Academics: Very Smart, Very Dumb

I have one major complaint about UbiComp 2010 as far as comfort goes. The seatting arrangement during the presentations is a typical lecture hall, but one with absolutely no space to move if someone is sitting in a chair. For some reason, every single person will opt to sit on the very end of the row. This means that every person who is not in the lecture hall before the presentation begins has to squeeze past those folks who sat down first. This is particularly difficult as some folks refuse to stand up to let people pass.

This is particularly humiliating in my case. I'm not a small woman by most standards, and it. is. not. comfortable. for me to move myself and my laptop pass you. You're forcing me to choose to show you either my rear or my front in a small area. It is awkward for me. I can't imagine you're enjoying it that much, given your reluctance to even stand up. When I say "Excuse me," it isn't a request for you to turn your knees to the side, which adds maybe three inches to the first three that were there. I'm simply not six inches wide.

So please, colleagues. If you're organizing a conference, do choose a venue that it is accessible for various body types. If you're at a conference that doesn't have wide aisles, either sit near the center of the row, or be prepared to stand up when people need to get by.

A further update about UbiComp as far as interesting papers went will be posted either later today or tomorrow.

Software Review: Mendeley

Finding a resource management software ended up being really easy. I searched cross-plastform because I work on a Mac in the lab, a PC at home, and up until today, my laptop was running ubuntu. (Since ASUS is no longer providing drivers for linux, and I really wanted to be able to skype with Braden while in Denmark, I'm installing Windows on it, at least temporarily.) Mendeley is absolutely fantastic. It scans pdfs to try and autofill citation information, while allowing you to sync files or information across computers. I'm so into this software right now. I have't encountered any bugs that I want gone or features that I'm desperately missing.

Mendeley exports to EndNote if you happen to have access to commercial software, as well as exporting to BibTex. I'm digging it so far. I'd chat it up a bit more, but I need to put together my personal-item purse/bag/whatevs for the flight to Denmark. :)

Catching Up/Getting Ahead

It's been a while because I haven't yet gotten through my thick skull that blogging more frequently might actually assist me in keeping my thoughts straight about the various projects I'm working on. This semester started all of two weeks ago, and things haven't really started to kick in full gear yet as far as academics are concerned, though I've been out of town for the last two weekends and have two more social engagements on the next two weekends, and then get to take a plane to my first ever real-computer-science-conference.

What? I never posted here about that? Right, well the poster paper on Paper-to-Parameters was accepted to UbiComp. On September 25th, I take my first international flight using my first passport(which cost me way too much money), to go to the first conference where my first paper ever will be published. I've spent a lot of time in the last week working on the poster, and working considerably harder since realizing that this may very well be a conference I'll want to be taken seriously at when I'm working the angles on my thesis.

Question to be asked at the department sometime soon: can we publish partial parts of our PhD research in a similar way to how the work we're doing right now is being published as a WiP in a couple of conference before the final paper is published? I really don't know these things at UIC yet, and I have a feeling it could be critical.

I'm planning on applying to the NSFGRF program this year. Getting accepted means some $30,000 a year stipend, along with an allotted tuition waiver, as well as travel assistance. It would also mean free time to actually do my research without having to work for someone else. The other nice thing about the NSFGRF is that it basically sets me up to get background work done for my thesis and to put some really intense thought into what I want to do and how I would do it. It's basically a mini-grant proposal. I'm actually really excited to start working on it, if only I could start budgeting my time better.

A couple of things I'm going to try and do: find a reference management software that I like, and then leave the references in my dropbox folder so I can access them from all three computers. Write up short reviews here again for papers that I've read, because well, I should be doing that anyway as I finish the papers to avoid re-reading too deeply the ones that are uninteresting/disconnected from what I'm doing. Discuss with Leilah what is appropriate to be spoken of with the internet before publication so that I can figure out just how much to reveal here about what I'm currently working on. Some open source software reviews for various toolkits I've been having to use.

For now, that's catch up time. I'm working on putting together a study group for the Foundations exam amongst my fellow graduate students, so that may be updated here as well.