Curiosu new language of the day

It's called Go from google.

Compiled, odd notion of classes but most intreastingly of all appears to have multiple returns. I'm glad to see the return of truely compiled languages.

remember the experiment from hell well..

So I have the chi reviews.

I can't say much except I'm disappointed. The reviews sound very positive but they gave abysmally poor scores (2s) but no indication as to what was wrong with the paper. The only area for improvement someone gave was a couple of missing papers ( well we cutout far more than 2 papers to make it fit into a note).

Like many people I'm not convinced that the reviewers knew what they where talking about but manage to express this in such a vague way it was hard to pull them up on something specific which might have made a difference to the overall review. One good review might have been a good start.

To be honest I thought it had a reasonable chance of getting in and a better chance that some of the other papers that got better marks.

I'm starting to think that the thing that threw them was that we rejected the original hypothesis and then failed to come up with a convincing and ardent explication for what was going on. If the paper had just confirmed space syntax that would have worked. If we had said flatly this is because of X then I think they might have gone with it if it seemed plausible.

I think the thing that also went wrong was that we used fairly obscure syntax ( isovists ) and combined it with HCI/psychology style experiments. All of the reviewers didn't seem t understand the power of the winthin subjects 2*2*2 test and one critiqued the full reporting we did of all ANOVAs.

I don't know. I'm feeling like I've been defrauded by CHI. revolutionised

At least I'm not alone. May other researches think the same about their papers.

Box physics

http://www.box2d.org/

hmm - I like the version of this in processing but the lack of documentation was always a drawback.

very useful for doing more real interfaces for the table.

My new favorate link of the day

Links to HCIbib lovely browsing experience.

Microsft reinvent ZUI and lots of other things from 20 years ago.

Came across this link to a Microsoft demo.

• Naturally there are bits I like and bits I don't.
• So pen input - fairly normal even the mac has stroke to text.
• The zoomable interface I like a lot but I would say that wouldn't I?
• I like the notion of zoom able searching ( get more back)
• The selection through eye tracking is again fairly old ( cute how the guy writing the blog is fairly excited by this). The big problem is that the eye cascades over the interface quite quickly. If something on the screen moves ( like the animated icon opening ) then you get the eye moving toward it. It must take a lot of blinkered self control to do this part of the demo.Given your motor vision and the eye movement are separate why not just let it grow under the finger/mouse.
• Speech recognition -again fairly old - I saw this in 1994? this has the same problem as any command line interface, you have to remember the command.
• Now you could use eye tracking as part of the emotion interface (the machine sees what are you looking at - why not start to load plain links before you look at them?) . Its also useful for the computer to know if you are looking at it ( use a audible alert to get your attention if your not).
• I do like the flexible interfaces and the glass interface.
• the gesturing looks fu. Again your don't want to do this more than occasionally with out getting gorilla arms ( remember I did VR research )

Cloud All new motors installed

but 8 are not working, 14 are and we are missing 2 wires.

I spent most of the day working on the new grant proposal with Ruth.

The building is dead

And it's getting dark.

Not a soul around

Chi reviews

Just got the chi reviews back. No that hot but not clear what they were objecting to either. I'm going to give it a day to calm down then have a constructive look at them.

Cloud Plan B.

Got all but 4 motors not attached.

Found this link to a prebuilt Adafruit motor sheild for Ardunio.

Can run 4 bidirectiona DC motors. That is one per row or one per two rows if we can put the same voltage across two motors ( assuming current it is OK). So need 6 of these or possibly three if luck ( we never are).

Now wondering what to do with 22 DC motors...

Did I mention we are on Itunes U.

The labs project videos are now on the web - so much more lush than the one I made ( see you tube).

I was away when they were being done so I'm not in them.

Note these will open up in your copy of Itunes via ItunesU ready for down loading

http://bit.ly/3irpPI

http://bit.ly/WOPiW

JLB - meeting

We had a long meeting about the failure of the building for the academics. Not for research I must admit but people are staying at home to work in droves. Many people think that the OU is step up for remote working - it isn't. Teaching students at a distance has huge support but there is nothing to support academics working on building courses together short of emailing word documents around.

The meeting was looking for suggestions. I liked the talk of dividing the building up between mostly monastery - people looking to work in absolute silence, no phones the slight hint of a conversation would be met by people walking out into an open space. And the cafe - people tolerate noise/conversation and use head phones to exclude the outside world when they need to.

I suggested work rooms like IET - places to go and work when you need silence/exclusion. Other suggestions included monastery/cafe times - assumes a lot of social cohesion.

I thought security was being ignored so I spoke up for the use of rolltop desks big enough to cover your computer. That way leaving your desk to was a simple task of covering the whole thing with one key. That way you can leave things on your desk and come back to it undisturbed. That went down better than the IET style work places.

Lovely conversation about reintrodiction tea time - taking time to have tea with each other once a day. Generally thought to be sensible to put groups together again.

After woods I suggested using floor tiles + giving out an interruption meter.

Not so hot day for cloud

Ok to day I had one tutorial. One big meeting but I managed to get 4 spheres installed. The down side is that the second row gets about half the voltage of the first row. This results in no movement up and only some down. Not cool. I am not sure I want to loose a couple of weeks with electronics guys looking at ciurcit again.