Project Ideas
(photo © New York Times)
This is the time of the year when semester is half-done, co-op info session taken place and suddenly first-year CS students that just began to understand what really programming means are brainwashed by the phrase "personal projects" daily. I requested my dear boyfriend to show me some good collection he saw before from close friends (for example, D.L's programming collection), and while they all look amazing, they are of typical engineer/CS routes. I don't want that. I want something more special. Something I can label as "yeah, that's what a CS ecologist does". I thought hard for 5 minutes and came up with a growing list of following things:
Local hiking app: sync information scatter on websites including time, reviews, difficulty level and preparation, etc. No live-tracking necessary (because really, when a Garmin doesn't even work, your phone really doesn't have a shot)
Sonograms of birds: this can be combined with phylogenetic trees to track back the evolution of species (i.e. speciation). Research is needed for species (although I'm sure all the info is there), and also a good way to render the info will be better.
Migration pattern of animals (birds/mammals): use connectivity of routes to showcase how animals might migrate. Models are available but further implementation will help visualize the models much better.
Live, up-to-date global forest distribution pattern: I don't know how this can be done. This sounds like a massive project as it should be.
Any takers on saying which ideas really intrigue you to want to see the end product? I might really give it a shot!













