PsuSean's Weblog

How’s your short term memory?

psusean — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:10:46 +0000

I stumbled upon this game that tests your short term memory. It shows you a shape for a couple seconds, then removes it and has you redraw the shape. It then scores you by the accuracy of your angles.

My short term memory was pretty good and I scored an overall score of 91%.

Viral Video Progress Part 2

psusean — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:42:31 +0000

Our group has reached the deadline of uploading our viral videos.

This video shows you how to view the full size of someone’s profile pic.
How To See Anyone’s Full Size Facebook Profile Image
This video shows how to create fractal images on your computer.
Fractal Images
This video shows a demo on how to use Photosynth.
Photosynth Demo
This video shows how to properly wax your skis.
How to Wax Skis

Viral Video Progress

psusean — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:52:24 +0000

Our group is working hard to get our viral videos uploaded. I just finished our first video and submitted it to Metacafe.

DPan’s Python Kills Again

Door Game

psusean — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:40:23 +0000

I played the Door Game a few times to test my irrational tendency.

The scores were:
Test 1a) 24 switches, 1100 pts 1b) 13 switches, 1600 pts
Test 2a) 4 switches, 2100 pts 2b) 3 switches, 2200 pts
Test 3a) 0 switches, 2500 pts 3b) 13 switches, 1900 pts

When I first played the game, I tried to keep all the doors at the same level. This resulted in lower score and more switches. The second trial was similar and very sporadic in my selection of doors. The game analyzed the my changing of doors so often was to keep my options open. The second game was an attempt to get the highest score I could and had no care of keeping my options open. The final game was just to try to beat the game’s basis that every has irrational tendency. I scored the highest score of all trials, but didn’t switch at all.

This game illustrates the idea of irrational tendency well, but has a few faults. The first fault was that the distribution wasn’t even. When the doors were shrinking and I only clicked one door repeatedly, it never went above 60. When I moved around the non-shrinking doors to get a low score, I got many clicks up into the 80 range. This made the game look rigged. The other fault was that when there were fewer switches with shrinking doors, the game still assumed there was more and said I still had irrational tendencies.

Viral Videos

psusean — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:36:41 +0000

Our new project is to create videos to upload to Metacafe. These videos can be on virtually any subject, but how-to videos are encouraged. We will be graded on the total number of views the videos receive before the end of the semester. Basically, we have to create a viral video that sweeps the internet. The best way to be sure our video succeeds is to make it funny, interesting, and sometimes stupid.

Who knows how we will progress, but be sure to check here for our amazing videos soon!

Junk Music

psusean — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:59:51 +0000

Last week, we created musical instruments out of junk. My group used static noise on a radio as our instrument and then changed the pitch by moving the source of interference from the speaker. This changed allowed for a variance in tones, something different than other groups. Most other groups just had different forms of percussion instruments.

The second day was a little more organized with a broader range of instruments. Many groups used bottles filled with different amounts of water as their instruments. This was an easy way to get a variety of tones from junk. All of our efforts are still small in comparison with Bart Hopkin’s instruments. He is able to create amazing music out of garbage and he is able to make it sound good.

Crash and Burn

psusean — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:23:20 +0000

Last week, we finished our crash and burn project. My group crashed and burned quite hard, but we have great opportunities to progress from the project. Our group began working on a market research survey and advertisements for local businesses. We visited over twenty different businesses in State College, but were unable to secure any sales. We had a few businesses interested in our advertising, but they wanted others to commit to us before they did. This venture crashed and burned and left us struggling to find some way to make money.

Luckily we were able to get a shipment of fancy candles to sell for a large profit margin. We were able to sell most of our shipment and made over $330 profit within the last 3 days. If we would’ve been able to sell the candles earlier, our profit would have been quite large.

While our project didn’t work out too well, a few of us are starting another business venture that will be very profitable for us.

How much is my time worth?

psusean — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:05:36 +0000

We’ve all heard people say “what’s your time worth?” But not many of us have a clear definitive answer and are unaware of what exactly it costs. I did some calculations about all of my expenses and split them over per day, per week, and per month. Included in these expenses was everything from food to car insurance.

After compiling all of my numbers, I found that I had a daily cost of $51.26, a monthly cost of $1559.29, and a yearly cost of $18,711.43. These numbers seem overwhelming at first, but reasonable after you consider all that they pay for. I’m a full time student with only a little bit of yearly income. My parents are paying the difference until I graduate. After factoring in all of my income, my daily cost that my parents pay drops to $39.16.

If I were to be on my own, my salary would have to be roughly 1.3 times my yearly cost (to include taxes). I would have to earn $24,324.86 a year. Once I graduate, I plan on getting a job in engineering and expect to earn around $60,000 to $80,000 a year. This seems quite large compared to my current yearly expenses, but it doesn’t factor in other costs like car payments and a family.

One hour to make some cash

psusean — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:33:51 +0000

Last week, we began our Crash and Burn project with a quick money making exercise. We had one hour to turn our $5 seed money into as much cash as we could. Our group began looking at all different ways to raise money. We tried working at Dunkin Donuts for 30 minutes and even tried our luck at scratch-off lottery tickets. All of these ideas failed and we came away with no extra money.

We were only successful in generating loans, totaling $200. Our final tally at the end of one hour was $211, the most in the class. From this quick exercise, we will be able to learn from our failures and it will help us perform during the Crash and Burn project better.

World’s Biggest Failure

psusean — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:13:33 +0000

Unless you happened to be in a coma or trapped in a cave, you have probably heard about the New York Giants beating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. For the Giants, it was an amazing win to a mediocre season. For the Patriots, it was a complete and absolute failure and in the minds of many, the world’s biggest failure.

The Patriots had so much riding on the game. They were looking to match the 1972 Dolphins’ perfect season and become the dynasty of 2000′s. Tom Brady was looking to be one of the best quarterbacks ever. They had been perfect through sixteen regular season games and two playoff games, they beat the Giants in week 17, and they were 11 1/2 point favors to win. They should have won easily, but they failed. Instead of going down in history as the perfect team, they will be remembered for losing the biggest game. They’ll be known in record books as the only team to go 18-1 in a season to lose the Super Bowl.

The Giants will be remembered as the team that started 0-2, sent only one player to the Pro Bowl, and toppled the goliath of the AFC to win the National Championship.