MikeOren.com

Under Construction

2010-02-12T16:07:00.003-06:00

This weekend I am hoping to do an overhaul of my web site. The effort will be two fold: increase the professional look and feel (remove the photo gallery and link to the creative writing page since some of the writings there may offend people) and update some of the design elements/refocus the site from a personal site to more of a portfolio-style site.

These changes are motivated by both Google's announcement that they are discontinuing support for FTP, which I have been using to push out blog updates as well as my plan to go on the academic job market in the fall (and thus a need to professionalize the site). Previous content (other than the photo gallery--where everything will be deleted) will be archived but not necessarily linked.

Some changes that you can expect:

-Banner image to be replaced with my logo (that was one of the reasons I had created it to begin with)

-Ads will be removed from all pages

-CV will only be accessible as a PDF (I find it too cumbersome to keep the html version up-to-date)

-Links to the archived posts will be deleted (the posts will still be available at their original address)

-Photo gallery will be deleted, as will the links to it

-Links to my creative writing projects will be deleted (although they will still be available at their original address)

-Grad School page will be removed, but the content will be folded into new sections

-The optimization of the site is changing from 800x600 to 1024x768 (looking at logs, outside of the iPhone--which rescales pages anyway, 1024 is the lowest resolution in use)

-Twitter feed will be removed

-Site search will be removed

-The RSS feed, which has been maintained by Blogger will go down (I am ceasing using the site as a blog update anyway, so the content will become more static--although I may start up a new blog in the near future for those interested)

Thanks!

Some Downtime

2009-11-01T17:12:00.002-06:00

I had gone into this semester (foolishly) thinking that my workload would be more reasonable than the spring (when I was taking two sociological theory courses, a research methods course, and trying to conduct research and plan a new course) and this past summer (when I was teaching the course, helping as a meta-mentor/mentor-at-large for the REU program, and conducting my research). My thinking was two stat courses and my research load--I've done worse, no problem. The classes were as expected--nothing to stress out about since I've had enough previous exposure to statistical thinking now. However, I had underestimated the amount of time I would be putting into research this semester.

My first big project was a relatively medium sized one--getting a CHI paper put together (relatively medium-sized because I had actually been putting time into it over the period of a few months). Then came a much larger time sink--I took the lead on writing an NSF grant with no previous experience writing one before (going off of accepted grants and input from the PIs). That ended up being one of the hardest things I have ever written and drained my system quite a bit in the time from mid-September to mid-October I worked on it. Not only that but after I finished it, I had a few class-based deadlines I needed to get back on top of (nothing was turned in late). That said, it was a great learning experience and there are definitely incentives for me if the grant gets accepted (beyond the learning experience). Somewhere in that period I also taught two weeks of a music class (that wasn't a huge time sink but when I had originally agreed to do it, I didn't realize all my time would be getting sunk into grant writing). Both the grant writing and teaching the music course ended up giving me preparing future faculty (PFF) credit, leaving me with just one PFF class left to take and then a teaching methods course in order to earn a graduate certificate in college teaching (so I figured I may as well and enrolled in those courses next semester along with my last sociology course--another advanced methods course).

After that, I planned out three experiments and handed out coding assignments to my fellow research assistants who were assisting me and recovered some energy by working on wrapping up some smaller, side projects then got some research paper reading done. At some point this week or early next the code for two projects should be handed back to me so I can run some pilots. The downtime also gave me time to think about some possible new directions of research and now I finally have a little bit of time to update my blog (I also updated the CV part of my web site the other day).

In other news, my Little Brother (the one assigned to me from volunteering with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America) seems to have fallen off the radar--I was supposed to hang out with him last weekend but was unable to contact his mom by phone beforehand (I showed up at his apartment anyway but nobody was home). The organization hasn't been able to reach them either. Hopefully they're alright though.

Vacation Summary

2009-08-17T19:14:00.003-05:00

After everything finished up with the class I was teaching, I took off for a week of "vacation" back home in Illinois. I kicked it off with three days at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago's Grant Park. I'll be the first to admit that loud, crowded concerts aren't really my scene, but it was a fun experience--I'll be back next year since I managed to snag one of the extremely limited $60 3-day passes (Golden Tickets). The highlight of this year's show for me were The Killers (I was about 20-50 feet from the stage--not sure exactly how far; too close for ear and physical comfort but an interesting experience anyway and The Killers are in my list of favorite bands). My biggest disappointment was missing Silversun Pickups (I was waiting for The Killers to start) and my second biggest disappointment was not being able to get closer to Arctic Monkeys (I could barely hear where I was). The best group I had never heard of before the show was Los Campesinos! (why a UK band chose that name, I don't know...) The group I heard more of then I ever cared to was Care Bears on Fire--little angsty pre(?)-teens (my older brother liked them--not sure why).

After Lollapalooza was over, I spent the week watching my nieces (age 2 and 4)--took them to the zoo (they love the penguins and we went for sushi after--the 4 year old loves sushi and can use chopsticks, but I bought yakatori for the 2 year old and got her a fork). I also took them with to my annual "take Brian to IHOP for his birthday--usually weeks late" thing--he was pretty good with the kids there (I guess that's good since he's a teacher; although he and Kaitlyn are, smartly, waiting a few years before hey have kids of their own). Friday I took my nieces to the park for a few hours then after the 2 year old had her nap, took them outside for water baloons (which were old and defective, so I sprayed them with the hose instead). Needless to say, I ended up as their favorite babysitter, much more than my younger brother (who has been watching them this summer due to an inability to find summer work--he didn't take them off the house property at all).

I did go out in the evenings after my sister got home but nothing much to repot there, most exciting things were an Ethiopian dinner Friday night and two nights at Dave and Busters (thanks to a $50 gift card I won--I still have ~170 credits left to play too; and I cashed in my tickets for an automatic ice cream maker--I'd never buy one but for free it's a nice little prize). Speaking of prizes, I also won (and just received today) a Flip MinoHD video recorder from gradshare.com (a web site where grad students can ask each other questions).

Things I didn't do that I would have liked to do: updating/redesigning my web site (including removing the photo gallery section in favor of information / papers I've written in Sociology), going to a beach, restarting (for the 4th time) mikeoren.blogspot.com (this time with an attempt to write my autobiography--primarily because I spent some time over break reflecting on the people and events that have shaped my course through life). sell my shares in FNM when it was over $1.20 (would have meant doubling my investment of $600 from 1 year ago--would have rebought after the drop I saw coming; this is a long term holding for me, but I'm not opposed to some short term profit when the opportunity appears but I missed the boat could still sell it for some profit but I'm not convinced it will drop low enough from the current price to make it worth the transaction fees, tax, effort, etc), and I didn't bake brownies to send to my friend as a thank you for a fun visit out to her in California.

As the Summer Ends...

2009-08-01T22:16:00.002-05:00

Yesterday the REU program that I was serving as a "meta-mentor" for ended with the groups' final presentations of their research. All five of the groups ended up with strong projects, especially given that they only had ten weeks to work on them (and realistically less than that since the first 2 weeks were spent on programming, OpenGL, and other classes). I think the program made a video of all the research projects, so once that's up on YouTube I'll embed the video into a future post--you can also read overviews of their projects on the REU '09 web site. They were a good group of undergrads, although I'll admit that at times I was worried about some of the projects or some people not adjusting well, some of the project mentors overworking them too early (they all understood that there might be a crunch at some point, but week 3 was a little early for that), etc. But all (potential) fires were put out, all individuals in the program did great work, and all of the projects turned out well. I think they'll all make great grad students (when their time comes) and their time management was very impressive (none of the groups had a major crunch during the last week). One of them even came up with a series of "Chuck Norris" style jokes about me (but using usability/design), like this one: "Mike Oren is so good at networking because he is so user friendly." The rest can be found on the summer quotes page.

I also gave the final lecture for HCI 596 on Thursday night. There's still one class left, but that's just their final presentations (e.g. no work for me to prep). I definitely learned, the hard way, exactly how much time and effort it takes to teach a class from scratch, stressful at times (at one point finishing slides a minute before I had to go teach), but I think it went well overall. The projects I assigned to students were ambitious and (purposely) vague, but for the most parts the students rose to the challenge. It did, however, serve to me as a reminder of exactly how difficult it is for a single individual to be an 'expert' on all aspects of HCI--while several individuals did incredible work on individual sections (above and beyond my expecations--therefore earning them a perfect) none of them, at least on the first project (I'm still grading) were able to score above a high B (I added 5% to the overall score for everybody to reflect the challenge of having all three sections fully fleshed out within a mere 3 week time span--and many of the students are employed full time so time was limited). The group service design projects look fairly good, so far (another thing I need to grade...) and one group in particularly had a good, and somewhat innovative, report on their initial observations and interviews of the service site they looked at. Gradining was clearly my weak point teaching this class, coming up with the content, reading/reviewing the topic (for every reading I gave the class, I read about 3x as much or more), and then figuring out how to present it and also try to balance it between giving them the highlights from the reading, providing additional information, and putting active learning elements into the class (so it wasn't just me lecturing) took more time than I had originally estimated. Then each report was taking me about 5 hours per report to grade--getting the base grade only took about an hour to two, but then I wrote 1-4 (single-spaced) pages of feedback and also went back over the grades to compare what I had given other students to ensure I was being fair with the grades. Needless to say doing all of that while also mentoring the undergrads and doing my own research, I ended up putting grading as a lower priority (I didn't want to do that, but the other obligations were more immediate).

With my research, I have gotten enough groups coded now that I was able to run ttests to check for statistical significance, and I have found it overall for conversational, behavioral, and overall affinity. Particularly impressive was the difference in behavioral affinity for the freeform task, where the ConvoCon group had 80% of their work showing signs of affinity vs. about 30% for the control group (this was statistically significant). Also interesting, although not all that surprising (given that we turned ConvoCons off halfway through the trials) was that conversational affinity starts out significantly higher but ends up roughly at the same percentage for the final task. I'm hoping to get the full results ready for CHI, although I still have a decent number of dyads to go through and tag up. I presented some of these initial results recently at HCII 2009 that presentation seemed to go well, no criticism and a few people seemed interested in it--so not bad considering the research is at an early stage.

The weekend before HCII began, my friend Mariya flew down from the Bay Area to San Diego--it was the first time I had seen her in 2 years (we had interned together at Google in '07--she's a full time employee there now). After she came in we pretty much went straight to see Harry Potter (the 2 year gap means we saw the last one together, so it was nice that premier weekend for the new one was the next time we saw each other), Saturday was spent at the world famous San Diego zoo (it's a good zoo with some animals I had never seen before, but the layout is such that there's no way to see all of the animals without backtracking--unlike most zoos there's no clear path through it all). The day after, we were going to hit one of the beaches there but I was warned through Twitter of the squids swarming the San Diego Bay beaches and changed our plans--walking around the gas lamp district instead. After that, Mariya left, and I went for dinner with a former student from HCI 521 (he's a full time employee with the air force) and went out to a nice international-blend restaurant, Vagabond. The day after I went to a fantastic Moroccan restaurant, Kous Kous, with a group of conference goers I had met (including two fellow Tweeters). The conference was tiring with the networking, preparing and giving my presentation (and helping with other presentation--on a cultural redesign of the iPhone), and my student volunteering duties. At the end of the week though I flew up to the Bay Area to visit my favorite Bay Arean, Mariya, to return her visit. We went out for Korean with her roommate then tried to hurry to make it to a play we had gotten tickets for but were a bit too late (and the doors were locked). In place of the play, we went to Blockbuster and rented Love in the Time of Cholera and When Nietzsche Wept. We watched the first of those with very liberal commentary from both of us (helped by a little bit of rum and coke--now that she's 21, I felt the need to have a drink with her) and that ended up being a really fun time (that's a great movie to add commentary to). After that we watched part of When Nietzsche Wept but then put it on hold to play some online trivia, until I started nodding off (it was past 3 in the morning) so we decided to call it a night. The next day, we bought some cheese, strawberries, water, and a loaf of french bread and took a ferry out to Angel Island for a picnic and just enjoying the sights (on the drive out to the ferry, I called the theatre and asked if we could have our tickets from the night before transferred to Saturday--they were able to do it, which was awesome of them). After getting back to the "mainland" we headed out to the playhouse, Dragon Productions, and saw A Girl's Guide to Chaos. The playhouse was one of those fantastically small places (maybe 50 seats) where the play depends almost entirely on the strengths of the actors (not enough of a stage to do any production tricks), and it was a good show--entertaining, strong acting, etc. At that point it was 10 PM and we hadn't eaten dinner, so we found a Pizza Hut and ordered a pizza and wings, went back to her apartment and finished watching When Nietzsche Wept then, inspired by A Girl's Guide to Chaos, watched Bridget Jones Diary 1 & 2. We still had an hour before my flight, so we played some Fluxx (great game if you've never played). So it was a great visit :) And the relaxed nature of my Bay Area trip was great after the higher stress of juggling my multiple hats during the summer and the conference.

Next weekend is Lollapalooza in Chicago, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to that with my older brother (which is great, since he and I never do much), Danielle, and Jamie, her cousin, and a friend of hers from Kansas City.

I'll end this post with the pictures from the wedding I attended this summer as a groomsman: http://picasaweb.google.com/mikeoren/BrianSWedding

Some Blog Posts

2009-07-10T03:02:00.002-05:00

It's late, so I don't really have time to post here right now (although I really need to get around to posting again--there are a lot of things on my mind and a lot of updates to give). Lacking that, I will refer you to the blog for the course I'm teaching--right now the students are slacking on their bi-weekly posts (severely slacking since there are only 4 weeks left and they're required to do a minimum of 6 posts and comment on 6 other posts--altogether, combined with class participation, that's 20% of their grade with the blog taking more weight since most students are off-campus). Anyway, check out the blog, I have a few posts there on various topics. I should note that those posts are written with the students as the primary audience.

The Myth of Individual Creativity

2009-06-01T22:29:00.003-05:00

The idea that a single individual on his/her own is creative and comes to creative solutions or creates 'creative' artistic pieces is a myth. Creativity comes through observation and interaction with the social world. Much as the 'individual genius' is said to be dead in modern times, the myth of the creative individual should also be killed. If you look at the arts, there are design critiques, writing workshops, readings, etc. all different ways that the creative arts receive feedback and change as part of a group creative process (although I'm aware this might be open to some debate). While individuals may brainstorm on their own, I think the true power in brainstorming/idea generation only comes after individuals start sharing the ideas with others who then provide feedback and potentially whole new directions that weren't thought of beforehand.

Just wanted to get that down. I thought about it after having a conversation with a friend when I tried out the very rough prototype of a game he's making for a class and envisioned it completely differently than what he was thinking than he ran with my idea and turned it into something different than what I was thinking but that I liked much better. Then thinking about all of that gave me this idea, which in reflecting on my own creative efforts seems to be true enough...

I really want to play the game once he finishes it...

The Struggle With Balance

2009-05-31T20:13:00.002-05:00

I've spoken previously about struggling to find balance simply in terms of time, commitments, academic pursuits, etc. However, now that my class started (so far there have been two meetings of the class) and the REU students are here, I've begun to find new struggles for balance. With the class, I'm struggling to keep things interesting (for me and the class), teaching to where I see the 'high bar' at, while at the same time trying to make sure everybody has the requisite knowledge to do well on the projects. I feel like I've been failing this struggle so far, not a complete failure but I don't feel like I've been doing at well at it as I'd like. I am really enjoying the involvement of the off-campus students with the class, although finding the best way to keep them involved without distracting me (or the on-campus students) is still a work-in-progress.

With the REU students the struggle is slightly different, I see my top priority with the REU student as making sure they feel like they can speak openly and honestly around me. That way, if they have issues with their graduate student mentors, a faculty member, or have any feedback about the program I can try to help them resolve it. To do that, I feel like I need to establish more of a relaxed rapport around them--especially since I think a big part of the REU program should be about treating the students as essentially equal to an entering graduate student (as adults capable of doing independent resarch as part of a team). At the same time, I am responsible for teaching certain classes and going over more administrative things with them that puts a power distance that I see as somewhat conflicting. With the classes I teach them, the struggle for finding the right balance between getting certain content across while keeping things interesting (for me and the students) is somewhat of a struggle as well--although with this first one part of that was I threw things together last minute (which is always a bad idea--but in this case I didn't have many alternatives since I wasn't sure how much of what I wanted to talk about would be discussed during the morning session by the guest speakers).

So I'll have to work on that this summer. In other 'news', I saw Pixar's Up today--it was a really enjoyable movie and had one of the best montage sequences I've seen in a long time (make fun of montages all you want, but the one in Up was very touching). I'm looking forward to spending a week in California in July when I go down for the HCI International conference and get to meet up with my friend Mariya.

End of Semester

2009-05-10T20:22:00.002-05:00

The semester ended about two weeks ago for me--the last week of the semester was pretty frantically busy but the semester ended up fine (A's in everything, kept my sanity, etc.) I really enjoyed some of the final papers I ended up with, so it was overall a rewarding semester class-wise. I had some good things come out research-wise but no real substantial papers (so far) out of the work done this past semester. One snag I've run into is that tagging up the videos has been taking me considerably longer than I had anticipated--I also need to find (at LEAST) one other rater in order to calculate interrater reliability to ensure my tags are appropriately empirical. Having gotten used to slightly more rapid production of results, the slowdown is slightly frustrating since there are other studies I want to run (directly related to my overall research agenda and at least one more directly tied to my funding). But sometimes that's just the way research is, I think I have been lucky so far so I guess it's time I paid the proper price--and I'm still pretty excited about how the results are looking so far and the overall thrust of things.

I've also been working on final preparations for HCI 596 (starts on Thursday)--on-campus enrollment is a bit lower than I had hoped for, but I know of a few people who were interested in sitting in on a few lectures so hopefully discussions will still work alright. The off-campus enrollment was about what I expected, so that's good. I'm trying to put a lot of different things into the course and I'm slightly worried some things might still be overreaching despite some trimming down I did of course content/project expectations. We'll see how it all goes though, I have some plans on how I can adjust things if too much is going on--I do want to make sure I address everything the students are saying they hope to get out of the course though. Also worth thinking about is this post on how learning is "caught not taught".

I also met up with some old friends this past weekend, that was a fun experience. Lots of alsos in this post, but another one is that I got fitted for a tux on Sunday (I'm a groomsman in a friends wedding coming up in June)--it's the first wedding of a friend I'm going to, so I think it'll be fun.

Twitter

2009-04-13T23:04:00.002-05:00

After much resistance, I finally started using Twitter a few weeks ago and now have about 150 'tweets'. Despite that, I'm still not quite ready to pass judgement on the service since I don't think I have enough (active/non-spam) followers to really be making proper use of the potential of the service. If anybody is interested in following me, my twitter page is http://twitter.com/mikeoren. I can see potential in the service, but only with an active group of followers and with limited use cases. Currently I am using it in probably a worthless way--mostly giving updates on what I'm up to, but part of that is just to get an active account going. Finding random 'local tweets' and replying to interesting ones has proven hit and miss as well. Following the CHI conference from a distance (to follow the progress of the student design competition--the Iowa State team got 3rd place, in case I forgot to mention that) proved to be semi-fruitful since through that I found somebody complimenting the Iowa State team on placing technology as secondary to actual user needs/desires--which was precisely the point we tried to hammer into people in 521 last semester (so it looks like that group got it, at least).

In other news, my abstract for the European Sociological Association annual meeting was accepted (but only as an oral presentation). I've also started prepping for the summer arrival of the research experience for undergraduates by looking into affinity research group literature and suggesting ways to improve the overall experience for the undergrads in ways that will help encourage their future research/graduate school pursuits. Not sure how many/if any of those suggestions will be incorporated into the program this summer, but I'm mostly pushing for the graduate student project mentors to play a more active role in serving as project managers and generally being more active than just providing technical support compared to the past efforts (at least what I'm aware of).

Summer Course Web site

2009-04-13T10:06:00.002-05:00

Last week I finally cobbled together a web site for the summer course (HCI 596), it can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/hci596s09/Home

It's still a work in progress so if you find anything off about it then let me know. Also, there are still plenty of slots open if you are interested in taking this course on campus or as a distance education student. If you have any questions about it then let me know.

More Free Advice

2009-04-07T18:13:00.003-05:00

This is a follow-up to a post from the beginning of March where I gave a few tips to be a successful student/academic. In thinking about this topic some more, I realized there are a few practical tips I should add beyond those higher level tips:

Take a public speaking class, join a speech team, or a debating team. My previous post talked about the importance of becoming proficient and comfortable writing, but it is equally important to become so comfortable speaking about a topic that if you are asked to give a presentation for a conference, class, or work (if you ened up in industry) that you can quickly form an outline and, essentially, pull the talk out of your rear end (yay for self-censorship). A lot of this has to just do with the idea of becoming comfortable talking. I, personally, was terrified of public speaking when I was younger (my speech impediment didn't help that fact), so I ended up taking public speaking, acting, and being on the speech team (primarily doing improptu speaking) and all of that ended up helping tremendously so that I am now at the point where I barely blink when I have to give a talk.
Diversify your education (or at least your social network). Our educational system really encourages, although it does not completely force, individuals to specialize as soon as possible and as much as possible. Through this increasing specialization, we often lose view of the wider spectrum and get "stuck within the box", making it difficult to connect within interdisciplinary teams and find new, "outside the box" solutions. If you diversify then you may find a new way of solving a problem and "change the world".
Network. Always, always network. No matter where you end up, always try to help people along the way and don't be afraid to ask for a favor on occasion (but be prepared to return the favor in the future). Almost everything is decided behind closed doors and you need a network and a sense of politics.

That puts the list at 9, maybe I'll add a 10th item at some point in the future if I think of something. Hopefully somebody out there finds these tips somewhat helpful.

Microsoft Research has a guide to writing and presenting on research that might be worth check out, if you're looking for more of a guide as opposed to general tips.

HCI Student of the Year

2009-04-06T18:26:00.002-05:00

This was my 3rd year being nominated for Iowa State's HCI student of the year award (each year I've been here, I've been nominated) and this year I finally won the award (I have a nice plaque to prove it). I finally join the ranks of my friends and colleagues Kim Weaver ('07 winner) and Jeremiah Still ('08 winner). It's not so much that I care about the award as that it was nice, after I was given the award, to be congratulated by a variety of people and to feel like I had really contributed something and that I wasn't just doing things out of my own selfish intersts (since there is often a fine line between my own self-interest and my desires to give back to the community/program). Here's a picture from the award presentation where I am indicating that my victory had 'a little bit' to do with the fact that people think I look like Jack Black:
In other news, the CHI Student Design Competition team from the HCI 521 class that I helped mentor has moved on to the next round of competition (they are in the top 4). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll place in the top 2 (hopefully first) and bring some recognition to Iowa State's HCI program in the process. The end of the semester approaches, so I'll be swamped with work over the next few weeks (including prepping for my summer course and prepping for my mentoring work with the group of Research Experience for Undergraduates that our coming this summer). It'll be a somewhat busy, but fun summer for me. Oh, I also got into the preparing future faculty (PFF) program for the fall, so that'll be another great experience/forum for me to better hone my skills.

Draft of New Logo

2009-03-25T17:59:00.006-05:00

The above logo is one I came up with, I'm still waiting for a price quote from the designer I was hiring the new logo out to. This came to me while doodling though, so I decide to translate it into an electronic format. In the black background version, the person figure is red to go better with my slide style. I'm kind of liking it, but I'd like some input. If you're liking it, or hating it, or just have some thoughts on it in general then please post some comments.

There's also a version with bigger arrows (below).

Update: Here a few additional variations to try to get across the concept of connecting people slightly better.

Update 2: Some feedback suggested that the message of social interaction facilitation was still not clear, so here's another round of draft logos. I should note that these are all rough drafts, and I am planning to have somebody with more graphic design skills put a final polish and shine on them.

Update 3: Yet another iteration.

Rebranding

2009-03-12T11:43:00.003-05:00

I'm working on getting my logo I use on my business cards and presentations redesigned, partially in preparation for a business card update. I'm hoping to hire a graphic designer to do this redesign and am in the process of discussing the project with one whose work I find nice and creative/out of the box. I'm not going to restart my self-marketing campaign though, my days of self-promotion beyond what's needed to get work/get work done are over, I'm content with the reputation I have at the moment. I'll likely restart a campaign when I near graduation or soon thereafter, but I'm not looking for any work right now and within the groups that I traverse I'm generally satisfied with my standing.

I'll post the new logo here when it's finished. I do encourage personal branding for those of you who never got into the movement, it's important to sell yourself no matter what you're doing, just make sure to keep a level of humility about you--self-branding isn't about being the best, it is simply about gaining name recognition and you don't want your name to be recognized as an arrogant/conceited jackass. Self-branding should be just as much about having fun as it is about tooting your own horn. Your work should be what speaks to how good you are, not your branding efforts.

Quarter Century of Life

2009-03-04T20:02:00.002-06:00

On Monday, I had my 25th birthday and now find myself a quarter of a century into life or roughly 1/3 of an estimated life expectancy of 75 for males (see Wikipedia's life expectancy list). It was generally an uneventful day, I woke up early and finished some reading for class, went in to do some research (I did make an effort to go out for lunch), went to class, etc. Generally life has gone well for me, not too many complaints, I've been fairly lucky with different opportunities that have arisen, some strong and helpful friendships, etc.

I don't have much time to be spending writing this post, but I've been reflecting lately on what I see as the main differentiations between what I perceive as strong students vs. weaker ones and these are the basic skills that I feel are crucial for the success of students, particularly as they move on to graduate school:

Self-motivation - being able to identify what they want to get out of an experience and making an effort to increase the opportunities to get what they want
Reading - not reading word-for-word, there's often too little time to allow that in grad school, but the ability to quickly scan and parse pages for key ideas, passages, etc. This is an extremely difficult skill to acquire and master since it's more natural to read each word and we're often taught to ead and re-read for deep understanding (and you should still do that--for text of particular interest to you/your research interests), but first you have to parse the text to identify these areas.
Rational thinking - thinking in a purely logical, rational has long been the way to conduct scientific research and while some people are able to adopt this cold logical thought process fairly easily, I've found that many find it an unnatural way of thinking since people don't really think in a completely linear fashion--we take shortcuts and make logical leaps to conclusions.
Critical reasoning - rational thinking is useful when looking at the steps in a process, but it's also important to be able to pull in diverse pieces of information and get a view of the large picture and this is where critical reasoning comes in. This is a particularly useful skill when tied together with reading as it is extremely difficult to parse important passages without properly developed critical thinking/reasoning skills that can be used to analyze all of the information.
Writing - I wrote a little bit previously about my frustration with the writing skills of students because without this skill one cannot effectively communicate anything from the previous skills. Oral communication is also important, but generally written communication is the primary way of disseminating information and way for instructors to evaluate a student's understanding of a concept. When I speak of writing, I don't mean grammar and spelling (they are both important still), but rather I mean the ability to clearly articulate a message in a well organized manner.
Have fun - I had intended only 5 items, but then I realized that perhaps the most important thing of all is to make assignments your own. This can't be done in just solving math problems so much, but in any written assignment, there's almost always room to add your own personal touches to it that reflect your interests and allow you to have some fun with the assignment.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to a real post, until then I hope somebody out there finds this useful.

Routine Surgery Turned Into Butchery

2009-02-05T12:30:00.004-06:00

--Warning: The following couple of paragraphs are fairly geeky discussion of some issues upgrading my Macbook harddrive, feel free to skip over this section--

I upgraded my Macbook's harddrive from the original 60 GB capacity to 320 GB capacity (the last of the upgrades I can make on the now almost 3 year laptop), and what I had expected to be a simple and relatively fast upgrade (fairly 'routine surgery') turned into a messy process leaving 2 screws, 2 unkown plastic pieces, and 1 rubber piece behind. My understanding of the process was that I simply had to pop the battery out, take the 2 screws out that cover the RAM (previously upgraded--twice) and harddrive off and then pull the tab of the old harddrive out before popping the new harddrive in. Up until that point, everything went well. Then, when I went to take the EMI (the electro-magnetic shield that protects the harddrive's logic board) cover off the old harddrive to put it on the new one, I discovered that the cover was fasted by torx screws (and I don't keep a torx screwdriver around). Not to be defeated, I used a flathead screwdriver to fairly easily remove 2 of the screws on the cover before stripping the other two screws and then forcibly pulling the EMI cover off of those 2 remaining screws. I put the cover onto the new harddrive (fasting it with just the 2 screws I was able to get) and tried popping it back in. No good. I tried forcing it back in, no good. I tried adjusting the EMI cover (which was dented on one side). No good. I pulled the dented portion of the EMI cover back off. No good. And so on and so forth. Then I finally gave up and tried using the original harddrive again. That wouldn't go back in either, so I FINALLY shown a light into the harddrive cavity and discovered a piece of rubber in the way--I tried sticking a thin object inside to grab it but it was too far back. To fially jump this story to the end, I wound up taking the entire top case of my MacBook off in order to get at the piece of rubber and get the harddrive in. I then hastily put it all back together (which is how I would up with the 2 plastic pieces that fell out of it and I have no idea where the 2 screws came from). Still, everything works and I now have a much beefier harddrive capable of storing the videos from my studies (no more need to lug around an external drive and find a power outlet for both it and my laptop). So what I had planned 1, 2 hours TOPS for ended up taking me probably about 6 hours (including a final Timemachine backup and restoring the new drive from the Timemachine backup).

Plus, my personal backup drive (250 GB) ended up getting a fried logic board, so I had double reason for upgrading my harddrive--I'd fix the old backup but apparently the WesternDigital harddrive I had stores unique information on the platters so even swapping the logic board with one from the same model and firmware is unlikely to fix it.

So that's my geeky story, probably not worth a blog post, but I just wanted to warn people that the 'ease of swapping' harddrives on the MacBook may not be as easy as you've probably heard. Although, to be fair, if the little piece of rubber had not fallen off of wherever it fell off then the process would have been mostly painless (getting around the torx screws with a flathead was mostly painless).

--Non-geeky portion of the post starts here--

In running my studies of the ConvoCon interface for multitouch devices, I have begun pondering our constant drive toward efficiency and task focus. Until I changed my procedures for the study, I found people were so obsessed with trying complete the tangram puzzles that they ignored the ConvoCons popping up in the middle of the screen (they'd rotate and appear in different colors each time) and participants (working on completing the same pattern) would say hardly a word to one another unless they found themselves working separately on the same puzzle with the wrong solution in mind. This probably shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did since I've always been in at least one discipline where one of the primary goals is a drive toward efficiency (computer science is really big on efficient algorithms and traditional HCI is all about making interfaces 'more usable' which is focused on reducing the number of steps necessary and overall making this more efficient). Still, when I think 'puzzle' I think of something 'fun' and 'social', not a single-minded slant toward completion as fast as possible. It was interesting, too, because when some high school students came in for a tour I had them do a 'moxperiment' (mock experiment) and they behaved as I expected--one person got the riddle/joke question and the other got the answer (the person with the answer would cover it up as they tried to figure it out). The ConvoCons then became something in addition to the main task that they were able to 'bond' over. Since adding the 'play time' before the puzzle start, participants now respond to the ConvoCons and seem to use it as a way of breaking the awkwardness of working with somebody they don't know (several of the groups without ConvoCons actually end the 'play time' early and stare at me in the awkwardness until I ask them if they want to move on to the first pattern, but I tend to have to end the 'play time' for the ConvoCon groups and move them on to the first pattern). I'm hoping to run an experiment to explore this phenomenon of 'task focus' more in the future (I need to do more of a lit review on it, as I'm sure there's a decent amount out there) but generally it's been a lesson learned for me in setting up social experiments that are not as fully rigid as I'm used to with more cognitively/task based experiments--with these the ConvoCons the task was really intended to be secondary. As I get into analyzing the data, I may add more insights into some of my observations and thoughts.

Aside from running the studies, things have been fairly busy with classes--I'm in two sociology theory courses and one social research methods course, so a decent heavy course load. I have added links to my blogs for my classic sociological theory course on the right side of the main page (Sociology 506 Blog and L.F. Ward Blog). The Ward page may change more into an actual web site as I'm not entirely sure it 'works' as a blog. I've also narrowed down the readings for the HCI course I'll be teaching this summer assuming all the paperwork goes through.

In other news, my CHI works-in-progress posted ended up being rejected (like the Note, they liked the idea but wanted more detailed data analysis--I thought as a works-in-progress poster that full analysis wasn't needed). I think I already mentioned that both submissions to HCII were accepted (I'm also a student volunteer for HCII, so I should be almost completely funded). I'm also hoping to do a decent analysis of the data from this study and submit something to UIST. I'm still hoping to try to find a sociology venue to submit something to as well.

Finally Some Updates

2009-01-25T23:25:00.002-06:00

I should be sleeping now as I am starting a usability study in the morning, and I need to get up early and double check everything, check out a camera, and get everything setup and finalized. However, I wanted to give a few updates. If you're reading this on my site and not from the RSS feed, then you may have noticed that I have given the site a new head image--I'm trying to go for something slightly more stylistic and professional than the old one while still conveying the casual feel of a personal web site. In addition, the ads on the side have been removed, as has my link to my Facebook profile--in their place I have provided access to my shared Google Reader items (mostly usability related). Currently the ads between posts are still present, but as I am down to less than $1/month on ad revenue (and after 3 years, I've only accumulated $26 out of the necessary $100 to cash out), I might be removing Google ads entirely from my site--I haven't decided yet though.

My resume page has now been updated, but I am now using my vita as opposed to a resume to reflect my more academic focus now. It also includes a PDF version of the vita, for those interested in a more printable version. Most of my other pages still need updating, but at least that has finally had a much needed overhaul.

In other news, I had two papers accepted to Human-Computer Interaction International conference taking place this summer in San Diego, CA. Along with that at least two of the three CHI Student Design competition entrants from Iowa State were accepted, the last group is still waiting to hear back (one of the groups was from the class I TAed and the other was from outside class), so congratulations to both of them. If my works-in-progress poster gets accepted as well then this will be the first year Iowa State has had a decent showing at CHI--which will make me quite happy as I've been trying to push people to submit to the conference over the past 3 years.

If you're interested in what I'm up to on the sociology side of things, then you may be interested in these two blog pages I've created for the classical sociological theory course I'm taking, one with my weekly notes and the other with information I'm collection on L.F. Ward.

Frustrations of Being

2008-12-03T18:41:00.002-06:00

I'm not completely sure what to title this post, and I definitely should not be wasting the time writing it; however, sometimes you just have to sit down and write what's been on your mind (or at least I do--that's the former writing major in me perhaps). Lately I've found myself not so much in a rut, per se, as in a sort of weird place for me as I struggle with a couple of challenges I've been facing. Intellectually, I've found myself increasingly vexed by the fact that I simply can't learn everything it is that I want to know (which I've always known, but it is just striking me as more so than usual--especially now that I am adding additional academic areas into my knowledge base, now the social sciences with sociology to add to my engineering and humanities background). I am also very frustrated with the fact that I have all of these ideas swimming around my head for research I want to do and other side projects, but I just don't have the time to work on them--and I need to try to group together a couple of particularly strong ideas and form an actual research plan sooner rather than later so that I can graduate in 2011 as planned (I do have a general idea as to that, and I try to resist the temptation to think too much about side ideas not directly related to the research plan). As part of this frustration, it is becoming very clear to me that I do not have nearly the grounding in theory that I really should have when trying to cobble together a research plan--I know sometimes that can come from a major professor, but I really feel it is my job to try to frame my research plan within a theoretical framework first and then get feedback from my major professor and other members of my committee with suggestions.

My other great intellectual frustration is that I have found that I really enjoy teaching through my work as TA and creating the syllabus for the class I'm hoping to teach over the summer, but that it can be incredibly frustrating as well (not to mention time consuming and distracting from the research--which I also greatly enjoy doing). Finding the balance between research and teaching is one of the frustration points here. The other frustration point is semi-related to my rant in the previous paragraph, but instead of being concerned about my own inability to grasp everything, I find that I'm frustrated with my peers (who may read this, and I will say that this is nothing pesonal). The class I TA is a graduate level course required by the HCI program, and everybody in it (for the most part) is very bright both generally and in their own area of expertise. However, when reading some of the work I find myself frustrated with what I perceive as a lack of ability by some to write English properly and to perform proper critical analysis of ideas. If this were an introductory undergraduate course, I would expect that, but this is a graduate level course. To me, this says that not only are the nation's high school's failing to prepare students but many of our nation's universities are failing equally as much to impart critical thinking and writing skills. Our nation's higher education system has for the past few decades placed more and more emphasis on science and mathematics (generally I agree with this focus), but it has been sacrificing basic and critical skills that students also need to learn (e.g. how to write well). But then, I am probably coming at this with a bias as I do have a writing background and analytical writing was the part of the GRE that I scored best on (6 out of 6), so maybe my frustration is unjustified. I welcome comments on this debate if there are any dissenting opinions (or any nods of agreement). My other frustration with teaching is that I have a desire to cover a wide range of topics (again going into my interest in breadth), but I also want to go really deep into certain topics and I've found this sometimes frustrating to find the right balance (but then I am new to teaching and hopefully this will come with time)--the same is true for my desire to find a balance between imparting my knowledge of topics and encouraging discourse on topics within the class.

My last frustration lately and one that has, unfortunately, been permeating other aspects of my life by making me generally ill-tempered as of late is a relationship issue that I have no plans to discuss now or any time soon on this site.

My First Time Teaching

2008-09-25T19:53:00.004-05:00

As some of you may know (I have been doing a terrible job of keeping this updated, so not sure what I've posted about), I have been the teaching assistant (TA) for HCI 521: Cognitive Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction at Iowa State this semester. Just this past Tuesday I had my first opportunity to lead the class because the professor was guest lecturing for another class (which meets at the same time). Since it's a distance education course, the entire class session was recorded. I've uploaded an ~8 minute clip (class was an hour and 13 minutes) of me leading a class discussion on some content I had added the night before to the professor's slides to give the class more of my own personal touch. The topic of the class for the day was 'affective computing' also known as 'emotional design'.

I found out Saturday that I'd be teaching on Tuesday and was given the slides and video from his lecture last year. However, I have a different presentation then the normal professor, so I modified things as I felt appropriate to get the major concepts across while catering to my more casual presentation style, which was rough at first, but I felt that at the point this clip is at that I was able to create enough rapport with the class and encourage participation enough that this worked out decently well.

I have many more updates for a later date when I have time, but for now, I hope you enjoyed the clip from my lecture. If you have an interest in the full thing then let me know.

*UPDATE* Full video of the lecture:

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

New Audio Game Version Released

2008-08-12T14:31:00.002-05:00

As part of finishing up, documenting, and cleaning up my work for my Masters, I have finally gotten around to releasing a new version of my audio game. This is the same version that I used for the user studies, but has the full list of audio options and restricts the player to 3 lives for the regular version of the game (to add a little bit more challenge). This version could still use some documentation, but I am unlikely to get to that any time soon; however, if you have questions please feel free to e-mail me. Most of my work was in tying up some loose ends with the haptics project and upgrading to the latest version of the API.

Starting on Monday I'll officially be on the Battlespace and Multi-touch project, and I am well aware that there is some irony in moving from an enabling project (audio game that provides access to platform games for the visually impaired) to an arguably disabling project (multi-touch is a technology that in its current state does not really allow persons with visual impairments to use and potentially the same can be said about those missing a hand, arm, or some fingers). I'm pretty excited to get started on it though, and I have a few ideas on some projects I want to work on to explore collaboration and try to improve co-located collaboration.

I'm also excited about getting involved with the Sociology program this semester as I start my co-major in that, which I think will be crucial in fully understanding the collaborative nature of multi-touch tables and the C6 (six sided virtual reality CAVE). This semester I'll be taking the introductory seminar as well as a history of sociology course.

And on a personal note, since the beginning of the semester I have lost 10-15 pounds primarily just through lifestyle changes in what I eat (not a diet--I don't eat less, I just eat smarter). I am now what I've found is called a Flexitarian (eat mostly vegetarian, but I make exceptions when eating out or when I pick up a grass fed chicken). I am also eating more fruits and vegetables and avoiding high fructose corn syrup and other heavily processed foods--but I still eat primarily quick, easy to make meals (just using the vegetarian equivalent) and spending roughly the same amount--maybe an additional $10 per week. I find myself less winded now and generally in much better mental and physical shape.

Mike Oren - Master of Science

2008-05-03T12:38:00.005-05:00

Since my last post, I decided to stay on for my PhD (changing projects and advisers though--focusing on collaborative user interfaces and picking up a co-major in Sociology), wrote and revised my thesis, successfully defended it, went on a cruise, went to Universal Studios Florida and Disney World, and was accepted to the Season of Usability SIP-Communicator project (I'll discuss this in a later post this summer). I also finished up my iPhone cultural usability study for my design class (based on the results, from a small sample size, we improved the efficiency of the interface for al cultural groups of interest and reduced the performance gap between cultures). Oh, and my first journal article (on the audio game) was preliminarily accepted for publication (I'm currently in the process of making the requested revision for publication).

And for those of you who haven't been following the news, Obama won the Democratic nomination which is good because I was supporting him for the nomination--I need to examine McCain and Obama's policies more before I decide between them as I have always liked McCain (as I pride myself in my moderate views) although I am very much against the Iraq war and have been for some time and am even more against warrant less wiretapping so those are two very large point against McCain who seems to have opted for a shift to the right in his desire for power.

So there's been a lot going on, and I've also been trying to get into better health. I am once again trying to be healthier, but now I've gone for a more workable system as I have not cut out 'convenience food' but am eating healthier convenience food (e.g. veggie burgers as opposed to cheap hamburgers; yogurt instead of candy as a dessert item; etc) and added more fruits and vegetables to my meals. In addition, I have bought a small stair stepping machine to use in the morning, bought a bike to ride on days it doesn’t rain (and is warm enough)--just rode for about 40 minutes this evening, and I am taking a daily multi-vitamin with apple cider vinegar diluted with water (supposedly apple cider vinegar helps the digestion/use of vitamins/minerals--although the health benefits of multivitamin pills in general are somewhat disputed based on an article that popped up in my Google News feed about a month ago).

More updates (including some to the other pages) are forthcoming, but until then feel free to flip through these unedited images of my graduation vacation (with my older brother--who finished his B.A., my younger brother--who finished high school, and my mother--who funded the trip).

Vacation 2008 - Cruise and Orlando

MikeOren.com is Another Year Older

2008-02-10T22:20:00.002-06:00

I had to renew my hosting contract this month, which means MikeOren.com is another year older (I forget if it's 3 or 4 years old...) To celebrate, I am taking some time out to write another post *throws confetti*. Perhaps my time would be better spent updating the other pages of the site (almost all of which require updating--although I did upload a new PDF of my resume; the HTML version is still as outdated as ever), but I have other priorities (such as a journal paper I'm working on submitting, and my thesis that I should eventually finish). I did take some time and upload a copy of my H3D/haptics project to YouTube (the video was created and edited by Adam Faeth, another graduate researcher on the project--and the same person who created the Wiicussion video):

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

That video was created for an IEEE VR '08 sketch paper that we wrote (and was accepted). I won't be attending the conference as it is two weeks before I defend my thesis and as I'm sure I'll need to be working on my presentation slides at that point, but anyway, I thought some of you might find the video interesting.

Things have gotten better with Danielle and myself recently, hopefully they stay that way this time... I should be seeing her next weekend when I go back for an aptly timed visit, which will also include celebrating my grandmother's birthday (besides celebrating Valentine's Day with Danielle--albeit a day or two late).

Aside from my thesis (and the previously mentioned journal paper), I've been having fun doing in-class evaluations of the iPhone and working with the graphic designer on prototypes for a new "India and China friendly" iPhone interface--we're also hoping to take greater advantage of the touch capabilities of the iPhone. The formal study should be taking place sometime in March. I know one of my partners on the project is hoping we can get a conference paper out of this, but I will wait and see how everything goes before I even consider that. Besides the aforementioned journal article, I am also about to begin work on an ASSETS '08 conference paper with the spatial mapping data of my audio game (that's about the only part of my audio game that I haven't written about yet, and an interesting although very time consuming portion of it).

Also, having done taxes last weekend and placing an order for a Tivo HD with lifetime subscription this week... I realize that Danielle is completely right in regards to me spending too much on electronics as all of my money that isn't going towards paying bills/esssentials (or taking Danielle out for dinner, movies, etc. when I'm able to see her) is going towards electronics and I'm spending far too much on them. So, I think, with the exception of "must have" games (like Super Smash Bros. for Wii), that it is high time I lock my credit cards up in my safe deposit box (again) and stop buying things. I should note that none of the non-game electronics I've bought in the past year or two have been on a random whim--they've all been things I had been wanting for at least a year and bought them either due to wanting to reward myself (e.g. HDTV when I got the Google internship) and/or due to finding good deals (Tivo doesn't offer lifetime subscriptions anymore other than on rare occasions, and I don't like monthly fees). Still, a lot of these things I could have (and probably should have waited on). Games are another story (and another problem) though, as I am now up to 22 Wii games and over 30 virtual console games (I also have 4 Wii remotes and 4 nunchuks for it). Not all (probably half or less--it includes Wii Sports, Wii Play, Link's Crossbow Adventure, Endless Ocean, and several other smaller titles) of those games were $50, but that's still a lot of money I sunk into the system. Part of me can't help it though as it's been awhile since I've had a system I've been this excited about and a lot of these games redefine their genres or introduce interesting control schemes and that excites me as a long time gamer... Of course I don't have time to beat the majority of these games... but then even when I was younger, I rarely beat the games I had. For me, it isn't about "winning" the game, it is about the experience and a diversion. So slowing down the games thing might be slightly harder for me, but my hope is that if I have my credit cards locked away and delete my saved credit card information off of Amazon that my temptation will be that much less (as it will require considerably more work to buy things that I don't need).

Update: So I forgot that my site registration and hosting no longer match... I made this post with the knowledge that I was paying to renew my hosting agreement. My site actually only turned a half year older (it is 2 and a half). Not that anybody is actually paying attention ;)

Victory

2008-02-05T08:25:00.000-06:00

I managed to get a first draft of chapters 1-3 of my thesis out to my program of study (POS) committee this weekend--meeting my deadline for the most part (I had given myself an end of January deadline for chapter 1, but that was delayed by 3 days as I focused on editing a journal paper). Sunday i did attend a Super Bowl party to see the last minute upset victory by the New York Giants (I think CareerBuilder.com had the best ad campaign for the second year in a row). Having received all of my W2s, I also went ahead and filed taxes this weekend--I finally broke the poverty line (and I'm on the low end of the national average income--not bad on grad student salary... although more than half of that was from my internship this summer).

Speaking of money/jobs, I've slowed down/stopped my job hunt for now as I work on finishing my thesis and concentrate on one particular opportunity that (to me) would be cooler than Google if I get it. I won't say which company it is, but I will say that the position is a game designer. It's totally my childhood dream job and even just going through the interview process is exciting to me. If I don't get that then I think my preference is staying for a PhD if the professor i want to work with still needs a research assistant.

On a final note... Today is Super Tuesday in the US and if you live in one of the many states holding primaries today--go VOTE (your vote actually counts in the primary this year and we've been seeing record turnouts in all states, so go make your choice for your party nominee be heard--both sides have a candidate that I would be happy voting for in the November election). With that, I leave you with the following video:

On Alarm Clocks (and some more political commentary)

2008-01-20T22:16:00.000-06:00

On Friday my alarm clock decided to break. It's a basic enough battery operated alarm clock that I got for free over six years ago, so it wasn't major shock when I discovered it was no longer working properly. Of course it was a surprise when it was showing the time (about an hour earlier than it actually was, and that I was running late), but the fact that it was broken was no surprise. And when I say it was a basic clock, I mean the only branding on it was "made in China" and it runs off of two AAA batteries that I replace roughly once a year (last time I replaced them was in August). Some of you might be wondering why I'm going into this whole tirade about an alarm clock that (as I've said) is no surprise about it being broken. Simple: I really liked the usability of it. To change the time, I simply held the clock button down (at the bottom of the circular clock face) until it beeped, then I would twist the circle around the clock face forward (to move time forward) or backward (to move time backward)--spinning faster would increase the rate that the time changed on the face. When I find the right time, I simply had to hit the clock button again. No hitting the hour button countless times and then the minute button, or (worse) changing the hours and minutes with the same button but having to select between them. Setting the alarm was just as easy, only the button for changing the alarm time was at the top of the circle. Arming the alarm was a simple slider on the right side of the clock--it was a nice large slider that was easy to operate with the middle setting being for standard alarm and setting closest to the clock face being for snooze alarm. This meant that turning the alarm clock was simply a matter of sliding the bar toward the back of the clock--an incredibly easy process (and much more friendly in the morning than sliding it toward the front, which takes a whole different type of reach). The snooze button was the entire top of the clock (which slid downward to reach a point at the end--giving it a sort of futuristic look). It was small and compact (great for travel) and the fact that it was completely battery operated was (for me) great since I didn't want to waste a plug on a clock (I have too many electronics plugged in as it is) and I didn't have to worry about a power outage stopping it from going off on time (as long as I remembered to replace the batteries--the backlight, also activated by the snooze button--normally served as an easy way to tell if the batteries needed replacing as the numbers were hard to read when the batteries were low and the backlight was on). In other words, it did exactly what I needed to do in exactly the way I needed it to do it (and that made, to me, intuitive sense). This is something that's hard to find these days (in my opinion) as manufacturers keep trying to add more and more features or stylish designs to their product lines to distinguish themselves from the competition and, often, simplicity of use suffers.

I had gone to the store today to replace my alarm clock and looking at their selection, I found nothing that even remotely appealed to me (they all had the same archaic/unintuitive method of changing time by pressing the hour and minute buttons--or using one button for both--to change the time and alarm time and the sliders for turning off the alarm just weren't placed in a position that I felt was ideal or the snooze button was too small or it was plug-in rather than battery operated). So I ended up settling on a $10 Sharp atomic clock alarm clock that runs on a single AA battery--I figure this way I at least never have to set the clock time ever again (with my old alarm clock, the one problem I had with it was that when I set the alarm, the clock stops ticking off seconds, so as I change the alarm several times a week, the clock eventually ends up being minutes behind). There was, of course, no way of testing the alarm clock before getting back to my apartment. When I got back though, I opened it up, put a AA battery into it (not included with the clock), changed the time zone to Central, manually set the time (if I had read the instructions beforehand, I would've known that it takes up to 10 minutes to synchronize the time) as well as the date (month, day, and year--not that I needed any of that). And all of those actions were done by first holding the 'set button' and then hitting adjust for hour until I got the right time, hit the set button to change to the minutes, and repeating that process until everything was set and then I had to hit 'receive' or 'mode' to get out of the clock setting--or else it would return to editing the hour. Then I had to do the same thing for the alarm (after hitting the mode button). After that I had to hit mode again and then hit set (to change the clock time to 12-hour time) and then go through the process again for setting the time as I hadn't realize the clock was in 24-hour time. In order to set and disarm the alarm, I have to hit 'mode' then hit 'set' once for regular alarm or hit set twice for snooze alarm. To shut it off, I have to hit 'mode' to get to the alarm and then hit set once (if in snooze alarm) or twice if it is in the regular alarm mode. Needless to say it is a very annoying, unintuitive (and I think stupid) process that doesn't at all match my task goals and my mental model. It annoys me and makes me want my old clock back (so if anybody knows where I can find an alarm clock like my old one, then let me know--I haven't found anything like it on Amazon yet). I mean, I could just use my iPhone (I like how setting the alarm works for that) and then just use this Sharp as my nightstand clock (it can serve that purpose easily enough), but the iPhone isn't the easiest alarm to snooze and I really prefer an actual alarm clock. Plus, I've occasionally had issues where for whatever reason my iPhone suddenly doesn't have the correct time anymore and then I have to temporarily put the iPhone on a manually set time zone before turning the autosync on to fix it.

Classes started last week--I just have one class that meets Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for about 3 hours (it is an art and design course on usability--my group is looking at doing a comparative usability analysis of the iPhone among different cultures, focusing primarily on the US, India, and China with deliverable of creating a prototype that takes the differences in the Indian and Chinese user groups and redesigns the iPhone to make it work better for those audiences). My original hope for that class was to do something with kiosks or tablets, but the iPhone is still a touch based interface and I've always had an interest in cross cultural usability studies (and it helps that my partners for the project are from China and India). So it should be a fun course and an interesting project. Expect to see more here on it (assuming I find the time to write/update my web site).

Outside of classes, I'm currently in the process of planning a study to evaluate the usefulness of dual-handed vs. single handed haptic device use within M4 (Multi-modal Mesh Manipulation system, which I've formally referred to as my H3D project). I'm always excited whenever I get to plan and run a study, but certain aspects of this study are of particular interest. I'm especially interested in finding out if there's a difference in performance between users who do more traditional 3D art (sculpting, claywork, pottery, etc.)--which traditionally relies on two hands--vs. users who are more familiar with computer based 3D modeling, which typically uses a single hand. We're only testing the system with 3D artists. I am also curious if some actions (such as cutting triangle meshes) will actually result in a decrease in performance when done with two hands vs. one when both hands wield the same tool (due to a difference in dexterity of the non-dominant hand). The study should be taking place sometime by mid-March. Of course, I also need to work on my Master's thesis for my audio game (which I need to defend at the end of March...) Luckily, I get to take the thesis option where I write an introduction and conclusion and then I stick journal/conference papers that have been accepted (or in the review process) as the middle chapters. So it shouldn't be too terribly bad... once I start it... I told my committee I'd have a draft of chapter one to them by the end of this month, so I'm clearly going to be starting it soon (I always make my deadlines).

In terms of leisure, I bought Guitar Hero III for my Wii this past week--placing my number of Wii games at 20 (including Wii Sports and Link's Crossbow training but not including my 30-some virtual console games). I haven't played it all that much (all sorts of other things I SHOULD be doing), but I'm at least competent enough at it now that I can beat the easy songs without breaking a sweat (it took about 10 tries before I could even BEAT an easy song though...). The hard songs I don't stand a chance on though (I haven't tried medium). I'm also trying to make a commitment to eating slightly healthier and I bought a 3 to 4 ingredient cookbook so I can have a plethora of cheap, easy (and quick) recipes at my disposal to help in that effort--tonight I made chicken in orange soy sauce served over asparagus (the chicken was organic and free range--it wasn't that much more than the regular chicken), and it was pretty good and nice and easy with little cleanup (one baking pan, and one frying pan--the frying pan was from the asparagus). I'm also making an effort to avoid high fructose corn syrup (I gave up drinking soda pop except for on rare occasions awhile ago, but now I'm reading ingredient labels to try to avoid it--which is more difficult than one would think as most bread contains it as well as many other common/staple foods).

Now for my (limited) political commentary (I try to keep politics off my site for the most part, but this primary has been too interesting to ignore). First of all, I have to say that if nothing else comes from this primary/election, it appears that many Americans who had drifted away from politics or who many people thought simply lacked an interest in politics are now at the very least paying attention--every state that has had a primary so far has had record smashing attendance and the race for the nominations are extremely close on both sides. This isn't just a contest for who will be the nominee for each party, this is a contest to determine the course of each party in the coming years. Both parties have lost their way and have fractured/been fracturing for years. The current government (Congress and the Whitehouse--Democrats and Republicans) are proving themselves to be ineffectual and too tied up in partisan bickering to actually get anything done. Both parties have lost their way, no longer representing the ideals they once stood for (whether you agreed with those ideals or not). I think the American people are finally fed up with all of this bickering, weary of the economy (tax cuts, if they do anything, are just another temporary bandage--they won't fix the larger underlying problems the economy is currently facing), unhappy about our waning international standing, etc. There are, however, still standing members of the old guard that are afraid of change. If they win, I believe the country loses. We are on the cusp of a critical point in history--not just with the possibility of an African-American, female, or Mormon President, but in our place in the world (not just for the next 4 years, but for decades to come). The facade that the old guard has built is crumbling and while they may try to patch it or hide the damage, the old ways are no longer sustainable. Reaganomics does not work. Unilateralism does not work. Partisanship does not work. However... I will say that Obama needs to stop having these mini battles with Hillary--sure she starts most of them, but he needs to be the better person and ignore them (take a page from McCain who when attacked before the Michigan primary told reporters he was too busy campaigning to respond to a false attack ad). I know the fear of swift boating is over the heads of the democrats, but you don't need to fire off an attack or accusation when proving the other person's accusation false. Just give the facts about the situation and then drop it. Also, if it ends up being Clinton vs. Romney, my hope is that Obama and Bloomberg team up to run as an independent ticket--I would totally vote for them (Clinton and Romney are both extremely polarizing and Obama and Bloomberg will be the first sensible/moderate independent ticket... Obama has the star power and Bloomberg has the cash to make it happen). Of course, I'm told that Obama-Bloomberg (or vice versa) will never happen... but I can dream. Anyway, I'm looking forward to observing how this primary wraps up (and what promises to be an exciting election year).

Post-Holiday Post

2008-01-07T14:49:00.001-06:00

Yeah, so I kind of dropped the ball on keeping everything updated. It was a busy end of the semester, what with research and class projects and interviews. I maintained my 4.0 GPA, but I'm still in the process of finding a job (having trouble finding something that really fits my interests, and I've been honest with companies when the position they are interviewing me for is not one I'm interested in). I did find out about a position with Motorola doing haptic and sound design that seemed interesting, but I only just applied for that one. I've also been talking with Salesforce.com about a usability analyst position, and I'm waiting to hear back from them about the next steps (the holiday kind of slowed things down a bit). In addition, I've been speaking with another professor here about staying on at Iowa State as a PhD student on his project--he had wanted somebody for the spring, but my current professor needs me to stay on his project, so I'm not sure if I've lost the opportunity to move to that other project later or not. In general, I'm keeping my options open as, for me, it's more important to find something that I'll enjoy and be happy with than it is to just get "a job" and work from paycheck to paycheck.

The holidays were also fairly busy, with the first two weeks spent helping out around the house and running various errands for holiday preparation and such. The third week was a bit more relaxed with some time, and I was actually able to play the Wii (I got 2 new games for Christmas--Lego Star Wars and Battalion Wars 2) for a couple of days before returning to Iowa to caucus for Obama (I had just enough time on my return to Ames to have dinner before heading to my caucus location). Obama, of course, won my precinct (and the state), and I have volunteered to serve as a delegate at the county caucus in March (in hopes of potentially moving on to the national convention--although there are 2 more layers after the county before I can get one of the national convention seats). I'm pretty excited about his win in Iowa, although there's still a long road ahead. It'd be nice to have a moderate President for a change willing to work with both parties as opposed to simply pushing a partisan agenda.

Over break I had also looked at a sheltie with Danielle--she's been wanting a dog for a good 5 years now and she now sort of has the money to buy one and while she's living at home her parents had told her she could get a dog and keep it there. Unfortunately, after I made the appointment to look at the sheltie (Danielle had requested I make the appointment for her), we found out that her parents were only ok with her getting an American cocker spaniel. It was a really awesome dog though, and I had wanted to adopt it myself and even purchased the basic supplies so I could care for it, but then I found out that while pets are allowed at my apartment the deposit and monthly fee were double what I had thought they were, so I had to abandon my plans to adopt him.

That's all for updates right now. I have a lot I could give, but I should be spending my time working on a journal article, working on my thesis, etc.