April 30, 2007
I never got into the flow...
In many ways, this has been one of the most painful semesters to date. Usually, the beginning of the semester is chaotic, you have new classes, new meetings, new due dates, and new deadlines. However, usually you make it through your first one or two weeks and finally get a hold of your schedule, letting you go into a sort of auto-pilot in terms of attending meetings and getting work done.
This has yet to happen this semester for me. I make good use of my calendars and to-do lists, but somehow I have spent a semester begging forgiveness from my advisers, peers, and students. I've been the king of broken promises.
I am somewhat excited to fill out the end of the year PhD review paperwork though. In all of this chaos I've had a really difficult time figuring out what actually was accomplished this semester.
My course went fine I think, the students seemed pleased.
My progress in the seminar class has been fine I think, I have gotten some sort of insight from all the readings. I'm not sure I can apply it, but I think most people have that trouble.
I am working on two seperate papers, one was submitted to INTERACT07, the other is just beginning.
I think i need to write a post on that paper, it will help me lay it out mentally.
Posted by whazlewo at 3:35 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2006
Testing A song on PlanetInfo
I added the macro code to my rss feed, lets see if it shows up in planet info
Long live Techno!
Posted by whazlewo at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)
Tell me if this would creep you out?
There is an act that everyone does, but no one will admit it. I think its time that people just accept it as a natural act of human curiosity. I'm sure you've all guessed that I'm referring to the act of Googlig your own name to see what comes up :-).
Any how, what came up for me has disturbed me to no end. It was an obituary of a person with the same name, from the same state, that died on my birthday! Here is the entry:
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William R. Hazlewood
August 7, 2003 – February 18, 2003
Graveside funeral services will be held on Wednesday morning, February 26, 2003, at 11:00 a.m. in Gafford Chapel Cemetery in Hopkins County, Texas, for Westside resident, William R. Hazlewood, 81.
Mr. Hazlewood was born on August 7, 1921, in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and passed away in Bakersfield on February 18, 2003. He was the owner of Hazlewood Drilling and worked as a driller for 65 years.
He was preceded in death by his mother, father, brothers and sisters and is survived by his sons and their wives, Brad and Lorelei Hazlewood of Taft and Greg and Jocelyn Hazlewood of Scottsdale, Arizona; his grandson, Bob Hazlewood of Taft; had by his granddaughters Lacey Hazlewood, Malory Robbins, Tess Robbins and Mary Hazlewood all of Taft.
The arrangements are under the direction of Erickson and Brown Funeral Home.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
What are the odds!?
Posted by whazlewo at 1:05 AM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2005
Special thank you to the Design Club
I've been kicking around the idea of implementing some sort of awareness system for our lovely tower of power over here at Eigenmann. After talking to Yvonne and seeing Paul Dourish's talk on Place and Space, I think it would be a good exercise and could even evolve into a publishable experiment.
I've seen several of these sorts of systems published, but all of them seem to involve simply putting a microphone, camera, and display at everyone's workstation, or placing a shared display device out in the lobby or in the coffee room. I think a lot more can be done, and I think the way to go is with some sort of ambient device.
The problem with the microphone/camera enabled workstations is that people don't really like to feel that they are being monitored, so they usually just turn off the mic, or cover the camera with a post-it note. In the situations where a shared display is placed in a public place, people usually mark it as a novelty and never really use it.
I think that an ambient device will work nicely because its not something people need to actively think to use or monitor, it can be something mounted on a wall or sitting on a desk in each user's office that just changes slightly depending on the information its given.
The Design Club came up with several possible solutions. The one that seems to have some real possibilities is the idea of an ambient waterfall device, that is somewhat in the shape of the floor plan of the building. Erik P. came up with a very interesting sketch of how it would look and even how it could work. I think this device works on several different levels. (1) It provides visual and audio ambient output. One can look at it and get an idea of which areas are being occupied, and the more areas occupied will cause a variation in the trickling sound the water makes. (2) It will be visually interesting. If we are going to convince several faculty and staff members to keep one of these in their offices, we have to make sure its something they would really want in their offices. (3) It is not invasive. It is easy to ignore, and it should not make people feel as though they are being monitored. The device will not tell you who-is-where, but it will tell you that some person is in a particular space. That alone will give people a feeling that they are not completely sequestered in this building. It is my thought that people will be more inclined to stay focused if they feel they are in a place that is buzzing with lots of other busy people.
I don't know where Erik put his sketch, but eventually I'll add it to this post. I hope that this project can continue so I'll need to get started on some literature review, and even though we feel like we have a pretty good idea, we need to explore other alternatives. That is fine however, because I had a good time debating along with these bright students.
Posted by whazlewo at 7:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2005
Still Fighting for Anarchy at Informatics
I've been told that I am "blackballed" for my insidious acts in the PhD office over here at Eigenmann. Apparently, the file cabinets in the vacant offices were providing some sort of function, and my involvement in moving them so they could actually be used, has somehow altered the stable universe. Informatics can be such a weird place politically. I've been told that it is the same way in most other departments but I can hardly believe that anything ever gets done if everyone has to subscribe to this level of bureaucracy. At times things seem to get better, but I still find myself astounded with the extreme lack of efficiency in acquiring resources here. I have been around this campus for several years now, and I have worked for many departments, and I have to say that it seems to me that more was accomplished with less in all of those cases. One of the departments I worked for had 300+ users in offices all over the campus, all of which were supported effectively by me and one other person above me. Another place I worked had no more than 50 users in 3 separate buildings, but we had no budget, and somehow we made that work. Where am I going with this? Informatics is somewhere in the middle, probably < 300 users, and what seems like a never ending budget. So why then, do I have to get in trouble just because I started using an unused filing cabinet? Also, why do people have to dread asking for help or recourses from Informatics? My hope is that it is not sheer incompetence that causes these problems, but rather that there are issues that are unclear to me. I am not trying to stir the pot, I just wish I knew what was going on some of the time.
Posted by whazlewo at 10:07 AM | Comments (4)
September 17, 2005
My Ambient Orb has arrived.
I purchased an Ambient Orb online from Ebay for only $40. They said that it did not work, but I plugged it in and everything seems to work correctly. It is pretty neat looking. Since someone owned it before me I have to wait and get the password chagned from their site inorder to configure it myself. They have several free datasets that it will sync with, but if I pay a monthly subscription, I can send it my own data with a php script. Hopefully I can talk them into giving me the 3months free that comes with a new purchase.
Posted by whazlewo at 1:37 PM | Comments (2)
September 16, 2005
Thinking of an Internship
I've started to think seriously about applying for an internship this summer. Yvonne has suggested looking into intel's research labs. After poking around a bit on their website I discovered the Intel Ubiquitous Computing research lab. Several of the projects in the Cambridge lab look very interesting. However, as I look at the skill sets they look for in their interns, I wonder if they would be able to use me or not. They are very fond of people who are working on PhDs in Computer Science. It is still very early to start thinking about this summer, I have to continue to work on collecting options.
Posted by whazlewo at 2:31 PM | Comments (1)