obso1337.org

So I forgot to publish this post, some if it is outdated ;P

I still have a bit of homework to do tonight before I can try to do anything else. Ive been waiting for a response to a question on the message board for a day now and no one seems to want to answer it. The homework itself should only take about 30 minutes once I get a response.

I did get my homework done last night in about 30 minutes which was nice. I was a little annoyed how well some of my classmates did not answer my question, and instead acted as if I didnt know what an algorithm was and gave me an unrelated explanation. All I wanted to know was what a certain variable meant because it hadn’t been defined in the example. Luckily one of my classmates knew exactly what I was asking because he had the same question and answered it perfectly.

My other two classes I have only had two reading assignments for, although I will eventually have larger projects to begin working on. I managed to get most of the reading for the one class done last week on the Metro, and the other book I had previously read so I will go over the material in between classes tonight.

I’m pretty happy with the reading selections some of my Ubalt classes have made. Most of the books are either prose/philosophy or reference, so I’ll get good use out of them after the classes have ended. I got back to reading “Digital Ground” for recreation, although it might get put back on the shelf if I can’t find time to read after I stop riding the Metro.

I need to figure out a way to consolidate postings on my KDE blog and my personal blog. Various blogs get syndicated all over the place but one audience always misses out on a story. I wouldnt expect you to subscribe to all of my blogs, but sometimes I wish I could cross-post interesting stuff.

I had good intentions of adding the 2005 usability reports to the KDE Usability website, but I was more interested in playing WoW. I havn’t been able to play since last week, and even then it was only for a few hours the entire week. I managed to get on for a bit last night, but it took forever for me to log in to the Battlegrounds and I ended up going downstairs to watch the Chapelle Show and Southpark with Justin.

Tonight are the second classes of the semester for Ubalt so I will probably get some homework or projects to work on.

So much to do, so little time.

seele :: Feb.08.2006 :: Academics, Books, General, KDE/Kubuntu, Work :: No Comments »

sorry for the caps, but i *am* yelling

this weekend justin and i went home and watched (and later celebrated) the steelers play in the super bowl.

for those of you who are not familiar with the super bowl, it is the championship game for american football (you know that weird game that is nothing like soccer). for those of you who are not familiar with me or the steelers, you should know that i am from pittsburgh and so are they

saturday night in the south side (one of the bar districts) reminded me of mardi gras. people dressed up in black and gold, drunk in the streets singing “Here we go STEEEEEELERS, HERE WE GO!”, cars blasting steelers polka (yes polka, dont ask) and blaring horns down carson street, and almost every store/bar/restaurant/house decorated in black and gold for the Big Game.

why was it such a Big Game (other than it being the championship of course). well, the super bowl is a big deal to pittsburgh for many reasons. *) it is a family owned team (which is getting rarer these days) of which the father of the current owner won 4 superbowls with. *) jerome ‘the bus’ bettis has been inducted in to the hall of fame, yet had not won a super bowl AND has been hanging in with the team for 2 years trying to get a ring (he is a broken man) AND is from detroit (he is from detroit). *) ben roethlesberger is the second youngest starting quarterback (and now youngest winning quarterback) *) bill cowher has been coaching the steelers for something like 15 years and has taken them to the playoffs something like 9 or 10 times with only 1 other appearance (loss) in the superbowl (1996).

so it was time for ‘one for the thumb’ (the super bowl prize is a ring and trophy for the team)

oh and strangely condoleeza rice (U.S. secretary of state) was at the game and publicly picked the steelers to win (this is strange in part because a) she was at the super bowl and b) public figures do not usually publicly pick sides in sports unless they are a hometown team and she is from Alabama).

anyway.. being more interested in getting drunk and staying warm to watch the game than ‘freezing our nuts off’ (as justin would put it), we watched the game from the comfort of a house party in north pittsburgh rather than going down town in the craziness. popular bar districts in pittsburgh were closed for the game (south side, strip district, station square, oakland..) to allow people to wander the streets and celebrate (or riot) after the game.

people from all around the country came in to pittsburgh just to watch the game here. pittsburgh has a great following, once from pittsburgh, always from pittsburgh. i have friends in California who have found a steelers bar, a friend in Boston who has found one, and Justin and i know of at least three in DC/Balitmore. (as for stats, i think Florida is the #1 place for pittsburghers to move to, DC-Metro #2)

the game was full of ups and down, ill let you read commentary to see the close calls and bad plays from both sides, but overall it was a great game to watch.

the street scene broadcasted to the post-game news was insane. the streets were littered with cheering fans, far from sober but all smiles. luckily most of the streets around the districts were closed as well and would not be opened until 3am, which gave people plenty of time to party (er.. sober up).

im afraid to know what the scene would have been like if we lost. something would have been torn down, set afire, blown up, who knows. but who cares, bettis has a fairy tale ending, the rooney’s have one for the thumb, pittsburgh native coach cowher has a superbowl win, ben is the youngest winning qb in superbowl history, and pittsburgh will be a very happy place to be for a long time.

GO STILLERS! (I is an intentional accent )

seele :: Feb.06.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off

I’ve had many computers over the years, although some of them have sadly been lost during ‘The Year of Moving’ (a one year period I moved 5 times).

Takochi

The newest member of the family, Takochi is a Lenovo 3000 v100 running Kubuntu Linux.

Screenshot

Photo

Slater

Nicknamed ‘Slater’, he is my Fujitsu 5010D TabletPC slate (not to be confused with Slater from Saved by the Bell). He is a true TabletPC: lightweight, excellent battery life, amazing hibernation recovery speeds, no keyboard, and awesome pen resolution, sensitivity, and feedback.

• Intel Pentium M processor 1.0 GHz (Intel 855GME) 1 MB on-die L2 cache; 400 MHz system bus speed
• 768MB SDRAM
• 12.1″ XGA LCD indoor viewable
• Windows XP TabletPC edition

Straylight

Straylight is my Fujitsu P2000 sub-notebook. A gift from 2002, this snappy and light-weight friend is still one of my primary machines.

• 933MHz Crusoe TM5800 (ALi M1535); 512KB on-die L2 cache; 133MHz system bus speed
• 384MB SDRAM
• 10.6″ wide-format SXGA TFT display up to 1280×768 (ATI Mobility Radeon)
• Kubuntu 6 (Dapper)

Rarae

Rarae was an inherited box from a friend in 2004. Now I am giving her a good home and putting her to good use.

• Dell Dimension 4100
• Kubuntu (Dapper) Linux

Screenshot

Sebastien

Sebastien is my homebrew PC I first built in 2001. Although parts have been swapped in an out over the years, his heart has stayed the same.

[stats forthcoming…]

Lazerus

Lazerus was another product of a successful dumpster dive, this time behind the CS building of the University of Pittsburgh in 2001. This bugger had some strange stuff going on with his BIOS (posted as 12MHz, yet was clearly not a dinosaur) but ran as a firewall quite fine for two semesters. Why ‘Lazerus’? He was far gone by the time I got to him, and it took a lot of love and pain to get him resurrected. He was retired in the move of 2004.

[no stats available]

Hal

Hal was, well.. very ‘independent’. Rescued from a dumpster outside Carnegie Mellon University in 2000, he served me well as the first host of obso1337.org. Over time it was easy to see his independence (as his name implies); something shorted in his wiring caused him to produce unpredictable data. Nevertheless he ran Debian without (much) trouble. He was retired in the move of 2004.

[stats forthcoming…]

Patrik

Patrik was my Toshiba laptop I took with me to College in 1999. At the time he was quite impressive, he possessed one of the first portable DVD players and a whopping 14.1 inch LCD. Talk about stacked. He was retired when Straylight replaced him in 2001.

[stats forthcoming…]

Skaven

Skaven was my first PC. After years of use, he was converted in to a demo box in order to run old school assembly graphics demos on native hardware. He was retired in the move of 2004.

[stats forthcoming…]

Honorable Mentions

I should also mention my other guys.. they are computers afterall and computers have feelings too!

Nintendo DS

I lost interest in the shiny, pretty, things, and traded in my Sony PSP for the Nintendo DS. The DS impressed me more than I expected, it has excellent gaming options and the form factor is much more comfortable than I expected. I am also very pleased with the pointing interface and its resolution. My current favorite game is Sudoku.

Sony PSP

Hey, I got this baby running homebrew SuDoKu and surfing the net before Sony had a chance to blink.

Sony Playstation 1 and 2

Not as interesting, but worth mentioning

(?) Socrates

Education game console

Nintendo Gameboy

Years of addictive entertainment.

Magnavox Odyssey 2

• Release Date: 1977
• Processor: Intel 8048
• Data: Cartrige
• Input: Keyboard, Joystick

seele :: Feb.03.2006 :: General :: No Comments »

Justin and I went to the local movie theater a few weeks ago, and I was completely amazed by the interactive floor they had setup in one corner of the lobby. After doing some research I found the company who created the technology, Reactrix.

It works like this: there is a floor (in this case a white hard surface so the projection could be easily seen) or some other surface on which a video/screen/image is projected. In addition to the projector, there is an infra-red receiver which checks for activity between the projector and the display surface. When it detects an object or movement, it uses that input to give visual feedback to the user via the projected image.

The kids in the movie theater LOVED this thing. Not knowing or caring how it worked, you could see them stomping, swiping, and waving their body over the floorspace to bounce balls, pop popcorn, and swirl colored clouds. My favorite display was much more peaceful but with the same amount of interaction. A top-down view of a koi pond was projected on to the floor, and when you walked on (or waved your hand over) the floor, you could see ripples in the water and the fish would swim away from the area of activity.

I want one.

The best part was how unintrusive this device was, both physically and mentally. There was no annoying feedback if you accidently stepped on the floor, and no damage done if you didnt react or interact with it correctly. Think of it like the ’smart’ thermostats we have now, where they sense the environment and adjust as you have told it to, but do not alert you persistantly (no beeping when it has changed a setting or needs input) or distract you in any way. Or even like speakers which sense your position and rotate the set up in order to give you the most balanced sound experience. Helpful, entertaining, but not intrusive to your lifestyle.

After seeing the koi pond the first application I thought of was an ambient living room or coffee room floor. The panel could be the floor underneath a glass or transparent coffee table in the middle of a sitting room. The fish would be nothing but decoration and ambience until yourself or a guest reach over to grab your cup and disturb the fish. Simple entertainment, a center piece to talk about, movement and ambience in decor, and a sense of something living in such a static world.

During E3 2005, Nintendo had Reactrix set up an interactive floor [google video] in their booth. It was so well received that many visitors thought it was a new Nintendo technology, not just a marketing display. Here is a more detailed article abou the Nintendo E3 display at N-Sider. They had a similar interactive koi pond, but as you walked on the water planks would float up and ’support’ your feet.

New technology often starts as an entertainment project until someone figures out how to sell it for use otherwise. A reactive display like this could be used for all sorts of things from physical therapy aids to military maps and dashboards. The implementation (infra-red receiving) may not be applicable, but regardless of how the action is detected (heat, movement, infra-red, laser, pressure) the same concepts and interactions can apply.

seele :: Feb.03.2006 :: Design, General, HCI :: 1 Comment »

Yesterday was the first session for my three classes, Data Structures & Algorithms, Sequential Visualization, and Information Architecture.

Data structures should be easy yet interesting. I’ve had it in my undergraduate work at Duquesne, but I can take it again in order to fulfill my programming requirement for the IDIA degree. Suprisingly, this class (which is online at UMUC) does not require programming even though it is a computer science course. The professor wants to focus on the building and understanding of algorithms and not worry about getting a Java program to compile. This was certainly a weight off my shoulders. Although I know C and C++ fairly well (and know how to build most data structures but graphs with them), I know very little Java past the ‘Your first cup of Java’ Sun tutorial.

Sequential visualization will be interesting, but I think it will be one of my easiest classes. A lot of the concepts we will cover in class I am already familiar with, but the assignments are interesting which will keep my interest. Our first assignment is to create an icon set and companion paper explaining our process. According to Dr. Kaplan (the class instructor) this will be the most ‘creative’ class we have in the program. That is fine with me, I joined the program to become more technical, but I think some of the other students with a less-technical background were a little disappointed.

Information architecture will be by far the most interesting and most difficult class this semester. Dr. Summers is a very experienced and very well spoken practitioner and I hope to learn a lot from her class. Our semester project (on which our lessons will be based) is to redesign the content architecture for one of the plain-language sites (she’s not sure if it will be .gov or the international site yet). It will be a lot of work, but that is what I’m there for, so it should be a good learning experience.

Ubalt in general is ‘interesting’ to say the least. According to their website, the average student age is 30 for both undergraduate and graduate. When asked ‘why Baltimore’ by several students, my answer (as well as my friend’s) was because it was the one of the only universities on the east coast which offered an IDIA program. I think it is primarily a Business/Law/Communications school who happen to offer some CS and technical programs. Although there were many students who were partially through the IDIA program, I overheard complaints about ‘difficult’ classes which required PHP programming and learning Flash. School is really only what you make of it.

The drive to Baltimore wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I wouldnt want to make it in the rain or snow because of its length. Riding the Metro then driving for an hour in the car was tiring, but that will end after next week when I start working for User-Centered Design. Most of the students in the program live in or near Baltimore, but I did meet a girl (who has blue hair exactly like I used to) who is a project manager at AOL in Virginia. That is quite a hike.

My book costs have come to about $300 after I get my last two books (which arn’t needed until the end of the semester). A few of them I will never use again and will probably try to sell them back on Amazon, but most of them are industry published books will be a good reference.

Not much ‘homework’ for next week other than data structures (which has homework every week), but I do have a pile of reading to do. I’ve already read the book for my IA class (OReilly: IA for the WWW) so skimming it should suffice. I was lucky enough to get the first edition of Designing Visual Interfaces, apparently the second edition is nothing more than a black-and-white copy of the book (no color photos or diagrams) which is sold for the same price (but cheaper for the publisher because of ink/paper costs).

With all this newly founded school-work I have less time to read recreationally and I probably won’t be able to work on KDE as much. Some of my class-required books are prose and not textbooks so they will ‘count’ towards my total, but it still doesn’t make up for the pile of other books I have been meaning to read. My personal deadline to get the 2005 usability reports on the KDE site has passed, but I plan on doing that by this weekend. I had intended on doing it last weekend, but I didnt have SVN installed on my laptop and got caught up in other things (like the new version of Stone Villa’s website which is now up).

Phew, it will be a busy, busy spring!

seele :: Feb.02.2006 :: Academics, General :: No Comments »