I’ve finally moved into my new apartment, got Internet hooked up, and will be getting 2 pieces of furniture this week. There’s a tendency for me to take a while to settle down onto a new environment, and this will be no different. However I am somewhat relieved to be living alone. While I love having roommates it’s about that time in my life that I need my own place.
Beyond all this moving stuff, research is slowly back ok track. Thanks to all those friends who have given me encouragement and the occasional nag here and there. I’m going to try and use this space a bit more over the coming month.
Until my next update, cheers to you all!
I thought I kicked the whole “productivity” habit already, but it looks like I’m back to work. You may have noticed that my thesis meter on the right has gone up. I’ve actually begun to write.
As it stands I have to get a copy of a semi-complete thesis turned in by next Monday (June 16) for a format review. Then it’s off to the races with 28 days to complete my final study and write a complete draft of my thesis. My defense will hopefully be on July 18th so that I can turn in the final copy on July 21.
Please feel free to nag me when you think I’ve been slacking. A few words of encouragement might also work ;-).
Ha HA!
Some students and faculty from IST have united to start some discussion about game research at Penn State. We’ve started a forum at weeklygamers.berniezang.com. Check it out.
CHI was an amazing experience. Yes, yes, it was in Florence, but beyond the amazing location, the conference itself was incredible and quite overwhelming. As a student volunteer, I got a chance to meet some very cool students studying some amazing topics. I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity, both culturally and academically, of the people.
Of the sessions, I found that the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) were the most valuable to me. These sessions focus on particular topics that are valuable to the CHI community. For example, I participated in 3 SIGs: Usability, History of HCI, and End-User Programming. Rather than just have a string of individuals presenting their own work, there was discussion and feedback. Since I’m a newcomer to the CHI world, the sessions gave me a chance to absorb some of the more cutting edge topics people were working on, and also ask some questions. The format was much more intimate than paper session; everyone had a chance to speak, and give their 2 cents. Some of the people I had a chance to interact with I had met at other events, while others I have only read about. At no point was anyone overly critical and even my rather naive questions were answered with patient.
One particular person I was truly impressed with is R. Henry Lieberman. I had read his work in the past, and just getting to talk to him was amazing. He has the uncanny ability to look at problems and different types of research from angles that others wouldn’t even consider.
When I had a chance to talk about my own research, everyone had great things to say and gave some of the most thoughtful comments.
Another group of people that made a good impression on me were the people from Microsoft. Every time I visited their booth they had great people to chat with. All of them had great energy and were very passionate about their work. It was very eye-opening since most of my past experience were from people looking down at Microsoft. Interestingly, Google’s presence at their booth was very lacking. There were quite a few recruiters, who, while very fun to talk to, weren’t able to answer some of the questions I had about life at Google and give me a more in depth idea of the work they are doing. Another group that I didn’t see was Yahoo. I did get a chance to talk to Aviva Rosenstein about some of the work they do. From just interacting with these reps, I really want want to work for Yahoo or Microsoft.
Overall CHI was an incredible experience. If this is how all conferences go, I really need to get my stuff together and write some more papers.
Since this is the Internet and everything I write here will be disseminated to everyone and everything I guess I’ll keep this pretty tame. Suffice to say, there are certain academics who know how to party and others who really can’t interact in a social manner.
I’m a big believer of taking about other topics when outside of work and school. For instance, I had a really good conversation with a Finnish guy about weird foods from each culture and we competed for the title of “most ethnic food” (some how Sweden won). However it seems some of my colleagues just can’t talk about anything except for HCI, jobs, and gossip about the conference. Let me tell you, sometimes when I hang out with these people, it feels like high school again. I was at a bar with some of these guys and all I could here at all the tables was “where is he going to after his PhD?”, “did those two get in a verbal arguement yesterday?” And all I could think is “wow, this is a really good beer.”
Last night was party night at the conference. Microsoft, Google, Techsmith, IBM, etc all had a party at this gorgeous hotel on the river. Since we are all academics, we’re attracted to free food and booze like flies on rice. There were lines out the door of people lined up at the bar. Seeing this hubbub we decided to skip out to the Oracle party. Yes Oracle. When I think Oracle, I think calendars, databases and business people. Wow was I wrong.
Normally I don’t like being in a crowded bar waiting for drinks, but the bartender was amazing. He was making mojitos 8 at a time, and the process was a show, with bottles, shakers and glasses flying all over the place. AND the drink was pretty good too.
Wednesday was a good day. Exhausting, but good. Today is the final day of the conference and tomorrow we move out of our awesome apartment to a hotel for 2 more days in town. I plan to do a lot of sitting and writing before I leave and I may get one of those floppy renaissance hats (it’s the secret to why all those sculpters and painters were so good…. it’s like inspiration in the form of a hat).
Ah yes, the fine dining options of Florence. From what I can tell and from what others have told me, Florence is a tourist trap. The whole damn city is just one huge sink for money to get flushed into.
While it is expensive to eat any where in Florence, the food is pretty amazing. I’m a student volunteer (SV) at the conference so most of the time I eat breakfast and lunch here. Now in most places, if you get a buffet breakfast and lunch, it’s mostly very light and nothing that spectacular. The first day of SVing, breakfast consisted of various pastries, coffee (which incidentally is just espresso in a coffee karaf), various juices, and some meat filled sandwiches… Yep, procuitto for breakfast. Lunch had a light salad with some crusty Tuscan bread, pasta in a very nice tomato sauce, mozerella wrapped around procuitto and tomatoes, spinich quiche, and wine. Yes, wine at noon.
Besides the random SV food, we’ve gone out every night for dinner. I have to say the Italians have this great thing called the set menu. You get your choice of a and a 2nd meal (also an amazing Italian invention, like elevenses, but without a break) all for a set price. I got saffron rissoto with mussels and a huge salmon steak with some sort of delicious sauce for 16 euros.
Ok… cutting it short, gotta run to a session. Just posted more pictures so take a look.
I’m glad that ordeal is over. Right after going out and buying some clean cloths I get back to our apartment and find my bag sitting in the living room. Not quite sure how it got there, but I”m inclined to believe that it was by divine or magical powers. I now have clean cloths and resumes!
Anyways, a trip update. We spent all day Sunday wandering around Florence and visiting museums. We were able to see the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’Academia, Medici Chappelle, and the Duomo. My feet and ankles are so sore that I hobbled my way to the conference this morning.
The Uffizi, which literally translates to “offices”, is a palace of sorts that sits on the river. It was built by the Medici family to house the Magistrate, which low and behold, was a member of the family. Today, it houses the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, the Caravaggio Medusa, and numerous pieces by Michalangelo and Donetello. Throughout the building, lining most of the hallways, are scultpures representing famous Roman figures, Caesar Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Caligula, etc. It seems that the family really enjoyed that sort of thing and collects, stole, pillaged quite a few of the important pieces. Also along with the stone pieces, paintings of famous members of the family lined the scroll-work. Pretty impressive stuff, and lots of big painting.
The rest is a bit much to cover fully here, so I’ll just let my the photos cover the rest. On interesting thing is that taking photos of the art inside museums are strictly forbidden in most of the museums in Florence so I wasn’t able to get any good shots. For that matter, I got yelled at by a very angry security guard when I tried to take a picture of Venus… oh well. I can understand no flash, but I completely forbidding any photos is a bit much.
Well, it’s been a tough journey, but I’m finally here. That’s the good news.
The bad news. Lost luggage. It seems that US Airways didn’t transfer my bag, and even better, I lost the baggage check tag on the flight into Amsterdam. Everyone else I travelled with had their bags delayed, but they arrived in the morning, but since they don’t have my tag number they’re running on a general description. So right now I have no clothing. If my bags don’t get here tonight, I’ll have to go shopping, which incidently is VERY VERY VERY expensive. Oh well, enough about that.
I had some time yesterday to wander around yesterday and posted pictures online. Check it out on Flickr. Now back to student volunteering.
Ciao
Time to leave for Italy. I’m packed and ready to go.
I will be at the CHI conference in Florence to be a student volunteer and also to present my work-in-progress poster. Here’s the full abstract.
Also a good friend of mine, who’s an artist, sketched me up and I’ve included it in a 1 page flier. It’s pretty awesome. He also has a sketch of me as a dinosaur…
Anyways, I’ll be updating daily with fun pictures and whatnot over the next 10 days. Keep an eye on this space.
It looks like I’m going to Florence in April for the CHI 2008 conference. My work-in-progress got accepted, and since this is most likely my main publication for my tenure as a graduate student, I get to take the trip to present my work. Not only is the conference one of the most prestigious in the area of HCI, but it also gives me an opportunity to rub elbows with some of the researchers I’ve been reading about.
Here’s a copy of the abstract I submitted: PDF
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