25
Apr

The evolution of mice

By Jason 4 Comments
Categories: Supposedly substantial stuff, Tech Fix and Apple

The evolution of mice

I get a kick out of shopping for computer accessories the way many of my friends do when they shop for clothes. And I have a special thing for mice, USB hubs, and laptop coolers. A history of my mouse purchases (from left to right):

Logitech MouseMan Traveler It had a sleek, attention-catching design that had people asking me (back in 2003) where they could get one, too. It served me well while using a temporarily-assigned HP laptop and later when I got my own PowerBook. It’s still around, and works just as well as the day I bought it. I used it from early 2003 to late 2006.

Logitech V500 Even sleeker, and more high tech. The “expanding chassis,” the touch-sensitive scroll “pad” in place of the scroll wheel, and the cool built-in hiding place for the RF receiver drew as much attention and the same question as the MouseMan Traveler. I used it from late-2006 until early 2008.

Logitech VX Nano I bought this, I must admit, because I wanted a black wireless mouse to go with my new black MacBook. This is a laser mouse, and it doesn’t have the irritating red-flashlight-like feature of optical mice. The RF receiver is amazingly tiny, and I am more comfortable using a traditional scroll wheel instead of the fancy-touch touchpad of the V500. This one is a keeper. Until the next laptop purchase, of course.

21
Apr

Rebooting into teacher mode

By Jason 8 Comments
Categories: Academia, Supposedly substantial stuff, Teaching and Tech Fix

Electronic index cards

The transition from researcher-with-a-3-month-old-dissertation-deadline to teacher-with-a-hectic-summer-load wasn’t as painful as I initially feared. I had greeted the news of what my summer load would be — one class (Business Writing), 2 sections (60 students in all), 4 days a week (3 hours a day) —with a loud sigh. But as I began reviewing notes and slides and revising them to suit the compressed summer schedule, I actually began to look forward to standing in front of a class again to deliver lectures and lead discussions, especially after a seven-month break to concentrate on research. The highs and lows of a week’s worth of classes so far have been the following:

  • High: It’s stimulating to lecture in front of a class. You’re really in your toes, alert for any kind of reaction (Are they getting bored? Am I going too fast?) and adjusting your teaching technique on the fly to suit the circumstances of that particular morning. It certainly beats reading page after boring page of journal articles.
  • High: I feel good when someone comes up to me to say “I learned something today.” That single comment always makes me feel that the three hours worth of preparation and three hours of class time was worth it.
  • Low: This is a writing class, and so there are a lot of writing exercises that need to be corrected; I also want to give detailed feedback for each student, but there’s just so little time to do that.
  • Low: Students who are distracted (often they are looking at a laptop screen and smiling or giggling) distract me. A lot. But I don’t want to waste a single second thinking about it, because it breaks my concentration, and brings down the energy level of the class.

For this summer’s course, I’m also trying out a couple of neat, teach-oriented tricks:

  • Posting announcements on a public site. For this course I’m using Google Sites, but the so far it’s been problematic. Some students have complained that they couldn’t open the subject’s home page, and the features are too basic. I would like a site where I can restrict access to just the students in my class, so that there’s a measure of privacy when I post quiz scores and class standings. Maybe next sem I’ll try PBwiki.
  • Using “electronic” index cards. I need to review index cards with students’ basic information frequently because I am really bad at names and faces. But I want the index cards accessible all the time. And so I’m experimenting with an electronic version that I keep in a folder on my virtual desktop to substitute the paper ones that I used to use and keep in an envelope that was always on my real desktop. The recipe for this experiment requires a small digicam, Pixelmator (or some other “Photoshop-lite” type of program), and the Cover Flow feature in Mac OS 10.5. The results have been really neat, and spinning the mouse wheel to simulate a tambiolo-spin when calling someone to recite adds an element of suspense and excitement to the class.
13
Apr

The week of whine and resolutions

By Jason 6 Comments
Categories: Academia, Supposedly substantial stuff and Cubicle chronicles

Whiny mood

I was all set to put up a really whiny post early last week until a friend said that I shouldn’t be making a mountain out of a molehill. It all started with an email two weeks ago:
Assistant to one of the big bosses: Sir, do you have this program called Keynote and could xxxx have a copy?
I decided on a snarky answer: Yes, but the older version, and it’s not free. It costs $80, and I won’t give him a copy because I paid for my copy with personal funds.
Assistant: Oh, ok, thank you, sir.

One week later, my immediate boss send me an email:
Boss: What is this Keynote program that xxxx asked us to buy for him and does it really cost P5,000 plus?
Me: It’s one of three programs included in a suite called iWork 08 and the retail price is $80. I can ask a friend who sells the suite at his store what the discounted price is. BTW, I don’t recommend it because I know that xxxx already has MS Office, also paid for by the office, on his laptop, and iWork just duplicates those programs.

One day later:
Boss: So, what’s the lowest price you can get for it?
Me: Lowest price is an online purchase via credit card. Or, I can just ask my friend for a discount. Since I assume that the purchase is approved, can I ask for the same program for my use? It won’t duplicate anything since I don’t have MS Office on my laptop.
Boss: Sorry, but your laptop is not office-issued so we can’t buy any software for you.

At which point I let out a long and deep sigh, because the suckiest thing about the whole episode was that for three years in a row I asked for a laptop because I felt it would make me more productive, both in teaching and while traveling to attend classes and do research for my PhD, and got turned down three years in a row (“Your job description doesn’t require the use of a laptop.”). So I ended up spending a great deal of my own money on two laptops in five years, using it about 80% of the time for office work. And I can’t even get a little piece of software that costs less than 2% of what I’ve already spent, mostly for office work.

And then this post by Merlin Mann comes along, and warns me that “nobody likes a whiner” and that “it’s worthwhile to be mindful about the extent to which your internal monologue is becoming personally insufferable.” The money quote:

…perhaps more importantly, that whining should be telling you something. Whining is the white blue smoke in your tailpipe that lets you know you’re burning mental oil. It means you’re unconsciously devoting cycles to something that you can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t be spending time thinking about. Otherwise, why would it be bothering you, right? You’d be either extricated or done with it.

So indulge me a little bit so I can let off some steam and then put this tiny, non-issue behind me and just concentrate on getting as much work done as possible with what I already have — a nice new MacBook, a fairly quiet, corner cubicle and, on the average, very supportive co-workers.

There. I feel better already. Whining over, and lesson learned.

30
Mar

All about books

By Jason 0 Comments
Categories: Miscellaneous

A truncated summer reading list
Given the past year’s track record — just 5 books all in all, well short of the minimum of one book a month that I set as a personal lifetime target and a pitiful showing compared to the 26 books that some other PhD students managed last year — I’ve set very, very modest goals for this summer. Given my work load this summer (2 basic writing classes [3 hours a day, 4 days a week] and about 1,000 words a day for the dissertation’s last couple of chapters) maybe I shouldn’t even be setting myself a target. But I feel I’ll go crazy if I immerse myself in nothing but lectures and checking exercises and looking at tables and charts and statistical tests for the next two months. And so, I plan to turn this summer into the Pulitzer summer, with Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and David McCullogh’s Truman, as an audiobook.

“It’s Not You, It’s Your Books”
The opening paragraph of this New York Times essay got me to read the whole article right away.

Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”

Summer reading list, by the Sunday Inquirer Magazine
Good news: SIM has a long list of books recommended for summer reading, including a good number of works by local authors.
Bad news: The Inquirer web site sucks, and I could not find a link to today’s issue. You’ll have to pick up a paper copy to see the list. If anyone finds the web page, let me know and I’ll add the link.
EDIT: Here it is.

08
Mar

My name is Jason, and I’m a tech addict — not!

By Jason 7 Comments
Categories: Tech Fix, Supposedly substantial stuff, The Web, Miscellaneous, Palm and Apple

I got a lot of ribbing at home after this article appeared on the front page of the International Herald Tribune a few days ago. I defended myself by pointing out that I do take some sort of a “secular Sabbath” by keeping my laptop closed and powered down on Sundays and dedicating some extra time to reading a book instead of reading emails or RSS feeds.

All that ribbing was taken lightheartedly, of course, because some of the people I live with need a dose of light rays and electrons from the laptop screen first thing in the morning the way I need a cup of coffee to get my day started just right. They need a secular Sabbath more than I do.

Seriously, though, I ‘m intimately familiar with the idea he’s taken and run with. Except that I think he’s oversimplified the situation and has taken the radically opposite tack—cut loose form all electronic ties, sip some herbal tea, read a book or lie under a tree—as a solution. Except that it’s just a palliative, not a cure. Merlin Mann breaks down the problem better in this post on 43 Folders, and proposes a more permanent solution: change the culture of continuous connectivity. Make it a point to carve out time for thinking, processing, reflection, each day. Disabuse our boss and co-workers of the notion that we will respond, immediately, to every email and every SMS that we receive. The comments on that post offer a lot of insight and suggestions on how to achieve that.

I don’t think we desperately need to unplug and commune with nature to get out life back. If doing that helps one take a step back and see things from a different perspective, fine. But if one can achieve a decent work-life balance and carve out enough time each day away from work, which does not necessarily mean away from every sort of technology, then one shouldn’t feel so harassed as to want to completely disconnect.

« Previous Entries

Reading: Michael Chabon

21/04/08 7 comments

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

I seem to have gone overboard in my attempt to get to know Michael Chabon’s work. I knew of him only tangentially, as the author of the book (Wonder Boys) on which the movie where a pre-Spiderman Tobey Maguire received a lot of attention was based. Then I picked up Summerland and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay when they were on sale last September, and thought “What the heck; he’s a Pulitzer-prize winning novelist so I should be in safe, albeit unknown, hands.” Then the reviews of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union were so overwhelmingly positive I ordered the book from Amazon (at about half the price it was going for at National Bookstore), and now I’ve asked a friend who just left for the US to bring back a copy of Maps and Legends. All these before reading a single page of any of his work.

I’m happy to report that I’m now I’m two chapters into Kavalier and Clay, and I’m hooked. So far, it looks like it will really have been worth it hunting down and ordering his books just on a hunch.

Blow Fly

21/03/08 7 comments

Blow Fly, by Patricia Cornwell

Well, Special Topics in Calamity Physics turned out to be a mixed bag. The prose was fantastic, refreshing, and witty, and it was always a pleasure to read it even as the plot developed ever so slowly over more than 700 pages. The ending was a let-down, in my opinion, and left me with a ”Huh? What just happened?” expression on my face when I finished the book.

After STCP, I decided to read Patricia Cornwell’s Blow Fly; reading a Kay Scarpetta book is like eating Chickenjoy — a familiar, comforting, and completely predictable experience. Blow Fly was a relatively quick read — just under two weeks, compared to the five months or so it took me to read STCP. It got middling reviews from most readers but I enjoy every Kay Scarpetta book; it’s part of a forensic pathology universe that I bought into beginning with Quincy ME and which now continues with CSI and CSI New York.

I was choosing between Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini as my next read, and Brian pushed me in the direction of Kite Runner. Unfortunately, my copy is missing — disappeared into the ether. While I racked my brain trying to remember who had borrowed it, I bumped into Butch Dalisay while I was in UP briefly last week, and remembered that I had recently unearthed a copy of Penmanship while I was cleaning my cubicle a few weeks ago. It will tide me over the next couple of weeks while I try and recover the missing Kite Runner.

Reading: First Among Sequels

14/01/08 0 comments

First Among Sequels

I finally got to reading the fifth Thursday Next book. So far it’s been a blast, like re-connecting with an old friend I haven’t seen in some time. I liked both of Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime novels but I missed Thursday Next. That accident with the laptop has done wonders for my book-reading habit ;-)

Reading: WIRED, Esquire September 2007 issues

25/09/07 0 comments

WIRED September 2007

Esquire September 2007

WIRED’s cover story is the new HALO 3 game for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has all my nerd friends salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. Looks like a cool game; too bad I never got into computer games beyond the Game and Watch era.

I’ve only leafed through the Esquire issue, but the article that immediately caught my attention is Luke Dittrich’s feature on how a sting operation by a crusading TV show goes horribly wrong. I think it provides a glimpse at the future of Philippine TV if the SSS formula (yes, I just coined that, and it means “sensatonalist sex and showbiz” formula) isn’t junked at some point soon.

READING: WIRED, July 2007 issue

17/08/07 4 comments

WIRED July 2007

Even though my subscription copy of WIRED arrives about a month late and all the articles that appear in the print version — and then some — are available on the web site, I much prefer to wait for and read the print version. Magazines and books, for me, have as much to do with emotion as with information. That’s why I never picked up the habit of reading long documents on a computer screen, or on my PDA or phone. The paper, design and layout, typography, and sometimes even the ink used make each issue, each story, unique, and the experience never translates well into a web page. After a few clicks, every page begins to look like the previous one, and that takes much of the fun out of reading.

The same is true for books, although only to a limited extent. A well designed cover and elegant but easy-to-read type enrich the experience of reading a book; on a PDA or eBook screen, each page of each book looks exactly the same as all the other pages, and where’s the fun in reading something like that?

Recommended reading: Chip Kidd at Esquire.com on How to Make People Buy Books