That's it!

First quarter. Already!

Cleaning up, vacations...

By the way, the pizza is one of the 8 remaining after a final right next to the computer pool where I spent the evening. They didn't know what to do with all the left-overs. Thanks!

I don't feel like it. Just handed in the junior project - our car does not even overtake dead cars on a double-lane road. When we put it together it simply wouldn't work. At least we handle stop signs and generally following other cars.
Anyways don't feel like it because I just left my two project fellows, one of which has to start his 15 pages philosophy paper that's due in 15 hours and the other starts tomorrow his 24-hour-take-home final for some class. Then he's done and will start working for some game company.

I also sent in my paper for Terry's class. I know, some of you were interested. Let's see, I'll post the link when it's online.

That's it! It's over. Let's see the country!

Design summary (only this week)

Today is the last day of the quarter for me. One paper due and the project with Junior.
Doing the bibliography of my paper I have seen that this week Bill Moggridge has put the chapter People and Prototypes from his book Designing Interactions on the web. Get it while you can, it's a beautiful and informative piece of writing. It's solid: About 100 pages and 18 Megabytes. But that's the essence of what I learned here!

Bib, Bibo, Bibliotheque

Just coming back from working on my essay in one of the reading rooms in the library. This was when I left - people were also sleeping on the couches.

Anyways its a wonderful library - biggest and coziest I know. If you want to come over for a longer period of time and work some in the library, 7 days are free, afterwards $2 a day or $15 a month. This includes the law library!


(you can also get a cubicle, or a cellar post if you prefer!)

Midnight breakfast for the dead

This is the last week of class in the winter quarter. Next week there will be final exams. Projects are due these two weeks. Things like that. It's also called 'dead week'.

There are some nice traditions around this time, for example the midnight screaming, or the midnight breakfast served by university admin staff (as opposed to the regular food people). I was there on Monday night, 10 to midnight, and the cafeteria I went to (several where open) was crammed! Free scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, viennoiserie, muffins, coffee, orange juice and tons of fruits! Cooool!

My first project was due on Monday: (Orbit)RED was our proposal. Scored somewhat - idea wasn't the innovative bomb, but it's just what the teenies want! We made lots of interviews and therefore half of our presentation was audio evidence. One team member is a radio reporter (YEAH, thanks again!).
Afterwards cocktail party at the design institute, meeting at 9 for the junior project and then the midnight stuff.
But the rest of the week will be less thrilling - at least as a story - deadlines can be rather thrilling for the involved!

Quarter finishing - energy conference

Just presented our super idea for (RED): chewing gum with messages on the wrappers! Apericube etc...? Yes, we were SO inventive! But it's the new cigarette - the kids want it.
In 20 minutes the party starts, then 4 ours later I have the next meeting for the Junior-project.
Oh, I've seen "The lives of the others" yesterday: wonderful! Can only recommend it.

But two weeks back there was this energy conference where I went to a talk with Thomas L. Friedman. They also had a small exhibition on campus:
It runs on batteries:

Friedman made some interesting points:
Energy has become the subject, not only for our future ("biggest industrial challenge ever") as for americans. Currently it is on "Main Street", so it has attention. But he is curious if it will "go down Main Street", meaning if people will change their behavior, or wear it only on their sleeves.
Attention was raised because:Temperature and because it becomes clear that Americans are financing both sides of the War on Terrorism: The army and the Saudis which finance radical Islam. Saudi Arabia is financing it because the rulers see themselves unable to battle it and so buy their security. This has started after the 1979 riots (Wright, L.: The Looming Tower.).
So Friedman makes out a conflict between the missionary vision of the US to bring peace and democracy to the world and the dependence on Oil. He supports that with his thesis of Petro-Authoritarianism: Rising oil prices lead to less freedom (see Russia and Gulf; by the way: Bahrain is the most liberal country - it's oil reserve has run out). "Price of oil is inverse to pace of freedom."
(Friedman talked at the Memorial auditorium - capacity 2500 - the only one this size. Classes are usually much much smaller!)

"Buying a Prius is NOTHING. Clean energy must become available at the China price" - this is his new credo. Quite right. This is the big industrial challenge.
He mentioned Germany by the way. "They're sucking all the silicon out of the market - because of goverment subsidies for solar cells." He believes in goverment regulations - also in Amerika. Example California: constant energy usage for last 30 years, other states: 50% increase. California has regulations.
I will stop here, this is not to become a politics blog. But I liked the American perspective on this all!
Now let's get some of this Thai food!

Late night foreigner

That's how I ended up tonight. Late night snacking. Just after coming back from a party at a undergrad dorm(itory).
Nearly the end of another one of those weird days. Woke up and got the mail that the draft of a paper I have to hand in today (mind the time, already past midnight!) should be "a real paper, no sketch or outline. Hard deadline!" Hmmm, what's a draft that then? So I went off with a Singaporean to do some user interviewing in the mall. That's the reason I have fresh bread to snack!
Then meeting, class, afterwards some meeting for a small small project I do for education - they need a small webapp - which (the meeting) nearly got screwed up. Wrong room... then lots of talking about the old "computer guys" - charming.
Then rather depressed in the center for design research, waiting for the research group meeting to start and writing very little on my paper. Meeting starts: Great! Three people have been a week in India to do rural development, they tell the story. Just fantastic!
Finally I cheer up, someone announces a party later on - will I go... ? Probably, what am I here for? Also I get to write quite a bit before we start to the party. One dorm, small live band; then to the next.
Big Stanf live band!

And now I'm back and have to finish my draft. So a little snack, some tea and go! Lets see. Its for my philo-hci class (typo, sorry!).

That's the story of the student abroad. You never quite know what will happen - always a little unsure, changes all the time, surprises and lots of encounters!
Ups and downs, roller-coasting!

Cool stuff

Today in my Multi Agent Systems class we were offered to try out some of our stuff (Multi-Agent Game theory, mostly) for the new DARPA Grand challenge. It's about Junior!

(You might want to look at the old material, particularly this is, ahem, funny (75 Mb video, careful, (my) Firefox tried to display it; use "Save As..." - but just funny) ;-) ).
We can do that for the paper that is due to pass the class (you need to do an exam and problem sets, too).

And then I was at a talk by Rana el Kaliouby, from MIT. That's really cool stuff: her software is recognizing facial expressions! :-) She's devised it to train autists about facial expressions. Autists are not disinterested in this stuff (they tend to look to the floor and cannot empathize - meaning feel with other people, communicate adequately and generally act socially), but are just overhelmed by the input from the environment. She teaches them slowly by showing them how they reacted and how the other people reacted in different situations and what that meant - this last part comes from the computer!
There's other applications - more later I guess :-)

Now what do I do? Only 3 weeks of the quarter left...