Thank God…

1. I’m not married.
2. I don’t have a kid.
3. I have a mom and dad who love me.
4. I have great friends.
5. I’m a male.
6. I’m intelligent.
7. I’m creative.
8. I’m my own boss.
9. I went to college and graduated in 4 years.
10. I’m going to law school.
11. I’ve been to Ireland.
12. I’ve loved at least one person in my life.
13. I have my awesome car.
14. I’m not a virgin.
15. I have no disability.
16. I am able to run.
17. I am healthy.
18. I make/have enough money to pay my bills even in this economy.
19. Obama is our president.
20. I have a sense of humor.
21. I got through a difficult time with alcohol.
22. I’m not a religious fanatic (not that religion is bad).
23. I can keep a conversation going.
24. My sarcasm sometimes goes unnoticed.
25. I’m artistic.
26. I can solve a Rubik’s cube.
27. I can still take the derivative of an equation.
28. I look really good with a tan.
29. I don’t take shit from people.
30. For computers and the entire IT industry.
31. For movies and the entire movie industry (minus the MPAA — suck my balls)

The project’s in-depth details can be found at http://www.geigel.com/signlanguage/, however, briefly, I was able to employ computational methods, initially researched in the 1980s, to recognize American Sign Language letters within computer images.  (Note: The initial research performed in the 1980s focused on recognizing faces in images which have popularly become known as Eigenfaces).  The process is called Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and is widely considered to be a breakthrough discovery in the advancement of Computer Vision.  Much of PCA’s attractiveness comes from it’s ability to train similar, yet slightly different, images of a given class.  In my research, for instance, the classes I dealt with were signed letters corresponding to different hand orientations.  When it boils down to it, PCA is able to mathematically define (using Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues) the most important features of a given class (for example a fist for letter A versus the open cirlce for the letter O), and then when a new unknown image is presented to the system a calculation can be performed and a mathematically reinforced estimate can be made as to what class the unknown image belongs.

Ellen Walker, my Computer Vision professor at Hiram College, oversaw my research and offered help when I ran into issues.  Ultimately, I was able to develop/program/execute a fully functional PCA system in C++ for recognizing American Sign Language letters.  In fact, once the PCA system was trained, I was able to test it on 10 sample images with 100% recognition accuracy.  The project was a huge success!  Both in it’s results and in the lessons, knowledge, and gratification it left me.  Though Ellen has never explicitly said this to me, I think that she was also impressed and surprised with how well the results turned out.

This all took place in 2005 — the year I graduated from Hiram.  As the years went on I would occasionally correspond with Ellen and then on 11/29/2006 I received an email from her asking if my project could serve as a possible AI/Vision project that she would be submit to the University of Hartford’s “Machine Learning Experiences in AI” shared curriculum.  Of course I was excited and happy that my project would be the inspiration for such a project. 

A few years later I received another email from Ellen on 2/23/2009 saying that project was now appearing on Hartford’s website at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/compsci/ccli/samplep.htm.  The project’s detail page can be found at this URL: http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/compsci/ccli/rasl.htm.  There’s also a PDF (http://cs.hiram.edu/~walkerel/RASLUPCA.pdf) that has in-depth details along with a credit at the very bottom stating that the project was inspired by my project!  In classic programmer speak — w00t!

CNN video deer attacking school

Unlike many other students I knew coming into college exactly what I wanted to major in, computer science. Hiram’s CS department is extremely focused, challenging and educationally demanding. We are the only college in America to have an all female faculty, and also one of only a few that require 2 research projects before graduation instead of just 1 which others schools normally ask of their students. There will always be a place in my heart for the 2 senior faculty members, Obie Slotterbeck and Ellen Walker. Their lifetime experience alone is a wealth of knowledge, and their enthusiasm for the subject matter second to none.

My proudest moment as a professional student was my research project done in Ellen Walker’s Computer Vision course. I developed a fully supervised and trained vision detection system for classifying sign language letters within photographs. I approached the project with the same energy and determination I had in my chemistry project. I dominated the research and understood every technical detail required to make my system work. The satisfaction I had from the project was some of the purest ever felt. When I gave my presentation to my fellow students and professors a great exhilaration came over me. You know what’s a great feeling? Working your ass off for something that you know you’ll get an A in, and having 100% confidence going into a presentation that you won’t get anything but an A.

Like most people who look back on their college years I remember mine as being some of the best of my life. Unlike most people, however, I don’t want to look back on them as if I can’t have even better times ahead of me! I am not done with life! I still have things to offer this world and things to do. After graduating it was a very strange feeling to not be returning to school the next fall. I miss learning. I miss research. I miss that undescribable spark a person feels when they’re on a campus with other smart people who are equally active in educational endeavors. The atmosphere is viral and electric. Hiram College, if nothing else, injected into my soul a desire to learn even more than I know today. To defend freedom of thought. Lastly, by generating a pang (sometimes painful) that I should strive for even more learning.

In the words of Hiram’s motto — fiat lux — let there be light.

I have always been a good artist and show creativity in everything I do. Art, for me, was an outlet. It allowed me to express myself in a positive way. Starting in 7th grade I began an aggressive art career which culminated in 12th grade by taking AP Art. My desire and dedication in high school to art was marred by a teacher who I didn’t really get along with, but I still stuck it through and got a 4 on my AP portfolio. One class in particular I enjoyed was a computer art course. That was my first exposure to Adobe Photoshop and I immediately saw the potential for what it could offer. Anyway, I mention my art career because it’s still a large part of my life and it’s worth noting.

I still sketch to this day and work with Photoshop nearly every day.

While my grades were generally good (fluctuating between As and Bs) I wasn’t immune to teenage laziness and disinterest in some subjects which resulted in lower grades. In retrospect, however, my high school years were great. I wasn’t anywhere near the most popular kid, but I wasn’t a huge dork either. I had a superb group of friends that bring back fond memories. I still maintain friendships with some of my friends to this day.

Also during my junior and senior year I had my first girlfriend, and was able to experience all the joys that come with it including falling in love. We dated on and off for 6 years, including college, but in the end it wasn’t meant to be. After college she became a teacher through the well respected Teach for America program and moved cross country. I, instead, opted to stay in Northeast Ohio to develop my web design business here in Cleveland. Though we’re estranged now, and had a less than perfect breakup, I still think of her at times and wish her well.

There’s plenty more I could discuss regarding Aurora, but this was the overall gist of it. My other stories are more specific to actual things that happened in Aurora.

The time I spent exploring the computer was in itself a course. When I chose to play on the computer I was developing the analytical skills programmers need. In retrospect I’m so happy that I worked on my programs than do some meaningless homework assignment. I wish I could convey the great feeling I have for my memory of these times.

As I grew older I developed greater skills and attacked more sophisticated languages. My foray into Windows applications was facilitated by Visual Basic. Then later, while in high school, my parents paid for private lessons in C++ at Hiram College from a student there. By the time I entered Hiram College as a student myself (you’ll read about this later) I had such a commanding understanding of underlying computer architecture and technology that I hit the ground running. While all these logical stimulations were good at serving my left side of the brain; they neglected my right side of the brain, and I needed to satiate it with art.

The next few days I was still fuming until a moment of realization rushed over me in an awesome wave of clarity. Our last assignment was to build some sort of “product” which we could market/sell that utilized chemical reations. It was obvious to me after my epiphany that I needed to knock the ball out of the park with my project. Sulking was no longer an option — I would instead focus my energy positively to show to Mr. Rohrig that he had greatly mistaken in choosing someone else. The feeling wasn’t one of maliciousness, but rather acceptance and action — to pull myself up an demand nothing but absolute success.

I spent weeks developing my project and when it was done it was easily the greatest achievment of my high school career. I developed a 3D topographical board game where players had to make it across an island laden with chemical reaction boobie traps. That wasn’t all. The driving force of the game was a computer program which tracked player progress on the board, showed fun graphics on the screen, and allowed students to view the chemical reactions taking place if they fell into a boobie trap. The presentation was exhilirating. The response was astounding. I ended up earning the highest grade on the project ever given out. I had overcome my demon and showed that I was capable of amazing things.

Later, I asked Mr. Rohrig for a letter of recommendation. I still have it somewhere around my house, and if I ever come across it I’ll post it, but take my word for it that it was glowing. You may also wonder if I ever confronted Mr. Rohrig about not receiving the outstanding student award. Well I did — when I visited his house to pick up the recommendation letter. He said that I was by far one of the the most dedicated students he had ever seen, but he ultimately chose honor awards based on grades. My friend, Adam (the person who won the award) squeaked by me by just a couple points. In light of my accomplishment this seemed far less important. The life lesson I took from this, of course, was to never to give up, never view a setback as total failure, and tolerate nothing less of yourself except the best. Mr. Rohrig, was one of the best instructors I’ve ever had and I owe a large part of my character development to his course.

The next year Mr. Rohrig was fired. He was a demanding teacher who wasn’t afraid to hand out bad grades to bad students. He firmly believed that you had to earn the grade you received, and parents complained. Because of this, and probably other comlaint(s) the administration fabricated to justify their action, he left our school system. Hopefully the story I’ve shared stands as a testament to his ability to change at least one person for the better

- Books written by Brian Rohrig as listed on Amazon.com
- Brian Rohrig’s teacher biography at his current school