As the weeks pass and both projects are beginning to form, the knowledge that I continue to gain has not seized.  Particularly the Atlanta Transit project has begun to take way with all members of the projects learning how to efficiently sift through archives of transit plans for the MARTA rail line. It includes all maps that display actual functioning lines, to proposed lines, to rail lines that were never built.

How we can use this information to obtain a tangible idea or final result comes from using the software ArcMaps, a software made by ESRI. ArcMaps allows us to take these Geographically tagged, archived maps and create an accurate layer, in which we then trace to create layers upon layers. As we all continue to track all the maps found and continue to add layers, the end result will be an inclusive map of all the planned and proposed rails that the City of Atlanta wanted for MARTA.

The uses for this map will hopefully be to see how transportation affects the city of Atlanta and how that in turn affects which of all the proposed lines were actually built throughout out the years. We can then look to how these stations and lines affected the communities that surround this convenient way of transportation. I believe that the mission of this interactive map will be to educate the people of Atlanta on how public transportation and construction have immediate and long term effects on the surrounding communitie’s’ economic status, social status, and ultimately their potential due to their accessibility from public transportation.

As this project continues to unfold, I have been exposed to many grad students who have degrees in Geoscience. These intelligent students have instilled in me the hand that technology has in creating all of these important mapping projects. One particular student has mentored me in thinking about guiding me on which other minor or double major to pick up, because of its demand.

I am infinitely grateful for all the opportunities that being a SIF has allowed me to have and I am always excited to see where the next upcoming weeks will take me!

I will be sure to keep you all updated.

Until next time,

Alexandra Orrego

As CURVE begins to gain “regulars” , “newbie” traffic, and large intellectual groups I continue to see the growth and resources that the CURVE space is able to provide for not just GSU students but the community. The visuals in the space are incredible and it is a daunting task coming up with ways to optimize all the resources that the CURVE space provides. As the weeks go by and seminars, classes, and research groups have come in and out of CURVE, its become a bit more clear the type of students and researchers that CURVE is meant to attract. These ambitious intellectuals are seeking knowledge on their own personal interest or to improve their abilities in the subject matter at hand. As a SIF member of two innovative projects as well as computer science major, the amount of knowledge that is out there simply by meeting the right people and gaining meaningful relationships has impacted me in being proactive to seek these opportunities much more especially when it is to gain that connection for a job or internship or simply for personal knowledge.

One specific  The entrepreneur workshop seemed very useful in not only the sense of helping guide entrepreneurs and giving them the tools to succeed on their own but also to provide them opportunities to network. Specifically a guest speaker was brought to the workshop. The speaker named MK was a GSU alumni who has been the successful business  owner of 3 companies and was now working on developing two other companies. MK seemed very passionate about giving the attendees of the workshop helpful knowledge and tips on how to successfully start their own business and this was rooted in his wish to give back to the GSU community that molded him into a successful business man. He mentioned several times his bias towards GSU students for internships and his need for people for his teams. These statements jumped out at me. The fact that the GSU community from current students, to faculty, to alumni can all connect with each other and provide each other with unbeatable opportunities to get ahead amazes me. I was very proud that CURVE was able to host such an event and bring such ambitious and successful people to GSU.

I am excited to see what other opportunities CURVE can bring not only to GSU but to the community as well!

until next time,

Alexandra Orrego

This week has been another one of those informational weeks. I was recently recruited to be a part of the Atlanta transit project. This project is geared towards focusing on Atlanta’s public transportation history, particularly MARTA’s planned transit lines as well as existing ones. With this being said our plans are to create one all inclusive map of how MARTA’s transit lines were originally planned to extend to and where they actually ended up being today. With Atlanta’s new street car being prepared for release in the next upcoming months, we can see how public transit has impacted life downtown and how public transportation remains as an important issue for large cities like Atlanta.

When analyzing the “game plan” for the project I was taught how to search for archival maps of Atlanta’s MARTA plans through GSU’s libraries resources. With these maps we can therefore sift through all the maps and record all of our findings to avoid overlapping and duplicates.These maps are then used in a large and very resourceful software called Arcmaps where we can over lay these old transit plans over another realistic map that places it to be geographically accurate. All this information was very enlightening and interesting when learning how all the mapping processes work. This project is going to be an exciting and educational experience for myself who is a computer science major in order  to obtain some hands on experience with mapping. I am glad to be what you call a rookie introduced to all the experts and professionals, because I get to collaborate with the best in the field.

I am excited to see what new things I learn, and with that, an update on my other project:

As some of you may know I am working on creating an interactive 3D model of the block at Decatur st. and Peachtree center ave. (formerly known as Ivy st.). Progress has been made much slower than we anticiapted, but only because we did not account for the delays when  confronted with the challenges of 3D modeling and finding historically accurate, head-on pictures of the buildings on the street. So I have taken the initiative to continue to look for picture on the immense world wide web as well as attempt to gain experience and knowledge on how to help with the interactive part.

I took  the liberty to download Unity which has been decided to become our interactive game engine, and I have proceeded to watch lynda.com videos on the gaming software in order to be of more assistance to my project “mates”. As I have only just begun the long and informational process of learning how to create and build in this gaming software, I realize that I have only scratched the surface.

I will continue to update you all on these interesting and innovative projects and hope to share with all of you the journey and headaches that innovation takes, but ultimately show you all the amazing finished products. (although that may be further down the road)

As our project on the interactive 3D model of decatur street in the 1930s continues, we have come to face challenges fearlessly. Some of the biggest challenges we are facing include historically accurate 3d modeling, finding pictures of the actual buildings that were there at the time, and filling all the historical holes from which we have to sort through what seems like a limited amount of information about the street. In order to tackle and overcome these issues, we reached out to emory because there was word that they were working on a similar project, except at a much larger scope. It seemed that they were working on a  3D model of the entire city of Atlanta based on the findings of numerous archival maps. We decoded to reach out to the people working on this project in order to gain some insight and information that could ultimately help and reduce the risk of replicating their project.

We did a video conference with someone who was leading the project at Emory and found a lot of commonality between the two projects, although Emory was working on the entire city while we are focusing on a specific street. We ultimately came to the decision that we could possibly join forces to aid each other on the project. We could help with their large scope project, reach out to other universities or interested partners, and seek funding all in order to have the resources to accurately and efficiently complete our projects. It seemed as though it were a reality check to see all that was still necessary to achieve the excellence and complexity that we wanted for the 3D model.

Although it was an eye-opener everyone on the project came together to decide that it was best if we united forces with those from Emory and possibly researchers at Georgia Tech. We are working on looking for an experienced 3d modeler and gaining more references and images of the buildings to therefore accurately replicate them. Ultimately the conclusion although the road to our goal has gotten a bit more difficult we have gained important knowledge needed to fight these challenges and overcome them.