Profile:
My name is Matt Greco and am 17 years old.
I am going to be a senior at Fairport High School next fall.
I am working at the Astronomical Imaging Insight Lab this summer.


July 6, 2011
First Day of the summer internship. I had the scavenger hunt today and set up a bunch of accounts for the summer.

July 7, 2011
Today Jason and I worked on making the DSE more user friendly.We made the push pins uniform in size and color and edited the information. We also made the push pin labels more readalbe and made the whole DSE project appear more professioal.

July 8, 2011
Today I worked on making the google labels and descriptions on the DSE dissappear. Jason and I tried many different ways to do this, but unfortunatly were not able to do so. Another thing that I did was brainstorm ways to improve the accucacy of the wiimote. I soon realized that it would just be easier to just use a sytem like "Soft Board" which uses an LED light pointer, and is more accurate then the wiimote.

July 11-15, 2011
This week, I went on a mission trip to West Virginia. I traveled with my youth group through a program called REACH. This program helps to fix homes that belong to people who are less fortunate than the average American. The crew that I was on and I helped to paint a man's house who is confined to a wheel chair. I had a great week, met many new friends and served people in need.

July 19th, 2011
Today, I got caught up on all of the things I missed while on my trip to West Virginia. Jason filled me in on everything that he did for the DSE while I was gone. Some of the things that he did was that he installed smoothboard2, which made the Wiimote more accurate. Also, since we missed a skin the first time around, Jason edited the skin to make it easier to use. I missed a lot over the past week, but I'm happy to be back!

July 20th, 2011
Today, the main goal of mine was to show Brandon how to use the DSE. He needed to learn how to use it because he was displaying it at some sort of college fair that night at RIT. Jason and I showed him how to use it and he picked up on it really quickly!

July 21st, 2011

Today, I transferred all of the information and files from Drew's computer onto the new laptop. Jason and I downloaded Google Earth, and also transferred Smoothboard2 from the desktop to the laptop. After lunch, we transferred the DSE files. Oh, and we also made The DSE the home screen.


July 22nd, 2011
This morning, the other interns came in to look at mine and Jason's lab. Unfortunatly there was a problem though... the Wiimote decided not to connect to the bluetooth in the laptop. So we described to everyone the project we are working on and told them to come back later when we fixed the problem. We spent the morning troubleshooting what could be wrong, and we eventually fixed the problem and invited everyone back in right before lunch. We demonstrated the DSE and then went outside for our Friday picnic! It was fun but really really hot outside. After we stuffed our faces with hamburgers and hots, Jason and I brainstormed 10 ideas for our new project to conquer: The Planeterrainium which is basically 3D images of Mars that we are trying to make more user-friendly... sound familiar?

July 25th, 2011
Today, All of the interns and a few grad students went on a field trip to Rochester Precision Optics. We toured the company, which manufactures glass lenses used mainly for military purposes and laser optics. It was really cool because alothough it is one of the top ten businesses in Rochester, it is not very well advertised, because they manufacture glass lenses. After the tour, we went to Pizza Hut and I ate about 17 pizzas. I didn't realize going on a tour could make you so hungry. After we returned, Jason and I contined our work on the DSE. We started to make a guided tour using audio files that would take the user around the sun and stop at different points to tell about the sun. Hopefully this project won't take too long and we'll be able to finish within the week.

July 26th, 2011
When Jason and I walked into our room this morning, we were surprised to find the both of our computers, projectors, PVC, and DSE werenot there... So we decided that either a buglary occurred or Brandon had all the equiptment. Luckily Brandon and Jake had the stuff and were at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, displaying the DSE and Planeterrainium. So after a morning of confusion, we finally got to work. We finished making all of the audio files for the DSE guided tour, and tomorrow all we have to do is just put the tour together.


July 27th, 2011
Today, Jason and I continued to work on the guided tour for the DSE. We put all of the skins into different folders so that we could make an automatic tor for each one... but the camera zoomed in way to far, so we spent a while adjusting the snapshot views of the pin points so that it stayed on the ball when the projector projected it. This took a long time, and after we were all done, Google Earth decided that it would re-adjust all of the snapshots... So our mission currently is to somehow make all of the audiofiles and pinpoints align, and stay where we want them to.

July 28th, 2011
Today, I spent most of the day re-recording all of the audiofiles for the pinpoints on the DSE so that they would align with the actual pinpoints. Jason and I finished up doing that and *hopefully* they will stay there. (We saved it like 26 times...) We'll keep our fingers crossed tonight and tomorrow will add some finishing touches to the Guided tour.

July 29th, 2011
Today was a frustrating day in the lab. All day Jason and I tried and re-tried making the guided tour work. We almost got it a few times to, but right when we thought it was finished, someone would walk into the room, a chair would fall over, or some other crazy thing would happen, causing noise, and the recording requires absolute silence to work. Another fustrating thing is that Google Earth does not want you to open a push pin while an audio recording is playing. This was annoying because that is exactly what we need to do when making the tour. Oh well, there's always next week to get a fresh start...

August 1st, 2011
Today we spent the day making the actual tours for the DSE. It actually was successful, and we got a great start! We should be able to finish (without any distractions) really soon. Nothing too exciting happened besides that today//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\

August 2nd, 2011
Today we finished up all of the tours for the DSE. Luckily, there were no distractions and we finished up relatively quickly. Our next task is to start making a DSE like program, but instead of an image of the sun, we are going to be using an image of the moon, with fun facts and things like that. 

August 3rd, 2011
Today, I started working on the DSE for the moon. It went pretty smoothly, because there is already a moon skin for Google Earth. So all that I have to do, is make the facts, pushpins, etc. I started to look up facts about the moon. I figured twenty five should be enough, so I used Google Documents to jot down a few. All that's left for the facts is to make push pins and put the facts on them.

August 4th, 2011
Today, I continued my work on the DSE for the moon. Since I researched all of the facts that I'm going to put on, I spent today putting the facts onto the push pins that I created. The DSE for the moon is actually going really smoothly because we worked out all the kinks in the original DSE, so now, I know what to do, and what not to do.

August 5th, 2011
Today, all of the interns went on another field trip to Xerox! It was pretty cool because there was a bunch of people who worked on other things besides the stereotypical printers and copiers, who gave talks about the new ideas that they had. Some were about different types of cameras that detect cigarettes at gas stations and others were about different types of imaging. Then we went on a tour of the facility where they make printers, which was this gigantic factory-like place with all sorts of crazy technology and assembly lines. The tour was really cool and informative. After the field trip, I walked into my lab to find a small group of people there, looking at the DSE and Planeterrainium, so Brandon and I gave them a quick demo of these two projects.

August 9th, 2011
Today, I finished working on the DLE (I gave it a new name: The Digital Lunar Explorer)by adding some final touches. After this, I started to work on a new project called the DME (Digital Martian Explorer). I looked up some facts about Mars and started to put them onto push pins on Google Mars. I really should finish up this project and start working on my final project soon...


August 10th, 2011
Today, we finished working on the DME by putting all of the facts onto push pins and putting the push pins onto the surface of Mars. It was a pretty slow day, besides the undergraduate cookout that the rest of the interns and I attended for lunch.

August 11th, 2011
Today was a very fun day. All of the interns went to Melles Griot and toured the facilities. Unfortunately, the tour was very short and only lasted for about 45 minutes, but we went to Pelligrinos afterwards which was delicious:) After we returned from the field trip, Bethany asked Jason and I to help with the summer camp she is running. We got to put some Mento's into coke and also got to drop some watermelons off the roof of the building. Other than that, we worked on our project and got a good start.

August 12th, 2011

Today was a very busy day. Today was the RIT Symposium where all of the undergraduates from our building presented their projects about what they worked on over the summer. Throughout most of the morning, I spent time over there listening to the talks. They also had a delicious lunch for everyone who attended :). After the lunch, I went back to the Carlson building and helped set up a lab on the roof. Later, a plane flew over and took measurements of the different things we set up. It was a pretty fun day.

August 15th, 2011

Today was a long day of working on my presentation... Just a lot of boring work on Google documents. Other than that, I'm going on a leadership camping trip with people from my church tomorrow and Wednesday, so I won't be blogging until Thursday. Until then.

August 18th, 2011
Today was a stressful day filled with a ton of Google documents work. I banged out a bunch of slides and made a ton of progress. I need to finish this thing up tomorrow. I also worked on trying to find a plugin for the DME and DLE so that we can upload it onto their own websites.....unsuccessful so far, but I'll keep on trying.