Josh & Rachel at Venice Beach

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Hope you have a great 24th!

Wow, Planet Informatics is quite active these days. Way to go, y’all. Let’s see how long this one can last at the top of the stack…

For the last week and a half or so, I’ve been writing my Capstone paper, the paper that is meant to sum up a year worth of work in a way that would be acceptable at an academic conference. Now, I’m not totally sure why it has to be conference acceptable, but that’s beside the point. I’ve been completely uninspired in my writing, and so for the moment, at least, I’ve given up.

Keep in mind, the only thing that stands between me and the official completion of my Master’s degree is this paper. 5-10 pages should be no problem. I’ve done it a million times, and this time I actually know what I’m talking about. So why can’t I just write the damn paper? Great question.

I’ve tried a lot of my old writing tricks:

• Write constantly throughout the course of the project, this will help summarize things in the end
• Organize all the materials that will need to be referenced
• Make a semi-detailed outline
• Don’t write it all in a sitting, set aside “chunks” of time to fill in bits and pieces
• Don’t worry too much about editing until the end

I remember when I was a little kid my dad would edit my papers, and every once in a while he would call me over while he was reading it and say, “Josh, what’s on your mind? It looks like you’re not so focused on this essay…” Generally he’d be right. I’d go back and make major revisions, and the paper would be better for it.

Right now I know my mind is on other issues: Moving, Employment, “New” life, my first real break in a long time, summer trips.

I’ll get to my paper in the next few days, I know. I just need to find a way to focus my attention on it…

So I’m in the process of packing my room. This is always a rather booooring, slow, tedious, yet insightful process. I get to go through all my stuff and realize that there are many things that I own that I never ever interact with, ever. Except when I’m preparing to move them.

I just came across all of my most important notes from college. The notes and quizzes and exams and everything else that got me through my undergrad Cognitive Science education. I rarely look at these notes anymore (though I have used them, on occasion). The only thing is, they fill half of a large box and are quite heavy. So I’m left to wonder, do I REALLY need these notes anymore?

The obvious answer is Probably Not…but I think it’s a tougher answer than just that. I get so attached to the work I do…to simply throw it in the trash seems wrong. For years I kept my scribbles and notes from elementary school, junior high, and high school in 2 huge boxes in an extra room at my home. I think my mom finally got fed up with them and threw them out. That was fine by me…probably because I had no choice, had plenty of time to part with them, and their purpose had been served. (My goal was to keep notes so my younger sister could get extra help in a subject if she needed…I think she might have looked at my Calculus notes, but I could be wrong.)

I’ve packed my CogSci notes into the box, but who knows if they’ll end up making this move. How can I just leave all my CogSci knowledge in a box in the trash?

As you probably know, I’ve been working for the past few days on a tool that will make it easy for people to download their images from Flickr. I think an official *beta* version is just about ready.

NOTE: To those of you who have already used the tool, be advised that there is a new URL

Check out FlickrDownloadr

So I played around a little more with the Flickr program I started yesterday. Now you can view and download the images you view, all with a single button click.

Instructions: Go to the page, enter the username, choose the number of images you’d like to see, and the size of the images. Wait for the images to download, then click the link on the upper right of the screen. This will download your images as a .zip file. Pretty cool, I know. This makes it really easy to backup your flickr photo collection.

Check it out!

This evening I took some time out to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I played with Flickr’s API for interacting with photos using PHP. I invite you to check out what I made. It’s not all that impressive, but still, it was fun to make…and maybe soon I’ll actually build something useful!

Check it out

P.S. An example username to try it with is: josh.ev9

I somehow managed to lose my sunglasses in the past few weeks. I’m not really sure where they might have gone, but if you happen across a pair of Quicksilver Eddie sunglasses with a black frame and grey lenses, they’re probably mine. Right in time too…I could really use some sunglasses right about now.

So you know that period of time between taking sleep inducing pills and actually falling asleep? Yeah, that’s where I am right now. It’s quite exhilerating. It’s great because I’m just waiting for that moment when my body simply wants needs to konk out…but I’m not there yet. I don’t know why this is so exciting, but it is. You’re probably thinking that I have a pretty boring life, and perhaps you’re not wrong, but still, this is too much fun not to mentcahl;k;nnm sleeeeeeeeep

Harshua

Originally uploaded by jjdonald.

Pretty much sums up the CHI06 experience. Now I’m tired and a little sick and not very excited about returning to work in the morning. Still, should be an exciting week…next week at this time I’ll be a Master.

Thanks to Jurstin for taking this picture.

Woot. Fixed the blog…it had me worried for a while, but it turned out to be pretty easy. Anyway, back to my conference, and back to your day.