Summer Student 2015 Update: Coding with Loading

Today we have a  post from Gauri Sharma who will be working on Planet Four this summer as part of the ASIAA Summer Student Program.

So the second week has passed in the ASIAA Summer program. I would like to call this week “coding with loading.”  This past week, I played with python. Don’t be scared, I will reiterate for you again it is not a snake, it’s a kind of language like java, C, C++ etc.

As the week was running likewise my work was also running. On the 3rd day of week, my supervisor said “let’s go and have some drink”. It sounds so awesome right!, I was thinking: ” Yipee! I am going to spend some time with my supervisor “. But beside all this imagination, I am gonna tell you truth. No doubt that was the wow time but along with that I got full week tasks. And finally I got all those tasks, that what I wanted to get completed. This is called ‘loading.’ Now time to talk about coding…

On 17 July, again meeting with Meg, and fully working on debugging my code. Oh! My God, my code!! full of errors. She spent almost 2 hours with me. In between more than two time My Mind said: ” Gauri Sharma you gone, she is gonna kick you in few mins, you wasted this much of her time”. I was literally soo scared. But we got through the debugging (and she didn’t kick me).

Before I tell, what’s the use of my code.  I would like to let you know some key points like HiRISE image and Planet Four images. HiRISE images: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) is a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , which allows it to take pictures of Mars with resolutions of 0.3 m/pixel. So that, image is so big that HiRISE images are diced  into tiles (Planet Four images) that are shown on the Planet Four website that you classify.  Right now, I am working to correlate Planet Four images to full HiRISE images, so I can easily find out a particular interesting area in the larger HiRISE image. So now I can tell you, my code works by converting Planet Four image (x, y) position into HiRISE_image (x, y) pixel position.

There is a  happy ending, my first master code is working. And as usual Meg always makes me happy and her line ” you are making progress ” always left a pretty smile on my face and helps me keep calm and cool in such a HOT Summer of Taipei.

Then, I moved forwarded for new task, I got in my loading season .This new code has taken much more time then expected, but it is finally done. It works by  “converting corners of Planet Four image (x, y) position into corners of HiRISE image (x, y) pixel position. So on Monday, I am ready with my second master code. I gather so much python tricks, finally I am enjoying with them. One thing , I would like to say for coding, “its awesome!, its kind of magic!!!!”

That’s all for this week. See you next week.