Eco Feature Extraction Phase 1

So most PhD students would probably agree that sitting down and actually writing is possibly one of the most elusive processes in the whole PhD effort. But we are encouraged nevertheless to write something, every night! I have been told this time and time again; it has come as a recommendation or suggestion from countless advisors, mentors, fellow grad students, etc. But we don't listen, I tried to tell myself, that if i am typing emails or chatting or sending text messages, then that's writing something...but looking at my progress thus far, that kind of "writing" doesn't seem to be helping. That's really why i opened up this little space so i can write about what i am supposed to be doing and when i read it again to myself, realize that i am either doing it or not doing it.

So today i read another scientific journal article, and i have plenty to choose from. I worked on one of the projects that we'll call LiDAR Feature Extraction (LiFE). Basically, from home, I typed all all the notes i have been writing in my research notebook about all the steps i need to complete thus far in the project. So the goal is to come up with some Lidar imagery and use it to create some high precision digital elevation models (DEMs). Then we'll take the DEMs and conflate them to some Digital Ortho Quarter Quads (DOQQs) and see if they align precisely.

Sounds easy enough...since they say you are what you eat...i have been eating "Nerds" to see if i can become one. But in the meantime, in the next few days i have to familiarize myselfwith how to use a few different software packages such as GRAS, TAPES-G, SNAKES, The ArcGIS tools, IDL & ENVI for terrain structure analysis. Yes, I am thinking spatially, but not looking at maps just yet. I keep mixing up my readings for two projects so i need to come up with a better filing system then just putting everything in a "research" folder. Ok let me get back to reading about remote sensing technology.