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.

CRA-W Grad Cohort

This weekend, I took a break from the last-week-of-school panic to attend a conference in Seattle for women in computer science. It's actually not so much a conference as let's all get together, eat free food, and talk about how to get through graduate school. And for the most part, I learned quite a bit and enjoyed myself quite thoroughly and actually made some new friends.

There were certain parts that concerned me. The two sessions that one wouldn't have seen at a similar event for any gendered cs grad student were...pretty gender biased. In a bad way. The suggested reactions to possible situations made me uncomfortable. They were all very passive reactions, which only leads to the persistence of the attitude that it's okay to say that someone only got their position because of their gender, or to interrupt a female speaker just because they're female. I do not believe in simply sitting back if I'm having a conversation with someone and someone else butts in and tries to end my conversation preemptively. I am far more likely to inject myself into the "new" conversation, politely. Restraint is something I should learn.

But there were constant references to "having a cry" when a rejection letter was received. There were the 'jokes' about shopping. If we're talking about activities that are relaxing, why are they all so stereotypically gendered activities? It...perturbed me. For all of the information I received, the attitudes I encountered at CRA-W were not really...about being equal. They were about establishing our femininity within being a computer scientist and somehow trying to be normal.

I have no desire to be normal. Not a normal woman, whatever that means, not a normal computer scientist, not a normal anything. Will I return to CRA-W next year if they fund me? Yes, I likely will. The opportunity to network with women in computing research is much too large to ignore. Will I perhaps be skipping the sessions on "Building Self Confidence" and "Being a Woman in Computing Technology" ...no, because I think it's critical that someone stands up and says that we should not let even "unintentional" sexism stand.

On a somewhat related note, if ever you have to be stranded in an airport for two hours, SeaTac is a great one for it. Comfortable seats, true free wi-fi, and outlets galore.

Qualifier Results & Summer Plans

Qualifiers Scores:

Foundations: No Go. Retry in September. We received the exams back, and I really need to study algorithms in depth, as well as some dynamic programming techniques. Whoops.

Human Centered Computing : Conditional Pass. I have to take Artificial Intelligence this Fall, which is cool. My AI course was not a practical course, instead being largely a theoretical approach. UIC emphasizes practice so much that I'm actually mildly excited. I did rock the HCI portion of the HCC exam, and that delighted me.

Systems: Pass. I find it peculiar that the only test I passed absolutely on the first try is the only one I didn't explicitly study for, but I'll take what I can get. Primarily my success here was due to taking Networking the prior semester.

While I attempted to apply for internships, I was largely unsuccessful. For some reason, places that are looking for research interns actually desire research experience. Fancy that. Luckily for me, I've been talking at length with Dr.Leilah Lyons about a project that only recently was given a small budget so that my summer will be partially funded, which is a delightful development that makes my summer much less stressful. The project?

The project involves two subjects that I'm aware of and one that I've studied with just a bit of depth. Essentially, it's an augmented reality project that will take AR input for a system, and then run a simulation for that system, based on the input. I actually question the extent to which this is Augmented Reality to some extent, since it's being used as input only, and not active input. Once the images are captured, they are not then acknowledged again unless another capture is requested.

The semester is coming to a close and Kenchi Games is taking up quite a bit of my time. Reach has been an interesting project with many, many problems that we're working on, a day at a time. Hopefully, we'll be making another video capture this week to post on youTube. The original intent had been to do that far more often than we have, but the amount of progress between weeks has been less than desired.

Additionally, for User Interface Design, we're now working on small projects in Android. This slow build up will hopefully lead to a good understanding of the API so that I can build small applications over the summer and increase my portfolio of work. (Speaking of portfolio, another high priority item on the list is definitely completing a portfolio website by the end of summer, since the school year seems to not include much real time.)

Qualifier Exams

Last Thursday and Friday were the qualifier exams. After reading some ten texts on computer science in the short time of a month, I still feel that I was under prepared for the exams and should've started studying about the same time I was accepted into UIC if I had wanted to actually excel, instead of merely feeling that it was possible I passed certain portions of the exams.

From here, things start to get interesting. When the results from quals come back, quite a bit changes. But for now? For now I am content to know that I have two possible research projects lined up, one possibly starting this summer. Now that I am not aggressively reading textbooks, it's time to turn back to the original plan for this blog, which implies doing quite a bit more reading of various journals and actually writing summaries on the interesting articles. I'll be posting a few of the summaries I've done for CS 594 here in the next few days, as well as the cleaned up version of our report for User Interface Design.

Additionally, if anyone is interested in what we are currently doing for Video Game Design, you can track our progress at Kenchi Games. That website should continue to be updated over the semester.

Human Centered Computing Exam: HCI

HCI Question 1 – 100 points:

The interface for a typical elevator is still based on physical buttons that allow the user to select a specific floor, hold the door open, close the door, or ring the alarm bell. With the price of flat panel displays dropping, it is possible that in the coming years we will see touch screen LCD panels replacing the existing designs.

A – What are the advantages of completely replacing a typical elevator button panel like the one

shown below with a touch-screen LCD panel?

Completely replacing the panel would allow for more information to be presented. There would be fewer individual mechanical pieces that could go faulty. Particularly in the case of some mechanical error, the LCD screen could provide information about what had happened to the caller to be relayed to the technician.

B – What are the disadvantages of that complete replacement?

With all changes there is a learning curve, and the newness may cause some confusion. Going beyond that, an LCD screen is unlikely to provide the same immediate feedback when a 'button' is pushed.

C – Suggest a hybrid design combining the current interface and an LCD touch screen that

maximizes the advantages and minimizes the disadvantages. Note which principles you

are using and how they affect your design.

HCI Question 2 – 33 points:

On some computer systems, using a mouse to move the cursor to the corner of the screen causes the system to sleep or go into alternative display modes. Is this a Fitts’ task? Explain your answer.

Yes, this task is a Fitts task. Since Fitts' Law deals with the placement and utilization of space for the distribution of objects for a task, placing the most frequently used objects near the center of the task, the act of placing a common task that shouldn't interfere with normal use at the edges of the screen falls under that umbrella of tasks.

HCI Question 3 – 34 points:

Touch-screen interactions often face the problem that the user’s finger occludes the object being

manipulated (e.g., selected, moved).

A - Describe two techniques that might potentially mitigate this problem, and discuss the

advantages and disadvantages of each technique.

One technique would be to have an offset of the touch, displaying the selection as slightly above(to avoid occlusion by the rest of the finger) of the contact. The advantage of this technique

B - Describe a procedure (including subjects, tasks, and analysis methods) for characterizing the

performance of the two proposed methods.

More later. Need to go back to foundations and really hard core study so...backing away from this for now. I feel this is easier and more comfortable than hard comp sci, and that's not cool.