thesis « Barron of Blog

6Jul/065

Master Mike

Me at my thesis defense As of today (4:46pm to be exact) I have completed all of the necessary steps toward earning my Masters degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Woo-hah!

There was a surprising amount of paperwork to be filed with offices all over campus, and a few minor typos that needed to be fixed in the actual thesis. I am still checking on my ability to publish my thesis online; for now (if you're curious and bored) you can view my defense presentation [5.9mb].

Some random stats on my thesis:

Word count: 22,600
Pages: 104
Number of tables: 12
Number of figures: 28
Most common word: "the" (1335 times)
Most common big word: "phenomena" (127 times)
Longest word: "misunderstandings" and "environmentalists" (tie)
Total editing time: 763 hours, 52 minutes, 51 seconds (includes time when it was just open in the background)

I'm glad that it's over. Guess it's time to return to the real world!

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24Apr/060

CHI2006: First Day

I attended the pre-conference "Networking Gathering" last night, mostly because there was free food provided, and was glad to see that most people were just like me: technology geeks. So when I awoke this morning I was looking forward to an interesting opening day at CHI2006.

Scott Cook (co-founder of Intuit) gave the opening welcome speech. He focused on how his company has found innovations through allowing employees to innovate without management breathing down their necks. Like all good CEOs he was able to say the obvious, but in an entertaining manner. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy who ran a genuinely nice company.

Around 11:30am Tom (my adviser) and I met to go over my presentation. I was still a bit nervous, but my experiences at the conference so far were positive and I wasn't intimidated. After we finished I snuck into the "Navigation" session, catching the only remotely interesting paper titled OrthoZoom Scroller: 1D Multi-Scale Navigation. Not terribly amazing, but probably useful for well-index material (e.g. text with chapters).

My session, called "alt.chi", started around 4:30 and I was told that it often drew a large crowd because papers in this type of session were usually entertaining, diverse, and not always mainstream CHI material. Judging from what the room looked like ten minutes before the start of my session I was a little disappointed with the turnout. Luckily the room filled up quickly, and by the time it was my turn to take the mic the room was standing room only (sorry, I would have taken a picture of the audience but I don't have large cojones).

The presentation itself (PDF, or PPT if you want my notes) went smooth enough; my voice cracked twice during the first three slides, and I almost made a comment about going through puberty again before thinking it inappropriate. I came back strong though and by the end I felt very confident that I had done a "good" job. The audience seemed to enjoy the presentation as well, and it felt very rewarding afterward as people came up and complimented my work. Cool. If you're curious you can see a picture of all of the presenters from my session.

I returned to the conference hall during the evening for a reception. They had entertainment to go along with the posters and other booths being presented. After eating my fill of the free finger food and imbibing my two free drinks I slumped off to our hotel room for a good night sleep. I still had 3 days to go!

[note: This post has been backdated to correspond with the date of the events described]

Filed under: chi2006, dev, thesis No Comments

22Apr/060

Going to Montreal

Shannon and I will be traveling to Montreal for CHI 2006, a fairly large annual conference on human factors in computing systems. The weekend will be spent exploring the city with Shannon (though it looks like rain on Sunday). On Monday I will present work that I did (from last year) during one of their alt.chi sessions, which are like the regular CHI sessions but much less important.

The paper I am presenting is about RoomBugs, one of three "embedded phenomenon" that my small tech group at UIC have created for use in classrooms. If you're interested you can read my accepted paper, but I assure you it's nothing earth-shattering. Up until this morning (when I found out that the hall I will be presenting in can hold 250 people) I wasn't very nervous about my presentation. Now I've got butterflies in places that butterflies shouldn't fly.

I'll keep you guys posted on any interesting projects I run across - I'm signed up for a few interactive labs and panels, and I am looking forward to the experience.

Filed under: dev, geek, thesis No Comments

10Apr/060

Language Lesson: i.e. vs e.g.

It occurred to me a short while ago that I didn't know what the abbreviations "i.e." and "e.g." actually stood for. I have always read "e.g." as "for example," but if that were the case shouldn't the abbreviation be "ex." (as is also commonly seen)?

Come to think of it I didn't even know the difference between "i.e." and "e.g.". So, to benefit us all, here is what I have found:

i.e.
specifies and explains
Stands for "id est" (Latin), which translates to "that is". You should use it to give an explanation or deeper description of what you are writing.
"I love to watch Lost (i.e. the show on ABC about an island of survivors)."

e.g.
gives an example
Stands for "exempli gratia" (Latin), which translates to "for the sake of example". You should use it to give explicit examples.
"I love to watch television (e.g. Lost, Grey's Anatomy)."

And to think I didn't know this after two semesters of high school Latin with Mrs. England. Shame on me.

Filed under: random, thesis No Comments