obso1337.org

So this evening we set out excited and anxious for the Radiohead show. The venue was 45 minutes away (+30-45 minutes in weekday traffic which we didn’t have since it was Sunday). Torrential downpours screwed with traffic and the roads, with the police redirecting traffic all over mother earth, basically in circles around the arena. 3 hours later, we turned around having been 5 miles from the arena for the last 2 hours. When we turned around, it was already 1 hour in to Radiohead’s set (we had called to see if the set would be postponed because of weather) and we still had 3 miles to go, then park, then get in to the arena. Basically we would miss the show regardless of our actions since Virginia has noise ordinances which requires shows to be over by 11/11:30PM. There were still hundreds (not exaggerating) of cars lined up trying to gain entrance to the arena and park when we turned back to go home. The lady on the phone said to call the Box Office tomorrow about refunds (I’d like to see pictures of how empty the arena was).

No Radiohead tonight. BOO

seele :: May.12.2008 :: Asides, Life, Music :: Comments Off

I can’t believe how long it took us to move. Since the Saturday before last, we’ve been taking a few boxes after work every night to the new place. Last Saturday we had movers help with all the furniture. The first dozen boxes were books and computer gear (even after donating half a ton of books and several old computers). There’s nothing like moving to get much needed spring cleaning done. To be fair, we have a house full of furniture etc., but I still have more “stuff” than I wish I had. Oh, and it is so awesome to have a balcony again.

So now that the network is back up and I have my electric kettle and tea box, I can get back to open source work. Between the sketchy ‘net connection, moving boxes, and abnormal buzziness with the Day Job, I haven’t had much time to pay attention to mailing lists or IRC (which reminds me, I think I owe a few people an email). I have three unfinished blog entries and need to continue working on KDE User Research Profiles. I know Okular has been working on their user profile the past few weeks and I want to put some cycles in to helping them out. Projects get ready, because I will resume calling out for completing user research profiles again next week. There were also those KGrubEditor wireframes I was working on for Artemis_Fowl…

Over the past month or so I’ve managed to get through the first two Hitchhiker’s books (Background: I had only ever read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and am now working through the rest of the series), but I’m losing momentum near the end of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Sure, it’s still funny, but it doesn’t seem to have the same substance as the first two books. I have about 10 more pages before I move on to So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. We’ll see how it goes. (I also have some more Gaiman and Peake to read afterwards).

We also took a break last Friday to go celebrate the Hardy release with fellow Maryland LoCoers. After the UDS in May, I will be focusing on ways to get the LoCo community involved in usability testing (in more ways than just acting as participants in tests).

seele :: Apr.29.2008 :: Book List, General, Life, Open Source :: 4 Comments »

KDE Women at the KDE 4 Release Event in January:

Kubuntu at the KDE 4 Release Event in January:

Maryland Ubuntu Loco meeting in February:

seele :: Feb.27.2008 :: Asides, Life, Open Source :: Comments Off

Gerry Gaffney of the UXpodcast interviewed me about my participation in Open Source and the Modified-Delphi Card Sort. I know these are two very unrelated projects, but I couldn’t resist being able to talk about Open Source!

The entire interview is about 25 minutes, with the first 8 minutes about usability in OSS. We had a bad Skype connection during the interview, so there are a few awkward spots that had to be heavily edited. Overall, Gerry did a wonderful job interviewing and made speaking very easy.

seele :: Dec.12.2007 :: Academics, Design, Open Source :: 1 Comment »

I finally completed the content draft for my graduate thesis. After I get a few eyes to read through it, it should be ready to be bound. I have a few more things to wrap up (one of them being Harry Potter 7 and a few work-related things I put of until this weekend) before I resurface and become a member of society.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have any projects already planned for the future, I will remain plenty busy:

• Wordpress contextual help (SoC project)
• Digikam usability report (months late)
• Object-based annotation research paper (for HCIL)
• A number of odds and ends kinds of things that make me the crazy person that I am

Cheers!

seele :: Jul.21.2007 :: Academics, Design, General :: 3 Comments »