It\’s a learning experience when one of your clients accuses you of not knowing the scenario even though she never gave us the scenario.

I am heading to Norfolk, VA tomorrow. A nice long 7+ hour car ride.

I can\’t believe how many times I have gotten sick this year. As I flew from Portland to Pittsburgh, my pseudo-cold got progressively worse. By the time we landed in a near empty airport of Pittsburgh, my face had turned into mush. Maybe it\’s because I have a lack of sleep.

I\’ll miss the West Coast. Visiting Portland makes me certain that I will return to the LEFT part of the country. Ultimately though, isn\’t it all about the people you\’re with?

Having an inner child is so much fun. Especially when you have a $2000 toy to play with. *cough* I have never been in a car where we purposefully ram into snow…just for kicks.

I noticed that I like to know why things happen rather than what things are.

I like conferences. You get to meet so many people from the area you\’re passionate about. And you also get to meet the crazier ones. Yesterday, I met a guy who wore this head-worn display during the three days at CHI. He looked so dorky and so nerdy, but he fit just right in!

The closing speaker was Michel Waisvisz from the Netherlands. He did this awesome \”music\” performance, using a variety of recorded sounds and noises at different pitches and volumes. Personally, to me, it sounded like a movie soundtrack. But then that\’s what music really is…to evoke some sort of emotion, to remember a time. Like the true definition of art? But my first thought was whether the older people in the audience hated the screeching and loud bass. What was interesting though was how he wanted to keep musical instruments…\”hard to play\”, a philosophy truly against HCI. In HCI, we are always trying to make everything easy to use. And Michel believed that this took away from the music–that you would never know how to play an instrument if it is only constantly improved. Playing music is a skill. Yet, what if musical instruments underwent all the methods and several iterations of redesign. Would it end up still as an instrument? Ultimately, it seems that we want to make everything automatic, but that takes away from the emotional connection. So that is why the piano has so many keys that we cannot reach. And how people take years to master an instrument. It\’s not just elitism, but also the progression of art.

Also Michel liked touching electricity. Someone asked how many times he has gotten shocked. \”Cannot remember,\” he replied.

So CHI 2005 ended. Over 1900 people attended! 1/3 of which were students! CHI 2006 is in Montreal next year. And I\’ll be there.

So there are graphical user interfaces.

Then there are tangible user interfaces.

Now how about edible user interfaces?

So one paper at alt.CHI was about a guy\’s project in EUIs. How the processing speed of eating jelly beans could create an interface that promoted user interaction…and taste.

One person in the audience asked, \”So how do you integrate Fitt\’s Law with this EUI?\”

And the author basically said, \”Well, if you have small targets, you eat them really fast. But beware, larger targets will have much slower processing power because they\’ll take awhile to eat.\”

If you\’re not HCI, you won\’t get why this was so great!

At the Oregon Convention Center. Outside the Starbucks inside. Using the Internet provided here, with only 500 ports available. Underneath the dragonboat. Wearing my CHI nametag with a CMU lanyard. Ready for the open plenary. And the Large Communities paper and the urban prope papers. And the urban pac-man. And the visual interface while swimming.

A tip from the fitness coordinator at CMU: \”A 200-pound person who starts walking a mile and a half a day and keeps on eating the same number of daily calories will lose, an average, 14 pounds in a year.\”

Normal people are never that consistent!

So the most common topic I have discussed in the last week is: the weather

I am currently in Portland, Oregon CHI, the computer human interaction conference. The city is so clean!!! I think I could live here too…

I take too many pictures of people! After seeing it from my Berkeley friends\’ point, I tend to focus too much on taking pictures of people I know at CMU–capturing the moment rather than the environment of the moment. Sure, you see all these faces of people you don\’t know, but are you interested in them? You want to know how it\’s like. You want to know how the experience is like. You don\’t really want to know who is in there.

There are two types of people:
– those who want to know the reasons behind things
– those who want to know what those things are

So it was great visiting all these people in Berkeley. Coincidentially, two other alumni also showed up too…all today! I walked into Rescomp and suddenly people were surprised and said, \”HEEEYYY! JENNNNN!!\” Admittingly, it is so different from walking into the CMU office. There, it\’s more focused, it\’s so team-based. But at rescomp, when I walk in, it\’s more male-dominated, there\’s a need to good off, a need to race in the chairs, a need to blast the music as loud as possible. But these two places which I probably will miss when I am gone…both have a famous couch where people sleep overnight.

I didn\’t get to walk through the campus, but stayed mostly Southside and went to Foothill. People are younger, but despite that, everything is the same. The new buildings are up at Unit 1 and Unit 2. I passed by my old apartment building, still ugly as ever. And it was 60 degrees. So hot.

Another memory of Berkeley: I brought one of my gay friends with me to an outing with my conservative girl friends once. He was bored and looking for something to do. The entire time, he treated me as he usually did–jabbing me, yelling my name whenever I did something abnormal (which is quite often), putting his arm around me…etc. The next day, my girl friends asked me if he was my boyfriend.

I am in California now. No joke!