Archive for August 2005

My heart goes out to all of the people who are struggling with Hurricane Katrina this week. Here in Houston, we’ve been receiving a lot of folks from New Orleans who have headed west on I-10 when the evacuation order came Sunday morning. It’s so tragic to see all of this unfold.

If you are looking for a way to contribute to to the relief effort like I am, you can check out this news release from FEMA. It has a bunch of contacts of various relief organizations. Help out, even if you’re a poor college student like me. Every dollar counts.

Vince sent me a heads up about a new movie where Eddie Izzard plays the villain. How awesome will that be! Admittedly, at this point it’s not much of a movie. It’s really more of… a gesture toward a movie. But at this point, my invisible friends and I are giving it 11 thumbs up.

I know women have slimmer builds than men generally, but showing these next to each other just looks ridiculous. Oh well, that’s Abercrombie for ya…

I made a friend tonight while chilling out on the patio in my dad’s apartment. Isn’t it cute?

I named him Sal A. Mander. But what do I know, I sucked at bio.

When Macromedia came out with their Studio MX 2004 almost two years ago, it was heralded with the slogan, “We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it.” It was at that point that I started to develop a distaste for Macromedia. I had been trained on Flash to the point where it was my #1 tool, so to some extent I was interested in the next release regardless of what they did. But people who participated in my Flash workshop can attest to the fact that I’m disenchanted with the improvements offered by the new version.

Read more…

I saw a BMW commercial today with the best actor ever – a cute doggie! The guy shook his keys to tell the dog it was time to go for a ride, and the dog looked apprehensive (I know! Good acting!). He finally came out to the car with an orange helmet. When the guy started the car and backed up, it jumped a little bit, and the dog slid into the back windshield, hitting his head on it. Awww! Poor puppy!

I’ve been having flashbacks of A.P. English lately. My classmates will likely remember Mrs. Tiller’s emphatic insistence that vague references had no place in our writing. For those who didn’t have the pleasure of having their papers marked up in red, vague references most commonly occur when you don’t quantify “this” or “that” - the object of reference is unclear.

At first, this didn’t really bother me at all. In fact, Mrs. Tiller was probably pulling her hair out at how often she had to correct this in my writing. But honestly, I couldn’t understand what the big deal was with all this. I knew what I was talking about. That wasn’t vague at all.

Well once you’ve had the A.P. English kool-aid you can’t go back. I’m reading a book for a class I’m TAing in the Fall, and the writer uses vague references as if they are going out of style. The first two times, I thought, “Oooooooh, Mrs. Tiller would downgrade yoooooouuuu.” But after 20 occurrences, I started to realize her frustration. When you want to skim read (like I often do), it’s helpful to have a little context follow you through from sentence to sentence. The more times you see something, the more likely you are to remember what’s being addressed.

The lesson? Don’t use vague references. Hopefully this has helped to convince you.

At MD Anderson, where my dad is staying, they have signs posted frequently saying “We speak your language” (in different languages, of course… they wouldn’t be speaking your language if the sign was only in English, I guess). Anyway, having translators make sense considering how many consent forms you sign in the process of doing a clinical trial. Beware the IRB!

Of course, with a different language often comes a different culture, but one woman that I met yesterday had adapted really well to American culture. She had adapted to the service economy in our culture, so when she saw me standing around in the vending machine room (I was trying to figure out how to get my fruit snacks unstuck, actually), she assumed I was a vending machine attendant and said, “Coke, please.”

At first, I thought she was just new to vending machines, so I pointed to the coke machine. But then she handed me two dollars and said “Please, I’d like a coke.” I told her where she could stick her two dollars (in the dollar bill slot on the vending machine, c’mon, give me a little credit), but she wasn’t budging. So I took her money and got her a coke.

In retrospect, this wouldn’t be such a bad job. Just chill in a room with vending machines all day, and get stuff for people. Instead of developing human-machine interfaces, I become the interface! And how cool would that be.

My dad and his brother get in disagreements from time to time about how things went in their childhood, and I never quite understood what the big deal was until tonight. Out of the blue, I got a call from two childhood friends (pre-high school, folks), who both happened to be in Houston at the same time I was. What are the odds?

It turns out Trent (he’s the one from across the street) has a better memory than I do. My friends from UNO know how good my memory is for inane and worthless details… but I have to say Trent had me outmatched from the beginning. I remembered the fun times with the Nerf bow & arrow… I don’t remember suggesting that I would be the buffalo for whatever game we were playing. I think Trent was lying. =P

But he did recall the bird that my family used to have when I was in grade school. I think his name was Tinker. Did I name him? Probably. Go me. Trent remembered the day that Tinker died (the day I took him to show and tell… my bad…) he started rocking crazily on his swing at the top of his cage, chirping wildly. He then took the long dive to the bottom of the cage. Trent (and his impeccable memory for quotes) recalled that I said, “Well, he’s a goner.” I guess I’ve always had a keen eye for the obvious.

On a closing note, it’s spooky how much information is available online for those who seek it. Jonn (the other friend from childhood) knew I was in Houston from my dad’s blog, and got my cell phone # off of my Facebook profile so he could call me. What good detective work!

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a blowpop? That’s not the line, is it. Well, I wanted to point you to a cool page that showcases the video sketches that the MHCI students did as part of a design class last Spring. My video sketch is on there (you should be able to spot it) along with 6 others that were pretty cool. They’re all under 2 minutes, so check ‘em out. You can get to them on blowpop.pc.cs.cmu.edu (what, did you think the Blowpop title was totally random? C’mon now…).

Post-Publish Edit: It’s Fall ‘05, and everyone who knew about the Blowpop server was away while the new folks rearranged our community space, so now Blowpop is nowhere to be found. In the meantime, feel free to check out the SonicBand video.