The rest of my life

In the last week I have:

• participated in my usual work/school grind schedule


• said Goodbye to my close co-worker


• had a great night out at Dave & Buster's to celebrate it


• learned how to read barcode


• found a new favorite television show: Dog- the Bounty Hunter


• visited with my Aunt & Uncle from Ohio


• applied to several companies and have begun talking to one of them


• totally nailed my calc 3 Midterm


• attended a SandCHI-UPA meeting about web 2.0

It's the summer time and there's still so much going on. Summer's supposed to be relaxed, no? I suppose I like it though- I mean, I'm not stressin' or anything.

To be honest, I feel like I should be doing a lot more. This weekend I didn't meet up with my friend Natan to work on our project, CORTEXT because we are both up to a lot of activity. But I need to start doing more work on my own terms with it. It's an AJAX platform for studying the brain in a collaborative way on the Internet. Basically, we want to completely change the GUI of the site, add more functionality features, and change the way the scripting works. When we are finished, it will be really awesome but that all depends on when that will happen. We are just doing it for our own interests, so it's hard to find a lot of time with other responsibilities, ya know? Besides CORTEXT, I want to buy supplies to start brewing beer from home. I'd like to actually work on my own website for a change, and I'd like to clean my room, go work out, and find a damn job... I also want to go to the zoo- that sounds like fun right now.

But yeah, Dog- the Bounty Hunter, what an awesome show.

Posted by codyfrew at 3:09 PM | Permalink | Comments

Alright, so I've now got two more classes under my belt - Philosophy of Cognitive Science (PHIL 150), and Brain-Computer Interfaces (COGS 160). I ended up getting an A in both of the classes, so that's great. To be honest, I wasn't too worried about my grades since I am almost done, but it's nice to keep my high GPA solid...good times.

anyhoo, my big task is to start job hunting. I won't say where, but I have between 5 and 10 companies that I have been looking into , which all have job openings in user design/usability engineering, and don't require me to move to the Bay Area.

It's so funny, but I always forget how bullshitty my area of concentration is to the layman. I mean, I remember when I first met people at UCSD that were into HCI and user design, and it really seemed like a stretch of the imagination to understand why it is interesting or important to be able to know how to interview users and intelligently design products in a user-centered fashion. To be honest, it sounded really trivial. It's only when I started getting training from my courses, working on projects, and reading papers and books on the subject where I realized that usability REALLY IS a big problem in everything all around us. This keyboard I am typing on right now was made to NOT be usable as to slow down the speedy typists back in the day when typewriters jammed from pressing the buttons down in succession too fast. That's kinda funny. Now the QWERTY keyboard is a convention, so it is "good design" to keep it that way in similar devices. That may not be a great example of what I am trying to say here, but there are countless examples of bad design out there- read "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman (met him a few months ago). Everything that is not made by nature is designed (good or bad). Now, when I try to explain this field to people I get one of two responses:

1. "That is really not that interesting, and I want to walk away and talk to somebody else" (well, they may not say this, but I can see it in their eyes...so long as they're not rolling them at me.)


2. "What does that have to do with Cognitive Science?"

sometimes that last one throws me, because I really have to make all kinds of connections to why it is that neuroscience is taught in the same classroom (and on the same day) as contextual design...like, "well, humans have brains and I have been trained on the mechanisms of how it processes information and produces thought. It just so happens that people use (or misuse) their brain when they use technology and other types of tools. better design of these tools along with better design of workspaces and social structure can really make a difference in the efficiency of their use."

Sounds pretty good right? I believe it... But I still have trouble explaining why it is that I know how dendritic branching of neurons occurs and how that relates to web development...

maybe one day I'll figure that one out (without rolling my eyes at my own self)

Posted by codyfrew at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments