please don't anger the freezer god.

We'll be demoing our Senior Informatics project social network, People, tomorrow.  Apparently the event is going to be reasonably grand as it'll be held in Bren Hall and refreshments will be served.  The Informatics faculty will be there, along with faculty from other departments, and some VIPs from Industry and beyond.  Sounds great, right?  Wrong. I'm unsatisfied with the state of People, and I just don't think the project has anything to offer to the research community, or any value to add industry.

To make things worse, I'm intimidated by the fact that other project courses will be demoing during the event.  People won't stand up to much comparison.  Given better starting conditions, team dynamics, and scheduling, people could be way better than it is currently.

Crap... kill me now.

I'll keep the whining to a minimum, but this quarter's been kinda rough.  With finals week starting tomorrow, I find myself in a curious state.  I'll summarize in a bulleted list to keep the potential for whining to a minimum:

• I sleep entirely too much; somewhere in the last 4 weeks napping became an activity that I dedicate a significant (and increasing!) amount of time to. 
  
• I have trouble getting excited about anything, and when I do manage to build something up, the feeling fades out frighteningly quickly.  This prevents me from achieving the same level of quality I came to expect from myself on the various projects i work on (both personal and pedagogical).
• I've largely stopped my personal reading.  It's become difficult to muster the time or energy necessary for sticking it through a work longer than a few thousand words.
• My discipline slipped away from me. My beard and moustache trimmer broke a week ago, and I haven't got a replacement.  Convincing myself to do my latest load of laundry was much too difficult, and I ended up delaying for nearly an entire week.  My desk, the floor of my room, and my computer's desktop have become increasingly messy.

With that said, I provide what I assess as the proximal causes.

• Existential unrest brought about (many months ago) by my inability to decide on long term goals
  
• The proximity of graduation, specifically...
  
• Not having applied to graduate school yet
• Not having any idea
  
• The sudden acute realization, and accompanying regret that my time to prepare for graduate school (by doing research, getting to know faculty members, and networking with graduate students) has largely passed me by.
• Not having a job
• The uncertainty about my living situation come June

And finally a hypoethetical distal cause:  An utter lack of confidence in my abilities or decisions.

I've been working my way through "How to Read A Book" by Alder, which espouses active reading.  Now I've been calling my reading "active" for quite some time now,  but upon reflection, there was very little activity beyond the reading itself.

That changed a few days ago when I started actively taking notes on Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."  Rather than just puzzling over the concepts presented and letting them fall from my mind, I now have  an accessible outline of the book.  That in itself is amazing; the knowledge gained while reading takes on a whole new dimension of permanence  when you take the time to write it down.  Additionally, the process of outlining forces one to grapple with the ideas in a wholly different way.  A half understanding of Kuhn's argument leads to structural issues in the outline, forcing one to go back and "refactor" the notes until the structure naturally accepts the new information.  Furthermore, the increased engagement encourages one to focus on the matter at hand.  I managed to maintain a decent pace even in a loud coffee shop.

Admittedly this isn't the first time I have encountered this effect.  I used to outline the chapters in my high school biology class in the same way.  Sad that the lessons learned then were forgotten until now.

Saw a video of a fascinating of a presentation by Paul Dourish at lift2008 (thanks Near Future Laboratory!!!). He comments about ethnography as an analytical practice as possessed to an empirical practice in relation to technology.  A quote (around 4:27) jumped out at me:

We miss a series of important kinds of disciplinary power relationships... I find it interesting that the ethnographers might frequently be asked what their implications for design are, whereas it's not actually possible for me to stand up and ask a computer scientist what his implications are for social science theory;  that one still kind of gets me in trouble.

This sort of "half duplex" interdisciplinarity strikes me as particularly interesting.  The design focus of the technologists subsumes ethnography; it's focus is entirely too pragmatic.  A few of you have probably heard me complain about the technical myopia of informatics, despite its claim to be interdisciplinary.  Perhaps having a discipline to call "home" is what leads to this situation... I admit that I haven't done enough reading on the subject, but maybe what we need to consider is post-disciplinarity; we must acknowledge that everything relates to everything else.  I don't know.

Also, random but I noticed a few lines in Iggy & The Stooges' "Search and Destroy" shortly after finishing the video:

Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology !
Ain't got time to make no apology
...
And I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy

Obviously, I'm taking this out of context, but I can't help but notice the way it characterizes technology.  It seems to say "act because you can; apologize if you have time."  Are we "searching" the frontiers of the technological revolution only to "destroy," either deliberately or incidentally?

But enough of my ramblings.

The Secret Life of Words

An awkward little film with plenty of confused and overextended metaphors.

Note: Possible spoilers!

im in ur cunt, professin mah love.
im under ur bridge, takin ur youth.
im in ur testimony, makebelivin things wrong.
im in ur pond, coveting ur heart.
im in ur chapel, makin things awkward.
im in ur basement, unexpectedly dead.
im in ur future, makebelivin things right.

I'm still not happy with it.

I wonder sometimes about the scope and nature of my intellect. Frankly, I have all the self assurance of a house of cards. Am I legitimately "smart," or do I cloak "stupidity" with pretension and elevated language.  The answer to that question determines much about the way I move throughout the world, and depends heavily on those around me.

In some situations I find myself conversationally liberated, while in others I quickly mire myself in an obsessive cycle of self consciousness.  Around some individuals, I'm able to quickly and accurately express ideas using, what I'm told is, an impressive vocabulary.  These conversations tend to involve a lot of rambling, and hopefully prove highly fulfilling for both sides.  On the other hand, I find myself idealizing a subconsciously chosen few.  These individuals strongly intimidate me, and I can't help but define myself as their inferior.  In their presence, I suddenly assume the role of a stuttering, intercalate doofus, and my preoccupation with hiding this state becomes so strong that it stifles any other thoughts.

Despite repeated assurances from a both camps, this pattern persists.  I understand that if I could but calm down in stressful conversations, I'd come across as a much more engaging conversation partner.  What's more, I don't like the idea that I'm subconsciously sizing people up; classifying them into such a sharp binary system makes me feel arrogant.  Why am I so hung up on this superior / inferior dichotomy?

I noticed a pattern in my moods last night.  The difference between morning and evening, is, well, night and day.

Provided I'm not racing against the clock, mornings are a prospective, relaxed and positive time.  It's a fresh start on the next little segment of your life, and the day is still ripe with potential.  Waking up and surveying the hours to come on my calendar allows me to locate myself in the grander schemes and workings of my life.  I feel no shame in spending a few minutes of time on myself.  I might indulge in an extra five minutes of showering time, flip through some of my RSS feeds, or brew some delicious coffee to help kick start the day.  Morning is not the only time that I allow my self such luxuries (quite the contrary actually), but I find that at other times I gradually accrete abstract guilt for not using the time for more "important" things.

Evenings tend to lead me into cycles of isolated retrospective naval gazing.  The day ended long ago, but whatever untapped potential remains in mind for critical analysis.  I find myself beating myself up over the little things all too frequently.  Sometimes I catch myself, and sometimes I don't.  I crave human connection, but IM  makes for mostly unsatisfying conversations (with a few notable exceptions!).  After I've poured an hour or two into meaningless small talk, my buddy list begins to empty: the rational people need their sleep.  I envy them, but a deep feeling of anxious anticipation keeps me raptly focused on my instant messenger.  If I just wait a little longer, something will happen.

On that note, it might be worth while to try being a morning person for a while.

My blog languishes as I spend my time socializing through more traditional means and experimenting with new creative writing techniques courtesy of The Artists Way.  That and I've got a metric fuck-ton of work to do for my senior project and other classes.

Hang in there readers... I'll return soon.

I absolutely love Pasta&Vinegar; it's full of all sorts of interesting tidbits about the design and use of information technologies and electronic objects from a human computer interaction perspective.

Two recent entries tickled my fancy.  One was about a children's book explaining a home server. If I ever have kids, and the concept of a 'server' still makes any kind of sense in the home setting (or perhaps just for nostalgia's sake --)  i'll probably end up trying to track this down.  The other reports on a study of the effectiveness of the aluminum helmets at thwarting subversive governments and organizations from tracking you down / reading your mind / whatever they do.

Keep up the good work!