative to another Game Object.

Day 17 - March 18

Wednesday - Obscura Digital
I got to talk to more people in the office. I got to shadow more people. I got to help more people. The conversations have been very informative and deep as well. Now that I have been talking to a lot more people (and in different departments as well), I feel like much less of an outsider and more welcome. It's a shame that I leave tomorrow. I'm really getting into it this week despite not having any active projects around that I can help with.

Geez- writing within the confines of a non-disclosure agreement is hard.

Home
I did some research into a bug I kept hitting when programming the instantiating code I mentioned in previous blogs. I think it has to do with how the location, rotation, and hierarchical position are stored in different ways. A very basic oversimplification is that objects in the extreme foreground are a part of the UI, user interface, and are located in two-dimensions. In contrast, objects in the background can be located in three different dimensions (in order to convey depth). For that difference, there is a rectTransform and a regular Transform. My instances are not being moved into the User Interface and are not rendered in the right position, if at all. I think I need to wield the two transforms to make them work together.

Day 16 - March 17

Tuesday - Obscura Digital
Today was less busy in the office. Most of the projects had moved out to their respective sites leaving most people to work on research and development. This gave me the opportunity to talk to many different people in the office (both inside and outside of systems) about what they do, their backgrounds, their work, and personal affairs as well. Because I got to talk to so many more people than before, I got to hear about many of their projects. However, I was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement and cannot blog or talk about much that I did (or will do) at Obscura.

Home
Before passing out, I cleaned my blog of content that might of violated the NDA. These edits have been labeled with the following message:

...Removed in agreement with NDA...

All I can say is that not only does my blog look a lot more boring now, it reads a lot more boring too.

Day 15 - March 16

Monday - Home
Decided to stay home and work so I cold get laundry done. After waking around 8;50 AM, I actually sat at my computer for most of the day and just programmed more of the Space Designer. I got the first two check boxes off the checklist done! I finished the grid system and programmed a way to select and deselect the grid tiles. Although I had ideas to do it off a double click system, I eventually found a way to do it off a left click system that makes for me to program future functions using the middle and right mouse click features too! I also got halfway through the square instantiation. See, I want the user to be able to create an instance of a square (or "instantiate squares") in each tile by doing an easy right-click and open a menu with a middle click. This current code allows me to incorporate that later on- a success for me. I can also use the same script for as many gird squares as I want- re-usability, another win. Now to work on getting the right-click to instantiate squares in the right category so that they actually show up...

Also, it's already 4:30 and I should probably actually go do my laundry...

Day 14 - March 15

Sunday
HA! nope.

Day 13 - March 14

Saturday - Home
Spent most of the day working on the task that Tom and I agreed upon before splitting for the day yesterday- the Space Designer. I did a lot of programming. See, there are always many different ways of approaching the problem, just like math class. While many ways are effective, some ways are much more efficient than others. I spent the day programming an inefficient way, realizing there was a much more efficient way, and then restarting from effectively scratch. So although I have almost nothing to show, I'm on the brink of releasing the fundamentals of something that'll work efficiently! I also added a checklist to the Trello page for the Space Designer so I can see how much I have to do in general and how it breaks up in to smaller steps.

Day 12 - May 13

Friday - Drew School
Despite staying from 8 AM to 10 AM, little was achieved. This stemmed mostly from the fact that the Studio, which is typically unordinarily quiet, was ridiculously disruptive. It just so happened that many people had to come in for various meetings and the result was a very distracting environment and little work done. It didn't help that Tom and I had an off day together and were constantly at each other throats. By the end of the day, we got plans in place in terms of where we wanted to go next but Friday was pretty dissatisfying.

Day 11 - May 12

Thursday - Drew School
Met with Tom and Garrison this morning. I shared with Tom the ideas I have for the tree farm. He also got me set up with Trello, a sort of online bulletin board where we can organize which tasks and components we want to prioritize first. I have seen it used for other video games, such as Insurgency (see their Trello here) and a Trello will be vital for our project's organization. Tom has also expressed his concern that the both of us will have to spend even more time on the project, which is fair. I dont think that either of us expected AP tests and Badminton to take up so much of our time, but this is something we definitely still can do. Prototyping is definitely feasible. Lastly, we talked about current  next steps and, tonight, I'll be working on building classes (not academic classes, but programming organizational classifications).

Obscura Digital
Even though I'm not a morning person, I made it in at 9:45 by accident. I took a brief break from the  project and racked a server with RY. ...Removed in agreement with NDA... Then I helped out CH do some of the typical chores around and do some installations. It was almost 3 when I left.

Home(ish)
I did some more brainstorming regarding how Tom and I are gonna do classes (again, object-oriented programming- not academic) and I had a few good approaches. I realized that it is harder for me to program without insight into how Tom wants the game to be designed. This means I should be calling, texting, and messaging him more so there isn't nearly as much overlap or irrelevant development. Though I still can do brainstorming.

Day 10 - May 11

Wednesday - Obscura Digital
The LED panels are really coming together quite nicely and it is awesome to see my the people at Obscura work and even more exciting to see how my assistance has actually been helpful! While I'm feeling a bit lazy and reluctant to describe everything I did, I have included pictures of what I have been working on with Obscura Digital for a certain successful search engine company. I've learned a lot over the internship; not just about tech, but about productions as well. After all, their work only is shown for a limited time, like most plays and performances. With this time crunch and pressure, unorthodox solutions are can be integral in bringing a project into fruition. This is can be paralleled to set design in the plays for our own school! Anyways, we got ... Removed in agreement with NDA...

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Starbucks Coffee
In an attempt to stall, I spent my time waiting at Starbucks to actually work out some details and ideas for the programming, especially regarding the tree farm. I was thinking about how certain variables will be necessary when creating a template-style prefab (for more info, see object-oriented programming). I even went so far as to brainstorm certain function, arrays, and UI elements that can be programmed into the project.

This might have been written on a napkin

Home
Spent three hours programming again tonight. Worked through more C# basics and spent some time exploring Visual Studio's nuances. I love staying up until 1 AM. :/

Day 9 - May 10

Tuesday - Obscura Digital
Today was moderately bad and moderately okay.

After being stuck in the Muni underground for almost an hour and being declined for a summer job that I have held for the past two years, I spent my morning back downstairs in the hardware department. The big project right now is for a ... Removed in agreement with NDA ... That means that a lucky intern (me) got to spend the morning un-plugging, untangling, and re-wrapping all the cables behind the physical displays as well as the computers that powered each one. That was tedious (to say the least) and it didn't help that I was tucked against a dark wall doing it all. I am grateful for the existence of headlamps but a nice Johnson & Johnson's De-Tangler for computer cables wouldn't hurt. After a lunch, in which my girlfriend surprised me with a homemade apple crisp, I talked to some random people in the office before heading back down. Instead of unplugging cables this time, I was plugging them in! Specifically, I was ... Removed in agreement with NDA... This was much more fun for me since there were people I could talk to while working (and they were also funny). I was so helpful, that I lost track of time and ended up staying until after 3:30 PM working on the test build.

Home
Later on, I hopped on for another four hours into the night to dabble some more in Unity. I got some features working, such as Button Events and accessing variables in different methods, but am still stumped by sliders... My process involves experimentation, success, thinking of something harder to do, failing at it repeatedly, and repeating the process all over again.

Day 8 - May 9

Monday - Home
Did a little more experimentation. However, my day was taken up by the AP Physics Exam and I let that take priority over the rest of my day. Little progress was made.

Day 7 - May 8

Sunday - Home
I watched a few videos about Unity and programming for the User Interface but, come on... It's Mothers Day and it's Sunday...

Day 6 - May 7

Saturday - Home
After having uploaded the last few blog posts (that I had written in my phone's notepad awhile back), I spent 4+ hours working though sample projects and videos related to the Unity work space, programming, design vocabulary, and organization. I also read over Tom's Design Document closely as there have been many more updates since I last checked it. While there is not much to write about today's work, lots was done.

Day 5 - May 6

Friday - Drew School
Before I left for the BCL Badminton Tournament, I met with Tom to discuss project guidelines. After all, the first week has made little time for us to collaborate together. Upon careful consideration, we have decided that it would be best if I spent more time working at home, instead of feeling obligated to come in to Drew to work every day. Even though there are certain distractions at home, I am losing around three hours a day to transportation (even more the last Wednesday) and it's ridiculous. We plan on using a VOIP Utility to communicate or whatnot. In addition, we have made it official that Tom, Mr. Garrison, and I will meet after lunch on Fridays to meet up and discuss challenges, progress, and other such details. In addition, I will actually show up to Drew on Fridays to work with Tom and collaborate in a close environment. This is not to say that me coming in to Drew is confined to those days so much as it required.

Day 4 - May 5

Thursday
No progress was made today. I came in to school for the AP Calculus test, grabbed lunch, and then left soon after to join the Badminton team on the bus for our last game against Athenian. Despite leaving before 2 PM, we got back to Drew after 6:30 PM. Exhausted and in preparation for the tournament the following day, I passed out when I got home.

Day 3 - May 4

Wednesday - Obscura Digital
Today I went upstairs to the Software Department. After being introduced to the head of the software department by SH, I sat with JD, an interactive engineer who used to work downstairs in the Hardware Department with systems. She spared more than an hour to talk with me about not only about what she did as an Interactive Engineer, but many other things as well. She talked about her time in with systems and how it differed from software. JD told me about the most stunning places she went in addition to the greatest productions she staged with Obscura. I was given insight on her most challenging job as well as the differences inherent it production-style work. On another talked about colleges (both mine and her alma matter of UC Santa Cruz), engineering school, and opportunities worth seizing. I even asked about what it was like being in such a male-dominated office. We covered many topics in our conversation and it was a fascinating discussion to say the least.
I spent the rest of the day with WN, another interactive engineer with Obscura. I got to shadow him as he worked on... Removed per NDA ... It was awesome watching WN use Touch Designer as he was able to explain what he was doing as well as his thought process. Before I left, WN and JD showed me what the older legacy projects looked like, rife full of bugs, errors, and poor organization, as well as his bug fixing process. I left early (before 3 PM) so I could make it to Badminton practice.

Day 2 - May 3

Tuesday - Obscura Digital
Today was my first day at my internship. I arrived at ten to silently audit their staff meeting. From there, I was taken down to the hardware floor. Everyone knows that traditional intern work consists of filing and copying. However, this changes if your a tech intern. Instead, I got to wrap cables. Considering how many cables this company most go through to organize huge productions, there are a lot of cables involved. Not only do they need to be organized, they need to be wrapped up so they do not get tangled- that's where I came in.

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 I went back to wrapping cables and then was taught how to terminate cables. Terminating cables is the process of adding the physical ends to them (the individual plugs or the jacks). Lastly, I did some shadowing of a guy who worked with various video systems.

I left before 3 so I could make it to Badminton game against Lick Wilmerding.
I didn't take lunch because I didn't feel like it. It was cool, I had a good enough time that I didn't mind working throughout the entirety of my time there.

... Removed in agreement with NDA ...

Terminating Cables

Day 1 - May 2

Monday - Drew School
Today was a nice slow start into the project. After coming in to Drew (at 7:50) and doing some extra calculus problems, I worked on my project through sometime around 12:15. Before I can program physical components of the game, I am waiting on Tom to finish up the "Design Document," featuring more than twenty pages visual displays of different aspects, views, and menus of Pre-FaB. In the meantime, I should put more time into sample projects of my own until the design  doc is done so I can familiar with this new language and re-familiarize myself with programming logic. (So far, I've been looking into programming the UI, user interface). All of the stuff mentioned above (and more) was discussed in a meeting between Tom, Mr. Garrison and I at Drew. I'd call Day 1 a success.