Who cares?

It is obvious to say I have been pretty tied up these past few days.
Last weekend was the most trying one in terms of balancing social life/responsibilities and phd work. You'd think that of course PhD work should and would come first, but lo and behold the power of peer pressure! At this age I thought I'd never have to worry about that anymore but... here I was. I felt like kicking and screaming, but I still did what I was expected to do. Simply because I was too much of a scaredy cat and was worried about what others might think if I didn't participate or do my share of the work (as the association's secretary--not by choice, mind you)... So, I ended up leaving my PhD work and assignments deprive of the love and care they needed.
Don't get me wrong, they are good people but the timing for socializing activities can be off at times. If you don't control yourself, all of your available free time can be filled up with social activities. Not that it is such a bad thing, but too much of something is always not a good thing. Especially now that everyone's supposedly busy with the semester starting (actually, most of them don't seem to have a problem juggling their busy time between PhD work and socializing which adds to the pressure to conform!)

Ok, I shouldn't spend too much time whining when I should be continuing my assignment. I have to do an interim report on the topic allocated to me: Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). Academic writing is hard. I find myself struggling to express myself even when it's just suppose to be a simple explanation. Mainly, I worry about plagiarism and whether I am saying it right. For example, it took me nearly an hour just to come up with this:

Virtual Environment (VE) usually refers to a computer simulated, three-dimensional (3D) environment in which user can interact with. With the advancement of computer performance, broadband technology and networked settings in the recent years, physically distributed users now have better support to connect and interact real-time with one another in this virtual environment. This, otherwise known as Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE), expands the affordances that come with VE by allowing users to simultaneously share their experience in the constructed virtual space.

Somehow this darn blogspot doesn't allow me to copy and paste. I'm pretty sure I should be able to use cut & paste function in blogspot but I simply can't. Must be somewhere in my account setting-- which I couldn't be bothered to look into right now. But it was nice to be able to mindlessly type up something without having to worry about plagiarism as you're only copying your own self :)

I made up the last third sentence (in blue) as I typed. That was surprisingly fast considering how long it took for the first two ones. maybe it really does help to type it in a blog instead! Well, it should be what this blog was intentionally for anyways. To practice academic writing, I mean. Not to talk about personal life (too much) in a 'Dear Diary' way (which I have been doing!). :)

My research group member, Paul, came to test his work on me as he knows I do drawings. He's doing digital ink stuff (simply put, using tablet PCs to write/draw) and his focus was to provide a magnification feature that also allows user input/writing at the same time (quite cool). The people in my group are all programming whiz-zes. As if I'm not already intimidated by programming. ~_~

Oh, another link to share for today. When I'm writing, it has become my habit to always have encarta (electronic) dictionary with me. I just love its thesaurus. I used to have the software installed in PC back in Malaysia but I'd lost the installer. So now I just use the one online here. Hope that helps somebody.

19 Days left (!)

As you can guess, the title of this entry reflects the countdown for my aesthetics taxonomy presentation. No. I haven't done anything much. I feel like I should be screaming that but with loads of things going on now, I have no energy left to strongly feel about anything. Which I hope wouldn't be too bad of a thing. I used to worry a lot during my undergrads and masters but usually when I worry, things kind of fall into place. Probably because the worry makes me work harder (that's just might not be true, because I was worried sick for my interview with Nottingham University prior to coming here and it turned out that did suck :P).

Knowing that I'll be doing ****loads of presentations, my sweet husband gave me a useful link to graphical resources to use for my slides. I always say having a polished look or finish to the presentation itself helps to increase people's perception towards what you're presenting, in other words, 'mengaburi mata musuh' (you'd have to use google translate for that one, I have no energy to translate it properly from Bahasa melayu to English).

Here it is:
www.noteandpoint.com
(I'll post screencapture of the site when I have the time)
While browsing through that, I found this cool lecture slide :
www.slideshare.net/SamanthaWarren/educating-on-design-symposium

In 5 minutes time, my HCI class is going to start. We're going to have a guest lecture today and I anticipate the room to be packed. So I think I better leave.

Tsunami or Gempa Bumi

Monday yesterday was the starting of the second week of the semester. Since I am not from a computer science background, the university required that I take 2 computer science courses (one from graduate) as part of my provisional goals. My supervisor was kind enough to let me take both HCI courses (undergrad and graduate course) which she and Prof Robert are teaching.

In the first tutorial (tutored by my research group mate Adam :) ), we were first asked to get a designated piece of coloured paper representing our skillsets: programming, psychology & design (yeay, that's me!) and then get into groups of four, each to possibly have members representing all those skillsets. As predicted, there were many programmers and the very least was psychologists. In our group we only had me as the designer, the rest being programmers. The two (one and Indian Fiji guy and the other a chinese guy) were sitting in the same row with me so we simply grouped together. And another kiwi guy who joined the class a bit late and sat next to me so that made us four. It's been sometime since I have to do this sort of group work, and my last experience with being the only female in the group wasn't so pleasant (that was the only B subject I had for my Masters programme, luckily I still managed to get a distinction, otherwise I swear I'd strangle both guys who were in my group at that time!). I pray that this group would do well as I have to get a minimum of B+ for this provisional.

The first thing I noticed was the existence of an 'alpha male' in our group -- the Fiji Indian guy. The first impression I though he seemed like a nice guy to work with. But after several minutes his dominating personality starts to emerge. He didn't do it in an obvious way but you can tell the sort of person he is. So I am not surprise that he proposes the group to have a 'leader' (kau nak jadi leader la tu :P tak kuasanya aku dengan orang gila kuasa ni). Fortunately, since time was short, we haven't agreed on that yet. I tried to put my ego aside and go along with the discussion. I didn't even bother to tell them that I'm a PhD student as not to put any expectations or boundaries. But if at one time or another he starts to put me down in someway (out of gender-biasness or anything of the sort) I might just tell him off :P But let's just play nice as long as we can :)

--Gospend (gossip pendek :P)
Last weekend a representative from KPT came and we as MAPSA committee had to help organize the talk he wanted to have with the students here. Overall, everything went on kind of smoothly...except for us having quite an inconsiderate 'caterer'. We opened a tender to our members (read: other PhD students) who would want to make money and cater lunch for 100 people. We were thinking of doing it ourselves (amongst the committee) but decided against it due to the lack of time and experience. The only people who bid were ex-committee members and they had put the highest price possible. Ok. Fine enough considering it was an eleventh hour request. But their performance, Masya-Allah. Not only were they late (luckily the talk had also long exceeded the estimated time), they also expected us (the committee) to do most of the work. Being considerate (and ethical) is for me to think of others who were working for FREE versus you who are making money out of this and pull your weight to do your part. Halal in terms of rezeki should encompass all the things that you should be doing. Not to mention that they were also the ones who were among the first to eat the food (regardless if they are also members invited to the talk & lunch as well, but they're the caterer, that's just shameless!) and among the first to 'tapau' all the remaining food for themselves! Tsk tsk. They didn't even bother to help clean up, and worse still, have the decency to tell us that "The committees should be the ones washing the big food containers" (after scraping all the chickens and leaving us with just the gravies). What?? We had even helped carry all the trays up to the first floor and clear the place up, which I think a responsible caterer would do. And this coming from ex-committees who knew we were doing this for nothing, while they are actually making money out of it! Well, all I can say is Allah is fair. May Allah bestow awareness amongst them one day. But that should be the last time we'd ever hire them!
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I went to a short seminar (Paul Denny was doing a practice presentation for the 'CodeWrite-Supporting student-driven practice of Java' that he will be presenting at SIC-CSE this year. One of the things that caught my interest was the mentioning of 'drill and practice'. Which kind of makes me reflect on my first initial idea in doing game based learning. That was closer to my heart, I think, but there are also so many other doubts. Like how good am I in programming those things (as if I won't have to think of the same thing for my current project!). But like they say, there's always the occasional self-doubt in a PhD journey. As for now, with the tsunami of classes, assignments, seminars, taxonomy, work (part-time teaching I might do next week at Queen's) I just do not have time to fret about it. Life is right now facing one thing at a time in order the keep my sanity intact.

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21 Days to my aesthetics taxonomy presentation (!)

Missed yesterday

Oh, well. I anticipate there are going to be days where writing here would just slip out of my mind and schedule. But I wouldn't have thought it would be this soon (it's supposed to be only the third entry, and I missed it already!). I had classes morning and noon yesterday. Then I spent the evening downloading more papers from IEEE explore. I found a new way of filtering through what I am downloading based on this Literature review book I had borrowed from the library earlier. Since the semester has started, lots of books that I am currently borrowing is being recalled (crap!). A good thing about that was that it made the 'kiasu' me try to feverishly read through as much as I can before returning them. Otherwise, they would just be sitting on my table.

This is a screencapture of how I did it in excel (at the same time storing them in EndNote):

I tried uploading the image a few times but it seems that blogspot would compress it and make it hard to see the details. Basically, the headings are:

1. Database (e.g. IEEE, ACM, etc)
2. Keyword search (in my case I typed '*sthetics' since some people spell aesthetics while others esthetics).
3. Journal/Conference (the name of the conference, so that I know where to publish my kind of paper later on)
4. Rank (of the conference- to evaluate the quality of the paper)
5. Result (The title of the paper)
6. Author (just so that I start remembering names!)
7. Date (of when I did this search)
8. Page searched (e.g.'25 pg 1' means I am viewing 25 search result at IEEE and this was found in the first page/first 25 of the search result)

I just want to make sure I've searched through all the important databases (at this time it's IEEE) before I start reading them (which I already should be doing!). I may have to sift through ACM, Lecture Notes on Computer Science (Springer-Link) and probably ScienceDirect again as the last time I did it I didn't use this excel sheet, I simply chuck them into EndNote.

Oh, look at the time. I have another class in 25 minutes. What Joy.

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25 Days more to my Aesthetics taxonomy presentation

Keeping the pace

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about dieting (like this blog, amongst my many attempts right now :P) and we got into Blood type diet. Since my blood type was B, I got to know the list of food I should not and should be taking from the Internet. So this morning, since our supply at home has depleted anyways, we went grocery shopping. That is, after MDH decided to go to the airport for his MacPro clearance (I sent his used one when I was in Malaysia last week via DHL). It's no fun not being able to buy (nor EAT) the food you love.. like chicken! Oh how I love chicken! But at least I get to eat salmon and lamb. We'll see how it goes.

As for work, I was only able to arrive at my office at about 3 (after cooking lunch for my boys). Was thinking of downloading more papers from IEEE on aesthetics. I am really wayyy back of schedule. sigh. At 4-5pm I had my second Advanced in HCI lecture that I had to attend (it is part of my provisional goals set by the university). I came back and just about to get back to work when it's time for Asr prayers. Met a few friends and went back up after seeing how it's getting dark. I hate it that summer's nearing to an end. It's great to have sunset at nearly 9pm and being able to work until then. But it was only 7.50 and the sun was already setting. I went back up to my office hoping to be able to sneak a few more papaers in the list.. BUT after (instead) chatting with a few friends online (it would be rude to ignore when people say Hi, aye?) I am now supposed to already head back home! Haha.. what a productive day this is!

Better luck tomorrow, I hope.
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27 days more to go before my presentation on my aesthetics taxonomy.

Hello World.

So this would be.. well actually my second (or is it the third? probably the fourth..) attemp to write a blog in regards to multitude aspects of my phd. After attending a workshop on 'Writing intensive for Advanced (Research) Paper' course last 12th of February I was determined to freewrite each and everyday. Well... It's not as easy as it seems. There's always something coming up which will push this freewriting exercise at the bottom of today's to-do list. Another thing is probably because I can be quite a perfectionist when it comes to writing and always ended up wasting too much time editing whatever I've written. So it makes writing a blog's a chore! This time around, I will try to just freewrite, pure and simple. (though there will of course be the occasional 'delete'-ing and 'backspace'-ing but I try to refrain from overdoing it!

I'm going to also try to do this (nearly) everyday. Because:

1. I promised my colleagues before I came here to do so... mainly to inform them of how's life living here in NZ (should they decide to come in the future), and what doing a PhD is like.




2. I told my supervisor and research group that I'd freewrite everyday.. but it should be reflecting the liteature I've read, not simply everyday life stories :P but this is a good start, I think :)




3. My dearest good friend kak nurul has started the exercise herself in her own blog, and I promise her to do the same too.
   

These three reasons seem to only be promises to other people... but for my own self, I knew doing this would help make me write more fluently (is there such thing as fluently writing? There must be a better word for it, but I just couldn't be bothered to look it up or recall right now! Kindly comment if you do, though)

So now it is already noon. Yesterday, a close friend of mine who has submitted her thesis at Birkbeck (University of London) and is now waiting for her viva this coming april, had had a chat with me on YM. Being her typical resourceful and generous self, she had shared a link to a good book on understanding taxonomy and typology. I was trying to find whether it's availbale on University of Auckland's library or the city library. Apparently not. There's one on sale online at the nile for $32.99 and I was contemplating on purchasing it. So far there's already so many books on my table from the library and it is collecting dust :P (much like the exercise machine back at home..haha). I know this book would be useful but I think I need to thoroughly check whether there's anyway I can access it for free before rushing off to buy one, considering our not so luxurious financial status right now. (My husband must be so proud of shopaholic me!)

Ok.. I have been writing for more than 15 minutes now. I need to get back to work. Oh, it's lunch time (did I mention I'm now back on diet? :P). My dear good friend Massila is not around so I may need to have lunch on my own. That may help in me eating lesser (?). I do have class at 2pm anyways so might as well have a quick one.

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Note: I ended up purchasing the book online via book depository after a recommendation from the very same friend who introduced the book to me. Though it was in GBP, it was still RM20 cheaper compared to purchasing from NZ's the nile, plus they ship worldwide for free :)