August 8
Day 24

Hello. Today was pretty uneventful. No computer problems at all, and I got a lot of work done. I am almost done with creating the ICAs and PCAs for the Latin manuscript. After I finish those I get to start experimenting with the Polynomial Texture Mapping program. I think that that will be fun and I am looking forward to learning something new.

This morning we had a intern meeting about our outlines for our final presentations. Mine didn't get too many comments, which I think is a good thing but some more feedback would have been nice. The one thing that someone did say though was that my presentation and that Calvin's (the other historical document restoration intern) presentation look to be very similar and he wondered why we were not presenting together. While the base of our projects are the same, up until the Latin manuscript we have been working on completely different projects and those are what we are focusing on. He is focusing on the Archimedes pages while I have been working on Saint Catherine's data. These require different processing and have different stories.

 I think that the key to my presentation will be making the audience understand why the research matters. I think that the best way to do this is by giving them the background and the story of the manuscripts and make the manuscripts not some random piece of old paper, but a possible key to important mysteries in history. Calvin made fun of me the other day for getting excited about the Roman death mask, but I have always loved the history of Rome and to be able to work on something like that artifact was amazing. I mean think about it, that mask was made as a remembrance of a man who died 2000 years ago. And I can still see what he looked like. That's crazy. Often when I ask Roger where the manuscripts come from or how old they are he doesn't know and he is more interested in processing them. But I feel like adding the extra level of story to the process makes it more interesting and engaging.

DFTBA