Gloria Mark, Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, Linda Stone

Gloria Mark and other HCI researchers are written up in this New York Times article. I received my Master's degree from UCI where Gloria Mark is a professor (her office was adjacent to my advisor's).

The article, titled Meet the Life Hackers, begins with highlighting Mark's research with Victor Gonzalez on how human's "multitask" in the workplace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html

Pumpkin Carving Party

I made the Scooby one (not yet complete).

Apple in New Yorker

"Tidal" was uneven. Apple was nineteen when she recorded it and had a teen-ager's sense of drama, which sees the world ending whenever a relationship does; she did not yet know that "invade your demeanor" is a phrase that God never intended anyone to say out loud.

-Sasha Frere-Jones in the 10/10/05 New Yorker on Fiona Apple's new album

The Sky Really is Falling

An article written about security in IT cites Ed Lazowska, a faculty member in my department at UW, and begins:

Ed Lazowska, cochairman of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, says that there is a looming security crisis, and the government, vendors and CIOs aren’t doing enough to stop it.

http://www.cio.com/archive/100105/qa_lazowska.html

How Dare You Compare Me To Cheney

Like Vice President Dick Cheney, who led the search for a vice presidential nominee before choosing himself, Miers headed the team searching for O'Connor's replacement and ended up choosing herself.

Ack. There's something fundamentally suspicious about heading a search committee that ends up choosing you. Also note to self, attempt not to follow in Cheney's footsteps in anyway such that comparisons like these could be made.

CSE Rainbow

Taken on my camera phone (SMT 5600 SmartPhone) from the top floor of the UW CSE building.

Absolute, Relative, Mixed Formulas in Excel

Here is a quick review of absolute, relative, and mixed formulas. Normally if you enter a formula like =SUM(A2:A4403) in D1 and then copy the formula to E2, your formula in E2 will change to =SUM(B3:C4403). This is a cool feature of worksheets called "relative addressing", but sometimes we do not want that to happen. In this case, we want every formula to refer to the range A2:B4403. As we copy the formula from cell to cell, it should always point to A2:B4403. While entering the formula, hit F4 once after entering the range, and your formula will change to =SUM($A$2:$A$4403). The dollar sign indicates that that portion of the reference will not change as you copy the formula. This is called absolute addressing. It is possible to lock only the column with the $ and allow the row to be relative. This is called a mixed reference and would be entered as =$A4406. To lock the row but allow the column to be relative, use =B$4405. As you enter a formula, use F4 to toggle among the four flavors of relative, absolute and mixed references.

(from link)

Mayer forms John Mayer Trio

Signed into the iTunes Music Store tonight and saw that John Mayer has a new band called the John Mayer Trio. Since I'm essentially TVless, I did not see him perform at the Grammys where, I guess, the John Mayer Trio sort of debuted their stuff with a new take on Mayer's grammy award winning number, Daughters.

The John Mayer Trio represents a different, harder-edged sound for the singer, songwriter and guitarist. Those fortunate enough to have tickets to the sold-out Fillmore gigs will witness a different side to the pop tunesmith known for slick hits such as ``Your Body Is a Wonderland.''
``I wouldn't just change just for the sake of changing, but I've always had another agenda,'' Mayer explains. ``That other agenda is a whole different set of heroes and hues and colors and textures. I've just decided to go to my next place. . . .
``It's a very thought-out process of taking what excites me about Eric Clapton and B.B. King and Buddy Guy and Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominos and the Band and Cream . . . and placing it in my thing. I love pop music. I love guitar playing. I love blues. I love jazz. And I love the idea even more that I could put my own stamp on all those things and roll them into one sound.''

...

``He's really serious about his guitar playing,'' Palladino says from his home in London. ``Some guitarists have a special touch, and you know the guys I'm talking about, and John is one of those guys. It's the way he strikes a note. He just has something.''
The same could be said for both Jordan and Palladino, two stellar players who have performed with rock legends.


(from link)

Well, at least we have sports...

Headline story on espn.com this morning:

Moment of Relief
Two weeks of suffering. A city, and region, in mourning. The mayor's pregame plea. Did New Orleans really need the Saints' 23-20 win Sunday? Len Pasquarelli says yes.

I have to remind myself why I check this page everyday? It certainly can't be for the insightful and worldly perspective.

Vancouver, Canada

Incredible Idea

Such an incredible idea. Wishing I would have thought of it.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000430055701/

Cool Discovery Photos

An online picture journal of the Space Shuttle Discovery Mission. Amazing what a group of engineers can accomplish.

More Adobe Premiere Problems

I made sure that when I finished my "wedding video" project in late June, I left the files in a perfectly archived state so that I could come back to it at anytime. Unfortunately, Adobe Premiere had yet another unfortunate surprise in mind for me.

I loaded the .prproj file tonight to give my friend Scott a short tutorial on Adobe Premiere. I was showing him the ins and outs of cross fades and video transitions when I noticed that one of the primary video source files was missing! Ack, what happened? I had not changed this project (or any of its dependencies) since archiving it months ago. What's the problem?

Ironically (long story) I received the lovely "red screen of death" faced me which said "media missing!." I double checked to make sure the video file was in the same place in my file system. I then tried linking, then unlinking the media through Premiere's pop-up menu. Nothing worked. Finally, I found a link on Adobe Premiere's "Support Knowledge" base which said to,

Rename the .AVI file to use the .MPG extension (for example, rename movie.avi to movie.mpg), and then import it into Adobe Premiere or Adobe Premiere Pro.

I did this and sure enough, the problem was resolved. Now what I don't understand is what caused this error? Why now? I hadn't done a thing between the last time I had used this .prprof file. Ah, yet another sad revelation of how bad Adobe Premiere really is.

Sky Diving Accident

My clever girlfriend went skydiving for the first time in Australia a few weeks ago. Then I found this story on CNN about a woman who died on her first tandem skydive jump.

Intel IRCON 2005 in Portland, OR

Some pictures from Intel's IRCON 2005 in Portland, OR.

Intel's Placelab in the news...

Microsoft's Virtual Earth project has recently debuted. It provides real-time location services by either (1) looking at your ip address and making an estimate on your position based on your dns entry or (2) by using Wi-Fi technology. This second method is said to be more accurate and is based on research by Intel Research Labs, Seattle pioneered through the PlaceLab project. Of course, one of the main tenents of PlaceLab is to try and preserve privacy by conducting the localization algorithms "on-device" rather than "on-server" so that no information is exchanged with an outside source that might compromise privacy. Privacy is certainly a critical issue in many domains of CS right now, from e-mail to peer2peer apps, but it's arguably more important when dealing with location as it opens the possibility of endangering someone's physical health.

Two recent articles about PlaceLab. They both specifically mention my research :)
1. The Future of Mobile Computing
2. Intel experiments with Wi-Fi as GPS substitute.

You take your car to work

I'll take my board.

All along the undertows, strengthening its hold.
I never thought it would come to this, now I can never go home.

Best part is when they break it down boys choir style 2 minutes in and then proceed to rock out.

Ack, I need to stop listening to the same music I listened to in high school.

My name is Steve Vaught and I walk

Very cool, inspirational story from a fat man born Stephen James Liller in Youngston, Ohio.

http://www.thefatmanwalking.com/

K's Choice, More than an Addict

K's Choice is popularly known for their song "Not an Addict" about the dark, unrelenting temptations of heroin. Launchcast served me up another song by them called "Believe" and before I could hit the next button, I was hooked. K's Choice, not just a one hit wonder. Who knew?

They are now an official member of my "purchased music" playlist in iTunes.

Hot or Not Google Maps Integration

Ahem.

http://apps.hotornot.com/jeff/

Can't wait until they add this to:

http://www.meowmix.com/playtime/hotnot.asp