Followup on Usability

Before continuing any further, I would like to share a brief anecdote. This week I had a large exam in my Into to Solid State Chemistry class. As a result, I stayed up until 3AM on several evenings studying, studying, and not sleeping. As a result, other work piled up. Now it is Friday, and I have half a week's worth of Calculus homework, as well as homework modeling CO2 changes in the atmosphere, and catching up (by doing all the optional homework I haven't done) in Newtonian Physics.

How could this have been avoided?

• Done all optional homework when it was assigned
• Allocated enough time for calculus and physics each day, so by Friday(or should I say Thursday Evening), all is completed
• Planned ahead

Although the above is a simple list in theory, it is hard actually put it into practice. A system needs to be established to enable a smart time management with the minimum of effort. Many software and physical products have attempted to solve this, using tables, and prioritized checklists, some even with partial completion, sub tasks, and a sleuth of very interesting and potentially useful features. However, using a such a task managing system takes a level of skill and time management skills that the average user of said system probably doesn't have in the first place. This is not to say that all users of task lists are incompetent, but rather to suggest that the non fluid nature of a task list makes it a difficult solution in the real world.

How about this: A task list that does all the hard stuff for you?

• It knows what class you are in (From a pre-determined schedule, GPS, or from a brief list of defined classes)
• It knows when most things are due (If it's a 18.01 pset, then Friday)
• It knows how long they take (from analyzing past data)
• It dynamically readjusts your schedule to match a set of parameters
• For example: No more than 4 hrs of work per day. No homework Friday. Bedtime is 2AM. Large projects will skew this.
  

Here's how this might work out in the real world:
(Brief functional specification)
Scenario: In 18.01 lecture on Monday
Task: Add Pset to list

How it plays out:

Joe takes out his spiffy phone, opens the superTodoList app and clicks the large "New" button. Immediately a list of categories shows up, with 18.01 at the top. He clicks it, and then sees a list of possible assignments (Psets, quiz, exam), and clicks Pset. The next screen immediately shows several buttons with dues dates. The first box is highlighted with Fridays date. The other boxes say "Tomorrow","Tuesday","Wednesday", and "Other". Joe clicks Friday, and the app returns to it's home screen.

Scenario: Sitting Down to do Homework
Task: Do a good amount of homework
How it plays out: Joe takes out his phone, opens the superTodoList app, and sees a bunch of tasks on the home or "Today" screen. He sees 18.01 Pset for 30 minutes, study for 8.01 quiz for 30 mins, and finish Essay for 21W.732 for 3 hrs, which is bright red,and at the top of the list. He quickly explains "Oh $#!T!!!", clicks on the "Do It" button next to the Essay assignment and a timer starts counting. He works for an hour or so deciding what to write about. He finally comes up with an idea, and finishes his essay in 2 hrs 15 minutes. He opens his phone, and clicks the big "DONE!" button. He notices it is 1 AM and decides to go to sleep.

Unbeknownst to him, his phone automatically increased his 18.01 Pset allowance for the following two day by 15 minutes.

--- TO BE CONTINUED --

Usability

Most software designers don't think much about usability. The site is about the magic code that makes it work. They have a beautiful vision that makes sense in the mind of the beholder. The user is often left far behind. Take Stellar for example, the MIT Course Management System. It is disorganized grouping of various features that should be included in a more unified way. Many of the components are great ideas that could be very useful to a student. However the lack of integration and user centric design makes the site painful to use. My group attempted to address some of these issues in our paper model.

On the State of Task Management in Higher Education Environments

In this complex world of meetings, lectures, homework, tests, quizzes, sports, and miscellaneous it becomes difficult to find time to eat, sleep, or have fun. Often disorganization can reach the point where even homework, quizzes and lectures do not fit into ones busy life. Many products have attempted to answer this age old challenge. Some have been more successful than others. People have planners, smart phones, google calendars, iCal, an many other ways of organizing time, but using these systems takes time and significant energy to use successfully. What we as students need is a way personal assistant that can actually look at our schedules, and plan accordingly. Wouldn't it be nice if your calender new that a Calculus 1 homework assignment typically took 49 minutes, and wouldn't it be nice if it could plan a time to complete it, and still have time for sleep?

A Little trip to MIT

First Impressions:

I recently attend MIT's campus preview weekend as an accepted "Pre-Frosh". I was expecting a bunch of fun activities organized to show that MIT can be fun too, and that was what I experienced. There was certainly a dearth of activities that really showed the school for what it is. Nevertheless, I am excited to be a student next year, despite my somewhat disappointing visit.

The Traveling Part

On the way there, I traveled with Virgin America, which is an absolutely awesome airline. Here are some photos of my travels.

Trip to MIT (Just the travel Part)

Wax Explosions

These wax explosions might be very appropriate for celebrating the downfall of APUSH or something...

A little Background

Recently, I visited the Sierra Nevadas with my parents, and my brother Elliott. Over the last several years, we have taken trips up there, to enjoy the peace and quiet (most of the time), swim, hike, and make campfires.

That was over five years ago, when I was much younger, barely past the double digits. One thing lead to the next, and soon my brother and I were mixing the sap from the local trees, and heating it over the campfire. I would roll pieces of paper towel in the heated wax, let it cool a little, and roll them into "crackling cigars." Although the cigars had nothing to do with their real counterparts, they certainly produced a lot of smoke and flames when burned.

With time, either my brother or I made the discovery that cold water, when poured into heated sap, reacts violently, producing a very pleasing effect. At first we created maybe 2 or three foot high fireballs, at max. Now, fast forwarding to the recent past, we advanced from using sap from trees, and started using candle wax. My mom has countless wonderful beeswax candles. Well, as candles, they suck. We soon usurped them for our own devious deeds. A large chunk of one of these will produce a spectacular fireball. Not quite like gasoline, but you''d be surprised.

Make your Own

Materials:

• A large quantity of some kind of wax. Beeswax, or other candle wax will do.
• Some assorted aluminum cans. I used the a 2" diameter can, and a 1" diameter can.
• Flexible, yet strong wire.
• Knife, pliers, a method to punch holes in cans, hack saw

The Boiler:

To make an explosion, you will need to heat the wax to its boiling point over a hot fire. Simply puncutre appropriate holes in an aluminum can, and attach a wire handle to it. The handle should be sturdy enough, that you can hold about a cup of water in it without spilling it. The handles should be about a foot or possibly longer, depending on you comfort around fire. This container will hold the candle wax.

The Ladle:

To trigger the fireball, you will need to pour about a half cup of water onto the boiling wax, from a ladle of some kind. Construct this in any way you see fit. Make sure the handle is at least a foot long. Again, adjust it to your comfort level. A preffer to just hold the can with some tongs.

Make something Explode:

So you''ve toiled through the process of making all these ladle and things. Now what? Well, all you need to do is build up a hot fire, one way or another. I but you could use a portable stove, a barbecue, or any other source of significant heat. WARNING: if you use a little stove, it will probably be coated in wax, and other disasters could occur. Propane + Fire = BAD. Now, when your fire''s going nicely, put a large hunk of wax into the boiler, and place in a part of the fire without too many flames. You don''t want the wax igniting to early (don''t worry, it most likely won''t explode, but will waste wax). Now, quickly get some water, if you haven''t so far. Wait until the wax is flaming profusely. At this point you can test the heat by flicking a bit of water in the wax. It should crackle menacingly. Now, if its hot enough, and carefully pour the water on the boiling wax. An explosion will result.

 

 

Pictures

Videos

wmvs:

• First Exposion
• Night Explosion

 

Youtube Videos

 

That annoying voice is my little brother. Thanks Elliott . . .

Check out this website: http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/comments/paraffin/

 

30 mins before the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in China

I will first say that I am saddened deeply by the recent disaster in China.

While searching around on the internet, I found this:

This phenomenon is rare, and its existence has not been proven. I just think that this is really creepy

I Hate Microsoft

This website (Creative Smoke) looks completely and absolutely terrible on Microsoft Internet Explorer. ARGH. Why can't they at least make their browser standards compliant.

I plan on working several hours this weekend to rewrite all the code for my site, in order to support IE.

Computer Privileges Gone Again

I am no longer allowed to use school computers once again. I suppose using Terminal to work on a website is the clear practice of an evil hacker. I don't see much use in fighting these allegations, so I will just accept my fate, and let the bureaucracy handle it.

Guess what I was doing?

I was trying to make a song play on my website. Oh, wow, very evil, and very against everything the world stands for.

Oh, and one last thing, I looked over the internet agreement I signed, and not one square inch of it mentioned anything about running prohibited programs that were already installed on school computers. Not one sentence.

Ooops

Smiles

After an excruciating day of school, I finally got a break. During break today, I was talking to that special person I mentioned earlier and said,

"Do you want to go to the beach with me?"

"Of course, but your mom won't like us not studying."

I replied,"I'll call her right now."

After a few moments of discussing, I was pleased to find that she supported my idea completely. Later in the day, I rolled off to the beach with my special friend and her friend. We ran, skim boarded, took embarrassing pictures (coming soon...), and ate junky food. The weather was wonderful, allowing us to stay there until around 9:00. This is what I needed. I will face tomorrow with a smile on my face. :-)

AGH. Why won't it End?

AAAHG. I woke up this morning, and it was still Wednesday. I cannot handle it. I cannot take this anymore. I am so fed up with school. Well, I managed to pull myself out of bed, because I knew I would see someone special soon.

OK, so I took my shower, got out, and to add insult to injury, my deodorant was nowhere to be found. I walked into the kitchen, and there as no bread for my lunch.

I kind of flipped out.

No that AP testing is over, I see no reason whatsoever why I should be going to school. We are watching movies in class. I thought would be fun. Not when I could be at the beach. Why would any company or school or government make AP testing before the last week of school? Seriously, are you kidding me?

End of AP Testing

AP testing is finally over! Although this should be simply a time of rejoicing, I have this foreboding feeling about my scores. My first English essay, in modest terms, was amazing. Many of you may be familiar with the terminology "magical at times". Well my essay certainly was.

I also have this feeling that come July, my essay will have received a score of 4 or 5, and all of my gloating will be for not.

What about APES? Well, the multiple choice was a piece of cake, with a few exceptions. I breezed through it in no time at all. As a matter of fact, I slept for about thirty minutes after completing section I. However, the Free Response section was so easy that I am afraid of what lies ahead. I answered every one using common sense, when contemporary knowledge and citations may have been more appropriate.

As you may gather from reading this, there is much uncertainty in my disposition.

All I can do is hope for the best.

Progress on Wiki

As some people may know, I have recently created the Terra Linda Wiki. The Terra Linda Wiki is a collaborative site for students, teachers and parents of Terra Linda High School.

So far, I have created the site, and put it on a temporary url. I plan to move it to wiki.terralindahighschool.net, but I am working my way through the SRCS bureaucracy. I will submit a formal letter tomorrow, and see how it goes. I am optimistic to have the site ready for a public launch within two weeks.

Storing Digital files as Printable Bitmaps

A while back I was intrigued by the idea of using pixels to represent digital information. This concept has already been utilized by Nintendo's Gameboy, providing people with an accessory that can read small cards with tiny dots on them, allowing cheap retro games on a new media. I think that this concept could be put to work, enabling anyone to print up a little sheet of paper with a few KB, or maybe only a few hundreds of bytes of information stored in the pixels on the sheet. This would be perfect for giving a friend a WPA key, a few passwords, or some other small files. I'm sure this idea has already been taken, but if there's anyone out there who can program, I think this would be a great utility. I'm not really sure how accurate it would be, but I think its a good idea. It would sure beat wasting a 700MB CD, just to give someone your wireless password.

Why Life Sucks, and How to Fix It. Maybe.

So, to start off, I must post an excerpt from a post by a VERY close friend.

"I am going to do you a huge favor. If you listen to me, you will save many hours of your junior year for things you actually want to do. You will not be as stressed, not have as much work, and best of all you may actually enjoy junior year.
I am warning you. Do Not Take APUSH. believe me, it's just not worth it. Unless you want to be a historian or really think that you can handle the workload. but be absolutely sure.

It's not that bad i guess, i mean the class is actually very interesting we have good discussions about current events. but the tests are insane, expect to spend around 2 hours on your homework every night, and expect to stay up extremely late (about 3:00 or 4:00 AM) every once in a while to finish a huge project. by the tests are insane i mean, taken literally word for word out of the book. This might not seem like a bad thing, but each chapter is 20-40 pages long or something, and the tests can cover up to 6 chapters at a time. they also have questions that make you decide between a "push" and a "pull" factor. as in, questions everyone gets wrong because they just dont make sense. and expect to spend many hours studying the book, because we dont go over the book in class (each chapter takes about an hour to read thoroughly)

so you can decide, i'm guessing after the AP test i will be very glad i am taking this class, but right now, i hate it, it is taking up all my time, and i would love nothing more than to drop it. i just thought i would try to help."

So what's the big deal. Is it really so bad?

That's the question I keep asking myself. I started off this school year, happy as a clam, optimistic as can be, looking forward to bright future of fun classes. I thought that physics would be a fun class. I even thought that Pre-Calc would be a fun class. Don't get me wrong, I do have fun sometimes, but what it comes down to is not whether you have fun every once and while, but rather, it comes down to what is really important in ones life.

Personally I would like to be a scientists. As of this moment, I am focused on electrical engineering, and computer science. Many things have changed throughout my life, but one thing has remained constant. My love of learning about technology.

I go to high school every day (almost) because I want to learn. Really. I love learning. I am fed this idea that if I work hard in high school, I will go to a great college, and then be empowered to follow my dreams. Guess what? an acquaintance of mine had a perfect 5.0 GPA, did all the shit high school students need to do, and he didn't get into half the colleges he wanted to get into. Why? Because he did just that. He did all the SHIT that is expected. He had no creativity (I think), and no real passion to follow.

I am sitting here writing this post when I should be writing an English essay, but I'm not, because I think my original thought, and my ranting is more important than all the English essays in the world. Maybe I'm simply rebelling because I want to. I don't know. Yet these thoughts I am having are beginning to reoccur at a frightening clip. Something is wrong.

At heart, I am a technology enthusiast and a nature lover. I used to dream of living in a tree, flying in a hang glider over a rain-forest canopy, or maybe guiding a GPS controlled glider over the Sahara Desert. Nonetheless, I am stuck in a school, wasting my time. I don't need to know US History. I don't need to know how to plug in formulas, and I don't need to spend most of the time I could be learning something useful waiting for the lazy son-of-a-bitch of doesn't care about school, life, or possess a vision of the future. I am getting dragged down by the system, and pushed to my limits every day. Some may argue that a student should be pushed to his/her limits, but I say not to the limits of his patience.

Somewhere in my English classroom lies a quote that reads something like this: "one cannot learn under compulsion". That notion rings loud and true in my ears. Let me give you some examples. I know four computer programming languages. I know more about computers than practically anyone I have met. I have made like 10 websites. One of my websites is like iTunes, but a website. I can remember what HTTP, RAM, RAMDAC, MOSFET, mod 4 is, the length of a TCP packet, but I can't remember when Nixon was elected. Why because I was forced to learn about Nixon, but I wanted to learn about computers.

If every person followed his/her passion, the world would be a better place. There would be no more people who hate their jobs. Everyone would be doing what he/she likes to do. If you want to be an artist, become an artist, and do it so well, that you can make money off of it.

Unfortunately, I am still going to go to school. I can't afford to take the risk of breaking free. I want to, I really do, but the wise people who have outlived me keep me to keep on fighting. I will remember that one day I will be free. I need to endure through a swamp of death, and one day I will arrive in a paradise.



(No religious allusions were intended)