Wish me luck!

Just put the finishing touches on my powerpoints. It took me way longer than it should of to complete them because my USB kept corrupting the pictures and the powerpoints and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was so frustrating. But anyway, Sylvia lent me her USB which so far, works really well. Thankyou Sylvia! I had to redo the powerpoint and go back and re-find some of the pictures, but hey, it's done now.
I've been handing out permission notes over the past through days, I'm going to start conducting the experiment tomorrow and I'm about to go and perform a trial run on my sister. I really hope it works. Wish me luck! (Please)

Progress...finally

I started handing out permission notes yesterday and gave out more today! Yay, it feels like I'm getting somewhere. Also, I checked with Ms Zhang and she says that, as long as I check first to make sure the results aren't too different, I can test people over the internet. This hopefully means I won't have to go to the english centre at Kogarah after all.

*groan* I just spent the last hour of my life looking up pictures of asian models. Does anyone realise how hard it is to find pictures of asian male models where they're looking at the camera (not doing the whole "I want to show you how long my neck is" thing, geez that's annoying), where the picture is big enough so that when you enlarge their face it's not blurry and who aren't famous?! I'm so over this experiment at the moment, and i haven't actually started yet.
Anyway, surprising though it may seem, the purpose of this update is not to rant. I've realised that I can't start my experiment tomorrow because I need to get Lisa to check my models to make sure they are models and not incredibly famous actors or singers. A bit annoying, because some people I only have the chance of showing the slide show to on Sunday before church. Ah well, what can you do?

Making changes

I haven't done anything more with my experiment since my last post because I've been at music camp. My internet is still mucking up so I only have a limited time on it, which I will use to find more asian models. I'm still short on volunteers but a couple of people have suggested to me that I go to the english centre at Kogarah and ask if they have any students who have been born in Asia and have been in Australia for less than 10 years who are willing to participate in a year 10 student's science experiment. I don't want to resort to this, but I don't really have any alternatives. I mentioned in a previous post that I was considering cutting back on the number of volunteers but I've checked with Ms Zhang and I've already got the minimum number.
I plan to start my experiment tomorrow, hopefully, provided that I can finish the slide shows before my internet time is up. I haven't written my permission notes yet; I was only told the other day that we weren't getting a template and had to create our own. I had planned to get Ms Zhang to check it before I started to hand them out, but I really want to start tomorrow. I've seen Steph's notes and so if I use those as my template and then check with Ms Zhang on Monday I'm sure it will be fine.
Oh, I almost forgot something important, I think I have to change my method. Originally I was going to carry out two tests; one 1 hour after the first slide show and the other one week after the first slide show. However this is looking impractical as I need to use people I've never even met and I think trying to met with them twice exactly one week apart would be too much to ask.
Another thing, I've mentioned before that I originally wanted to get all my volunteers together and carry out the experiment in one go, then I said that this wouldn't work so I had to carry out the tests at different times in different locations. Unfortunately it seems like I may have to even conduct some of the tests over msn or something, due to the fact that some of the people are friends/acquaintances of friends that live too far away etc. I don't know if this will still work so I'll have to check with Ms Zhang on Monday.
P.S. I know we're meant to upload photos but at the moment there isn't anything to photograph. I can't put the pictures of the models up because if one of my volunteers sees them before the experiment it will alter the results.

I hate technology

I started collecting pictures of models last week (I would have blogged sooner but our internet's decided to stuff up). The anglo-saxon models were easy to come by, but I'm having a bit more trouble finding the Asian models. For example the first sight I clicked on which had a totally innocent, if rather superficial, title like "top 50 asian models" had some very, well, not innocent pictures. So did the next site. In order to avoid any more confronting and rather gross pictures I changed my search from "asian models" to "seoul fashion week". These models were predictibly (and thankfully) more clothed, the only problem is that, because it's fashion week, the focus of the picture is the clothes and not the models' faces. This has added difficulty to my search because I need to enlarge the faces of the models for the slideshow and when they're that small in the picture they just turn out blurry (which would really muck up the recognition thing).
Yesterday at school Lisa looked through the pictures that I had managed to collect to ensure that none of them were famous (which would also muck up the recognition experiment). It's a good thing she did. She ended up in a fit of hysterics; partly, I think, due to excitment at seeing a picture of her favourite boy band singers and partly through shock at how totally oblivious I am to Asian pop culture.
So now I'm back to square one as far as asian male models go, and not that much better with asian female models. To make matters worse my laptop has decided to not work properly and so some of the pictures that I've found and saved have come out fragmented and unrecognisable(sort of like my climate graph but 10 times worse) and every time I fix the powerpoint backgrounds it refuses to save them. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! I hate techology!

Climate Graph

Hi, i was just reading over my method post and realised I'd forgotten to mention something. When the volunteers are shown the slide show during the study I won't ask them any questions on it. All they have to do is pay attention and try to remember the faces.