UC Berkeley, Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Philosophy, Taekwondo, Neurology, and whatever else has to do with the Berkeley campus.
Positive reenforcement has been proved successful time and time again. Expressing joy at another person's kindness, gratitude at their thoughtfulness, or mirth at their jests, it all feeds back into the mix to produce more of the same. Somewhere along the way, quite non-deliberately, I took this principle and internalized it, and now I wonder if I'm alone.
I love to create. I like to make beautiful things, useful things, things that other people enjoy. It's probably a good thing that I'm an interaction designer, because when I put something out there I get far more satisfaction from seeing the impact it has on others than I feel from the simple creation of the work. On the basic level, public reaction is the loopback in my positive reenforcement feedback loop. I make good things, and people like them, making me want to make more good things. But the desire to make good things isn't enough.
Some time long ago, possibly in high school, maybe a lot earlier, I got in the habit of giving my subconscious positive reenforcement. In grade school I was always a procrastinator (who am I kidding? I'm at work at 10pm writing a post when I should be finishing the presentation I'm staying late to finish) and when it came to writing papers, I'd often spend the first 13 days of a two week assignment with the subject in the back of my head, taking up spare cycles in the shower or on the bus. Come 10pm the day before the paper's due I'd crack open the word processor (or piece of paper) and empty the tank that had slowly been filling in my head.
Thanks to spellcheckers, I often didn't even have to read my paper before turning it in the next morning.
It usually worked out okay. Somehow while distilling in my think-tank the thoughts polymerized into strands that came out well without doubling back or making logical knots. Sometimes it was disastrous. By the time I was a senior in high school I'd determined that anything I write had a 2/3rds chance of being terrific and a 1/3rd chance of being absolutely awful.
I used to brag that I never knew which it would be until it came back with a grade. In truth that probably has more to do with my frequent skipping of the proofreading process than any auto-aphasia relating to my own writing. I'd never add that part though. I preferred the mystery.
But I digress.
Inevitably, the paper would come back with a grade on it. As Miss Griffith walked around the classroom, handing back papers, I honestly had no idea what I'd find on mine; the subjectivity of grading prose multiplied by my own inability to judge my own work. The uncertainty always came to a sudden clarity when the paper made its way to my desk. (Ever notice how some teachers place the paper face down on your desk, forcing you to execute the revelatory act yourself, like pulling off a band-aid, or possibly a scab?) Either way, seconds later I would know whether I'd written something good or bad. The marks of red completed the greater, outer feedback loop.
This moment is when my own inner feedback loop begins. If I got a bad grade, I'd file the paper away in my backpack, never to be read again. If I got an A I'd re(?)read the paper carefully from beginning to end. I'd read it with pride, and that warmth would drift down to my subconscious, telling it that this is what good writing looks like.
The funny part is that I didn't have the intention of making my own writing better, only to read what I sound like when I'm doing it right.
Nowadays, now that I realize the net benefit, I do it more than ever. When someone gives a particularly laudatory comment on this site, I'll frequently re-read what I wrote, often re-reading the same piece several times. It's like watching a well-worn videotape, looking for clues you missed the first five times. Sometimes I find alliterations and nuggents of metaphor that were so buried in the stream of prose that I don't even know they were there until the fifth time I panned for the gold within.
It's not just papers anymore. I'll relive conversations, re-examine designs, sites, even code. I try to view each with the fresh eyes of he who provided the praise. I wipe my own mental slate clean and pour the sand down slowly and metered to experience not only the resulting work, but the formative process of taking the work in.
I don't know what my bad writing looks like, but as time goes on I seem to have less and less of it, because I understand much better where I find my successes. This might be true in the broader context of life as well. I don't dwell in the past, and when I do, I find it filled with nostalgia, and only very rarely pain.
It may be that I'm doomed to repeat past mistakes, but I don't think so. Tromping through the forest of life we all build trails, and if we backtrack to relive the more enjoyable ones, we can set forth in the future using these well-trod paths as guides, without the need to set warning markers on the rough paths traversed but once, all illusory allusions to Robert Frost aside.
Perhaps it's a form of egotism, or maybe selective memory, but I like to think of it as taking good care in raising my own homunculus.
As a parting thought, I wonder now how far this rabbit hole goes. Does my inner creative self encompass a homunculus of its own? The spark of creativity? Is it a tiny flame that is constantly fed, or one like I, who feeds on his own successes and starves on his failures? Food for thought, as it were.
Fake News guy gets Fake Doctorate
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Wednesday, May 19 2004, at 8:40 am
(more haha, politics, school)
I was going to post this, but Ray already did. Last week Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) accepted an honorary doctorate from William & Mary. This is his speech to the graduating class.
Now that the weather has dropped precipitously from 90 down to 50 in the last week, I'm nostalgic for Pittsburgh. I still follow the news there now and then. I'm vaguely pissed that Starbucks is moving to Craig Street, giving Kiva Han a run for its money, and I congratulate Michele, the CMU HCI program coordinator, on fulfilling her dream and moving to upstate New York to open a B&B!
I miss the leaves, wearing gloves, and walking through a leaf-strewn cemetery to the bus stop with my iPod in my pocket and feeling so very in-the-world.
Top 750 High Schools
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Tuesday, May 27 2003, at 8:46 pm
(more nostalgia, school)
Top 750 High Schools, based on average number of AP courses per student and such, and excluding schools who select more than half their students via merit (grades, tests, etc.).
The scary thing is just how many of these high schools were right around me: North Hollywood High, Van Nuys, Taft, Westlake, Marshall (yay Mom and Dad (alumni)), L.A.C.E.S., S.O.C.E.S., Venice, and a bunch of others. There is a Grant in California on the list, but it says it's in 'Valley Green', a city not even yahoo Maps knows about. Is this my Grant, in Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley? Do I get validation?
My sister and my oldest friend each work at schools on the list, which seems highly skewed towards California, probably because they push AP tests harder there. Heck, I took seven... One of them for a subject I never even studied in school (US Government).
So as most of you probably gathered by the oh-so-subtle hints, I've been offered a position at Google as a UI designer, and I happily accepted on the spot. While I would otherwise be in Seattle right now, interviewing at Amazon, I'm now snug in Pittsburgh, planning out the last 10 weeks of school, and the three weeks between the end of classes and my August 25th start date.
Talking to my dad on the phone, I realized the truth of the matter when I told him matter-of-factly "I couldn't think of a job I'd rather have right now." Seriously. Anywhere. Too cool.
This will be the fifth time I've moved from the academic world to the 'real world' but this time it feels very different. When I took leaves of absence from Berkeley, I always knew that I'd go back 'some day' and finish my bachelors degree, and I did. When I started at Yahoo I (and they) knew that I had deferred my CMU admission by a year, and would likely be leaving to pursue my masters degree when that year came to pass.
This is different, though. For a lifetime I've known what the next change was, and when. I've been aware of the limited time of the status quo, like I've been driving through a winding pass, where each change in direction was mirrored by a change in circumstance. School, work, school, work.
Today, though, I can see the last turn up ahead, and I know that around that bend lies a straight ribbon of highway, as far as the eye can see. I've never gone to work somewhere without knowing that it was a short-term (less than 3 years) gig. The idea of starting someplace with the anticipation (in both forms) of staying there for the long haul is novel to me, as it is to so many people who started their careers in the tech industry, where 2 years makes you 'old guard'.
The parallel of the open road metaphor and my long drive back in August hasn't been lost on me. I know there's a word for when you map a metaphor to a real-life experience to strengthen it, but I can't remember what it is. Druids call that kind of thing 'imitative magic', but I just think of it as the journey home, for good.
Tomorrow I'm going through graduation ceremonies, celebrating the completion of my masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction. Nevermind that I and all my year-mates (augh, vocabulary sublimated from Valdemar books) don't actually finish our work at CMU until August; there's only one ceremony a year, for the whole school, so it's now or nunca.
This is kind of a trend. All my scholastic life I've looked forward to 'graduation'. It has such a cathartic ring to it. Yet I'm not sure that I've ever experienced 'graduation' in the true sense.
My first graduation, from elementary school, was called a 'matriculation', a big word I wasn't willing to internalize when I had already pegged the ceremony as being a 'graduation'. In Junior High School, graduating from Portola Magnet, we also were 'matriculating', but at least we got honest-to-god diplomas certifying our achievement, and we got them on stage, in front of our families.
High school, the most well recognized of all levels of 'graduation' was, I believe, actually referred to as a 'graduation', [oops. As I recall this morning, it was called a 'culmination'. No graduation there either!] but the actual ceremony of the principal calling each (of 655) graduate's name, shaking their hand, and handing them a scroll tied with a ribbon was slightly dampened by the growing pile of gumballs and other paraphernalia at Principal King's feet, as some of the less mature students wished to leave their final (only too literal) mark on the school (or the hand of the head of that institution) which they were departing. The other downer was that the scroll we received wasn't, in fact, our diploma, but instructions informing us that we needed to return our caps and gowns to the basketball gym, in exchange for our diplomas-held-hostage.
Berkeley graduations were fun. Here we had elevated from the terms 'matriculation' and 'graduation'. This was 'Commencement': the simultaneous completion and onset of our lives, representing initiation in the truest senses. Mind you, mine was premature. I still had one language requirement to fulfill, a requirement which not only did not need to be filled in Berkeley's hallowed halls, but one which we were encouraged to complete at community college, to free up space and professors for pursuits more novel and advanced than rote memorization. But I digress.
Like High School, each participant in the Berkeley ceremonies receives a small, tightly tied scroll. This time the scroll attests that the bearer participated in the commencement ceremonies for the department in question. It doesn't say they earned a degree, but it does affirm that they sat in a chair, and had their name read aloud.
The funny part is that they'll let anyone with a cap and gown in to the various Berkeley commencements. Indeed, several students were supposed to repeat, considering that there are roughly 20 ceremonies for different departments, in addition to special ceremonies for students of color, re-entry students, and other groups unaffiliated by field of study. I have friends who participated in as many as 10 ceremonies, writing their name down on 10 cards, sitting in 10 seas of graduates, and having their names read by 9 unphased professors or directors (okay, 0, but the 10th should have been unphased, considering that one of the ceremonies was the one they were expected to attend), before offering their hands to be shook on stage, and proceeding down to the inevitable champagne and strawberry reception following the ceremony.
Still, it feels really good, and it's easy to suspend my disbelief into convincing myself that this is what it's all about, on loan for one more semester; Christmas early.
In about 10 hours I'm going through my final Commencement ceremony. This time I get to wear the plaid and gold hood of a master, and I have family from nearly 3,000 miles away to cheer me on. This time really does feel like a commencement, a tipping point, a point of inflection on the integral of my life. While actual completion is still 12 weeks away, I'm rapidly narrowing in on what my future holds beyond August, and should have it resolved by the end of the week. It's as though the train tracks that I've been laying just in front of the engine of my life are finally connecting with the main line, and I can continue on without counting on just-in-time education, planning, employment, or anything else.
I'm clearly rambling, but what I'm trying to say is that it's funny (that I'm graduating prematurely once more), and that it's good (that life's map is being drawn well, and by my own hand).
I should go, because in five hours I have to pick my mom up from the airport, where she's flying in on the redeye from Los Angeles, and then drive back to campus to start the festivities. I'll make sure plenty of pictures are taken, including some by me.
On a tangental note, I've interviewed with twenty-eight people in the last three weeks, and the single most common question asked of me was "why did you go back to school and get your Masters?" I came back for answers, for training, and an internal affirmation that the skills I learned in the real world aren't a facade of confidence, trendy design ideas, and design-by-ego. While here I've built a foundation of UI and HCI understanding that I can build on for the rest of my life. I have a much clearer idea of my own abilities, and of the things I want to do with them.
Anyhow, I should sleep and quit it with the St. Crispin's Day deal. Tomorrow I get to graduate, rain or shine, and it's going to feel very, very good.
I just had a phone conversation with someone who was accepted to both the HCII and SIMS programs, just as I was two years ago. He's agonizing over whether to leave Berkeley (where he owns his home) and move with his wife to Pittsburgh for a year, or study at Berkeley SIMS for two years.
I don't envy him his decision. I know how hard a decision it was for me. In fact, the relocatioon factor was probably in no small part responsible for my decision to defer from CMU for a year to work at Yahoo. I remember that a year later, when I again had to choose, this time between Yahoo and CMU, the fact that I'd have to move either way (the 50 mile commute from Berkeley to Sunnyvale was just too much) made the idea of moving to Pittsburgh a little bit easier.
In the end, what made my decision was the Hogwarts factor: HCII is the best place to learn HCI. SIMS excels at information systems, and would teach me perhaps 70% of what I wanted to learn in HCI, but the idea of being limited only by my own bandwidth was just too attractive.
It's really a kind of risk aversion: I worried about spending two years at SIMS and leaving thinking that I could have learned more about my own focus somewhere else. On the other hand, unless the HCII underdelivered, Carnegie Mellon offered me exactly what I was looking for, with people who shared my focus and passion.
Other pennyweights on the scale were the idea of spending a 'year abroad' in the East, to experience something other than 'California seasons' (and last Winter didn't disappoint on that cold front), and getting an advanced degree from a different school than my undergrad. Having TA'ed Marti Hearst's UI prototyping and evaluation class (after taking James Landay's version of the class) I felt that I already experienced the single SIMS class closest to my interest.
In the end, I just needed a big change. 12 years in a city can build up a lot of plaque, expecially when the reason for not leaving is fear of change. This last year is a yo-yo on a string. Ship out, gather experiences, and come back the wiser. All in all, (and I'm a little surprised) the experience has been gratifying in many of the ways I theorised when fretting about the decision to come out here. (By the way, the post I just linked to has become one of my all-time favorites; a real turning point.)
A year ago last January I was living in the middle and now I'm not. I'm headed down a certain path with a few forks to navigate, but I'm moving fast and with definite purpose.
Everything's just moving so fast. How fast? Next month I have two days of interviews with Google, I may be flying to Seattle to talk with Amazon, and there's still Yahoo and eBay to think seriously about.
I've never really had so many parts of my life change at the same time, as they will in August. I don't know when Rachel's leaving (neither does she), be it late May, after I go in August, or any time in between. I'm blessed to have found such a great person to share the second half of my year here with. Every time I carry something up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, I think about having to carry it back down in a few months, or daydream about hiring movers.
I'm starting to yearn for the open road again. The week with Ammy last August, gunning across the top of the country was amazing, and we're deciding between taking the Canadian high road or the deep South on the way back. I'm working on so many projects right now I have scant time to think, let alone dream, but the future is pretty well packed with options. We'll see how it all pans out.
And now I've taken this post down three or four different paths, with little cohesion. Funny how there's an inverse relation between the directedness of my life and the directedness of my writing. Well, I'm sure that's enough for now.
I'm in Ft. Lauderdale now for the CHI2003 conference. I'm in all kinds of tizzies, mostly school and work related. Karen and I took 438 pictures during our time in LA and on the cruise, and I have about 48 really good ones that I'll be posting soon.
I took the redeye last night from LAX to land in Charlotte, NC this morning, where I met some of my fellow CMU folk and we flew the rest of the way to Florida.
right now I'm realizing that Ihve' had a chai and some dried mango and that's it for the last 20 hours, so I'm going to go find some yummy food and destress a little before tacking the mountain of homework I have to get through.
Oh, and great news on the job seeking fronts as well. Interviews abound, and possibilities coalesce...
Did a lot of great work on my Game Design project. I now have a dice game that, packaging issues aside, I feel is actually ready to be pitched to small games distribution houses. All I know is that people with no vested interest enjoy playing the game enough that they really want their own sets.
In other news, it's snowing tons. It snowed about a foot in the last 24 hours, and another 6-8 inches in on the way tonight and tomorrow. Add this to the fact that the City of Pittsburgh ran out of salt. Last week they dusted the roads with cinder, and today snowploughs and bravery were the city's only salvation. With tonight's storm, the Pittsburgh weathermen are calling this the worst winter on the books. Last month's average high was around 20, compared with the 40-year average of 36.
Htet Htet, Dana, Rachel and I all went sledding down the hill at Homewood Cemetery, about 200 feet, stopping jst before the frozen pond. I have a little video I'll try to get up once I finish the considerable assignments due tomorrow and Tuesday.
I had a very nice Valentine's Day with Rachel. We stayed in, cooked, and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I also had a bad crick in my neck, and the doctor said it could take 10 days to get fully better, but backrubs were the best thing for it, so I should get out of the medical center and find myself a valentine. Thankfully I was prepared.
Also, for those of you who use the RSS feed, I did a little code work on the feed, so it shows the first two paragraphs of each article on Fury, with a link and a message showing what % of the post is currently displayed, if it's longer than two paragraphs.
and amazingly, I still like the snow. I've rediscovered the wonder of more-than-four-inches of snow, when the pillowey yet nonslippery powder means you can stop being so careful with your step. Heck, I even jogged to the bus stop.
Now it's time to go to sleep. My game prof is going to mail us by 9:30 to let us know if class is delayed or cancelled due to the snow. Officially, CMU never closes for weather. But then, I wouldn't expect any less from the only institution I've every worked for or attended that doesn't observe President's Day. Apparently that's more common in private East Coast institutions. In California, pretty much all offices close (Am I wrong?).
Well, maybe Mother Nature will enforce what CMU doesn't.
I'm completely overloaded and panicing today. I emailed in sick to my classes, because it's true enough. There are so many things fighting for importance in my head that I can't do anything at all. Total and complete lockup.
So I shut the doors and am trying to sort it all through.
I have a 4:30 GM meeting I really can't miss, and I'll have tons to do this weekend, but for the next three hours I'm working at relieving the pressure inside and outside my head. Don't worry; no literal spikes will be used.
Oh, and I desperately need a new glasses prescription. After spending so much time awake and working I decided to give my eyeballs a rest and went from contacts to my glasses for a while. Big mistake. It took me almost three days to connect the difference in prescription to the headaches I was having. I'm so used to headaches coming on from dehydration, I neglected to think it could be anything else.
It wasn't until I lost the ability to focus without my brain physically hurting more that I put two and two together. Back home and with contacts in, at least that torment has eased.
Now I'm resting for a few hours and then playing a game of life-tetris, where the blocks are assignments, and the column is my day-to-day life. I've gotta work that pile down, because level 9's coming up.
So, after listing over three hundred games, our next task is to pick our five favorite games, with the condition that the games can be demonstrated in a classroom setting. There's more to the assignment, analyzing the nature of the game, what makes it distinctive, and all that, but I won't bore you with those details.
Sifting through the full list in my head, I think I've settled on Fluxx, Cribbage, Zendo, and Bango (yeah, so we might have to go outside to demonstrate (and I'd need to borrow a wicked knife)) as my first three games. I'm still looking for a fifth, and I'm not married to Bango.
Am I missing something obvious? Not that your favorite is necessarily mine...
Okay, ditching Bango in favor of Karen's and my movie game... Maybe Bango will stay as #5 if I don't think of a good alternative.
One thing that got me praise in the hopscotch assignment was my use of pictures. Now that I'm doing the movie game, I wish I had a photo of the paper tablecloth Emily and I made at Rio Grill in Carmel, covering the entire tabel with a couple hundred actors and movies, all latticed together in a huge Gordian neural net knot.
So there are games missing, and of the 312 games on the list, only 175 currently have descriptions, and the whole thing is in a 13,000 word, 28 page PDF file, yadda-ya, but in all its state-of-fluxiness, this is My Game Toolbox version 1.0.
It will be added to and updated as time goes on, and may even be database driven, allowing others to add their own comments, memories, and rulesets for games. But that's for later.
That's this week's Game Design assignment: Make a list of all the games you've played. Then go through and determine, as best you're able, what year you first played each (and how old you were). Then come up with a sentence or two describing what was notable about that game to you.
That's right. Every single one. From the past 25 years.
The exercise is intended to provide us with a toolbox of ideas. Looking through the list of games we have experience with should prove useful when trying to deal with design problems or coming up with new game designs. In this I have no doubt it will succeed.
When Prof. Schell handed out the assignment I was a little panicked. He's looking for at least 150 games on our list, due Monday. Specifically, he also wants at least five games for every year since age 5. 150 games? It sounnded like an awful lot.
Then I started thinking...
...and writing...
...and thinking and writing.
Quickly I realized that 150 is a cakewalk. A really low number.
Christ I've played a lot of games. Board games, video games, card games, sports, made-up games...
I'm still scared of this assignment, but I'm not scared of 150. It's clear that by Monday I could easily have a list of 400 or more, and the only part that scares me is knowing that for weeks after I turn in the assignment I'll keep thinking of games from my past that didn't make it on to the list.
Truly this will be a living document.
As such, I'm putting it up here during its fetal stages. Each of these games reminds me of several more, but since I have to start somewhere:
Cat's Cradle, Jumprope, Doubledutch, Chinese hopscotch, dodgeball, "operator" math games, hopscotch, fitaly jumpboard hopscotch, bouncy-ball (Ali), D'n'D, HitchHikers Memory game (Josh), M.A.S.H. (fortune-telling), Hitchhikers Guide (Infocom), Enchantment (Infocom), Tee-ball, Baseball, Basketball, Stunt-kite flying, Boggle, Bridge, Sorry, Handball, Tetherball, Tag, Freeze Tag, Keep away, Chasing, Unsnapping bras (AP Calculus (Thank's Jeff!)), Apache, Airborne, Gato, Dark Castle, Crtstal Quest, Crystal Castles, Crystal Crazy, Glider Pro, World Builder, Minotaur (World Builder), Spacequest (World Builder), 3 in three, Fools Errand, Cosmic Ozmo, Orbiter, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Falcon, Rummykub, Rummy, Cribbage, Wizardry, Knights of Diamonds, Ultima IV, Final Fantasy VII, Galaxian, Galaga, Defender, Stargate, Space Invaders, Robotron, Daleks, Snood, Tempest, Solarian, Pipedream, Lode Runner, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, Super Aqua Blooper, Dig-dug, Centipede, Millipede, Tapper, Track and Field (video game), Frogger, Zork, Bejeweled, Dopewars, Tetris, Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmix, Quake, Doom, Quake II, Quake III, Half-life, Myth, Myth II, Myst, Riven, Dark Forces, "I know you are, but what am I?", Air Hockey, Pong, Ping Pong, Foosball, Volleyball, Charades, Movie Game (Karen), Movie Game (Ammy and Rick), Croquet, Marco Polo, Scavenger Hunts, Geocaching, Easter Egg Hunt, Phase 10, Gimmie the Brain, Lord of the Fries, Deadwood, Bitin' Off Heads, Kill Dr. Lucky, Clue, Masterpiece, Life, Hungry-hungry Hippos, Malibu Gran Prix, Kings in the Corner, Blackjack, Keno, Poker, Spades, Hearts, Roulette, Craps, Slots, Minesweeper, Hangman, Jeopardy, Battleship, Chess, Checkers, Othello, Tennis, Racquetball, Wallyball, Speed Cribbage (Dad), Scrabble, Speed Scrabble (x-mas 2002), Nurtz, Speed, Spit, Pictionary, Cranium, Kickball, Relay Race, Obstacle Courses, Footraces, Touch Football, Tossing Football (Karen), Aerobee (Dad and Karen), Frisbee Golf, Ultimate Frisbee, *Drama games, *SCA games, *Faire games, *Card games, *Fezziwigs games, Chrononauts, Fluxx, Nanofictionary, Icetowers, Zendo, Liars Dice, Tiajuana, Yahtzee, *Dart games, Matchbox car racing, Firetruck playtime, Grapes-in-mouth, RC car racing, Guillotine, *other computer games, *console games, **odyssey 300, **colecovision, Red Baron (snoopy), **Intellivision, **gameboy games, **single-game handhelds, **current (gamecube/playstation/etc), **GBA, VirtualBoy Tennis, **pinball games, Parchesi, Poor Pussy, General Post, Blind Man's Bluff, Telephone, Picnic on Mars, Alphabet in the Round, Bondage, "Honey if you love me, why won't you smile?", Horseshoes, Wheel of Fortune, Name That Tune, BlindDateBlog, SurvivorBlog, Tic-Tac-Toe, Nine Mans Morris.
*The one with aserisks are genres that I've only barely dipped in to, lest I forget old favorites like Venture for the ColecoVision or Super Monkey Ball for the Gamecube. With those last two I have exactly 201, and if the recall of games follows the same decay curve as most large recall tasks, I'd estimate I have another 300-600 games left in me. Time will probably be the limiting factor for Monday.
So did I forget anything obvious? Err, obvious to you, that is. I mean, I probably didn't play all the games you did, but I bet your thoughts will trigger more of my own memories.
This should be one of the funner and more nostalgic discussions...
Thank you Zhaneel and Ammy for your help. Ammy, sadly I accidentally deleted our IM convo. You don't happen to have it, do you?
Oh, a few more I shouldn't forget: Milles Bornes, Uno, Lord of the Rings Board Game, Chez Geek, Magic: The Gathering (just twice, but still), Diplomacy, Risk, Illuminati, Shinobi, SimCity, The Sims, Sim Tower, Battlezone, Robotron, Dragons Lair, Billiards, Bowling, Tron, Tron Discs, Street Fighter, Gran Turismo 2, Need for Speed II, Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit, Virtua Fighter, Sands of Egypt (CoCo), Guess My Number (Mickey), Merlin (handheld), Red Rover, Trivial Pursuit, Kinesis, Speed Sliding Puzzle, Snake, A-Maze-Ing (Mac 128K), Pyramid Solitaire, Clock Solitaire, Klondike, Dark Castle, Diablo, War, Bullshit, CivNet, 10 women (Mr. Bad), Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft, Pole Position, Lunar Lander, Maelstrom, Gother Than Thou, Aquarius. Okay! I'm stopping now! I could keep going on and on but I have to sleep now. This paragraph adds another 51 games to the total.
So it's week two and the semester's already at full tilt. I pulled my first all-nighter of the semester Sunday night, and have been packed with work all week, and all the week to come.
It feels SO GOOD.
I learned a new word yesterday: eustress. I haven't found it in an online dictionary yet, but I'm going to check out the Oxford. Eustress is an opposite of 'distress.' In effect, eustress is 'good stress.' To me it feels like 'frenzy' but then I'm a sicko who likes frenzy. Anyhow, that's what I've been swimming in, and I like it.
Every single one of my classes is awesome. My teachers are fantastic, in contrast to a mix of brilliance and disappointment last semester. I'll write up my course listing in the next couple days, and will dive into detail on each of my classes later on, with syllibi and possibly even photos and video.
Right now, I just finished a simple maze program, representing my first foray into visual basic. It's a simple maze game for my Programming Usable Interfaces class. We were told to code something, anything, in Visual Basic. Don't even try to map the maze; it randomizes each time you turn. It's nothing special, but it's great to have the freedom of sitting down in a computer lab for a few hours, letting my imagination being my guide. Oh, and I wouldn't have called it 'impress.exe' except that was the sole constraint of the assignment.
For a (very, very slightly) more down-to-Earth example of what I've been doing the last few days, our first project in Game Design was to create a new game based off of hopscotch. The assignment was in three parts:
Okay, more a note to myself, but today, the first day of classes, was great. I had two classes today, just getting started. I'll write more on them in the morning.
I also need to talk/write to Trisha, Emily, Mellie, my Dad, Ali and Mark, and Dawn, not to mention follow-up on my two interviews last week. Ahh, documenting. I want to write about my absolutely fabulous month, but I'll settle for the moment to say that it was tremendous, and to thank my friends for being my friends, and adding such richness to my life.
Okay, sleeptime. One class I wanted, a fiction writing workshop, I've been asked to de-list since it's intended for undergraduates. I'd be miffed, but it's okay because my courseload was getting crazy-heavy and now I have 90 minutes in the middle of the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do things like finish this post.
I'll do a write-up of this semester's courses, but I should at least wait until I've at least attended each class once. Until then, here's my schedule.
Accidental terrorist
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Sunday, Jan 12 2003, at 4:29 pm
(more school, storytelling)
Watching "Heathers" on the plane ride back to Pittsburgh, I was reminded of my own history of explosions at school...
It was Sophomore year of high school, and I was in Honors Physics. We were learning all about gasses and pressure, by way of two-liter soda bottles, water, and pieces of dry ice. The demonstration involved filling the bottle one fourth of the way with water, and slipping in a few pieces of dry ice and replacing the cap, so we could see and feel the pressure in the bottle rise as the dry ice went from solid to gaseous carbon dioxide. After it dissolved, we would unscrew the caps and hear the fizz of the escaping gas.
In true experimentary fashion, my lab partner Jason and I wanted to take it further: If a little bit of dry ice caused a little bit of pressure, what would a lot of dry ice do? This was high school, a time of experimentation, so there wasn't anything to do but give it a whirl!
Add a little more water so there's less air volume to compress, put in a few more chunks of dry ice, then a few more. Screw the cap on. Tight. Wait a bit... Shake the bottle slightly, accelerating the evaporation.
Watching the little white bubbles rising from the chunks of ice, we tapped the side of the bottle with a fingernail. The way the pitch of the taps kept rising reminded me of the elevator scene in "Ghostbusters" when they turned on the proton packs.
We quickly realized we put in too much dry ice. It was still bubbling away and we were rapidly approaching the maximum tolerance of the bottle. Sitting there on the desk it looked so innocent, but the slight bowing of the sides of the bottle belied quiet yet formidable pressure. Jason and I looked at each other, and at the other kids in the class who were oblivious to our little extracurricular experiment.
"Should we loosen the cap?"
"There's a lot of pressure. It might be dangerous."
"What should we do?"
"We've got to take it outside."
"The bathroom."
"Good idea."
"I'll go," Jason said.
He picked up the bottle. Gingerly. Recognizing it for the bomb that it had quickly become. Relying on skills learned from countless films, he kept the bottle steady as he smoothly and quickly made his way to the door, down the deserted hallway, past the banks of lockers, toward the bathroom about sixty feet away.
As he ducked out the door I breathed a sigh of relief, not knowing until moments later that my exhaultive exhilation was premature.
...
BOOM
...
So in high school I had this problem (hah, who am I kidding? Like I'm any better now...) where drama and comedy always took precedence over restraint and pragmatism. The smart Kevin would have acted surprised. The pragmatic Kevin would have run out, concerned for Jason. Unfortunately those Kevins weren't around back then, and as the huge subsonic rumble shaking the building was still echoing amidst the clink of beakers jostling on their bases, the dramatic Kevin bolted for the door, yelling "It worked!!!"
So today is my last day of classes for the semester. I still have a final on Monday, and a final presentation the day after, but as far as class goes, I have my last session of Communication Design Fundamentals in a little over an hour, and that's it.
I'm sure it's partly the snow, partly the fact that I'm coming off an all-nighter, after coming off 4 hours of sleep (6am-10am) on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning), and partly having far more exciting stuff to do than time to do it, but it's literally incredible to me that the semester's essentially over. Incredible, as in not credible, as in I understand the concept, yet cannot give credit to the prospect of its validity. Sure, I still have work to turn in in three of my classes, one of which I haven't started yet, and sure I have a final that could snap me like a tiny twig of logic, but I'm not the only one. A lot of people are in a daze, looking vaguely like they should be passing their yearbooks around for people to sign, but they forgot to make yearbooks in the first place.
Okay, enough with that. Time to enumerate stuff:
There's snow on the ground and lots of it. I checked Weather.com at 4am and saw Pennsylvania covered in dark white (heh, 'dark white' makes sense if you look at a precipitation map). I looked out the window and saw the world covered in softness. Don't worry Ali, I got your snowscaped graveyard picture. I just need to get home to download it. I forgot to bring the cable. The snow's about 5 inches deep; just enough to change a road from a right to a privilege. The forecast is pretty clear for the next week, but the temperature will sway from 36 to 8, so I don't see much of this stuff clearing away before I take off. I hope my car likes its snowbank.
My powerbook came last Tuesday (wow, two days seems so much longer when you were conscious for 49 of the intervening 53 hours), and I've barely had time to give it its due, much less revel in it here. Fittingly enough, I'm typing on it now in the UC center, its frosted silver mirrors the suddenly winterized world just outside the double-paned glass. I haven't had time to install enough apps or docs on it to feel comfortable giving it dominion over my digital well-being, but somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday I'll be loading it up with my 20gig mp3 dowry, 4gig photo tome, and assorted other data vaults. The thing is truly freaking beautiful. I don't know what more I could want in a machine. I can't reasonably ask for faster than a 1Ghz G4, and the screen constantly seems bigger and brighter than this svelte machine should be able to house. Internal wireless is also a dream come true. Joy.
When I brought the box up from the FedEx guy Tuesday morning, I gently patted my newly-old powerbook, telling it that it would always have a place with me. I have an affinity for my portable machines. In contrast, I'm planning on selling my Quicksilver G4 tower, its noise and continuing depreciation outweighing the little unique utility not duplicated by my sibling powerbooks.
I should have treated my sidekick so well. Nestled in my pocket yesterday, it decided to make a plea for attention, no doubt feeling neglected and threatened by the new baby. It decided to deactivate every other vertical line of pixels, and dim several of the others. Cajoling, rebooting, and eventually slapping it briskly (think baby's first breath, not crying toddler over the knee) to kick'start the display, but to no avail. The true irony (if one can extend anthropomorphosis this far) is that the temper tantrum is backfiring: T-Mobile is sending ad advance-replacement my way this morning, and it'll be here early next week, so the sidekick that wouldn't shape up will now ship out, replaced by a new doe-eyed machine that's never known a world without the G4PB. Now I just have to make sure the powerbook doesn't get jealous. Oh, and a name for the new powerbook? I'm leaning towards 'Sendai.'
What else can I tell you? For the first time in memory I have both of my Congresses of Vienna blocked out for a Gaskell's Ball that's still over two weeks away. Not bad for a country boy. Now I just have to make sure I can still dance.
The Great Blogger Diet hasn't been forgotten or abandoned. On the contrary, there's quite a tale to tell on that front; one that might just rival this post in length, and may even rise to the level of the mythic laundry story, so you'll understand that I want to take my time with it. Some time this weekend. (I just want to add how cool it is that searching for that url was so easy
It's amazing how everything's quieter in the snow. It's like hanging tapestries on the walls, all over the world. Busses driving by no longer chug, but shoosh, and traffic moves slow enough that you don't have to look both ways, just walk with the traffic, going at a downstream angle, just like how they told you to escape a running river.
The air is so quiet, and everyone looks like a student. It feels like a weekend on campus, which is just like a weekday on campus, with authority figures removed.
But I still have a few miles to go before I sleep, and more upon my next waking, so I'll cut this short (even though it's anything but). I could write all day, but I need to turn it to more scholastic ends at the moment.
And yea though I had to trudge through powder to get to a packed damp bus early this morn, I do still so love the snow.
You'd think I'd've seen it coming...
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Thursday, Dec 5 2002, at 5:11 am
(more pittsburgh, school)
I was up all night working on a presentation I'm giving in five hours (with three hours of class between now and then), so you'd think that some time during the night I might have peeked through the blinds to take a look at the world outside, but no. If you thought that you'd be wrong.
And what would I have seen if I'd looked outside?
Six inches of snow that fell in the last four hours, shutting down elementary schools, but CMU never closes.
I'm puttin' on the snow pants, walking down to the bus stop, and waiting to see just how rugged the Pittsburgh Port Authority busses really are.
I just have this feeling that Winter wonderlands are all the more enjoyable when you actually got some sleep the night before. *Yaaaawn!*
(If you're looking for the piece on my mom's chorus and the singing holiday cards, click here.)
So this is the last week before finals. Of course, I only have one final exam. The rest of my work is finishing final projects for my courses. On Wednesday our final report is due in HCI Methods class, worth nearly a quarter of my grade, to be followed next Monday by the course final, which will be worth more than a quarter of my grade.
On Thursday I'm presenting my final project for Computer Music, a set of code (written in at least three languages) which takes in a logfile and outputs music. I'll be writing up more about this once the project is done, but it's pretty cool.
Later on Thursday I'm turning in my notebook for Communication design Fundamentals (damn I keep wishing I'd posted a lot of the work I've done in these classes as I went along. Just too busy, and now's no exception, but soon I will have a lot more time...), a notebook showing my creative process for each of the assignments I've done over the course of the semester.
Monday the 9th is the aforementioned Methods final, and the following Tuesday and Thursday are presentations for our interactive programming final projects; in my case that's a Director project along similar lines to the computer music project: visual and aural representation of a logfile for easy cognition, only this time augmenting the sounds with some kinetic typography and realtime controls.
The long and short of it is that I'm insanely busy, but just for the next week and a half. Oh, and I'm coming back to the Bay Area for Winter break on December 12th.
For no good reason today I found myself thinking of Dr. Peterson, my AP Chem teacher in high school. I was only in his class for three weeks before switching to AP Physics, realizing that chem wasn't for me. Give me the gravitational constant over avagadro's number any day.
The two salient features I remember about Dr. Peterson are that, in his thick Indian accent, he would often joke, "We call it de Pidiodic Table because we use it... pidiodically." Also, before teaching high school, he did cancer research at USC. I remember that because I used to wonder, inthe back of my head, why someone would stop doing cancer research; I had this notion that people working to cure cancer wouldn't stop until it was done...
So I was up until 6:30 this morning, in the cold multimedia lab, before walking over to my office to take a nap on the couch, prepping for my 8:30 class.
My cellphone went off at 8 as I asked it to, and I opted for a 5 minute snooze before facing the next half of my 48-hour day.
Apparently reality and I have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes 5 minutes, or so I realized when I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9:55.
Pissed at being (so very) late, and having a flashback to the recurring nightmares of waking up 2.5 hours late for a 3 hour final, I got up moved my car which, after two hours of delinquancy, didn't have a ticket (small favors, I thank thee), and was grateful (for once) that Interactive Programming is a 3 hour class, and I'd be coming in just after our mid-class break.
Walking in on a presentation, I was still asked by Pamela to see her after class. I thought I was older than that. Wanh. (stomping foot)
Nevertheless, the presentation went off without a hitch, and all went well. She told me I should be working on more challenging programming projects, and I certainly could; I just have to clear my work buffer to the point where the assignment doesn't get shoehorned into the sandman's time, because sometimes he takes time when you've really got better things to do.
So some of the fonts won't work quite right, unless you have the full Lucida family on your computer, but if you're interested, here's the thing I made last night, a takeoff on the traditional hangman game.
So after day two, my class schedule is starting to settle down. I'm really excited about several of my classes, and I'm still on pins and needles and will be until everything's finalized.
First off we have the core classes for the HCI Masters students this semester:
Intro to HCI Methods - Dealing with all the old standbys of contextual inquiry, task analysis, heuristic evaluation, and the like, only unlike my classes at Berkeley, this time we'll actually be going through the gruntwork of GOMS instead of just reading about it. (Briefly, GOMS is a 'hard math' way of doing usability analysis. Basically you assume an expert user and calculate exactly how much work, (time and cognitive effort) has to go in to accomplishing each of a suite of common tasks.) GOMS is interesting because it ignores the personal side of things, the enjoyment factor or the learning curve, but it's really valuable for those expert systems where people will be performing repetitive tasks, or will be highly trained in the tool. The class will also contain a good-sized usability project for a group on campus (25 of us are split into 6 groups, each assigned to a different campus computing effort in need of interface design or refinement). More to come soon on that front.
HCI Pro Seminar - Each week we'll have a distinguished speaker in the field come to talk to us on Wednesdays, followed by school-sponsored pizza. This time the class is so large that we'll probably trade off half-and-half for pizza chats, but we'll all get to glean the wisdom of visiting and local experts.
CDF - or Communication Design Fundamentals, is the class I'm taking because I didn't have a formal design background. This year it looks to be principly about typography, which suits me fine. As a bonus, we'll be doing all our work in Adobe InDesign, which I've been meaning to pick up for a while anyhow. I just know this class is going to make me frustrated with the web. I love typefaces almost as much as I dislike using gifs and jpegs on sites just to render specific typefaces. I'm considering putting up the occasional post in PDF, just so I can really run free with the design. As an added bonus, google will index it just the same.
Intro to Computers in Music - One of my two 'wow' classes, this is the first time Roger Dannenberg has taught this class in over five years. Prof. Dannenberg is famous (if you're into music and sound synthesis) for his work in creating Nyquist, the powerful programmatic sound-synthesis tool (open source, multi-platform, and using LISP for scripting no less! I swear I thought I'd never again use LISP after taking my AI class). Filled with CS and Music students (though more of the former), the class's final project is a choice between a ~10-minute original composition or an extension of Nyquist, to be incorporated into the package. Actually, the parameters are more broad, and those are just highly-suggested routes to realizing the final project, but I find it *really* intriguing, especially in light of my interests in realtime use of sound for ambient interfaces.
Interactive Programming - Okay, so I'm not in this class yet, but I'm really hoping (yes, this is the other 'wow' class). Led by Pamela Jennings, this class helps artists (formal or otherwise) realize their inspirations in interactive art, primarily through director and flash, relying heavily on advanced scripting in Lingo and Actionscript, respectively. Now, y'all know how interested I am in art- and computer-mediated communications (AOLiza, Randompixel (Cameo), War, Yahoo Messenger, et al). What I've always wanted is a good foundation in richer tools, because coding in javascript, perl, and html will only take you so far. Anyhow, the class is impacted, and there are about 10 of us HCI masters students and others vieing for maybe 4 remaining spots in the class. I consider this a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I think it would only be even better taking it at the same time as Prof. Dannenberg's computers in music class. I'd love to be able to share the projects with you. Here's crossing all my fingers!
As always, I'll keep y'all posted. The weather's finally cooling off in Pittsburgh, and things are finally settling down. Envy goes out to all those who have TV and could watch American Idol tonight. I've officially been TV-less for a month now, restricted to a diet of DVDs, but the cable guys' due to come a week from Friday, so my TiVo can feed once more.
Wow. This is the first time I've been full-time at a new school in eleven years. One thing's for certain: It's a lot different than starting at Berkeley in '91.
On nearly every axis things are different. At Berkeley I lived in the dorms, surrounded by other freshmen; here I live alone in a quiet neighborhood (across the street from the aforementioned cemetery). Before I came in not knowing what I wanted to do with my life; this time around I'm tightly focused: I know exactly what I want to learn and I have a clear idea of how I want to apply those skills when I finish. Back then I took a lingering academic dalliance that would, over the course of a decade, traverse between academia and industry no less than eight times; this time it's a straight 12-month shot, from Yahoo to my Masters in HCI, back to industry.
I also realize how different a person I am. Always the first to jump to the proverbial wall (you know, the one coated with flowers), shy around strangers while trying so hard to fit in -- a juxtaposition that leads invariably to a palpable social awkwardness far worse than shyness: When you're shy, people overlook you. When you're socially inept, people avoid you.
Luckily 18 year-olds are different than the twentysomethings (and thirtysomethings) in grad school, not to mention our shared interests and complimentary backgrounds.
It turns out that we have a huge leg up on last year's Masters students in that most of us got to know each other before classes, and being a social bunch, we had gatherings pretty much every night the week before classes, so now most of us already know a lot about each other, and hang out together, in sharp contrast with last year, where one of the Masters students told me they spent the whole first semester getting to know each other, and even then they didn't really know everyone. We already feel like a team.
So, first day of classes! More pragmatic and slightly less stressful than Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon condones (or, at least tolerates) 'shopping' for classes: signing up for more classes than you could realistically take, to find the ones you like in the first week or two, then drop the others. This is a nice change from Berkeley where you can't sign up for more than max units, so you have to crash all the classes you want/need. The difference is subtle, and probably all in the student's mind, the distinction between trying to crash into a class and trying to stay in a class, but at least it postpones the despair for a few weeks.
Of course, as a grad student the situation is different. I'm taking one or possibly two classes that are taught at the undergrad level, and are heavily impacted, but as a grad student in the department that offers the class, I got an email today saying I'd been enrolled in the class even though I was #21 on the wait list. It's not as unfair as it sounds, considering that undergrads sign up for Fall classes in April, and incoming grad students sign up in July, so naturally allowances have to be made for impacted courses. Still, it's nice.
Oh, the wireless network: It's great. Every foot of lawn, every lounge, classroom, hallway and broom closet is blanketed in 802.11 goodness. I keep my laptop with me as a matter of course now, pulling it out whenever I'm taking a break on campus, eating lunch, or otherwise want to check in on the ether-world which, month-by-month is where more of my work and communication takes place. It's a wonderful thing to have my distal friends so close, even when they're so far.
I'm making a lot of new friends here, too. Despite the pressure-cooker drive to find new people to share experiences with, I'm making some good friends, and a lot of acquaintances. I still feel odd naming names, since I'm made more aware daily of how many of my costudents read this, but I'm sure I'll feel more comfortable with it as we all get to know each other better.
As soon as I finalize my class load, probably by the end of the week, I'll post the list, and describe each one. You long-timers probably remember the left-hand nav module listing the classes I'm in. Well, I'll bring it back, and I'll try to open it up wider, writing all my assignments in HTML so I can share my voyage of discovery with you.
Well, that's probably it for the moment. I'm struggling to get DSL at home so I don't have to plug and unplug dialup whenever I want to check email or movie times. I also need cable, and a bank account, all of which beg the question "why are you blogging until 6pm when you have domestic things to sort out?" Well, you guys come first.
The apartment's really shaping up, and now that I have a hammer I can finish making my space up just the way I want it. Once I do, I'll take 'after' pictures to go along with the 'before' pics I took last June when I signed the lease.
Oh! And I have a new cellphone number! Okay, call me just too clever, but if you know my old Berkeley home # and want my new Pittsburgh cell #, type the Berkeley home # here (no spaces , parentheses, or dashes):
They already know me...
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Monday, Aug 19 2002, at 10:37 pm
(more ikea, pittsburgh, school)
Wow. So today was the first day of orientation for the grad students in the CMU HCI program. I had more than my share of trepidation.
Highlights? Well, at various times through the afternoon, three of my classmates-to-be came up to me and said, "Kevin Fox, eh? I know all about you. I've been reading Fury." Scary. Or should I say, "umm. Hi!" Now I just need to get to know them
I was a little disappointed, as was another classmate I could (but won't (ahh, blesed privacy)) mention, that the interaction seemed so strongly one-way. I'm triply glad that I started the yahoo group three months ago, so we knew each other to a degree already, becuase other than a go-around-the-room introduction and a big group lunch, all the info has been them telling us, without consideration for the fact that we left pretty much everyone we knew, and it would be nice if we spent a little of our orientation week performing teambuilding exercises, or at least breaking off into groups for something so we could talk through something other than the perogies in our mouths...
It's all good though, and I'm sure it's going to be better. My friends that I have here have all been here between one and three months, and so have had plenty of time to crest the isolation wave, emerging on the other side as re-adjusted people.
I know I'll get there soon. 'Till then knowing I'm not far is hopefully good enough.
The other realization of the day is that I didn't leave Yahoo to get my masters in order to get a better job when I get out than I could otherwise have gotten, but to get a better next job after that, or after that. Basically, I expect that this is the last time I'll be in school, and once I know that I'll have the steady income-stream, unterrupted by educational dams, promising power and clean energy (oops, unstretch that metaphor, sir), anyhow, once financial constancy is assured, I can work towards the finer things in life, like a home, and maybe a family (though I, err... well, I'm not there yet. There's that whole girlfriend thing to deal with first, let alone wife thing).
Anyhow, getting my Masters should give me the rest of the educational cards I need for my deck, so I won't feel like I have to go back before moving up to a director role somewhere.
And, of course, I'm going to learn a hell of a lot.
And my apartment is shaping up nicely. My mom and I are the masters of IKEA assembly. We find mistakes in the manuals now.
Final note: How odd is it that my mom picked me up after my first day of (ahem, graduate) school? Well, I'm dropping her off at Greyhound tomorrow morning, so then it'll just be me and me...
Joy is logging in to my school-to-be's computers and registering my laptop and wireless card so that, even though classes don't start for two months, I can open up my powerbook anywhere inside CMU's campus-wide wireless network and have 2Mbps net connectivity.
Tomorrow will be surreal (and by 'tomorrow' I mean Tuesday, since my flight arrives in Pitts at 11pm Monday). On one hand I know the area so well, as conveyed through texts, maps, and a dozen vignettes from a dozen different Pittsburghers' experiences. On the other hand I've never been there, and therefore can't know what it's like.
It reminds me of when I went to 'CalSO' (Student Orientation) at Berkeley back in '91. I'd already chosen Berkeley as my college, but I had yet to set foot in it, so the 3-day orientation (with my mom alongside) was my first Berkeley experience. The odd part is that I still vividly remember being dropped off by the cab, in the morning, in the rain, between Soda Cory Hall and North Gate, and finding our way up to Foothill. Later in the week, I remember walking over (and taking a picture of) the bridge between the Faculty Club and LeConte (the one that has 'MDCCCCX' on the arch).
I clearly remember these images and the primative mental topologies associated with them, but the odd part is that they don't match up to the Berkeley I found once I lived there. It's as if they're out of phase, as if I was viewing them from a different perspective (and I suppose I was, temporally as well as mentally).
I'm really curious about the CMU I'll discover this week. Even once I get back, I'll be interested to see if this will be the same CMU that I'll know after living there 6 months. I'll gain more fidelity in my mental map, to be sure, but I wonder if this weeks experiences will connect to the later ones or if, like my CalSO experience, it's an island of its own, with similar landmarks, but on a different plane...
More than anything though, I hope 4 days is enough time to find a good apartment. I'm bringing my camera and the aforementioned powerbook, so you can expect further bulletins to follow through the week.
The sky was so big this morning
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Saturday, Jun 15 2002, at 5:53 pm
(more communication, school, travel)
Walking down to Shattuck to see an 11am showing of The Bourne Identity, I couldn't help but notice that everything seemed lighter, bigger... freer. It's weird, since I loved my job, and still do even though I don't happen to have it anymore, but the world seemes so full of possibility.
I leave Monday to find an apartment in Pittsburgh. With the Pittsburgh Bible and advice from dozen of current and former Pittsies, I'm hoping that four days is enough time to find a place I'll happily call home for the next year.
In other news, I built a community this week! Gathering the names and emails of the 30 incoming grad students to the Interaction Design and HCII masters programs, I created a Yahoo Group and sent out an invitation mail, so we could all get to know each other, share info on housing, moving and (as it turns out) drivers licenses and vehicle registrations. The community's only three days old and already there's a thriving community of us. Hearing about the passions, worries, and expectations of my classmates-to-be is getting me excited all over again, and looking at some of their portfolios makes me certain that this is exactly the place I want to be, and has got me thinking about making a portfolio of my own...
Today is a very strange day. Yesterday was my last day of Spanish class, which, incidentally, fulfilled the final, lingering requirement for my Berkeley bachelors degree in Cognitive Science.
I used to joke that the strange thing about being at Berkeley 10 years after starting was that every year the students got younger. The funny part is that in my final semester at Berkeley, I had a breadth requirement class filled with freshmen and sophomores. Now, for this Spanish class I took at De Anza community college, several of my fellow students were still in high school, seniors and more than a couple juniors. Seems the students actually are getting younger each year.
And so it was with a turning in of a take-home final and a long drive home that I finish a degree that began eleven years ago when I came to Berkeley out of high school. After a full graduation ceremony at the Greek Theatre this time last year, this true finale is a bit of an anticlimax...
On the work-front: Yahoo threw a going-away party for me at work yesterday! I was really touched. So many people were happy for my upcoming adventure, expressing their sadness that I'm going, and I reciprocate every bit. Instant messaging is interesting here: All these people are in my friend list, and will stay there. Considering how most of us communicate in the office via IMs, when I log in from home, school, or wherever, they're all just a click away.
So I have to jam outta here in a few minutes (still at home) to go to my exit interview with the HR folk, then finish up a few loose ends, and pack up my cube. After such a warming sendoff yesterday, and with almost half of my department telecommuting on Fridays, this too is an anticlimax...
Banning Indians: Missing the point, or more ethnic clensing?
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Thursday, May 16 2002, at 10:39 pm
(more history, politics, school)
Follow my train of thought for this evening:
California may force schools to drop Indian mascots - The move, promoted by Native American tribesmen, is intended to protect the dignity of the American Indian heritage, by forbiding schools to promote it. Braves, Chiefs, Apaches, and Comanches are all among the 'offensive' labels that would be forbidden.
I went to Gaspar de Portola Middle School. No, my old school wouldn't be affected by the ban, because our mascots weren't any for of Indians. Our mascot was the Conquistador.
But apparently naming a school's mascot after a Native American tribe is more offensive than naming one after the group of people that committed mass genocide against them.
Just so long as we all have our priorities firmly in place.
My Sister the Superstar
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Monday, Apr 8 2002, at 5:09 pm
(more family, school, science, tv)
So I don't talk about my family too often 'round here, but I'd like to say a little about my sister, Susie.
Susie's a teacher in Los Angeles, teaching Biology to 8th graders, and in addition she teaches on the Homework channel, where 70,000 kids see her for about an hour each week. I've seen tapes of her shows and I'm proud and amazed at what she can do, on live TV no less.
Last week she did a 20-minute presentation on using crickets to tell the temperature, or to be more specific, she did a presentation on how the real world differs from the ideal scientific method. I think this is her best episode, and though I don't expect anyone to watch the whole 20 minutes, there are some really funny bits for those of you who do. Enjoy!
So I have two lists in my pocket. The first is a list of reminders of things I want to blog about. The second is a list of pictures to take from Chatterwaul's Collectivo project, where each participant takes 10 pictures on a theme. This one's theme is 'The Daily Routine' and the individual pictures are things like '1. The first thing you see when you wake up' and '5. Something that requires your daily attention'. I've finished taking most of the pictures, and I'll point to them when they get posted to the site.
Two of the instructed pictures are giving me trouble though: '8. Your most loathsome daily activity' and '9. The thing you look forward to most each day.' I've been thinking about it for three days, and I can't find anything particularly loathsome that happens daily. I mean, how loathsome is taking out contact lenses really? Similarly, I'm having trouble finding the thing I look forward to each day. Again, how much can you look forward to a Chai? And even then, I already took a picture of that ritual for '3. A food or beverage you consume on a daily basis.'
I hadn't realized how low-contrast my life seems to be getting.
I'm living in the middle.
...
In my love life, that thing that keeps happening outside of fury.com's view, there's a coffer full of untold stories and those still unfolding. I'm neither saint nor satyr, looking for love, but unable to give myself up to it. I have the opportunity for love and commitment, or I could be sated with my friendships, but my own feelings, desires, and emotions are constantly conflicted, to my own detriment and sorrow and that of some of those who touch my life.
I'm living in the middle.
...
Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my application deadline to Carnegie Mellon's graduate HCI program. Tomorrow, hundreds of eager hopefuls have to have their own applications postmarked. Last March, with a job offer from Yahoo in one hand and an acceptance from CMU in the other, I chose to defer grad school for a year. I told my manager of my intent to get my Masters degree the following year, and he said that after a year at Yahoo, I wouldn't want to leave.
In two months today's applicants get their thin-lipped letters of rejection or grinning packets of admission. I'll be getting a joyous packet, one year deferred, and I'll find myself weighing the same choices, options, and futures, albeit with a year's more perspective. The needle keeps wavering, and right now it's at the balancing point.
On one hand, I love Yahoo. The people there are the most capable I've ever had the pleasure of working with, and I feel that I get to exert my capabilities more and to more meaningful ends than ever before. Even more telling, in my CMU app statement of purpose, I talked about how I want to be able to design interaction models that will be used by millions, eventually being emulated by competitors, and finally being accepted as simply 'the way things work.' I'm incredibly lucky to have that opportunity, designing Yahoo! Messenger, and I'd be a fool to leave it.
On the other hand, CMU's HCII program is the best in the world. Coming from a university of 30,000 people, and a high school of 3,300, going to a graduate program of 40 people, on a campus with one eighth the population of UC Berkeley, I'd love an educational experience that doesn't involve feeling like a number. In short, I feel like I got an invitation to Hogwarts, and the Dursleys are inside a corner of my brain, crying things like "too much money!" "Pittsburgh? For a full year?" and "The perfect job isn't good enough for you?"
If I choose to go, I hope to continue at Yahoo when I finish in 12 months. There will be packing, storage, the sharing of furniture and furnishings with friends ("Will you take my big TV, oh please?"), and the slow but steady purge of unneeded junk, papers, etc. from my life, in preparation for one carful of stuff on a cross-country sojourn to a new, brief, life. If I choose to stay, I've decided that I need to move. (More on that later. I'm writing it on the list of things to blog about now.)
Gah. I just need more information, and I'll make sure I gather it in the next couple months, both about Yahoo and CMU. But for now, and for the next several months --
I'm loaning a friend my Vision Science book for her class in Visual Perception. I envy her this semester, taking Visual Perception with Stephen Palmer, and Mind & Language with George Lakoff. I remember when I was in those classes, and how clear it was that you were learning from two of the leaders in the field (and I mean that in the good way). She may also get the chance to study in a small neurology seminar with Rich Ivry. Ivry's great, not only because of his extreme knowledge (and ongoing research) in the field, but because he's easygoing.
Back when I took his Cognitive Neuroscience course (CogSci 127), I remember (and wouldn't you know, I've got the photos too) when he talked about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Basically, a TMS is a solenoid that generates a very powerful, but highly focused magnetic field that disrupts the delicate electrical potentials within its reach.
The thing is shaped like a ping-pong paddle, with a wire going from the handle to a computer that controls the pulse duration and frequency. The flat paddle projects a disruptive field a few cenitmeters beyond its surface. Scientists use it to create temporary harmless brain lesions. Basically, this will stop a select few square cenitmeters of a person's cerebral cortex from functioning for under a second per pulse.
As we in the class are all amazed by this, he rolls out a cart with a laptop and a TMS paddle on it and asks his head TA if he could come to the front of the room. It sucks to be the GSI. But no, the TA was going to man the computer, while Ivry took the paddle in his own hand, placed it carefully on the right part of his skull (right forward parietal lobe, the motor cortex, a little off from the top, the part controlling the left arm and fingers), holds out his left arm, and signals to the TA.
Professor Ivry takes his role as an educator very seriously.
The class goes very quiet. Shuffling stops, pens stop writing, the 360 students in the room completely fixated on what's about to happen. A flashbulb goes off and 361 heads turn toward me as I sheepishly lower the camera and everyone starts laughing. Once everyone looks back to the spectacle-in-the-making, Ivry gives the sign and the head TA presses a few keys. Pulses accented by quick beeps pulse though the paddle, and every four seconds the professor's arm and fingers twitch. "Okay, now I'm going to concentrate on keeping my fingers absolutely still" he says, and there's absolutely no difference.
I snap another picture without a flash, just in case it looks better (it did).
It starts to dawn on some of the students that he could move the paddle a little along the motor cortex and affect other parts of the body, the face, the legs, the toes, and right next to toes on the cortex,
the genitals. Scattered pockets of giggling ensue. Made bold by the professor's daring, a few students call out requests: "Can you put it at the back of your head?" (occipital lobe: temporary lack of vision for part of the visual field (not darkness, but a completel lack of awareness that it exists)), "Can you put it at the front?" (prefrontal cortex: temporary lack of personality), "Broca's! Broca's!" (Broca's Area: inability to formulate coherent words).
But no, even when a few students volunteered to be guinea pigs (err, monkeys. I think this thing could probably disrupt a whole guinea-brain at once, and that wouldn't be good) trying, no doubt, to remember where the pleasure center of the brain was. Besides, it wouldn't activate it, as an electrode would. It would just disrupt it anyhow.
I wonder if the grad students ever mess with the paddle after office hours.
You know what miffs me? We work so hard writing papers for school, the papers are only read by one or perhaps two teachers, and we're dissuaded from posting them to the net, because of plagiarism issues. It seems like such a waste to write so much just to prove we can write and so we can learn. What about sharing?
Almost there...
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Friday, May 18 2001, at 10:28 am
(more school)
My last final is at 5pm, bringing to a close my education at Berkeley. I'm thinking about wearing my mortarboard during the final, a sort of silent protest against the common practice of having graduation ceremonies before finals are even over. Maybe I'll throw it into the air as I turn in my exam, the real moment of graduation. Maybe not.
Anyhow, it's breakfast, study, exam review session from 1 to 3, study more, take the exam from 5 to 8, then who knows what. Waaaah. So close...
I went to 