UCSD COSMOS Cluster 1 - 2021 - Blue

On Friday, Professor Sanjoy Dasgupta guest spoke about machine learning and how a computer can determine handwritten numbers. For example, the post office uses software which has to determine the addresses written on an envelope. However, not everyone writes the number 5 exactly the same. Some may curl more that it could be considered by a computer as the number six. There are different algorithms that can be used to most effectively and accurately determine the values.  Similar algorithms can be use to make connections/relationships between other things such as analogy problems (king is to queen as man is to ?). 

This week we spent time working with PyGame.  After learning about it and creating an example game, we were let loose to create our own.  On Friday, we presented our PyGame projects.  Below you will see our presentations and demos.  Congratulations the Faculty Choice Award winners Erin and Paul for their game "Magical Maze" and to the People's Choice Award winners David and Carter for their game "Battleship." Jennifer and Brad - PacMan -2.0 Slides | Demo  | Play the Game How to play - Use the arrow keys to move around *** Jocelyn and Heindrick - Snake Game Enhanced Slides | Demo  | Play the Game How to play -  Control the snake using up,down,left, or right arrow keys to either avoid hitting the border or the obstacles (didn’t have enough time to finish collision with obstacles) or colliding with the fruit to increase length and earn points. *** Sam and Shane - Battle through the Lands Slides | Demo  | Play the Game How to play - Use the right and ...

We like to work hard AND have some fun in our cluster. On Tuesday, we create skits to show off our creativity and goofy side. Be ready to laugh!  Presenting our group skits... Menaces to Society by Elizabeth, William, Brad, Tony and Linus *** Burrito Eating War Crime by Taylin, Sam, Joshua, Edward and Austin *** Henry Lu, An Autobiography by Carter, Heindrick, David and Shane *** The Separation by Paul, Iman, Vidhi, Jennifer and Erin *** "Break" Time by mentors Hannah, Han, Henry, Bella and John, and Shirley

  On Wednesday afternoon, Deian Stefan was our guest speaker. He is a professor in the CSE department at UCSD. His insights on cybersecurity helped us relate what security issues in the physical world to that of the cyber world. There are two main types of security – defensive and offensive. He spoke about the analysis and protection of computer systems in an adversarial setting. The main focus was the protection on confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a system against an adversary. A couple of the big tips we walked away with were use password managers (so you don’t use the same password for everything and they are complex) and don’t install too many extensions.

  On Monday, we joined with Gold cluster to hear from our guest speaker Geoff Voelker . Professor Voelker is teaches operating systems and software systems courses. His research is on multiplayer network games. We had the opportunity to learn about what happens behind the scenes in massive multiplayer network games. For example, when you play these games, you are actually playing a game in the past (around 50 ms in the past) and there are several different ways for the system to handle lag times, predictions and interpolations so that it behaves as we expect.  It was fascinating to find out how it works by sending the state of a player's game to the server and to the other players to make everything seem smooth and real-time.  Thank you Professor Voelker for answering our questions about gaming issues like cheating.

 This week we worked in groups of 5 to create a Shark Tank presentation to our sharks (mentors).  You can view the entire Shark Tank "episode" below. Our Sharks: Hannah - CEO of Grehmlins, Inc. - Finest breeders of fantasy creatures. Han - Dodgecoin investor, overnight billionaire, and currently investing in creating ecofriendly crypto. Bella - CEO of Plushie Incorporated: The largest plushie company in the world Henry - Owner of social media, empire of memes Kevin O'Weary - Inventor of toaster strudel Our products were: Edible Cardboard The Blank Plan Goldfish Walker Sauce Stream   How did the Sharks respond?  Watch the full episode of the pitches and feedback!

On Friday, we presented our image processing projects.  We had to do image manipulation.  We programmed in Python to do our "photoshopping".  It was incredibly tough decision as there were many deserving projects!  They could have easily won in years past.  After much deliberation, The Faculty Team Choice awards went to Carter and Elizabeth for "Blurbadoobe" and David and Edward for "Shining Liberty".  The People's Choice award went to Jocelyn and Austin for "Save the Earth". Below are our videos of the presentation we did in lab to our cluster, a link to our presentation and the images (before and after). Shane and Paul - "Graphic Landscape Image Process" Presentation Slides Before After *** Brad and Vidhi - "A Colorful Perspective" Presentation Slides Before After *** Jennifer and Heindrick - "Fish Wallpaper" Presentation Slides Before After *** Tony and Erin - "Ultra Mega Awesome Picture Filter" Pres...

We had an amazing time Friday night getting to know one another by playing some fun games! At the beginning, everyone in breakout rooms played games like Werewolf, League of Legends, and Pictionary. At the end everyone came back together to join a game of Werewolf with everyone, where the Werewolves were unsuccessful both times and the Villagers won to protect their town! Some games we played...   

 We take time on Friday to share what we appreciate or are thankful for during the week.  This week, we captured our appreciation visually.

We exercised our creativity in a different way - collaboratively doing a group Bob Ross painting.  Below are our paintings!  It only goes to show that working together creates an awesome product.  Thanks to our mentors for leading the way! Edward, Paul, Sam, Brad and Bella (Mentor) Carter, Linus, Jennifer, Erin, David, Joshua, Iman, Jocelyn and Hannah (Mentor) Heindrick, Elizabeth, Taylin, Tony and Henry (Mentor) Shane, William, Austin, Vidhi and John (Mentor)