Louise's thoughts

Trouble

Apparently I am a trouble maker (no comments about the comment Rikke left previously). Today I was told twice that I generally cause trouble because I wanted an access card for the new building but wasn't in the system (which was not my fault!). I was also told that I had spend xxx.xxx kr on traveling last year which was not a surprise to me but quite a shock to the one granting me these funds. Finally, I was called a Meg Ryan because I like to order 'without' and 'please substitute' at a restaurant. But rather cause trouble than be boring, that's what I say.

No mail, no ssh

This entry was going to be about the sporadic access to my email the next few days and possibly weeks as the university moves the servers and literally close down any mail delivery Friday from ten AM to five PM. Just be prepared to be ignored, the geek in me insists on using pine through ssh for email (what did my friends ask me? don't you like color on your screen?), which means that I don't even have email stored on my computer and when pine goes, my mail goes (which has already happened most of the hours this week). But tonight the whole ssh server is down, which means that I can't download my latest version of the chapter I was suppose to work on tonight. Error: ! unknown open message "500 OOPS: child died" 500. I would assume that one OOPS would have been enough and I hope I didn't kill any children. Anyway, apparently my ability to write will be sporadic as well and I think I will instead spend the rest of the evening reading book and article. Mental note to self: remember to back up on Irvine server, I suppose I still have my account there and they are not moving anywhere.

Moving

The university is moving this weekend and everyone is packing up. After a loud, nostalgic goodbye-house-cooling party last Friday (guess who was one of the last ones to leave...) everyone is now trying to pack books in boxes, tag their furniture and pray that it will end up the right place. The indication that we are leaving is apparent all around us as things stop working and nobody wants to do anything about it. For two days the lock on the door into second floor (where my office is) was broken and just buzzed 24 hours a day. Now finally someone took off the whole handle and the lock, it is not buzzing anymore, just unlocked (you have to pull through the absent handle-hole if you need to go in, just push if you want to exit).

As I was going to the cafeteria on the fourth floor today, I saw that one of the elevators just had a big handwritten sign on it: 'Broken' (see, I love the way we have to write in English because half the people at the university are non-Danish speakers, but we still don't know how to be proper or polite. 'Out of order' would have been the correct term). The cafeteria had no chocolate left (there goes my afternoon snack) but two licorice things for 10 kr, and the food was even worse than usual because they just don't want to bother anymore. Yesterday the main printer on my floor (the one that at least 30 researchers and administrative staff uses) was broken for most of the day and today when I went to pick up my print, it was gone! Well, I guess they can't move all of the stuff over the weekend. I am seriously considering working home for the rest of the week, but out of nostalgia, I can't help showing up (even though it is raining, raining, raining). The fact that I spend the best of my past five years here counts as something and tomorrow I will bring my camera to get a few last shots.

I can't believe that this place ended up meaning so much to me, the university building is in the roughest and somewhat boring part of Copenhagen; there are no cafés close by (no I don't count Ultimatum, they have horrendous service) and the building gets too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. But I have had my best experiences right here. I have been writing the most interesting projects, making friends, friends and more friends without blogs, getting and losing boyfriends, getting the best grades and getting the worst grades that I did not deserve. I have had the best Friday bars where we had so much fun that the other students left without us noticing and we just kept dancing to the loud music and laughing all night long. I was voted student of the year right here two years ago which is still my proudest moment and I have ended up dancing 'til dawn at more than a few parties. I have met so many nice people that I count as some of my best friends today and I have had some of the best moments with those friends right here. I have gone from being a fresh, bright-eyed student to being a bold, skilled and almost-finished PhD student right here in this building. I have realized that one really do change through a few five years as well as do people around you.

All this nostalgia due to an ugly structure of concrete and glass, which was never big enough (well, the first semester it was), never warm enough (one winter we measured 5 degrees C (40F) by the floor in one of the project rooms) and never had any charm except for the people occupying the building. But as the vice chancellor said yesterday, as many of us gathered one of the last times at the IT square, we just leaving a building, we are bringing the people. And I hope that he is right, that we will bring the good spirit of wanting to make an impact in the world with us to our new building.

Stuck

I got stuck writing one of my chapters today because I suddenly couldn't see the purpose of a section of 'mobile computing' in the overall scope of my thesis. Why did I need such a section, when it is obvious that context-aware computing is most often implemented as mobile computing? And what points other than this should I bring out? I wrote something about mobile technologies and infrastructures (well, the lack of) but I erased most of it again. I described the many different types of mobility that research has to deal with, such as mobile but having a base and mobile, doing work while walking/moving etc. I finally gave up, decided to deal with the chapter later and biked home through Copenhagen, secretly wishing that Denmark will lose the football/soccer match tonight (sorry!). That would make my night's sleep a lot better; last time Denmark won, people were cheering and partying right outside my window until four in the morning.

Grades

My exams are finally over and besides being exhausted (I couldn't read a line last night, I just went out for coffee with my sister), I realized how tough it is to give grades. We gave everything from a 5 to an 11, which is pretty much the whole scale; it was fun to give 11 but the level of amusement over the rest of the grades did not correspond to the number. It all depends on people's expectations and since I can read this out of their faces and their tone of voice, I had to disappoint several students. Because unfortunately students' expectations are not always related to their level of understanding of the material and their project's quality. This of course brings me closer to the thought of writing a 'how to write a project' guide.

One thing that I keep thinking though, is if I could have done anything differently. Could I have helped them more through the project (I advised them all, with up to three meetings)? Could I have warned them that their project was not much better than a barely pass? And should I have suggested that they improved their design late in the process? The main issue here is that I expect students to work independently. This is a graduate education and I assume that students know how to give themselves a problem, solve it in a creative way and describe what they couldn't solve but how they would have done it in case they hit a wall. I expect students to be able to reason and argue for their design decisions and take the project a little further at the exam. The problem is here, that I expect students to be capable of doing this on their own, I don't expect to have to teach them.

What I do expect, as an advisor, is to guide them through the design process (if they do a design based project contrary to a theory based, which is much harder and rare here at the university); I will give them input and feedback on their material. I will also tell them where their weaknesses are and where their strengths are. And finally, I will give them a fair chance to bring the project to a higher level at the exam, by asking questions that can heighten the level or straighten out misunderstandings.

I think that disappointed students are inevitably something teachers have to deal with. And I hope that I will get a little tougher with tearful eyes and angry students as I get more experienced. However, there are two ways to deal with the problems that exist here at the university with students not working independently in an environment requiring this type of work: one it to just ignore that the university accepts students who are less inapt to work on independent problem solving issues and realize that a lot will never graduate. Another way to deal with this is to provide the means for the students to learn these skills before it becomes necessary for them to know how to do projects, for example by way of introductory courses in project and report writing (non-credit). Unfortunately, I don't think the latter way is going to be carried out any time soon. And in fact my cynical mindset would like to see a third way to deal with the problems: not admitting students who are not capable of thinking independently and writing academic reports. But that option leaves open a set of new problems and challenges that are to long and complex to fit in here.

How to write a university project report

All these project exams make me want to write a guide of how to actually write a university project report (oh, hey, one of my colleagues already did that...). Someone should tell these students that you don't end a paragraph with a : and you don't use ;'s like :. Neither do you have one sentence in a paragraph; to make a paragraph you need at least two sentences. And when you reference a paper that you found on the internet, you still need the original journal name, not just the URL to ACM.

All these things really surprise me to see, but I guess that either people are not as concerned with little things like I am (it is called perfectionism, Louise) or perhaps they don't realize how important details are to the understanding of a project report. But as the reader you stumble every time you find little grammar mistakes, no space between sentences (for some reason I find a lot of those) and inconsistencies of how to spell something (is it Blue tooth, blue tooth or Blue-tooth, I don't care as long as you don't use all three different spellings in one sentence). It makes the report difficult to read and thus lower the level of understanding on the part of the reader. And in the case of these project reports, the only readers are often the two people who will grade the student.

So one day, when I get the time, I will write a 'Louise's simple guide to getting a better grade on your project report'. The only problem is that I think there are so many out there already that it will drown between 'how to write a thesis' and 'English Grammar for Beginners'. But who knows, perhaps I will reach the exact people, who will find it useful and in fact will get a better grade? That would really thrill me.

Confused Technology

Today, I discovered that according to the description of me on my department's list of people, I am not only doing Context-aware Mobility (it is called context-aware computing and what's up with the odd capitalization?) but also diffused technology (whatever that is). That prompted me to laugh and think of how I would love to introduce the concept of 'confused technology'.

Confused technology is technology that people think can do all kinds of neat 'intelligent' things. Like having your iPod calculate your taxes for next year, your computer explaining when you need a break or your cell phone telling you where your best friend will be the day after tomorrow. Intelligent tasks that people often expect technology to be able to do shortly, but which will leave your device utterly confused. Your iPod will flash its little apple in despair' and your computer will tell you to have a break when you get back from lunch or after talking to a colleague for 12 minutes. It will be confused that you always skip the break and in the end stop suggesting you take breaks because you never do according to the computer's standard. And your poor cell phone will run out of battery from sole confusion over having to predict something this complex. Based on past data, it shows that your friend will very likely be in yoga class, but on the other hand yoga class data shows it is over because of summer. Usually Thursdays are busy with work, but last year at this time she was in New York. Oh, and she moved recently, so perhaps she will be buying paint and furniture. 'Beeeep, no more battery, beeeeeep'. As we move into the new era of 'intelligent' technology, I expect that in the future we will experience a lot of confused technology. Or if we are lucky, just a lot of confused people.

Weekend

So I ended up spending my weekend having fun (shopping, brunching and dinner with my parents Saturday) and because I am a stubborn person, who doesn't like giving up on something that I have set myself to do, also writing a workshop proposal for a workshop on Location Systems Privacy. I wrote it ON the due date in a couple of hours while watching 'All that Jazz' (70's nostalgia), so I hope they will accept it! It was a spur of the moment, you should rather do your thesis, but I really want to go to this conference, thing. Next week will be exam week, I still need to read 7 projects (I hope none of my students read my blog) and give out 27 grades. I really hope they will do well and wish them good luck.

Hey Nostradamus!

I finally got Douglas Coupland's new book, which is not that new anymore, but it was sold out in the physical bookstores I went to last time in the States (Kramerbooks in DC) and then I didn't really need anything from Amazon until now, where I decided to buy Gay and Hembrooke's Activity-centered design. I have Coupland's book on my office desk and have resisted so far to even look on the back cover. I know that the minute I pick it up I will start reading and end up spending too much time reading fiction instead of writing thesis. I think I might take the risk and bring it home. Perhaps it will be less of a temptation on the windowsill together with my method and EI books.

Dating

What constitutes at date? I never really understood the American dating system; despite living there for several of my adult years, I only ever went on one date. It was the classical 'meet guy, 'do you want to do out some time?', going to dinner' and him continuously opening the car door for me althrough the night even though he had power locks. That freaked me out so much that I didn't answer his call when he called to ask me on a second date.

I always complained about how difficult it is to date in America, but I think it might just be because I often wasn't very datable. In fact I now realized that the Danish ad-hoc system is even worse. At a certain point in your life you get a little to old to find boyfriends/girlfriends the Scandinavian way by getting insanely drunk at a private party, dance with the cutest one you can find for half an hour and end up smooching in the corner. When you get too old for that, what do you do? You can't just expect some hot guy to ask you out, because that is not in the Danish culture. I have only ever once been asked out (the above date), but have asked several guys to anything from coffee to movie and dinner with more or less serious intentions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I have had one serious relationship on this account and ended up at several disaster 'dates'. But recently I realized how uncertain this method is and always end up with the big question in mind: if you go out for coffee, dinner or lunch with a guy, how do you know if it is a date or just a casual attempt for friendship?

I have very few guy friends. I used to say that if a guy was nice enough to be friends with, I would also want to be his girlfriend. But in my strongly male dominated field I acquired more guyfriends that I had ever imagined and I had to swallow my words again. I know so many nice guys that I love to hang out with but would never want to be together with for a longer time. But this undefined dating scene also means that I can't be sure what their intentions are when hanging out with me and this leaves me puzzled and confused. What constitutes a date her in non-dating Denmark?

My place

This is the view from my wonderful apartment in Copenhagen, just wanted to share that with the world. The italian restaurant below is a tourist scam, never go there. When I passed by the waiter today in the rain, he was trying to trick people to come inside: "such a beautiful day today" and "Ciao Bella!". Like that would make the food better. I am instead going to have sushi, about a block from here.

I hate SysAdm

Today was not my day. After waiting two hours for my new computer (well at least I got some reading done... oh, no I didn't, I couldn't print what I really wanted to read), I finally got this wonder, spent half an hour installing my usual programs (why do Microsoft think I want Messenger in Danish just because I am located here, have they not heard about internationalization?) and then of course went to the obligatory department meeting. I then had to write all kinds of internal documents ('oh, Louise, by the way, please write a page or two about all the things you did the last two years, including publications') and an important email (no not the one to you, that was just for fun).

Finally around 6.30pm I wanted to search and print out articles about social computing to take home and read tonight; I need to write a chapter about approaches to social computing in my thesis. After printing two documents, I got the following email from the system administration:

You have been sent this message in order to inform you that your printing quota is exceeded.

This means that you can no longer print, and will be sent a message like this each time you try.

In order to be able to print again you will need to buy more print units at the reception of ITU.

If you think this is an error, please contact system administration stating your reasons to believe it is an error.

I wanted to cry and go home.

Cheating

Today I cheated and did not write much on my thesis. The weather in Copenhagen was gorgeously sunny and when my brother invited me for brunch in his little garden (which used to be mine), I left my computer and biked out there. I had the excuse that I needed to go there to vote (still have my official address at his place), so it was a reasonable thing to do. We spend most of the early afternoon eating bagels and drinking coffee and after voting, we each went back to work. But this is what you get out of cheating: sunburn. As soon as I got home I realized that my arms were burned and felt rather stupid. My fair skin always gets burned on the first summer day, but what is more ironic, spending a year and a half in California didn't even give me a tan; returning to Copenhagen for three months and I get burned. But I had fun with my brother at least and tomorrow it is going to rain.

Personalization

For the second time in less than 10 months I managed to kill my office computer (and it should be noted that I have been away for about 7 of these months). Towards the end it will just randomly restart, often when I am in the middle of a text document making me lose precious work and of course time until it reboots. This time it was nice enough to just act weird, like not wanting to wake up after hibernating (yesterday I had to pull the power plug to get it to turn on again, not very healthy) and freeze for extended periods of time.

The downside is that when I go and exchange it on Monday I'll have to spend half a day reinstalling all my little programs that are not standard on the ITU image. Programs like Firefox, winedt and winzip. I used to have personalized settings such as color scheme (something fancy like red and grey) but after experiencing this disposability of computers, I don't think I even want to bother. Which brings me to the real point, because the system administrators reassured me long ago, that it is the hardware and not anything I did wrong that made them die (bad IBM model, they got a discount and only gives this model to non-complaining PhD students who spend most of their studies outside the country): personalization gone bad. When the personalization of a device seems to require continous work, it weighs out the advantages the user get and it looses its value. It was fun the first time and even perhaps the second time, but now I am so tired of installing, configuring that I just go with the default; in essence this answers the question and outburst of horror when my friend saw that I still had Mozilla's page as front page in my browser. Well, this is why, life is too short for personalization.

New university

Tomorrow I will be attending the first talks to be held in my university's new building. We don't move out there officially before the begining of July, but since we are having important guests tomorrow, they will be giving their talks here in stead of our shady old buildings in the run-down part of Copenhagen. I can't wait to see my office :-)

Britney Spears

Last night I had the weirdest dream: I dreamt that I was having a real genuine girlfriend talk with Britney Spears. She was really nice but the coolest thing was that she was using latex too! We talked about how nice it is to be able to write comments in the document and like me, she had problems with the tables sometimes too. Actually she was so happy to meet someone with the same interests that she offered to fly me to California. I am not going to comment on my dream further than just clear out any misunderstandings of my real-world relationship with Britney: she is good for the gym but other than that, I don't give her many thoughts when I am awake.

Thesis II

Today I realized that I have never written a PhD thesis before. It might sound obvious and banal but fact is that most of the things I/we do in life are repeats of something previous. Or adaptations of something we have tried before. I have written quite a few articles, I have made many (feels like 1000) projects during my regular student years and I have conducted numerous empirical studies. But I have never written a thesis before. This is illustrated by my ignorance to where there should be references, how to refer back and forth between chapters and sections and who in fact my audience is. Again I really miss my (few but fruitful) Friday meetings in Irvine where two of us would discuss thesis related problems like this. Things that you don't really think you could ask your advisor (because you rather want to ask him 'important' questions) and things that you don't know because, well, it is the first time you write a PhD thesis.

Part of me can't help being a bit annoyed of how much I need to write down and how long it is supposed to be. Much of my writings are repeats from my publications, rephrased and elaborated. I know that some of my Danish friends would just say that I could make a paper based thesis because on the surface I have enough publications; but for reasons not relevant here, I have chosen not to do that; I am writing a monography. This brings me to the observation that writing a thesis requires persistence. I persistently write page after page about the things I have done, the things I have observed and what it all means until I can't stand looking at the screen anymore. But moreover writing a thesis needs elements of courage because you are doing something you haven’t tried before. If I have doubts about how to phrase things, how to structure it or just a simple thing as how I should refer to myself ('I did this and this, I think this' or 'this and this was done and apparently this and this'), I just have to build up the courage and decide on something. Not nothing but something. So I guess those are then biggest skills needed for writing a thesis: persistence and courage. I Think I have enough of both.

The Universe

I took a break from my thesis writing today because my two brothers were playing squash down town and afterwards stopped by my coffee shop to have a cup of coffee with me. I needed to see some real life people. After regular 'how are you's and 'how are your exams going' (they know better than to ask how my writing is going) we started a discussion of how the universe is put together. My youngest brother explained a few theories about the universe as a donut and one theory of layers. The layer theory would explain how quantum physics and the relativity theory fit together in that entities would jump from one layer to another. My other brother commented that the donut theory is for people who don't understand the concept of infinity. We continued talking about how in theory it is possible to fold space and then fly warp speed. It would only take up so much energy that the sun had ever sent to the earth in its lifetime. I ended up missing Star Trek and my brother promised to make a couple of DVDs for me. When we had hugged goodbye and I went upstairs I thought about how my brothers are always the ones I miss the most when I am not in Denmark. I made a mental note to tell them this next time I see them.

Sightseeing in Copenhagen

Yesterday I had the pleasure of playing tourist for an afternoon in Copenhagen. And despite the Danes aversion towards American tourists who think they can see your great capital in one day, I have to admit that we pretty much did this. This is of course due to the wonderful concept of canal tours. Here you see most of central Copenhagen from the water, and since most of the beautiful and important buildings are located close to the harbor of at least the canals, we got to see everything in 50 minutes. My American friend was quite impressed. I learned things that any Dane should know, such as that our constitution is from 1849 (is it really that young? Did the king have all the power until then?) and that it took more than 150 years to build Frederik's Church (the Marble Church), which originally should have been much bigger (!). It was not finished until 1894 and the original drawings were from 1740. Perhaps they had to change to structure because the old architect had died long ago. Except for this church, I realized how everything in Copenhagen is so tiny. Not only the residential houses and the streets, but also the military band playing on 'Kastellet' (who played out of key) and the coffee shop on 'Esplanaden' where you can hardly sit down inside. And there is nowhere downtown that is not walkable in more than 20 minutes. By the end of the day we went to the authentic Italian restaurant where they bake pizzas the original way and only speak Italian. Just to illustrate that Copenhagen is divers and international. I really love Copenhagen.