Josh Evnin

Gmail must have heard me blogging…as soon as I finished my last post I checked Gmail and found that it’s back up…karma.

Simply unacceptible. That’s just about all I have to say about that. Let me explain. Gmail has been down all morning. ALL MORNING. I use Gmail to access just about all of my email, and so I have had no access to my email all morning. Now, I realize that it’s Sunday, and it’s still early in the morning in California (where Google is based), but still. Are there not backups in place? Was this an expected failure period? Is there somewhere I can go to figure out why I can’t access my email? Is there tech support for me to contact? Could I have been warned? Can the error messages tell me something? Anything?

I’ll be really honest. I love Gmail when it’s working. It is by far the best email client/host combination I have ever used. My only problem is that it often doesn’t work. Most of the time it’s very temporary, but sometimes (like today) it is not. I realize that the system is still in Beta (being tested), so I shouldn’t expect perfection…but I should be able to check my email always.

The kicker to this whole shebang: the only reason I want to use Gmail this morning is so that I can send in an application to work at Google…

I think I’ve read just enough to know that it is time to go Mac. I’ll be looking into getting an iBook as soon as I get paid back for the trip to Oregon, within the next few days. Anybody want a brand new IBM T42? I would say it’s sparkly clean, except for the fact that it’s brand new in the box, so I wouldn’t know.

What’s the difference between Mac and Apple? I’ve asked this of many, but it doesn’t seem that anyone has the answer. My hypothesis is that Mac is the hardware (unless specified otherwise, i.e. Mac OS) and apple is the brand. So software titles are preceded by the word Apple (such as Apple Pages) while the computers themselves are called Macs. Am I right? Perhaps I’ll know soon enough.

I’m doing some usability testing today. It should be fun. Designing usability experiments is, or at least can be, very challenging. Sometimes you want to know more than “Is this button placed in the right spot?” or “Does the user understand how to print this document?” We wanted to ask something more like, “Is there sufficient user buy-in for this product?” and “Does the user think this system does things better than in in its analog equivalent?” Hard questions to answer, especially when you’ve only got 30 minutes to burn and a paper prototype to work with. We did some informal testing last weekend, and it went alright…but I’m still not sure we’ll be getting the information we really want.

Running is still going well. I went a whole 4.33 miles yesterday, if you haven’t already noticed. It was on a treadmill, and therefore dreadfully boring, but a cold front has moved into town. I’m not down with running in really cold or snowy weather…just don’t have the clothes for it.

Did you notice the runGrapher on the left of the screen? It was donated by Erik, and I thank him big time for it. I’ll add some more functionality in a bit…but for now it just shows you the relative distances of my last 5 runs. If you can think of some upgrades, let me know and I’ll think about adding them in (and actually do so when I get the time).

There are damn near a million books I want to read and projects I want to work on right now. Mostly, I’d like to build a prototype of the software concept a team I was on created in my third year of college. It is used for photo organization, and I think we did an exceptional job, but none of us had programming experience. Now that I know a little bit about Flash, perhaps I can mock it up. Actually, I’ll probably be using to help me get to know Flash better, because I’m not as comfortable with it as I would like to be…

Ok, I’ve gotta get up and get out. Piece.

If my worst days are like today, then I think I’m doing just fine. The two effectors: Flat tire on the car & getting locked out of the house. The latter was my fault, the former a freak accident…

Went for a run this early afternoon. I had planned my day perfectly…my run was to be 45 minutes long, giving me just enough time to shower, eat, and make it to school right on time for my 1:30 meeting. I was on my way, about 1/4 mile away from home when all of a sudden my right ankle started giving out. “Crap” was all I could think. I’ve been working so hard not to injure my knee, then all of a sudden my ankle is in major pain. I walked back to the house, convinced that my pain was due to the fact that I was wearing ankle socks, causing major coldness. As I walked past my car, I realized that the rear passenger tire was completely flat. Upon inspection, I noticed that there was a big metal slab jammed into the top of the tire (foul play?). I went in, put on some longer socks, and headed back out to change the tire, mad that I wouldn’t get my full run. I changed the tire (all by myself, there’s a first time for everything 🙂 and headed back out for my run. It was an ok run…though shorter than I would have liked. I’ll make up for it tomorrow. Longer socks totally did the trick, still injury free.

When I got back from the run, I turned the door knob only to realize that I was locked out with no cell phone and no one inside. Luckily, I was able to find a way to break in to the house. It was much easier than I would have expected, which is *really really* scary. I was able to shower and eat and get to school only 5 minutes late, which is good considering all the mishaps.

So now I’ll have to buy a new spare tire. Big woop. Hopefully it won’t be too expensive. I guess it’s better to have a tire pop in your driveway than when you’re driving on it. The funny thing is that I just filled my tires with air yesterday…could I have messed it up somehow? Who knows…

I think my most recent project is going well. We finished the bulk of our 3-5 page single spaced paper today. From here on it will be rewording and reworking, just to make things sound good (and right).

I’ve really been thinking about the Contextual Design process lately…it’s what I have been bred on. It’s in my roots. It just feels right. In every other project I have worked on, I have gone in to the idea generation phase with a relatively blank slate. My designs are creative, but I just have not been at all comfortable with them. After doing Contextual Inquiry and modeling, I feel really comfortable in generating ideas. I feel like I’ve deserved the right to create human-centered designs. I think it comes down to the fact that I’m a really visual person. If I can look at human behavior, then strip it down into its smallest pieces by way of external representations, then I am more likely to understand the real problems at hand. But maybe I’m just not thinking deeply enough. Perhaps I’m not opening myself up to other lines of thought.

Is it really true that one should play their weaknesses in school? Should I drop the things I know and head blindly into the unknown? Or maybe I can play my strengths and burrow further into the intricacies of cognition and design. Do I go for breadth or depth? I need to answer these questions for myself. All I’m saying is that I never truly realized exactly what it meant to be an HCI/Designer with a Cognitive Science background until I gave my Distributed/External Cognition talk last week. It didn’t go well for a few reasons:

1. I had not thoroughly prepared the material. This was due in large part to the fact that I decided to change my topic at the last minute.
2. I did not convincingly make my point. Probably because I’m a bit inexperienced at making presentations.
3. And finally, I think most of the members of the class do not think of design from the angle I do. This is due to the fact that they don’t have backgrounds similar to mine. I could have set up the presentation so that it would have been easier for a general audience to decipher…but failed to do so

I’ll have to figure out a way to have my cake and eat it too. There must be a way. There’s no reason that I shouldn’t be able to focus on aspects of cognition while acquiring the breadth of knowledge that I would like to have. I can do it, because “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog gone it…people like me.”

Ah…Graduate School…

It’s been too long since I’ve written a good blog entry. Sorry about that. Now it’s too late for me to promise a good one for this evening, but I’ll write a little bit anyway.

Party at our house tomorrow. We’re celebrating E’s GF, N, being in town. That was far too many abbreviations/acronyms for my liking. “Make Your Own Pizza Night,” take 2. It was awesome the first time…great food, great fun. This time Ja, K, and I are going to try to create a Cuban Black Bean Pizza, just like at Avers. Mmmm…it’s just so good. Who’da thunk that pesto sauce and black beans would be such an awesome combination for a pizza. Not me. It’s delicious. If you’re in Bloomington, you’re invited (you’re invited if you’re not in B-Town as well, but it will likely be more difficult for you to get here).

Saw a great thing today. Saw a professor who was worried that his class isn’t going as planned. Saw a professor admit to his mistakes. Saw a professor point out that it was also the fault of the students. Saw myself inspired to do great(er) work. Wish I saw more professors that are forward thinking like this. Many teachers/researchers in HCI/Informatics/Related Fields really think they are forward thinkers. Listen, just because you’re in this field doesn’t make you a forward thinker. In order to claim that title you must be proactively not living in the past. That cannot be said for all in this field. That is all I have to say about that.

Tired, if you couldn’t tell. Piece.

So I came in to school yesterday morning to have a meeting and get some work done, when I was told that the Internet was down. “Whaaat!?” I said, astonished. The professor I was meeting with had to reschedule the meeting, but his aide was unable to see his schedule, because there was no internet. I decided I would just go back to my office and start up on my work, when I realized it was all on the ‘net. Sure, I could load things onto my USB key, but uploading it somewhere always seems more convenient to me for some reason. I was relatively shell-shocked, and surprised that I put myself in a position where I could not do anything because I was completely cut off from all my work (not to mention my main source of entertainment). Luckily, I had grading to do, and the professor requires the students to turn their work in on paper (which I found annoying at first), so I was able to get that done.

The thing that was really astonishing was that work must have stopped all across campus because of this internet interruption. I cannot imagine being one of the technicians trying to restore the system. Their phones must have been ringing off the hook. I’m sure professors were unable to give lectures (because their powerpoints were on the network), and many meetings were unsuccessful.

The repurcussions of losing the internet are severe, as yesterday’s “experiment” showed. If that sucker were to be destroyed, we’d all be in some big trouble. But what to do? Do I (and those around me) stop depending on the net? Probably not, but let’s just hope it never goes down indefinitely.

The original internet was developed by the U.S. Military in the late 1960s as an information transport system that was not vulnerable to single attacks. That is, it was a network built such that destroying one of its communication nodes would not cut off the entire system. This was obviously a Cold War effort to protect ourselves from devastating atomic bomb attacks. So why did the Internet die at Indiana University yesterday? I thought these computer systems were able to come up with their own work-arounds. I’m just full of questions…perhaps someone can explain this to me…