HCI - Final Presentations

Winter quarter classes ended today. For our final Human Computer Interaction (HCI) class, we had our three design teams present our quarter-long projects for a group of industry people (T-Mobile, Google, and Microsoft were all present).

The three projects were:
Panlingual Mobile Camera - Translator for your cell phone.
Don't Forget - Never forget stuff again.
Cluster - Social networking on crack.

My group's poster.

Microsoft Event

Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of Windows and Windows Live, came to UW today to give a talk about Microsoft Office 2007. Unlike most other industry presentations at UW, this one was actually interesting. He talked about the progression of Microsoft Word from version 1 in 1989 to Word 2007 now. He also talked about stuff like the huge amount of statistical data they get from users about which toolbar buttons in Word they click, and how they used the data in designing Word 2007's new ribbon interface to put the top 80% clicked buttons on the Home tab. Not only did Steven's presentation captivate the audience, he also managed to spin some loaded questions (i.e. Open Office, format compatibility, Word annoyances) to put Microsoft in a positive light.

And what's an industry event without prizes? 7 copies each of Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Ultimate were given away, as well as a laser mouse and a Zune. Although I didn't win any of these big prizes, I did manage to snag a T-shirt.

Which turned out to be very wrinkly.

21st Birthday

For my 21st bithday, I decided to go to the Ram with some friends. The plan was to drink some beer, get a free dinner since it was my birthday, and have a good time. Little did I know, there would be a series of setbacks to thwart my plan.

Good So Far
I went to the Ram with my friend Kevin Chiu and my roommate Torri. I hear you need at least three people to have a proper party so we were all set. The parking lot was crowded, but we managed to get a good spot by waiting for a woman to leave. We arrived at around 4:30, before it got terribly busy, so we waited less than 5 minutes to get seated.

The First Setback
It was time to order drinks. Torri ordered coffee and Kevin ordered Sprite. I ordered the beer sampler (6 different 3oz beers for $3). I showed my driver's license to the waiter. He looked at it awhile, wished me a happy birthday, and then said he couldn't accept it since it expired today. I thought he was joking. I asked the waiter how my license expiring today could possibly affect the date of my birth. He replied it was their policy not to accept expired identification and said I would have to talk to their manager. I decided not to pursue the matter further. After all, I had already waited 21 years, another few days isn't going to hurt.

So I ordered coke instead. Kevin asked them to serve it to me in a beer glass, but it just wasn't the same.
The Second Setback
I had a hankering for some shrimp, so I ordered cod and shrimp. When the food arrived however, my shrimp were nowhere to be found. I turns out the waiter thought I had ordered fish and chips. After I informed him about the mistake, he brought my shrimp on the side.

The Third Setback
When the bill arrived, I was expecting my dinner to be free. When it wasn't, I asked the waiter about the free dinner on your birthday promotion. The waiter said they had free mud pie on your birthday, not free dinner. I asked to talk to the manager, but he told me the same story. This couldn't be right I thought. The first time I had eaten at the Ram, my friend got free dinner since it was his birthday.

I remembered the email I got when I signed up for the Ram's MVP Club said something about free dinner on your birthday. Unfortunately, I hadn't printed it. Luckily, there was an Apple store right next door. So I grabbed my camera, and literally tripped over myself while running over there. I went online, brought up the email, and took a picture of it with my camera. I came back and showed the email to the manager, but he still refused to give me a free meal.

All's Well that Ends Well
In the end we did get a mud pie that was absolutely enormous.
The manager also gave me a coupon good for $15 off my next visit.

ChinesePod

I recently discovered this awesome podcast for learning Chinese called ChinesePod. This podcast actually makes learning Chinese fun, or at least, as fun as learning Chinese can be. The hosts are great, and the lessons are on interesting topics like pirated DVDs, love triangles, and infinitely recursive stories. There are lessons for each level of Chinese, from novice to advanced (I'm at the intermediate level).

Best of all it's free and there's no advertising in the podcasts. You can subscribe in iTunes for the latest episodes. You can also get the first 500 episodes via bittorrent.

Vista File Permissions

I tried creating a new file on my external hard drive and I was very confused when I got a message saying it failed. It turns out Vista sets the default file permissions to not allow modifications on external hard drives.

To fix this, you can:

• Right clicking on the drive to bring up the context menu and select Properties.
• Go to the Security tab.
• Click on Edit, which pops up a UAC dialog.
• And then edit the permissions.

Windows Movie Maker

I used Windows Movie Maker to make a few simple videos and I have to say, it's more useful than I expected. It's no Premiere Pro, but it has just about all the features that I need. You can import clips, splice them, reorder them, insert title slides, insert transitions, and add video effects.

Dashed Dreams

I got all the parts I needed (CPU heatsink, case bottom, processor) for the pinmod on Saturday.

CPU Heatsink + Fan

Case Bottom

Processor

Saturday night, I took apart my laptop, replaced the bottom case, CPU heatsink and fan. Then I tried out the new processor at stock - no problems. Then I tried the pinmod, and ran it at stock voltage. It managed to boot, and I was very excited when I saw this:


That's the (Basic Input/Output System) BIOS detecting the processor running at 2.40GHz, a very good sign. Unfortunately, this would be the first and last time I would see this screen. Every other time I tried booting the computer, it would freeze during (Power On Self Test) POST. I even tried voltmodding the processor, but it didn't help.

I'm a little disappointed, but I was kind of expecting this. I feel like one of the people that didn't win on Beauty and the Geek when they say something like "It's alright that I didn't win the money, because I got a great experience out of this that's worth more than any amount of money." I guess I'm happy just to have seen 2.4GHz in the BIOS and not to have damaged any components in the process.