The weather must have known it was the first day of school. I woke to snow falling outside my window. I had a quick breakfast of nutella on rolls with orange juice, packed up my bag and bundled up to head over to campus. I first met with Professor Lovás for Material Science, which I'm taking as independent study. He gave me reading material, and then introduced me to the other professors who I will also learn from. Hopefully I'll also be able to practice welding as part of the class! I then met up with Will and many of the other English speaking students for our Measurement and Signal Processing Lab, only to find out (after some confusion) that it does not begin until next week. We decided to go visit our international advisor and then found a school supply store. Since the school has an Architecture College, there was a awesome little shop filled with drafting and assorted school supplies. Good to know for the future. We were felling hungry and cold, so we stopped by the cafeteria for some inexpensive Hungarian cooking. Can't beat lentil soup and potatoe salad and crepe for $5.
With some more time to spare until our Math class, we took refuge from the cold outdoors by escaping to the Library. I'll have to go back to take more pictures inside the library, because it is a really impressive building, with wood furniture and bookshelves lending a traditional, classic library feel. We found the quite room, a large hall with rows and rows of desks with lamps at each seat. I looked over the material for my independent study class to get a head start on the reading.
We braved the cold again to head to Math which we are also taking on an individual basis. After almost two hours of math lecture and practice (which went by suprisingly quick), we had one more task for the day on campus: to meet with our exchange professor and discuss our research for the semester. We took a little tour of the laboratory, and talked about the different projects which we can do. It was a busy day, but it looks like the semester is going to be really fun. Now I'm back at home, enjoying the warmth of being inside, and enjoying the warm food I cooked up inside me. Tomorrow is, thankfully, less busy, and hopefully the weather will be nicer. I hope it is for you too.
Here is a training Robot, running off an old Dos machine with about a Megabyte of RAM. It was made by some of the university students as a PHD project some 10 or 15 years ago. This is what we're starting out programming.
Look at this bad boy go. This was top of the line in the late 1980s, built by the current cell phone company NOKIA. They did some automated workpiece placement research on this setup in the early 90's, and now it's also for student training.
Here is our lab space at the University. There's a Microprocessor which we are learning to program for a Ultrasonic Distance Sensor. Not too complicated, but we have to learn lots of C quick. We're using the Oscilloscope to look for interference if multiple US sensors are operating at once.
After school we hurried to buy tickets for a quick trip to Vienna on Sunday and Monday (Easter Holiday on Monday!).
And of course sometimes we relax for a late lunch break.
