And I Color Too

Voting with your Feet coming to Fruition? Google Maps Suggests Places You Might Like

2010-02-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

At Intel Research in 2005, I ran a study called "Voting with your Feet" that examined the relationship between a person's place preferences and their place visit behaviors. We were exploring a simple question: could a location-based system make recommendations about places that you might like based on your travel history? We looked at features like travel distance, place visit frequency, whether you visited the place alone or with others...

Our results were mixed (see UbiComp2006 paper here); it turns out, place visit behaviors are a fairly noisy signal when it comes to expressing an implicit preference. Although we tracked thousands of place visits, we only had the resources to follow 16 participants. Now, current technology like Yelp Mobile, Foursquare, and Google Latitude/Maps Mobile should make studying this question much easier. Indeed, Google now has "Google Map Suggest", which suggests places nearby that you may like. Although they are ambiguous about what features, exactly, they are using to make these recommendations, it's an interesting development for automated real-world recommendation systems.

Anonymous Methods for Control.Invoke

2010-01-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

I found a blog post about something I've been trying to do forever: use anonymous methods to get around InvokeRequired issues with C# Form Controls.

Answer, cast delegate with MethodInvoker, ala:

this.Invoke(

(MethodInvoker) delegate { this.Text = "x"; }

);

Thanks Guy Mahieu!

Batch Change/Rename File Extensions in Windows

2009-12-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

Simple answer, open command prompt, type:

ren *.(current extension name) *.(extension you want)

For example, to change the extension from .jpg to .png:

ren *.jpg *.png

From addictivetips.

How to select the first/least/max row per group in SQL

2009-12-17T20:36:00.000-08:00

This is an extremely understandable and useful article on common SQL queries (link).

Protovis How To

2009-12-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

I've played around with both of Jeff Heer's prior visualization toolkits (Prefuse and Flare). Prefuse, in my opinion, has one of the best designed APIs ever. Jeff is now a professor at Stanford. One of his students, Mike Bostock, worked with Jeff on a (relatively) new toolkit called Protovis, which unlike his previous toolkits, is SVG and Javascript based (perfect for web 3.0!)

I just started experimenting with Protovis yesterday but could not find even a simple example showing how to put together a line chart. Although the Protovis website lists a large number of beautiful visualization examples, most of them were over my head as a beginner (when first looking at the code, it reminded me of The International Obfuscated C Code Contest--you can do a lot in a small amount of code, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be understandable).

The problem was one of documentation--although Protovis has a fairly fleshed out set of docs including a multi-page "quick start" tutorial, I was still searching for some simple examples to work through on my own. The problem was, I didn't realize that the icons on the left side of the docs page were clickable--I thought they were just there for aesthetics!

Now I'm good. Although I'd still love to see some very simple time series visualizations.

SVN/CVS Update Like Command in Mercurial

2009-12-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

Took me way too long to find this.

To update your sources, you can use:

$ cd main $ hg pull -u

This will pull other people's changes from the server into your repository. It will also update your working copy to the latest version.

If you have made your own changes in this repository (even in a completely unrelated directory), you will need to merge your changes with other people's changes. This requires running hg merge.

The Death of a Laptop, Dell M1330

2008-08-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

I have been a Dell customer since 1996, when I bought a Dell Pentium 166 equipped with a fancy 17 inch CRT for over $2,000. I've since purchased three more Dell desktops and three laptops and made recommendations to countless others.

My current Dell laptop, the XPS M1330, has been a lemon almost since the beginning. Purchased in March of 2008 by April it had already exhibited strange behaviors, which I attributed to Vista. By mid-April, Vista blue-screened and I could not reboot even in safe-mode. Unfortunately, I was traveling in Europe at the time. My laptop became a brick that I had to lug around Italy and Greece. When I returned to the US, I spent two days reformatting the drive and installing applications from scratch. This was the first time I have ever had a computer fail to the point of requiring a complete reformat and yes I am a lifelong Windows user (maybe I've been lucky?).

At the present time I am again in Europe for business and, once again, my Dell XPS M1330 has failed me. This time, no amount of technical knowledge can solve the problem--I've been hit by the defective NVIDIA GPU issue. On Sunday (five days ago), my laptop screen started to freeze up and automatically reboot. This happened seven times in five hours (I'm stubborn and I was working on a deadline). Now my laptop refuses to boot at all--or, more accurately, boots with these beautiful vertical lines (see below). And no, plugging in an external monitor does NOT fix the issue. This is a video card problem, not a monitor problem. I should note that I am extremely reliant on my laptop--it is my primary computer (I'm almost like a Mac person in that way... perhaps I should take the hint and switch to a Mac?). Thus, I have incurred considerable cost in work time trying to remedy this issue not to mention the fact that I am now stuck in Europe without a computer.

An early indication of failure?

The current state of my machine. Unusable.

Fortunately, Dell support has been incredibly responsive, answering my requests for help only hours after the initial email. However, since I am in Europe they want me to upgrade to international warranty coverage in order to receive support here. I most certainly do not want to blow this out of proportion but that offer seems a bit ridiculous. You would think that in the case of a known hardware defect, they would make some compromises in their regular procedures. From a Dell support email:

...since you are in Europe right now, if a service call needs to be processed to repair your system, I do regret to inform you that your current warranty does not support International coverage. You can either return first to U.S and have your system serviced there, or Transfer your system's ownership to Spain so Dell Spain Support will be the one assisting your for this matter, or lastly you can contact our Ext Warranty Department at 800 247-4618 to upgrade your warranty to have an International Support so we can process your request and provide service on any country that are covered by Dell International Warranty support.

Some Background on the Issue
In early July, NVIDIA informed stockholders of the problem:

...the company just informed investors that "significant quantities" of previous-generation graphics chips have been failing at "higher than normal rates," and that it's lowering its Q2 estimates due to pricing pressure. NVIDIA will be taking a $150M to $250M charge against earnings next quarter to cover the cost of repairing and replacing the affected chips, but didn't specifically announce what products were defective, just that they include GPUs and "media and communications processors." Laptop makers have apparently already been given an updated GPU driver which kicks in fans sooner to reduce "thermal stress" on the GPU, and NVIDIA says it's talking to its suppliers about being reimbursed for the faulty parts

Dell's initial strategy was to release a BIOS update, which essentially keeps the laptop's CPU fan on continuously to decrease the temperature. This is a major kludge in my opinion but better than nothing, the major downsides are that #1, it does not really address the problem and #2, the resulting noise and decrease in battery life. From engadget:

...quite a few NVIDIA GPUs have been acting up. Nothing new there. However, Dell's attempting to help its laptop owners out by making a few notable BIOS updates readily available for download. Apparently the issue "is a weak die / packaging material set, which may fail with GPU temperature fluctuations." In order to combat the problem, Dell's BIOS flashes "modify the fan profile to help regulate GPU temperature fluctuations," though the Round Rock powerhouse only promises that the updates will "help reduce the likelihood of GPU issues." Hit the read link and give it a go -- it can't hurt... we hope.

Many are upset with Dell's strategy here as a BIOS update does not fix the problem, it only decreases the likelihood that it will occur. As many have pointed out, this could simply delay the problem until the laptop is out of its warrenty period. From the Inquirer:

To make matters more laughable, the fix that NV is forcing on Dell, HP and everyone else does not fix the problem, it simply makes it less likely to occur during the warranty period. With HP now offering an extended warranty period, and Dell looking likely to do the same, this will only multiply the cost. Add in the fact that Nvidia is sending out defective parts as replacements (there are no good ones), and you have a recipe for a long and expensive tale.

On Monday of this week, perhaps as a result of HP offering a similar deal to customers, Dell released this statement on their direct2dell blog:

NVIDIA GPU Update: Dell to Offer Limited Warranty Enhancement to All Affected Customers Worldwide. Dell will offer a 12-month limited warranty enhancement specific to this issue. For all customers worldwide, we plan to add 12 months of coverage for this issue to the existing limited warranty up to 60 months from the date of purchase for the following systems:

Where Do We Go From Here?
However, what remains to be seen, is exactly where do Dell customers, like myself, go from here? It appears that there are, in fact, no good reliable NVIDIA video cards available and Dell is absolutely drowning in the problem. Also, from the Inquirer:

"We just got our first casualty from the Nvidia mobile graphics [expletive deleted]. Laptop used by one of our senior engineers started acting up this past weekend. Won't boot except in SAFE mode. Called Dell, they tried a few things, gave up, stated it was the graphics module, and said that because they were SO swamped dealing with that issue, they were just going to send a completely new laptop!"

There are two messages here which have echoes in earlier emails received over the past few weeks. First is that Dell is replacing full laptops over this, contrary to what they claim (read the comments here and here for more). The second is that the small 'under control' problem is far from that. If they had a handle on it, they would not be so far behind and drowning in backorders. Anyone want to bet Dell isn't going to get stuck with the bill here?

If Dell chooses to send me a new laptop, I hope it's a laptop with an ATI mobile graphics card or even Intel's own integrated graphics chip. Many are asking whether Dell is still shipping laptop's with defective parts and whether replacement parts are also defective (there is speculation that NVIDIA still has not corrected the problem).

Some related posts:

Update 08/21/2008 6:07PM GMT +1: I just had an online chat with a Dell customer agent by the name of XPS_Michael_135201. Here's the transcript:

5:40:55 PM Agent: May I ask if you are in the united states currenty?
5:41:10 PM Me: i am not currently in the united states which is the essence of my problem
5:41:16 PM Me: i am traveling for business
5:41:37 PM Me: this makes my laptop even more significant to me
5:42:01 PM Agent: You need a new motherboard/integrated video card, sir
5:42:12 PM Me: that is true
5:42:26 PM Agent: This is a known Nvidia problem.
5:42:31 PM Me: yep, i know that
5:42:39 PM Me: but this is a dell system
5:42:45 PM Me: nvidia doesn't sell computers
5:42:57 PM Agent: have you contacted international support?
5:43:16 PM Me: i was informed by a previous support agent that i would need to "upgrade" my warrenty in order to receive international support
5:43:53 PM Agent: I would get you one immediately for next day service if you were in the United Sates
5:44:00 PM Me: Great. i am in Europe.
5:44:07 PM Me: let's talk about what you can do for me here
5:44:10 PM Agent: one, moment please
5:47:27 PM Agent: XPS_Michael_135201 pushes page, http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/international_travel?c=us&l=en&s=gen
5:48:03 PM Agent: you could place a local phone call to where you are at to get that replaced.
5:48:18 PM Agent: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
5:51:41 PM Me: ok, assuming i got the next day onsite service, would the replacement motherboard/gpu contain a new revision of the Nvidia hardware
5:53:13 PM Agent: The Nvidia problem, was a weak series of chips in the actual construction ( a weak die-cast) the replacement would not be from that line
5:53:25 PM Me: could i get an ATI chipset instead?
5:53:34 PM Me: or could i opt simply for the intel integrated video?
5:55:36 PM Agent: We can offer to replace it with a good part that is the same as what you purchaced.
5:57:41 PM Me: ok
5:58:10 PM Me: thank you for your help.

Update 08/22/2008 7:38PM GMT +1: Some people have asked for more pictures and a better description of how I knew my laptop was failing. It took five days from the first day of experiencing problems to complete failure (e.g., a completely dead laptop). My first indication that something was wrong occurred on Sunday, August 17th (six days ago now). I was using Excel and Word and then suddenly my screen would change color, look pixelated and Vista would freeze. This transformation usually lasted about 5-10 seconds before Vista would either blue screen or simply force-reboot my laptop. I had not heard of the NVIDIA GPU issues so I (ignorantly) thought this was yet another Vista bug. I do not have any photographs of my laptop screen in that state in Vista, unfortunately, but here is a picture I took on Monday when trying to run a diagnostic tool that froze mid-session:

This is what the diagnostic screen should look like.

You know things are bad when even the diagnostic tool crashes (note the vertical lines)

After Monday, things only got worse and by Thursday I could not boot my laptop at all. Or, more specifically, the laptop would boot and look like this:

Update 08/25/2008 01:00PM GMT +1: Dell sent a service technician to fix my laptop, who, I must say was both incredibly efficient and friendly. Unfortunately because my Spanish is far from as good as my English, I was unable to gain much more information from the technician about how rampant and widespread this problem is. The "fix" for this issue, incidentally, is a whole new motherboard, which requires one to take nearly everything apart in the laptop and then put it back together. This particular technician had clearly dealt with many M1330 before as he was able to take apart the laptop, put in a new motherboard, and reconstruct the laptop in under 15-20 minutes.

Note that I am not certain whether this "new" motherboard is really new (or just a refurbished one). Nor am I aware of whether this "new" motherboard contains a fixed NVIDIA GPU. The BIOS software read A08 upon first boot. I immediately upgraded it to A12; however, the A08 number gives some indication as to the age of the laptop (e.g., when was the A09 BIOS firmware released?). Here are some pictures.

The faulty GPU (the chip just above the label WWAN).

The screen works!

I Don't Want To Be Your Friend

2008-07-14T13:25:00.001-07:00

The music blogs are ablaze with this new video by Radiohead. It's hypnotizing. House of Cards is among my favorite tracks on the album. Also note that there is a "making of" here and some interesting background on the data visualization technique here (hosted by code.google no less)

Open Innovation: New Corporate R&D Strategies

2008-07-12T05:16:00.000-07:00

A short article on how Microsoft, IBM, and HP are shifting research strategies.

Pundits in recent years have taken to bemoaning a retreat by U.S. industry from basic research in science and technology. And indeed, it's easy to cite research labs whose glory days have come and gone -- Bell Laboratories comes to mind. But consider this: IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard together spend $17 billion annually on research and development.

from: The new face of R&D: What's cooking at IBM, HP and Microsoft

Google Earth Crashes on Polygon Edit

2008-07-09T03:15:00.000-07:00

Recently, Google Earth (4.3.7204.0836, Apr 24 2008) started crashing whenever I selected the "New Polygon" tool. Though the "New Polygon" dialog box would appear, I could not click on anything and the mouse icon, which is supposed to change to a cross hair (to place the polygon), would remain an arrow. Then, a crash report dialog would pop-up and I would be forced to close Google Earth. Quite frustrating. To fix this, I switched from using DirectX, which is the default, to OpenGL in the Tools->Options->3D View->Graphics Mode settings. I have heard that others have fixed this with enabling safe mode (located in the same settings dialog); however, this did not work for me. Apparently, there are some strange video card driver interactions occurring here.

Auto-Generate KML C# Classes

2008-07-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

Using the xsd.exe tool (in a default installation, you can find it here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin), you can auto-generate KML C# classes. Make sure you have ogckm122.xsd (here), atom-author-link.xsd (here), and xAL.xsd (here) in the directory where you are executing the xsd command.

>xsd /c ogckml22.xsd atom -author-link.xsd xAL.xsd

This will generate a C# file called ogckml22_atom-author-link_xAL.cs.

Thanks to these two blog posts for the help: xsd command and multiple xsd files and Error generating classes for schema 'MySchema.xsd'.

Google Maps Street View in Middle America

2008-07-02T01:04:00.001-07:00

My sister's family lives in a small Nebraskan town with an estimated population of 3,000 people and an estimated median house value of $127,000 (was less than $100,000 in 2000). Nonetheless, Google has taken its mapping technology to these streets and captured my brother-in-law and niece on film (without their permission). It appears Google truly does want a visual index of all streets in America. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, "Google has stated that its ultimate goal is to provide street views of the entire world, although the company has not disclosed in advance the exact dates when any particular locations will be added"

Now, there have been plenty of write-ups online about the chilling implications of this technology from a privacy standpoint (see end of this post). Admittedly, I had not paid much attention to said implications until now. What I find startling here is not just that my family was captured on film and automatically uploaded by Google but that this picture was taken while my brother-in-law was on his private property in front of his own house (with my little niece no less). Further, if you click on the "Full-screen" link, the Street View photo itself increases in size, which is even more unsettling. It just makes one feel invaded. Note, here, however that there is evidence that Google is running automatic face detection algorithms and blurring faces. Automatic face detection is pretty much considered a solved problem in the computer vision world (face detection is not the same thing as face recognition). It's difficult to tell if Google is in fact explicitly obscuring the face here or if the overall photo quality is just poor.

Although the photo quality published online is rather low, I would not be surprised if the original captured image was of much higher quality, which likely still resides in a Google database somewhere. I would imagine that Google has plans to apply computer vision algorithms for automatic object detection, 3D-routing, sign reading, sidewalk routing (for people routing, rather than car routing), etc. Thus, there would be little reason for them to invest the money into Street View and not capture the highest quality imagery possible.

Some related links
Wikipedia's Google Street View page has a Privacy issues section as well as a long list of links to articles and news items related to Street View's growth, governmental concerns, and privacy implications:

Privacy advocates have objected to this Google feature, pointing to views found to show men leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, cottagers at public parks, parents hitting their children, males picking up prostitutes and other activities, as well as people engaging in activities visible from public property in which they do not wish to be seen publicly.^[19] Google maintains that the photos were taken from public property. Before launching the service, Google removed photos of domestic violence shelters, and allows users to flag inappropriate or sensitive imagery for Google to review and remove.^[20] When the service was first launched, the process for requesting that an image be removed was not trivial;^[21] however, Google has since changed its policy to make removal more straightforward.^[22] Images of potential break-ins, sunbathers and individuals entering adult bookstores have, for example, remained active and these images have been widely republished.^[23]

Mashable has a Top 15 Google Street View Sightings page including pictures of a possible crime in progress, female sunbathers, and men coming/going from adult related entertainment venues. Some more Street View oddities are listed on this blog post. The New York Times has an article entitled Google Zooms In Too Close for Some, which is also worth a look as it briefly explores the idea of public vs. private and ownership of data.

Skinny Love Primavera Sound Festival 2008

2008-06-30T01:38:00.001-07:00

A friend I was with recorded this video of Bon Iver at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. We were sitting in the third row. It was my favorite show of the entire weekend. If you have an opportunity to see them, it's an amazing musical experience--I strongly recommend it. (Plus, it doesn't hurt that Bon Iver is a Wisconsinite, support your local midwest artists!).

Skydiving Spain

2008-06-25T02:35:00.000-07:00

Nokia Morph Concept

2008-06-19T03:30:00.001-07:00

The new nano?

My Bicing Commute

2008-06-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map

Querying Big Datasets with MySql and Java

2008-06-15T01:50:00.000-07:00

I received this error when calling the executeQuery() method on a PreparedStatement object. You'll note that within the JDBC MySql code, there is a method invoked called "readAllResults." It appears that the default behavior of the executeQuery method is to read all data records into memory before returning! This simply will not do when dealing with large datasets.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.nextRow(MysqlIO.java:1444)
...
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.readAllResults(MysqlIO.java:1746)
...
at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeQuery(PreparedStatement.java:1885)

The solution was non-intuitive but an easy find with Google. From MySQL JDBC Memory Usage on Large ResultSet:

If you are working with ResultSets that have a large number of rows or large values, and can not allocate heap space in your JVM for the memory required, you can tell the driver to stream the results back one row at a time.

To enable this functionality, you need to create a Statement instance in the following manner:

stmt = conn.createStatement(java.sql.ResultSet.TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY,
         java.sql.ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY);
stmt.setFetchSize(Integer.MIN_VALUE);

The combination of a forward-only, read-only result set, with a fetch size of Integer.MIN_VALUE serves as a signal to the driver to stream result sets row-by-row. After this any result sets created with the statement will be retrieved row-by-row.

There are a few caveats, which are described in the following links:

Bicing Usage Survey Now Live!

2008-06-06T07:52:00.001-07:00

As part of my ongoing research in "green computing" I have been working on a project at Telefónica Research on improving the Bicing system. As a first step in this direction, we have created a Bicing usage survey. Bicing is a shared biking system in Barcelona, Spain (think of it like a shared car system ala ZipCar). Citizens pay 24 Euros a year for the ability to use bikes parked around the city. There are a few really clever ideas that Bicing employs.

Bicing Overview
For the 24 Euro a year payment, you can ride for 30 minutes for free. After that, each 30 minutes costs 30 cents up to 2 hours. Bicing is meant to be used for commuting--thus, if you surpass your 2 hour limit, monetary penalties begin to emerge (3 euros / hour). Bicing applies service penalties (reduced access to Bicing) if you exceed the two hour limit on more than three occasions. Note, however, that you can bike everywhere in Barcelona easily within an hour so two hours is more than enough time. If you keep the bike out for 24 hours, you pay 150 Euros (the cost of the bike). Bicing is meant to provide an alternative form of transit in the city (e.g., to reduce congestion). As a result, it is not a service for tourists, only for residents of Barcelona (and surrounding areas). The kiosks are in two languages: Spanish and Catalan (Catalan is the regional language here).

Figure 1. (left) A Bicing kiosk. (right) A close-up of the Bicing LCD screen. Note that only two languages are used: Spanish and Catalan.

Checking-in / Checking-out Bikes
The Bicing system relies heavily on technology to control and enforce usage. The Bicing cards are RFID. To check out a bike, one simply swipes their Bicing card at the Bicing kiosk. The kiosk contains an LCD flat screen that tells the user which bike was just unlocked for him/her. If the Bicing station contains no usable bikes (e.g., either it's empty or the bikes at the station do not work), the Kiosk informs the user about other stations close by. To return a bike, the user simply drops the bike at another Bicing station and the bike is auto-locked back into the grid. Note that since this system is so digitally oriented, it's very amenable to being studied (e.g., usage data comes nearly for free--kind of like real-world click through data). Bicing users can log into the Bicing website and see a chronological log of their usage. Note that this data only shows temporal activity and does not include data on which Bicing stations are used. The aggregate data of which Bicing stations are full/available is available online as well (see below).

Figure 2. (left) The Bicing RFID card. (right) A user scanning his RFID card across the Bicing kiosk.

Figure 3. A bike is automatically unlocked after the Bicing user scans his/her RFID card. The bike is automatically locked back into the station once the two prods on the underside of the handle bars are placed into the appropriate nodes.

Real-Time Bicing Information
The Bicing website uses the Google Maps API to create a near real-time geo-spatial visualization of bike usage (so you can check online if a Bicing station near home or work has bikes available). Here's the official website map and here's a slightly better version created by a Bicing user.

Figure 4. The Bicing map displaying stations with bikes available (in green) and not available (in red).

Bicing Bike Design
The bikes themselves are made of custom parts that do not interoperate with normal bikes (thus, thieves have little incentive to steal them). They are also quite unique in shape and coloring. Two self-powered lights are used (one headlamp in the front and one red light in the back) for safety. A three-speed gear shifter and a bell chime are located in opposing positions on the handlebars. Also, a handy basket is located on the front handlebars for carrying groceries, bags, or other things. Figure 5. Two Bicing bikes locked up to a Bicing station.

Figure 6. Bicing baskets being put to good use (photo credit: Dave Chiu).

Some Bicing Problems
One problem that the Bicing system faces is that of load balancing. Often times the bikes become disproportionately distributed in the city. This is probably due to two factors: (1) Barcelona, as a city, is built on a hill. Thus, we speculate that many Bicers choose to bicycle downhill but not uphill (e.g., they commute on Bicing in only one direction). (2) The resident and commercial density of the city is not evenly balanced (i.e., many Barcelona citizens commute in the same directions). As a result, Bicing uses trucks to move bikes around the city. We spoke to a Bicing truck driver last week. He told us that the city has multiple trucks, each driver is assigned to a region of Barcelona and is informed via mobile phone on where to pick-up/drop-off bikes. The problem of load balancing is significant as it is a major deterrent to usage. Many Bicing users complain about going to a Bicing station to pick up a bike and finding it empty or arriving at a Bicing station to drop off a bike and finding it full.

Another issue which many Bicers are quick to point out is that although the Bicing service runs 365 days a year, it is not open 24 hours a day / 7 days a week. From Sunday through Thursday: the service is open all day except for between 12AM and 5AM, at which time you can only return bicycles (you cannot check them out). On Fridays and Saturdays: The service operates 24 hours. I would imagine that this constraint is based on some agreement with the city and has to do with safety.

Figure 7. (left) A Bicing truck. (right) The inside of the Bicing truck.

Figure 8. (top) A Bicing truck driver moving bikes into an empty station. (bottom) The before and after.

The Bicing Usage Survey
We created an advertisement to promote our survey in three different languages: English, Spanish and Catalan.

Spanish - Llamada a todos los usuarios de bicing!
Somos un pequeño grupo científico de Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo trabajando en informatica ecológica y sostenible. En uno de nuestros proyectos, estamos estudiando el sistema Bicing en Barcelona. Nuestro objetivo es aplicar tecnicas de inteligencia artificial e informatica avanzada para mejorar el sistema Bicing y vuestra experiencia con el. Por ejemplo, uno de nuestros objetivos es conseguir que las bicicletas estén distribuidas de una forma más eficiente. Este es un proyecto nuevo y queremos involucrar a la parte más importante del sistema Bicing: sus usuarios!. Por ello, hemos creado una encuesta online para recoger vuestra opinión y experiencia de uso con Bicing. La encuesta solo os llevara entre 5 y 10 minutos y los datos son totalmente anónimos.

Contamos con vuestra colaboración.

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jfroehli/56868

Català - Crida a tots els usuaris de bicing!
Som un petit grup científic de Telefònica Recerca i Desenvolupament treballant en computació ecològica i sostenible. En un dels nostres projectes estem estudiant el sistema Bicing de Barcelona. El nostre objectiu es aplicar conceptes de intel•ligencia artificial i recerca en informàtica per millorar el sistema Bicing. Per eixample, un dels nostres objectius es que les bicicletes estiguin distribuïdes d'una forma més eficient. Com que aquest projecte està començant volem involucrar la part més important del sistema Bicing: els seus usuaris! Doncs, hem creat una enquesta online per recollir l'opinió de l’ús (positiva i negativa) de Bicing. Trigareu entre 5 i 10 minuts a realitzar l'enquesta, les dades son totalment anònimes.

Esperem la vostra col•laboració

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jfroehli/56870

English - Call to All Bicing Users!
We are a small scientific group at Telefónica I+D working on "green computing" research. In one of our projects, we are studying Barcelona’s Bicing system. Our goal is to apply advanced concepts in computer science to improve the Bicing experience, so that, for example the bicycles are better distributed in the city. This project is just beginning and we wanted to involve the most important piece of the Bicing system: its users! Therefore, we have created an online survey to acquire feedback about your experience (positive and negative) with Bicing. The survey will only take about 5-10 minutes to fill out and is completely anonymous.

We look forward to your feedback!

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jfroehli/56481

Anything to Make You Smile

2008-05-24T03:49:00.000-07:00

Purchase Band of Horses Cease to Begin album for $7.99 on Amazon's MP3 download service. No DRM. Here's their new video from a track on that album called "No One's Gonna Love You".

And while you're at it, purchase For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver (fellow midwesterner). Here's my favorite track from that album: "Skinny Love" being performed live. The music starts at 45 seconds in on this video (don't mind the Brits).

Vote for David Gillette!

2008-03-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

My friend David Gillette, a talented artist and animator, has been nominated for a 2008 Yahoo! Video Award. Cast your vote for him here.

Music Makes Silence More Alive

2008-03-03T21:43:00.000-08:00

A powerful look at music and the role it can play as people transition from life to death (music thanatology). Well worth your time to listen. It's the third chapter of four in this NPR radio program.

Dalton, Murdoc and, Most Importantly, MacGyver

2008-03-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

Um, yes.

Sony Misinformation Campaign

2008-02-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

I went to the Sony Style Retail Store in University Village (here) and the following interaction took place:

Salesguy: Hi sir, are you looking for a new laptop?
Me: yep.
Salesguy: These models here have the Core 2 Duo.
Me: what does that mean?
Salesguy: It means they have two hard drives so they can write files twice as fast.
Me: really?
Salesguy: Yah, it's sort of like having two brains.

Hrm, I think even my father knows the difference between a hard drive and a processor. Note that Sony laptops easily run upwards of three grand. You would think for that amount of money, the sales people would be educated about their product.

Oh and no, the laptops I was looking at did not have two hard drives (just the Core 2 Duo). And, yes, the last thing he said was somewhat accurate, but only if he was referring to the processor.

Scooter Style

2008-01-31T18:08:00.001-08:00

If you pause the video at 11 seconds in, you can see Toomim.

Snowy Seattle

2008-01-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

Once or twice a year it snows in Seattle; I woke up to fresh snow this morning. Here are a few pics from the bus stop by my house.

Moon Reached, Now On To Mars

2008-01-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

My best of 2007 music mix is entitled Moon Reached, Now On To Mars (album cover pictured below).

The album cover was created in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and is essentially a composition of three separate photographs I took plus an image I found on flickr (here). I spent more time on the idea than on the implementation, thus the baby and polar bear definitely "stick out" more than I'd like. In other words, they don't fit seamlessly into the picture. This is mainly because of lighting and edge blur issues.

The background is a picture of the North Cascades that Danyel Fisher and I took while on a hike of Mount Dickerman in late September 2006.

The first thing I did to the original image was to transform it from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 1:1 aspect ratio. I did this by rescaling the blue sky. Increasing the sky's size also had the result of changing the viewer's perspective slightly by moving the horizon line to roughly the middle of the photo. Thus, it appears (to me anyway) to give the image more visual depth.

The second thing I did to the background was add an additional translucency layer with a blue hue and a "Linear Burn" effect. This was to create a dusk-like effect in the image as I wanted it to appear later in the day.

The polar bear shot was taken at the Como Zoo in Minnesota in October 2006. We were there celebrating my niece's first birthday (see this link). I didn't want to spend much time on this project, so I quickly used a combination of the "Magic Wand Tool" set to a variety of tolerances and the Eraser to cut out the polar bear from its surroundings. I resized the bear, darkened it slightly, and applied a little motion blur after adding it as a layer on top of the background.

The pink baby riding the polar bear is actually my niece. This photo was taken the same day as the polar bear photo at the Como Zoo. Once again, I used the Magic Wand Tool and the Eraser to cut the desired object from the image. I rotated the baby, increased the blue and green hue, and applied a motion blur after adding it as a layer on top of the polar bear. Both the polar bear and the baby are on top of the blue "dusk" layer.

Finally, the moon was extracted from its original image, resized, and placed behind the blue "dusk" layer. Then text was added to complete the album cover.

And, finally, the finished product:

The back of the album was generated, in part, by iTunes. I simply overlaid the track names and my favorite albums releases on top.

Christmas 2007

2007-12-25T23:53:00.000-08:00

This year it snowed on Christmas (just over an inch I believe), which made for the perfect holiday atmosphere. The Star and Tribune ran a little infographic about the probability of a white Christmas in Minnesota. Note that certain areas of Northern Minnesota are guaranteed a white Christmas.

Annual chance of a white Christmas in Minnesota, based on historic records from 1899 through 2005. Sources: University of Minnesota, Minnesota DNR, NOAA. Graphic by Billy Steve Clayton.

Sledding

The snowy weather inspired a group of us to go outside and sled in the backyard.

Bro-in-law and niece.

The outlier: knee-first sledding!

My sister tearing up the snow.

My father.

My aunt.

Don't fall off the sled as deep snow awaits.

Christmas Morning (Stockings and Presents)

My niece received a little gorilla in her stocking;
she's attempting to imitate it here.

My niece gave me a storybook of my life (2005-2007) made with Shutterfly.

I gave my niece a princess crown.

The next gift my niece opened was a princess dress.
She is actually airborne here jumping for joy.

The full princess costume.

Christmas Eve 2007 Photobooth

2007-12-24T23:42:00.000-08:00

Photobooth makes for pure awesome fun.

My two cousins and I.

My two cousins and my bro-in-law.

Niece and sister looking crazy! Thanks Photobooth.

My cousin making sure to represent his braces.

The Mirror.

The Day Before Christmas 2007

2007-12-24T23:32:00.000-08:00

In the morning, my family and I went to the Macy's annual holiday auditorium display, now in its 45th year. A team of 40 local theatrical artists created 16 vignettes depicting the story of the Nutcracker through mechanical puppets, sculptures, and hand crafted scenery. Although I have seen the ballet in the past (in the Kodak Theatre in LA no less), I had forgotten how whimsical and violent this story can be. For example, the Nutcracker must battle a legion of killer rats with only the help of some toy soldiers and children (see below).

Afterwards, we took our first professionally captured family picture with Santa (given that my parent's house has no scanner, I'm afraid this is a picture of a picture).

Uncle's House for the Eve

Per family tradition, we spent Christmas Eve at my uncle's house in Minneapolis. Here are some pictorial highlights.

Scrabble on Christmas

Christmas Eve ended like it usually does, with a game. We typically play party-games like Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, etc. This year, however, we played Team Scrabble. Fortunately, I was paired up with my wordsmith cousin and we had no trouble disposing of the competition.

Whiteout Conditions in Twin Cities

2007-12-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

The Twin Cities received about six inches of snow today on top of
the two inches it snowed yesterday. Both Minneapolis and
St. Paul declared snow emergencies. (Photo credit: Jeremy Portje, AP)

My parent's backyard as viewed from their kitchen window.

Looking back at my parent's house from their backyard.

My dad and I on a short hike through the forest on my parent's property.

The northwest side of my parent's house.

The high winds brought about whiteout conditions. There is about fourteen inches of snow accumulation in the Twin Cities.

Sweetest Kiss Ever

2007-11-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

Note the early pucker approach... I may incorporate that into my own skill set.

Cornell is Gorges

2007-11-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

I was in Cornell giving a talk on The Mobile Phone as a (Massive) Data Collection Platform (slide deck here, 63.1 MB PowerPoint file).

Traveling to Ithaca, NY from Seattle, WA took me approximately 36 hours, though it was worth the wait (Ithaca is gorges, of course). I had a two-layover flight: from Seattle to Cincinnati, from Cincinnati to Detroit, and then finally Detroit to Ithaca. It's the second layover that ruined me. NWA indiscriminately bumped eight passengers off the flight from Detroit based purely on their ticket price (fine, understandable, it's the economy of seats). As a bargain shopper, I proudly had the cheapest ticket (thanks Expedia!). However, being bumped meant a night in a shoddy Detroit hotel (are there any others?) where I was promised but did not receive deodorant, toothbrush, and all other bathroom necessities. However, they did get me toothpaste... oh and a free round trip ticket on NWA (which would only be indicative of times to come).

On my way back from Ithaca, I had a slightly more streamlined flightplan: Ithaca to Detroit and from Detroit to Seattle. My departing flight out of Ithaca was supposed to leave around 6:30AM. I arrived with a fellow graduate student, who just happened to be taking the same flight out and had thus driven us both to the airport. While checking in, I observed the person to our direct left arguing with the ticket agent--it appeared she had just been bumped from our flight. I immediately thought, "uh, oh, not again." Sure enough, my colleague and I were both bumped off this flight as well (yep, another free round trip ticket on NWA). This time, however, I was a seasoned bumpee and thus I negotiated for a first class ticket to Seattle and a free breakfast (on top of the round trip voucher). The only downside was that the departing flight took out of Syracuse instead of Ithaca. We took a one hour cab ride on NWA's dime to Syracuse where I was met with an accusatory stare and some deriding comments from an NWA ticket agent who asked me why I wasn't checking in 45 minutes before my departure. I was too sick and tired to argue.

Needless to say, this was the worst air travel I have ever experienced. Thanks NWA! I should note, though, that the two round trip ticket vouchers paired with the first class ticket back to Seattle definitely mitigated my troubles (as it was meant to) though I can say I would have much preferred to achieve my original flight plan in both directions.

Touring Campus
Given my flight debacle, I didn't have as much time to tour Cornell and the surrounding area. Jofish was kind enough to quickly walk me around on the night of my arrival. The next three pictures were taken from the sixth floor of the Johnson Museum building. The fourth one is a photograph I snapped while walking around campus before my talk.

Information Science Building
Hanging Out After Talk First Class Return Flight

First class food. Salad with fresh vegetables, a warm roll,
fresh fruit, white wine and a Dove chocolate ice cream bar.

yum!

Typical Day in the HCI Lab

2007-10-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

When your research is this bright...

Denny's in Tempe, AZ

2007-10-19T16:58:00.001-07:00

I was in Tempe, AZ this past week for the ASSETS2007 conference. Across from our hotel was Denny's Restaurant, which offers fine dining experiences across the USA. This was the first Denny's that I'd ever been to, however, that sold hard liquor. I, of course, ordered a $3 whiskey, which the waitress told me was, ahem, Crown Royal. Although now I am somewhat disappointed that I did not order Denny's Champagne.

Radiohead, Exceeding Genius

2007-10-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

Radiohead released their latest album In Rainbows last week to much internet fanfare. The album can be purchased online for any amount that the purchaser feels suitable (including $0.00). More info at Wikipedia, which includes some statements from the band on the atypical release:

Explaining the reasons behind the album's unusual delivery, the band's lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood said "partly just to get it out quickly, so everyone would hear it at the same time, and partly because it was an experiment that felt worth trying, really." As for letting people name the price they pay for the album, he said "it's fun to make people stop for a few seconds and think about what music is worth, and that's just an interesting question to ask people."

I tried to pay roughly $20 for my copy but my credit card wouldn't go through (in fact my credit card company put my card on hold after visiting the In Rainbows web purchase site). I noticed on Last.FM this week that Radiohead is the top played band and all 10 of the top played songs are Radiohead. My favorite tracks off the album include Reckoner, All I Need, House of Cards, and Videotape. Like most Radiohead records, this album must be played multiple times before you can fully judge its musical quality.

On Last.FM, Radiohead is the most played artist and has the top 10 most played tracks.

Dave Climbs Mountain, Summits

2007-10-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

One of my best friends from high school came to visit me in Seattle. I had long planned to take him on a hike of Mount Pilchuck, a favorite of mine since moving here in 2004. Our other option was Mount Rainier, however a quick check of their website noted snow conditions on the roads and trails so we went with the safer bet. Plus, Pilchuck, in my opinion, offers some of the best views of the North Cascades and the Puget Sound of any hike--and it's fairly low effort. I'd never hiked Pilchuck in the fall, only the summer, so we ran into a few (slightly) unexpected weather-related issues.

The Mount Pilchuck trail is 6 miles round trip with a 2166 ft elevation gain.

The trail starts out below the alpine line with small stream crossings and lush vegetation.

After much debate, we decided to ford the river
(ferries were not within site).

We were probably 0.5 miles into the trail when we began hiking through
low clouds (fog). It created great ambience but I knew at a cost of
seeing the great views Pilchuck had to offer.

The first signs of snow... little did we know...

Dave is holding up pretty well at the 1.0 mile mark.

Snow accumulation continues to increase as we climb.

Some breaks in the clouds allow us to see a partial view of the valley.

The Pilchuck trail can be somewhat strenuous because
of its constant elevation gain.

Another break in the clouds allows us to see what we're up against.

Starting to tire, probably about 3/4ths of the way there (though
admittedly I had been telling Dave that for the past 40 minutes of
the hike to motivate him).

Dave's a trooper hiking through 1.5 feet of slightly packed snow
with only tennis shoes. At this elevation, it was snowing.

After about 2.5 hours of hiking, we made it to the top.

As you can see, the clouds were dense obscuring the 360 degree
panoramic view that typically includes Mount Rainier,
the Puget Sound, and the North Cascades.

I had Dave take this picture because those rocks behind me are the
same ones I am standing on in the picture below
(which I hiked with Danyel in August of 2006).

This picture was taken during my first Mount Pilchuck hike in
August of 2006. More pictures from that hike here.

We summited Mount Pilchuck.

A manly handshake at the trailhead sign after the hike.

Whose Parrot Had Learned

2007-10-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

Classic David Sedaris:

Once, at a dinner party, I met a woman whose parrot had learned to imitate the automatic icemaker on her new refrigerator. "That's what happens when they're left alone," she'd said. It was the most depressing bit of information I'd heard in quite a while, and it stuck with me for weeks. Here was this creature, born to mock its jungle neighbors, and it wound up doing impressions of man-made kitchen appliances.

-From "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" by David Sedaris in his essay Repeat After Me

Row Limit You Ask?

2007-09-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

As much as I love Excel 2007 (finally an easy way to save your graphs into templates!), I cannot believe they still enforce a row limit. A "row limit" you ask? Surely not, I mean, it is after all 2007--the years of mandating artificial limits of data sizes are long over, no? Unfortunately not. Excel 2007, row limit=1,048,576.

Um, why?

I'd like to think it's because Excel's dev lead programmed int [] rows = new int[1048576] at the top of the Excel document model.

MyExperience Website

2007-09-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

I finally updated the MyExperience website such that it now actually has real content. Although the MyExperience source code has been available for quite a while now at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/myexperience, the website http://myexperience.sourceforge.net was mainly a skeleton page with broken links. This has been fixed :)

Note that the SVN activity log on the leftside of the webpage is actually live. I wrote a php script to dump the two most recent commits to the frontpage.

Update 10/02/2007: I was alerted to the fact that http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/myexperience was a broken link before. I had accidentally left out the "projects" part. Now fixed.

Last Day at Microsoft Research

2007-09-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Art Through Technology

2007-09-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

Any guesses as to what this is?

Happy Birthday Wishes From My Niece

2007-09-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

My niece is nearly two years old and left this adorable happy birthday message on my voicemail yesterday. Note that the woman who is prompting the "happy birthday" from my niece is my sister--do not confuse the two voices :). I used a myexperience script to record the voicemail audio on a Windows Mobile device.

Click here to play the audio yourself.

No GetAltitude Functionality in MapPoint

2007-08-30T17:18:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately neither Microsoft MapPoint, Microsoft Virtual Earth, nor Google Earth have GetAltitude(lat, long) functionality. That is, you cannot retrieve elevation data given a lat/long pair. However, NASA, the US Department of the Interior, and the US Geological Survey provide a tremendous amount of geographical/topographical data on the United States and its territories (including elevation) at this website.

For a more direct link to this data:

Open this website: http://seamless.usgs.gov/
Click on the View and Download United States Data (click on the map of North America in the upper right part of the webpage)
This opens the Seamless Data Distribution Viewer. You can zoom in/out and select what features to download by drawing a bounding box over your desired region. There is a 1.5 gigabyte limit per selection. On the right side of the application, you can change what attributes the viewer is displaying.

Here's a screenshot of their tool.

I Said, "No Negative Values"

2007-08-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

I selected "Logarithmic scale" on an Excel 2007 graph that contained negative data points (which I didn't realize until it was too late). I was told in a not-so-subtle manner that this is a bad thing. Needless to say, I was graphing about 12,000 data points--only about 500 of which were negative. I would guess that this is also the number of error dialogs that popped up.

Should I select the "Was this information helpful?" link? Microsoft certainly seems to think so. I guess they're not really following the adage: less is more.

I'm going to start clicking OK on these babies--probably be done in about an hour.

Charts that Flow

2007-08-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

BoingBoing has been linking to lots of flowcharts recently, see Criteria for proper tactical usage of phrase "Oh, Snap!" and Medieval sexual decisionmaking for penitentials . My favorite, however, is this one from Toothpaste for Dinner: the Panflute flowchart. Comedic genius.

T. Scott Bachelor Party

2007-08-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

T. Scott celebrated his last days of bachelorhood by playing his two favorite games: golf and Dartmouth-style beer pong.

Susumu and Sam: a formidable team

Oh yeah, I'm rockin' the dub shirt.

Kayur and J-Lest had skills but the King (background) could not be stopped. Tonight, even LeBron would be proud.

Susumu harnesses his years of martial arts training to direct the ball into the opponent's cup.

Sam and Susumu battle for a top seed.

The championship round: Bridges and Toomim vs. T. Scott and Carlson.

Berkeley and Pitt go down early vs. G. Tech and Dartmouth

Scott finesses the ball and hears some sage advice from the seasoned Dartmouth veteran, "if you're going to miss, miss long."

Feel the intensity.

Feel the 9% alcohol by volume beer.

The king would not be denied.

Winners.

Undefeated blue-ribbon champions.

North Cascades National Park

2007-08-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

08/10/2007 Heather and Maple Pass

08/11/2007 Cascade Pass

Subway Cheese Tessellation

2007-07-22T16:04:00.001-07:00

(click here to see fullsize).

Puerto Rico Eco Tour

2007-07-07T15:52:00.001-07:00

My girlfriend and I arrived in Puerto Rico a few days before MobiSys 2007 started. One of the things we did was go on an "EcoTour" in the middle of Puerto Rico--somewhere south of the Arecibo Observatory. It was absolutely fantastic. The tour included hiking through rain forest, spelunking in a cavern, hiking/swimming along a river, vine swinging across water, repelling down a cliff and zip lining. We were also fed an authentic Puerto Rican home cooked meal for lunch. What really topped it off, however, was our two guides Jaime and Jorge--they were incredibly fun, informative, and helpful. The tour company is called Acampa Nature Adventure Tours and the tour we went on: Organic Tanama River and Cave Adventure.

Here's a video I threw together of our adventure:

MyExperience Poster for NPUC

2007-07-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to make a MyExperience poster for a while now; NPUC 2007 was a good forcing function.

From my publications page:
Froehlich, J., Chen, M., Consolvo, S., Harrison, B., & Landay, J. (2007) "Sensors and Surveys: Collecting Qualitative and Quantitative Data on Human Attitudes, Behaviors, and Activities via Mobile Phones" New Paradigms in Using Computers (NPUC), The Healthcare Interface, July 9th, 2007 IBM Almaden, California
[extended abstract pdf (0.23 MB)]
[poster ppt (4.32 MB)]
[poster pdf (11.6 MB)]

UbiFit in Press

2007-06-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

I know Intel Research Seattle has been fairy reluctant in giving open public demos of their work of the UbiFit project, but here's a recent write-up in news. Note that UbiFit is built on top of the MyExperience tool, a project that I started and worked on while at Intel Research. MyExperience is now open sourced under the BSD at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/myexperience.

Gnarls Barkley Crazy

2007-06-25T09:36:00.001-07:00

Wow, this is just awesome musicianship. I used a Theremin at UCI--Crista Lopes has one in her office. It's not easy to produce such sound (it requires, like all instruments, practice and skill).

Walker Week 2007 - Nature Photos

2007-06-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

Sunrise over Whitefish lake

A Great Blue Heron perched on a tree

Sunrise over Clamshell lake

Sunset over Whitefish on a calm summer evening

Purple wildflower from my kayak trip

This photo and the next few contain pictures of Monarch caterpillars

Mobile Phone Growth Figures

2007-06-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

I created these figures for my MobiSys 2007 talk but didn't end up using them. I thought I would post them here instead--they demonstrate the incredible shift from static computing (e.g., desktop computing) to truly mobile computing (e.g., smartphones). Oh, and yes, I noticed that 51.47% is a bit exaggerated in the pie graph--it looks more like 55% there. That was, perhaps, an unconscious bias manifesting itself. I don't have the energy (nor the reason) to fix it though. :-P

World Population Numbers:
- CIA World Factbook
- US Census World Population
- Wikipedia

Mobile Phone Users:
- Mobile phone usage doubles since 2000 (2004)
- Global mobile phone subscription to hit 3.5bn (2006)

PC Users
- A billion PC users on the way (2004)
- Worldwide PC Market To Double by 2010, Forrester Says (2004)

The Art Of Lecture

2007-06-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

The main teaching vehicle of the university professor is the lecture, a performance that is agony for some and a delight for others, particularly hams. I belong to the latter category. A dull fifty-minute lecture can be an affliction for audience and lecturer alike, as I well knew from having sat through, and delivered, many. On my off days, I have looked out at my hapless victims--sitting in a halo of numb boredom, slack-jawed and staring, fighting to stay awake--and I despised myself for inflicting this on fellow humans.

- Robert F. Murphy, The Body Silent.

Makes Windows Mobile Look Bland

2007-06-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

WM6 looks like DOS compared to the iPhone interface. See for yourself: http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/

Many Looks at Golden Garden Sunsets

2007-06-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

T-Mobile and Puerto Rico

2007-06-01T10:32:00.001-07:00

Just spoke with a T-Mobile representative about calling rates to Puerto Rico from stateside US and calling out from Puerto Rico. I was told that both Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are included in the T-Mobile National Rate plans. This means that I can call Puerto Rico (787) for no additional charge and use my phone when I am there for no additional charge. This includes both voice and data.

Richard Simmons Is Not Gene Simmons

2007-05-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

Mental note: Richard Simmons is not Gene Simmons--although that makes for an interesting mental image.

Pervasive2007 in Toronto, ON

2007-05-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

Mount Rainier from the airplane.

View from my hotel room.

The Eaton Centre.

The Eaton Centre 2.

The Distillery

The Hockey Hall of Fame

Close-up of Hockey Hall of Fame

The CN Tower from a distance.

The CN Tower close-up.

View from CN Tower.

Making the big announcement at the CN Tower.

Night view of Toronto from CN Tower.

On the glass floor of the CN Tower.

Ryan A. on the glass floor.

Stop Putting Orange Soda In My Mouth

2007-05-11T11:40:00.001-07:00

Simply the funniest amateur YouTube skit I have ever seen. This is hilarious even if you don't know who David Blaine is. It's worth watching the whole video--the ending has a big payoff.

Note: this video contains obscene language.

Olympic Sunset With G.W.

2007-05-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

Took these pictures while walking to a bus stop on the UW campus. The statue is of George Washington.

Study Designs

2007-04-22T23:26:00.000-07:00

2x2 Mixed Factorial Design
Within Subjects Design
2x2 Between Subjects Factorial Design

Boxed Wine and One Liter Beers in Ballard

2007-04-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

Female Friends in the NY Times

2007-04-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

In an article about promoting science and engineering careers to women, my CSE department at the University of Washington was featured along with a few friends.

The man in the middle there is Ed Lazowska, professor in CSE and former chair of the department. The surrounding females are a mixture of grads and undergrads in CSE.

MyExperience Website

2007-04-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

I open sourced MyExperience in February after the SourceForge server debacle was resolved (link). Despite releasing the code to the wild, I have not yet had time to create an installation package that users can download and install to their devices. In addition, I've only just begun creating documentation. Thus, I've held off on advertising MyExperience to the larger research community until these two tasks are accomplished. This week, I made substantial progress in designing a webpage. The current (incomplete) version can be viewed here. Screenshot below.

Perceptive Pixel

2007-04-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Jeff Han, of multi-touch fame, recently formed his own company called Perceptive Pixel to market touch screen technology to the masses.

Check out a demo video here.

NTC 2007 in Houston, Texas

2007-04-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Flying to Houston

JFK layover

Dinner with University of Houston NTC team

Cavendar's Western Outfitters w/Coach

Paul disapproves of my Texas belt buckle style

Bobby, the cowboy.

Jason, the cowstud.

Texas breakfast pwnage.

Cassandra and Paul at the NTC Banquet

West Seattle and Fremont

2007-03-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

View from West Seattle

Sunday Night Baller's (B. Prouty and myself) at Dad Watsons in Fremont

dub!

2007-03-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

SourceForge Downtime

2007-02-16T18:12:00.000-08:00

It's hard to complain about SourceForge; it offers an invaluable (and free) service to open source developers and downloaders alike. It is, without question, the predominant host of open source software. However, one criticism that SourceForge can't seem to escape is its propensity for server downtime. Ironically, I was having a similar discussion with colleagues at my research lab and attempting to defend SourceForge for its apparent lack of robustness (and IT resources?). Now, I'm being affected directly by it. I am prepared to launch two open source Windows Mobile 5 projects: Roam and MyExperience. My application for hosting on SourceForge was accepted last week. Unfortunately, however, the project shell service has been down for the past 5 days preventing me from transferring my SVN dumps. It's been very frustrating.

The SourceForge "site status" page says:

( 2007-02-16 12:34:12 - Project Shell Service ) 2007-02-12: The shell server was taken offline for unscheduled maintenance. Due to a need to replace the old hardware and some unforeseen problems in getting the new hardware setup, we estimate that the shell service may not return until the 21st of February. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Interestingly, however, they keep changing this "log" message. On 2/13, they said that the shell service would be down for 24 hours, on 2/14 they changed the same log message to read "between 24 and 48 hours," on 2/15 it read "... will be up as soon as possible" and now today it says "until the 21st of February." I definitely appreciate their openness in relating these facts; I wonder, however, why they don't create a new log posting on the page for these updates--why overwrite prior log messages with new information?

Update 02-21-2007 @ 8:30PM: The SourceForge shell services are still not back up. I do not want to seem ungrateful but this is getting ridiculous. How can a hosting company function this way and still maintain a userbase? Don't they understand that other hosting services are cropping up from major players (see, for example, Google's Project Hosting and Microsoft's CodePlex). How long can SourceForge sustain itself with its well known tendency to break? They are currently recruiting new hires on their frontpage, so perhaps this is simply a matter of scale and lack of personnel. Let us hope. Here's another dissatisfied SourceForge user making a similar point nearly a year ago for similar reasons (link).

Update 02-22-2007 @ 11:05AM: They did it again :-|. SourceForge changed their status message to read "...the shell service may not return until February 23rd" which read February 21st yesterday. Again, I appreciate their candidness but why keep overwriting their old updates. By my count, this status post has been changed five times.

Update 02-23-2007 @ 5:34PM: The shell services are now reportedly back up. I have not had a chance to try them (the SSH keys have changed). The status page now says:

( 2007-02-23 12:00:52 - Project Shell Service ) As of 1200 PST on February 23, 2007, project shell service has been restored. Please note that the SSH host keys have changed: refer to document G04 to see the new host key fingerprints.

New England's NTC Champions

2007-02-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

Cassandra Hearn and her partner Paul Caruso won the National Trial Competition's New England Regional Tournament (link). The National Trial Competition (NTC) is one of the oldest and most prestigious mock trial competitions in the United States. Every ABA-accredited law school in the country is invited to compete in this annual competition. The American College of Trial Lawyers sponsors the tournament.

This year 22 teams competed in the New England Regional Tournament including Harvard Law, Maine, New England Law, Franklin Pierce and Suffolk University (to name a few). To get to the championship round, you must win at least 3 of 4 matches.

Cassandra and Paul will travel to Houston, TX on March 28 to face the winners of the thirteen other regional tournaments in the national phase of the competition. Paul Caruso was also the recipient of the Judy Potter Award, which is given to the tournament's Most Outstanding individual advocate. Cassandra Hearn becomes one of only four Suffolk University Law School (Suffolk) students to win the tournament two times. Their primary coaches were Bobby Hazelton (adjunct Suffolk faculty member) and Jason Drori (Suffolk Law alumnus).

According to the Texas Young Lawyers Association web page, The National Trial Competition was established in 1975 to encourage and strengthen students advocacy skills through quality competition and valuable interaction with members of the bench and bar. The program is designed to expose law students to the nature of trial practice and to serve as a supplement to their education. It is the Texas Young Lawyers Association intent to provide a meaningful contribution to the development of future trial lawyers.

Website Launch

2007-01-29T17:37:00.000-08:00

My personal website is now officially live. I tested it in Opera (Mac & PC), FireFox (Mac & PC), Safari (Mac), and IE7 (PC). There was a slight JavaScript bug in IE7 that I resolved today thanks to webdeveloper.com (see my post here). It turns out that IE7 does not handle <script .../> correctly. Instead, you must use the longhand closure <script .../></script>.

There are a few small rendering discrepancies across browsers, particularly in IE7 vs. everything else but I'm willing to live with them for now.

You may notice the dynamic content in the right side column of the about me page. This was done using a mixture of php and JavaScript. I plan to post those scripts on the website (in the hacks section) for public consumption. This was my first experience using php and I was impressed. It's amazingly easy to parse XML data and the library calls are straightforward. I imagine that if I did something more complicated, I would definitely need some sort of php debugger.

Website Header Reflected

2007-01-29T02:16:00.000-08:00

From Mockup to Website

2007-01-29T02:02:00.000-08:00

I've been using PowerPoint to mockup interfaces since I got into graduate school. This weekend, my goal was to implement my website ppt mockup in actual html (and learn php and CSS in the process).

Here's the ppt mockup:

Here's a screen capture of the actual site rendered in FireFox:

Time will tell whether this renders correctly in all browsers, FireFox and Opera seem to do fine.

Running SSH Server on Windows XP

2007-01-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

This howto document created by the University of Waterloo on "how to setup the Cygin SSH Daemon on Windows 2003" is fantastic. Note that every piece of advice translated directly for me to Windows XP Professional (except for the keygen stuff which I don't use).

There was one thing missing, however, and that is to unblock port 22 in your firewall. By default, the Windows Firewall blocks this port. If you don't, the ssh server will be inaccessible from outside your domain. :)

NetFlix User Reviews

2007-01-15T19:28:00.000-08:00

Recently, NetFlix has been actively promoting their user-created content. NetFlix allows users to rate and review movies and share them with public/friends. One of the coolest features is the user-to-user similarity rankings--e.g., my g/f has rated569 movies and has a 80% similarity ranking with me. The reason for this post, however, is that I recently rented Maria Full of Grace (which was fantastic) and I found the most current"user reviews" to be quite interesting:

The movie might have been OK except that there was non stop comentary [sic] through the whole movie... The comments told every small detail about where he met the actors, physical points he liked etc. I got a BIG headache and had to turn off the movie. Who cares where he met the actors, I wanted to see a movie, not hear about what it is like to make a movie.

and, from another user,

I hated it because the movie was in Spanish and I could not get it to speak English.

New Years Resolution Passed

2007-01-14T03:26:00.000-08:00

This year for my New Year's Resolution I decided to gain 100 pounds of pure muscle. On Thursday, the 12th of January, I passed my goal. This is, mind you, without steroids or even Gatorade. This is simply the outcome of 12 days of hard work.

Next year, I plan to work on my other arm.

TechCrunch's Best of Web 2.0

2007-01-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to TechCrunch's RSS feed. I found it to be one of the best news sources for up to date information on Web 2.0 and Mobile startups. Recently, they posted their best of Web 2.0 list.

A View From My (Parent's) Window

2006-12-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

GSM-Based Context-Aware Profile Switcher

2006-12-17T22:59:00.000-08:00

CellProfileSwitcher is a cool freeware application for Windows Mobile 5 based Pocket PCs that can perform a set of tasks like changing profile, running an application, play a sound or turn on/off Bluetooth based on your GSM LAC (Location area code) and Cell Id location. A Today home screen plug-in is shows the current GSM cell, group and the according LAC and cell ID numbers.

Here are the tasks/actions it can perform based on your GSM location:

Change profile
Change Bluetooth status
Execute a program
Vibrate (short for entering the cell, long for leaving it)
Change the home screen
Show a message
Play a wave sound
Change the phone’s wave volume
Notify Automatic Keylock (which must be installed separately)
Switch Wifi (Wifi-enabled WM5 phones only)
Enable flight mode

from (link)

My Life in 19 Seconds

2006-12-11T14:10:00.001-08:00

Mates of State

2006-12-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

Buy this album, you will not be disappointed:

There are only so many ways to earn your own surprise

I know we're giving up too soon
There are only so many ways to float upon the sea
It makes no difference to me

- So Many Ways by Mates of State from Bring it Back

Easy Way To Remove Folder Structure in Windows

2006-12-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of switching from CVS to SVN. I wanted to remove all the underlying "CVS" directories for my projects--I first thought to write a recursive batch file that would search and destroy all CVS folders. Frankly, however, I did not really want to spend time looking up old DOS batch commands. J. Lester and T. Scott had the idea to use Windows Search functionality (yes, I know, hard to believe it's good for something). Basically, (1) open the folder that you want to recursively delete some files/folders in, (2) then open the Search box, enter your search criteria, (3) select files and delete. It's that easy; see below:

(1) Open folder of interest

(2) Search

(3) Select and delete

UW vs. Northern Iowa

2006-11-17T18:56:00.000-08:00

I went to Tuesday night's Husky game vs. Northern Iowa. It was a close game (both teams shot absolutely horribly); Huskies pulled away at the end thanks to a 3-point bomb by Appleby and a steal/fastbreak layup by Dentmon. We eventually won by 9.

Local Washington boy Jon Brockman is accompanied by Ryan Appleby on the regional cover of Sports Illustrated this week (below). Interesting that SI chose not to put our 7-foot McDonald's All-American Freshman, Spencer Hawes, on there. Who, by the way, was very impressive vs. Northern Iowa. He has a soft touch, good free throw shooter, and likes to shoot both left and right handed hook shots.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

2006-11-12T21:28:00.000-08:00

You - You look a bit like coffee

And you taste a little like me

-The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

(Pitchfork Media's review of their debut album)

Frat Boys Sue Borat

2006-11-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

You knew this was coming, CNN reports that "humiliated frat boys sue over Borat portrayal":

Two fraternity boys want to make lawsuit against "Borat" over their drunken appearance in the hit movie.

The legal action filed Thursday on their behalf claims they were duped into appearing in the spoof documentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," in which they made racist and sexist comments on camera.

The young men "engaged in behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in," the lawsuit says.

This was actually one of the most painful parts of the movie for me (and there were many). I was quite disappointed with the ease in which Americans got caught up in Borat's bigotry and racism (which unbeknownst to the Americans was a joke) and ended up mirroring his prejudices with their own statements of discrimination.

Tillman's Wish Granted?

2006-11-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

In his poignant article on the state of America and the loss of his Ranger brother in Afghanistan, Kevin Tillman calls out Americans to take action against the current administration in the White House--to hold them accountable for their dubious conduct and policies.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action.

With the results of the recent midterm elections where both the House and Senate achieved democratic majority and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, it seems the tides of power are changing. It is my hope that the now-former Secretary of Defense (and others) will be held accountable for the illegal methods employed while prosecuting the "war on terror." A war which, in my opinion, is more like a a "war of terror" as put so eloquently by Borat Sagdiyev. On Andrew Sullivan's weblog today,

We have news of the first attempted prosecution of the defense secretary for authorizing torture. You could see this coming. At least, I did, and Bush did. The case is coherent, as I pointed out last July. Rumsfeld had better not travel abroad for a very long while; or he could be arrested. Same goes for Gonzales and the other war criminals in this administration.

POLS in Computer World

2006-11-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. has attached a privacy license to its new location-aware software product, intended to protect cell phone users’ personal information as mobile devices increasingly rely on tracking technology to provide targeted services.

So, Intel has added a privacy addendum to the Eclipse Public License it uses for the software application called Privacy Observant Location System (POLS), according to a posting on Intel's Web site by John Miller, the privacy and security policy manager of Intel's corporate technology group.

(link)

Be Jubilant: Rumsfeld Resigns

2006-11-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

Worse than Robert McNamara? Time will tell...

(link)

Music, Proof of God?

2006-11-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

By the time reason took over we did not speak of that July.

And by the time you lost a Mother, I had no place in your receiving line. I had no place in your receiving line.

-"Receiving Line" by Halloween, Alaska

ELM's First Birthday

2006-10-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin Patch on Friday

Party on Saturday/Sunday

Como Zoo Trip on Monday

Please Vote in November

2006-10-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

It's our only hope.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

- from After Pat's Birthday by Kevin Tillman

Radiohead, a Saving Grace

2006-10-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Purchased Thom Yorke's new album, The Eraser, as a musical backdrop to thesis proposal writing (iTunes Music Store was tempting me for weeks). In high school, I was a huge Radiohead fan (e.g., Pablo Honey, The Bends). OK Computer came out my sophomore year of college but I didn't really start listening to it until graduate school. Now, I'm much more into the sound they introduced in OK Computer and perfected on Kid A and Amnesiac than those rock precursors. Like the last 3 minutes of Paranoid Android, Idioteque, Like Spinning Plates, Kid A, I Might Be Wrong, Packt like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box, create a cacophany of sounds that somehow work together to form a wonderful, haunting, ambient melody. Motion Picture Soundtrack is, I think, one of the saddest songs ever written.

PS Not a huge fan of Hail to the Theif, but hey, they can't all be the White Album.

Thesis Proposal: Status Update

2006-10-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

In rewriting the primary "thesis" of my thesis proposal for the, ahem, third time this week, I believe I've finally struck upon something that may stick and, in the process, coined a new term.

phetadata (phe.TA.da.ta, alternate pronunciation: phay.ta.day.ta) n. The digital metadata that is generated by our everyday, physical interactions with the world. [Blend of physical and metadata.]

Thesis Proposal: Status Update

2006-10-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've completed one page of goodness, two pages of mediocrity and two half-done pages of crap. Reminder: writing is an iterative process.

Hiking Mt. Dickerman (Fall Colors)

2006-10-01T23:28:00.000-07:00

[Photo credits go to Danyel Fisher, fellow hiker and confidant]

This Life

2006-10-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

You want the truth on this? I think he was somebody who desperately wanted to be popular and, because of that desperation, he wasn't.

-Paul, a high school friend of Jon Ronson

This American Life
6/23, Episode 314

The Office, Season 3

2006-09-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

[weeping] Jim is gone. I miss him so much. I cry myself to sleep, oh Jim.

FALSE.

-Dwight Schrute

Google's "Add a Tab" Disappeared

2006-09-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

I use Google Personalized homepage to keep track of some of my most read RSS feeds. They added a "tabs" feature a few weeks ago. However, now the "Add a tab" link has disappeared.

Before:
After:
Update 9/22/2006 @ 10:22AM: Aha. It turns out that Google instituted a max tab limit of 6. Someone found a hack around this limit however.