A place to describe all my experiences at Queen's.

May 4, 2007: Week 1.
This week was all about getting things set up. I flew in from Vancouver and set up my room. The experience of watching the moving in/out of students from homes in Downtown Kingston (a.k.a. “The Ghetto”) is memorable. On that weekend, it seems like every building has someone moving out and someone else moving in. In addition, you will see TV's, toasters and all sorts of other goods left out on the lawn for someone to pick up. You also see little old ladies going around picking up unused canned goods that was being left in recycling boxes. This seems much different from home.

Then I met everyone in the lab. It was also time to set up email, security dongles and internet access for my laptop. I also started to set up my web site. I took some time to take some pictures of the Queen’s campus. Other than the digging, it is beautiful. My favorite picture is on the top of every page. It is a view of Kingston from the lab.  This is the most beautiful place I have ever been to. We met with Wendy Powley about the Computing Unplugged program to expose grade 5/6 girls to the gratifying world of programming though the use of Lego Robots. It is an exciting program that I am looking forward to helping out with.

Now onto work, I spent the week reading about the planned research project. The topic is using Case-Based Reasoning system for the diagnosis of impairment and for the planning of rehabilitation strategies in stroke patients. It seems exciting and a very practical application to help in the rehabilitation of patients who have suffered from a stroke. I read the Research Proposal for the project as well as Amr Abu-Zeid’s draft thesis on his research.

May 11, 2007: Week 2.

This week has gone by quite quickly. The week started off with a meeting with the Stroke Research Group (the biologists). They suggested a few projects that they would like to see. I spend most of my time this week looking at the 3 project suggestions and looking at the database that stores all the results. The one that I am going to start out with is a User Interface to input the data from paper forms (that are currently being used) into the DB2 database. Currently (I believe) this is done using spreadsheets and scripts to move the data from the spreadsheet into the database. A benefit to starting with this project is that it will familiarize me with the data that is being stored. Another feature included is the security of the data which allows restrictions of who can see the data. Later I will work on another project relating to the data. I also made sure that the computer I have use of has eclipse working on it. Eclipse makes writing Java code so much easier, it takes years to find all the little tricks that you can use with it.

Additionally this week, Helen and I had our chance to play with the Lego MindStorms NXT kits. They are a lot of fun. I was able to build all the simple designs in their original manual including simple programs that you can build right on the robot. The final instructions is for a robot that can "see" and detect light vs dark. That is where the instruction book ends so I spend more time installing the software and trying to get the robot to hit the ball off the stand. I finally succeeded.

Download Clip

It is a lot more work than you would think to get the robot to do what you want. But it is a pretty interesting toy. Hum... Maybe a good birthday gift? Well more to say next week.

May 18, 2007: Week 3.

How do you (almost) get hit by a car in Kingston? It turns out the most dangerous time to cross the road in Kingston, is when you have a green walk sign visible. Drivers here seem to not even bother to see if there is anyone trying to cross the road! Luckily, I saw the guy speed up and was able to scurry across the road before he arrived.  I had always heard that eastern drivers were worse than the drivers in the west (British Columbia) but I hadn’t really believed it until then. Kingston is interesting because most people seem to jay walk or cross when the light is red. Usually they look both ways (sometimes one way as there are some one-way streets) but rarely do they actually wait until the light says. This doesn’t seem so surprising.  As for work, I spend a lot of time learning how to use Visual Editor to build a graphical interface in Swing. It does seem to work better than hand coding, though it seems to be slightly verbose code as they use lots of little methods to build the GUI. I don’t know which form I like better but it seems to work somewhat better.

May 25, 2007: Week 4.

This week was a continuation of last week with a bit more. It was a bit shorter as it was Victoria Day on Monday. On Saturday, I took some time to view Kingston. I bought an all day bus pass so I tried to use it as much as possible. I checked out some thrift stores (I keep wondering when I will find something really good there) as well as the classics (Wal-mart). I took the time to take the bus to Amherstview, which is west of Kingston itself. It has a village atmosphere with mainly 60's era houses plus some new houses being built as well as mansions hugging the side of Collins Bay. I think I would like living in that area, it seems quiet.  Just before the buses shut down for the night (they stop fairly early on the weekends), I took it east towards RMC (Royal Military College, Fort Henry and the Kingston Military Base. Other than the military, there isn’t much there. I was really impressed by the buildings at RMC and am making plans to visit Fort Henry while I am here. After all the walking & riding the bus, I relaxed for the rest of the weekend. On Monday, I went to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University(www.aeac.ca). It has a WONDERFUL collection of 1800's portraiture by Antoine Plamondon, a very talented Canadian artist. As well they have some Rembrandt and El Greco pieces that are unbelievably detailed.

This week, I also started to work on the project relating to Visual3D, a software program for visualization of the KINARM data. Helen and I are going to add / modify some reports to begin with. I also spent time this week creating story boards for the layout of the DB2 interface for the addition of subjects to the database. After some discussion, with others, we added some more ideas on how the interface would be used, we still have to talk to people who will be using the program to determine if we are meeting their needs. We are going to be working on both the Visual3D and the KINARM interface program.