Kate Tsoukalas

Reamde (or not)

2012-01-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

Last week I finished Reamde, the latest offering from Neal Stephenson. To tell the truth I was a little disappointed, since I enjoyed his last book Anathem so much (and also wrote about it on this blog).

What always brings me back to Stephenson's books is the way he plays with ideas about commerce, currency, and technology (sometimes the intersection of all three). In Reamde, he again picks up on these by setting the novel around a new game (which reminds me of much of what I've heard about Skyrim) and how different groups of people exploit it to generate revenue (the 'gold miners' who find virtual gold and sell it for real-world cash). When one faction of players creates a virus to scam others out of their gold, all hell breaks loose as both a virtual and real-world conflict ensues.

Unfortunately, Stephenson gets distracted from the interesting ideas in his book by trying to create a cliched commercial thriller. In particular there are a few problematic points:

there is a group of terrorists that somehow gets included in the action; they don't seem to add anything to the plot except action
Stephenson adds plenty of gun battles to keep the action going (however feels the need to discuss the workings of said guns down to the most minute detail, resulting in several skim-worthy passages right in the most action-packed parts of the book)
an international cast of characters adds intrigue, but it's an unfortunate assumption that every one of them can communicate seamlessly with every other character
one of Stephenson's main failings in the past has been his ability to wrap up an ending. I felt he had been improving, especially with the conclusion of Anathem. Here however he gets a bit maudlin and a bit too neat. For example, despite featuring several strong, independent-minded female characters (yay!), Stephenson finds the need to ensure they are all romantically involved with one of the male main characters by the last chapter of the book (ick).

All that said, the book is an entertaining read and I don't regret the time I spent on it (and given the size, this was a non-trivial amount). If you are going to give it a go, just make sure you set your expectations appropriately.

Catan + Star Trek = WIN

2012-01-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a board game fan and I guess it goes without saying that I'm a huge fan of Star Trek as well. One of the things that helped us make it through long nights in the lab during grad school was playing Settlers of Catan while waiting for our experiments to finish. So when I saw a new Star Trek-themed Catan game, I knew I had to try it. It's due out in March 2012 and you can be sure to see a review here from me!

A Few CES-Related Items...

2012-01-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

Are you following the latest tech coming out of CES this year? I was going to post about some of the cool new tech being shown there, but I found two interesting videos related to CES and Women in Tech that I wanted to share instead (even though the new Nokia 900 with Windows Phone is pretty exciting!)...

First up is a piece by the BBC which explores the effect CES' 'Booth Babes' has on attendees of both genders. It's interesting to hear the perspective of women working in tech at CES - I thought they did a great job of expressing their discomfort in a way that (hopefully) all viewers of the video can relate to.

Second there is a video of a panel on Women in Tech with panelists Padmasree Warrior of Cisco, Marissa Mayer of Google, Caterina Fake of Hunch, and Lindsey Turrentine of CNET. Their conversation is interesting and ranges across many aspects of the issue, from when to start educating students on CS, work-life balance, and how to succeed in the tech industry.

What are your thoughts on CES? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has actually been there in person!

Cut the Rope for IE

2012-01-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

I love web games, and find them pretty addictive (most recent evidence of this is my completion of Angry Birds). Here's a cute one built in HTML5 for IE: Cut the Rope. Enjoy!

Kindle: Waterproofed!

2012-01-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

First post of 2012! I've been quite busy with the holidays and visiting friends and family, so I haven't had time to put much together for my blog. However I did get a Christmas present worth talking about: this waterproof case for my Kindle:

Why the need for such a funny looking case? Well, a few months ago my first Kindle suffered a bath time misadventure, and no amount of rice-bag drying would resurrect it. I loved my Kindle so much I got a second one, but did some thorough researching and decided to get this case to protect it from any further mishaps.

Yes, the straps are a bit hokey, and the seal at the top is basically a double zip-lock that rolls up and snaps, but I have now tested it and it's pretty awesome. I doused it pretty well with water and although there some got into the roll-up part of the case, none managed to get inside and my Kindle was safe. From the other reviews on Amazon, yours should be too should you decided to take the...plunge. Happy New Year! :-)

Καλα Xριστουγεννα - Merry Christmas.

2011-12-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

This year has gone by super fast, I can't believe it's almost over. To help ring in the New Year, I thought I'd close it out by giving an update on some of the highlights.

Travel
This year was a whirlwind of trips, both for professional and personal reasons. I racked up quite a few airmiles traveling to:

Okinawa (Dec 29 2010 - Jan 4 2011)
Kamloops (June 17-19 2011)
Hong Kong & Singapore (July 10-24 2011)
Iceland (Sept 11-19 2011)
Good old Vancouver :-) (Canadian Thanksgiving 2011)
Portland Oregon (Nov 8 - 12 2011)
Road trip to San Francisco (US Thanksgiving Week, 2011)
San Diego (Dec 15-20 2011)

Phew! Can't believe I got all that into one year, but I had some amazing experiences. Can't wait to see where next year takes me!

Professional Life

This year I learned so much and have had the chance to work with some amazing people. Here's a few of the most memorable parts of the year:

Attended Edward Tufte's course on Presenting Information
Went on a work trip to two countries
Attended this year's Grace Hopper Conference
Started running my own project with my own virtual team
We shipped Mango!

Books
I got a lot of reading done this year! Some of my favorite books were:

Logicomix
The Complete Maus
The "A Game of Thrones" series
Reamde, which I'm still working on but hope to finish before New Year's.

I'm still immensely happy with my Kindle but have not made the leap into the tablet realm yet. We'll see where 2012 takes me on that front.

Blog

In November I attempted to participate in NaBloWriMo, and almost succeeded in writing a post every single day of that month (I missed one or two). I've been able to keep it up in December, although I've been writing more like every other day and with vacations and holidays I've been slacking off a bit. Here are the top 5 posts on my blog this year:

And here's what my pageviews look like month over month:

Well, onwards and upwards!

To-do's for 2011

2011-12-23T07:55:00.000-08:00

This great article, "11 Things every Software Developer should be doing in 2012" has some excellent advice for developers to follow. When we transition from student life to the world of full-time work, it's easy to focus only on the skills needed for day-to-day work and let the rest become rusty. It's so important to not let that happen through continued practice and study outside of work, something that's definitely on my list of New Year's resolutions.

What's on your to-do list for 2012? What are your professional goals/resolutions?

San Diego Trip

2011-12-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

I'm on my way back from San Diego, where I was attending my sister's wedding. For the most part the weather was warm and sunny and the scenery was spectacular. Here's a few shots I took with my phone today in La Jolla, just north of San Diego:

There are seals on the rocks and beach!

Beautiful beaches and big waves off of La Jolla.

View of Del Mar Beach in front of my cabin on Camp Pendleton.

San Diego, Here I Come!

2011-12-12T22:19:00.001-08:00

In a few days I'll be headed to San Diego, so blogging may take a backseat for a week or so. Hope I'll be too distracted by this:

to worry about real-world stuff for a little while! :-)

A Sweet Tooth, cont...

2011-12-10T15:35:00.001-08:00

So I didn't quite finish off the problem I talked about in my last post.

The next part asks how much Jeremy's advantage increases by if you increase the number of cakes. You might say, have 7 cakes. Would Jeremy still come out ahead using the rules in the previous challenge?

I just used some extrapolation to do this one. It's not quite as thorough as the solution in the book, but we end up at the same place. First, I looked at the case where there are two cakes, n = 2. Then Jeremy's advantage over Marie is 5/4 - 3/4 = 1/2. Next, I looked at the case where there are three cakes, n = 3. Then Jeremy's advantage over Marie is 15/8 - 13/8 = 2/8 = 1/4. You can keep increasing n and you will see a trend, which works out to the following equation: A = 1/2^(n-1).

I wrote a little code in C++ to let us easily extrapolate:

#include "stdafx.h"
#include "math.h"
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
 double advantage;
 int numCakes;

 cout << "Enter number of cakes: ";
 cin >> numCakes;
 advantage = 1.0/(pow(2.0, numCakes - 1));
 cout << "Jeremy's advantage is: " << advantage << endl;
 
 return 0;
}

The question then asks if there's a way to make sure both players of this game get an equal amount of the cake. That part is easy! As we noticed when Marie goes first, Jeremy always cuts that cake in half. If she can always go first, they'll always get an equal amount of cake.

A Sweet Tooth

2011-12-08T21:59:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've been working through a book of puzzles for programmers. The title of the first problem is 'A Sweet Tooth', and is very apropos since I had a visit to the dentist this morning (I should probably visit the dentist more and do puzzles less, but that's another matter).

In the problem, there are two children playing a game of cutting cakes and trying to get the largest pieces. Dennis Shasha, the author, does a pretty good job of explaining the problem, but the hints he gives are a bit wordy and I think those who haven't done a lot of math proofs before might not bother with them. I think it's easier to state assumptions and separate out the reasoning into cases, working through the math for each methodically. I like to write mine out on a white board and I wrote out all the algebra, but ended up with the same solution as the one in the book.

I'm too lazy to type it out, but thanks to my handy cell phone you can see how I did it here. Here's my answer to the first problem:

And here's my answer to the second:

I think it would be fun to code up a generic solution for x number of cakes. I'll try to post it here when I do.

Practicing Problem Solving

2011-12-07T21:51:00.001-08:00

I've been looking at Dennis Shasha's book "Puzzles for Programmers and Pros", which combines two of my favorite activities: programming and puzzles! Going through the book is fun and a good way to brush up on those languages one doesn't use on a regular basis, and I may post my experiences with it going forward. Have you tried the puzzles in the book? What did you think?

Nous Nous Souvenons

2011-12-06T20:27:00.001-08:00

Today is the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, which took place on December 6, 1989 at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada. On that day, 14 female engineering students were killed by a male student who blamed them for his problems in life. So, today we remember, and commemorate the event as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada.

When I was looking at related news stories and articles today, I found a couple of positive ones that I thought I'd share here. The first one is particularly related to CS Education Week (which I've posted about a few times now); it's a blog post by the Girl Guides of Canada on why STEM programs for women are important, as told by Girl Guides' scholarship winners who themselves are studying in STEM programs. Having been a member of Girl Guides for roughly a decade growing up, I'm happy to see them encouraging young women to enter STEM fields and explore technology as a career.

The second is an article about the top 100 most powerful women in Canada, featuring one of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood (whose books I've also occasionally posted about here). It's great to see these women honoured and I'm a little embarrassed that I don't know who more of them are. Should make for some great reading over the coming days!

Women of Science for the Holidays

2011-12-05T23:01:00.001-08:00

Not only is it CS Education Week, but many people have started decorating for the holidays. And what better way to celebrate both than with these non-denominational ornaments laden with female scientist role models! And two are female computer scientists! Awesome!

CS Education Week Is Here!

2011-12-04T09:37:00.001-08:00

This week is CS Education Week. The idea is to celebrate and raise awareness of the impact of computing science and the need for CS education. You can find out more here.

My first experience with CS education was terrible. It was Grade 10 and I was enrolled in the pre-IB program (a preparation year for the full IB program which started in Grade 11). I had chosen CS as an elective as I was generally interested in computers and programming, but had no background or training in either. The first day the teacher gave out the assignment:

"OK, you guys are going to code a database, and you will be able to sort, save, search, and print records. Go."

Can you imagine my shock and panic? I had no idea what to do, but it seemed like all the other students in the class (all boys, incidentally) did. They confidently started up their IDEs and began typing away. There was no textbook and the teacher did not offer any kind of useful help, and there was no internet so I could not search for examples or tutorials there either.

Well, I made it through the year (I had to, since by that time it was too late to transfer and nothing else fit into my schedule) but vowed never to take another CS course again. I didn't feel like I learned anything except HTML programming and was very annoyed by the experience. The next year I switched to Physics and managed to avoid CS courses almost entirely in my undergraduate studies.

Luckily I realized later how important CS would be for me and went back to school to study it - but I imagine that there must be many students like me who get turned off early on and never come back. My experience highlights a few things that are currently missing from CS education in my opinion:

Programming is not CS: That is, programming is a tool of CS, but at its roots CS is much more than just writing code. CS to me is all about modeling solutions to problems using algorithms and data structures. It's about how to think abstractly, how to analyze problems and their solutions to come up with the most efficient one, and it's how to communicate those solutions to users in a sensible way. When I took my first course in algorithms and data structures, I fell in love, but that wasn't until long after completing my undergraduate studies. It seems to me we have the order of things backwards here.
CS is everywhere: There are so areas of education that CS could impact. Bringing up CS when teaching about other topics could help inspire students or at least get them thinking about it more broadly. Algorithms are an easy example when it comes to mathematics, and pretty natural when you think about the programmable graphing calculators students are encouraged to use these days. We can start even earlier; even kids in elementary school could be learning how to sort using various algorithms (there is a neat demo using blocks and weights, or discs). There are all sorts of applications of CS to art (digital painting, photomanipulation, using computers in art installations, graphics displays, etc). There is a lot of literature around computing these days. I'm thinking of Cyberpunk books like Neuromancer or Cryptonomicon. How about artificial intelligence? When I was a kid one of my favorite discussions on this topic was whether the character Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was alive or not:

Teachers need CS, too: In my (admittedly limited) experience, few teacher training programs have little if any focus on CS (or even STEM subjects in general). How can we attract people with the necessary technical skills to teaching, when the technology sector provides numerous better-paying jobs? But it's not just technical skills we need in the classroom - we need a special blend of the ability to teach and instruct in addition to the necessary subject knowledge. At my university they had a course which was in effect 'Math for Teachers'. Maybe we need something similar for CS. Greater awareness of CS in general among teachers could help them integrate it into more traditional subjects, especially when CS-specific courses are not available.

Are you supporting CS Education Week in some way? If so, please sign the pledge and talk about it! If not, please consider how you can help raise awareness. I don't think my experience is all that uncommon, and if so we must be losing an awful lot of talent to other fields. Let's do what we can to help make things better!

Show Me the Place

2011-12-03T15:21:00.001-08:00

Leonard Cohen has a new song out, listen to it here. It already has a lot of great reviews. Looking forward to his new album which comes out at the end of January. :D

Robots in the News

2011-12-01T07:25:00.001-08:00

A few pieces of robotic news I came across this week! First, a robot that can recognize itself in a mirror and tell the difference between itself and other objects. The video is super cute!

Second, and perhaps more interesting, is a new robot driven by a Windows Phone.

The robot is being developed by WPBots and can actually work with Windows Phone or Android. It's pretty neat and I'd love to try out some programming for it when it becomes available.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson GHC Keynote

2011-11-30T08:11:00.001-08:00

A while back I posted about Dr. Jackson's GHC keynote speech. I'm sure my notes didn't do it justice, but luckily the video has finally been posted so I can share it with you! Enjoy, it's well worth watching.

Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente. So far it's intriguing - the style is different from most books I read. It's more like a collection of related vignettes than a single story with a linear plot. I think the narration matches the writing style very well too. Definitely worth a listen!

As an aside, the Clarkesworld Magazine seems very cool too. Seems like I'll be adding it to my regular reading routine!

Teaching Your Kids Science

2011-11-28T19:15:00.001-08:00

There was a very good piece this afternoon on CBC's afternoon program, On the Coast, about getting parents to encourage their kids to study science. The guest gave some helpful resources, such as Let's Talk Science and Curiosity.ca. I wholeheartedly agree with most of what they discussed - parents should encourage their kids even if they themselves struggled themselves with math or science, and shouldn't emphasize that to their kids, but rather encourage their children's natural curiousity and thirst for knowledge.

The only problem came towards of the interview when the host asked "What about science fiction, is reading that or watching Star Trek enough". This happens at about 6:39 into the interview. The guest talks about how this is great for encouraging boys. What the heck? Lots of girls (like me, growing up) love science fiction, volacanoes, and yes, even farting dogs (which the host gives as an example). Worse yet, she goes on to talk about how we should make science relevant to our 'youth', and how websites like curiousity.ca show lots of examples of cool 'guys' doing science.

These initiatives are generally great and yes, we need to do everything we can to ensure our population has a good grasp on scientific literacy. But we need to make sure we are encouraging everyone, regardless of gender, and that means showing examples of all kinds of role models and making sure we don't discourage one group of people from pursuits they enjoy just because of their gender.

New Photos from California

2011-11-27T08:20:00.001-08:00

I lugged my camera down to San Francisco and was determined I would use it! Here are a few of the shots I liked:

Early morning surfing in Crescent City.

In Golden Gate Park.

Also got a few with my phone:

Near the Jewish Museum.

Looking down on the city from the top of the Grand Hyatt hotel at sunset.

Out of this World

2011-11-25T10:50:00.000-08:00

I just finished "In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination", by Margaret Atwood. Basically this is a collection of essays, short (very short) excerpts of Atwood's fiction in the genre, and what I gather once was intended to become the author's PhD thesis.

I enjoyed the writing, as always; Atwood's style exhudes her wry wit and there are sprinklings of her dry humour throughout the book. Other reviews I've read lament that there's really nothing 'new' here - if you are quite familiar with SF already you will probably know much of what she describes here. On the other hand, if you are not familiar with SF (or very well-versed in fiction in general), you will probably miss a lot of the references she makes.

Atwood focuses on the more speculative side of SF rather than the hard-science side. I would have liked to hear more about her thoughts on authors such as David Brin (his idea of 'Uplift' having some similarities with her use of genetic manipulation in "Oryx and Crake", for example), or other authors like Benford or Bear. Still, this book was like a romp through familiar territory for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you have fond memories of reading SF as a kid you will probably like it too. Worth the read, but if you have something more pressing I would get to that first.

Happy US Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T07:30:00.001-08:00

It's Thanksgiving again! No, it's not a rift in the space-time continuum, I'm Canadian (except being Greek, we had lamb the first time around). Anyway, hope you have a great holiday! Enjoy!

I Want To Work In A Meritocracy, Too

2011-11-24T06:44:00.001-08:00

Lately when the topic of the gender imbalance in CS comes up, the answer I seem to hear a lot is 'I want to work in a meritocracy!' or 'We work in a meritocracy!', and as long as we do then it doesn't matter if there aren't many prominent female computer scientists, engineers, or CEOs. You can get ahead if you're good.

But something about this line of thinking doesn't sit right for me. For one thing, even if you ignore the initial gender imbalance for people in school or at the start of their careers, the percentage of women starting out isn't the same as the percentage of women at the top. Where do they go? Why aren't they getting there? Unless the percentage of women who aren't meritorious is much higher than the percentage of men who aren't meritorious, this doesn't make much sense. But having the percentage of meritorious people for one gender be much higher than the other doesn't really make sense either, as explained in this fantastic set of slides by Terri Oda.

Yesterday I came across a great article called 'Racism and Meritocracy', which also touches on the gender imbalance in tech. It offers another explanation: there's a systemic bias which filters women (and other minorities) out, and that this systemic bias can exist even if individuals in the system don't have it. I think this is a pretty powerful argument, but the article also proposes concrete, practical solutions that we can all employ to help correct the problem. I highly recommend giving it a few minutes of your day to consider.

On a side note, another comment I hear on this topic is that people don't want to see quotas or to see people rewarded when they don't have the contributions or achievements that warrant it. I don't think many people would want that, actually (I certainly wouldn't!). I want to work in a meritocracy too, I'm just not sure our industry truly reflects that yet.

Escher Stairs! And Other Finds...

2011-11-22T19:25:00.001-08:00

Today brought another sunny day in San Francisco with lots to see and do. Mathematics kept popping up in different places throughout the day...first, we had coffee and snack in a park near Octagon House (Allyne Park). Later I found a set of Escher Stairs at the SF library downtown. Compare:

My Escher Stairs!

Original Escher Stairs!

Along with many numerical streets (6th, 7th, 10th) as we made our way from Twin Peaks to Zynga to downtown and beyond. We ended the day with a delicious Cantonese food dinner at R & G Lounge with my old lab-mates Ming and Bin. One of the dishes was 'Three Treasures with Black Bean Sauce' - the perfect end to a great day!

California!

2011-11-21T21:19:00.001-08:00

On Saturday I set off on a road trip to California, traveling from Seattle all the way to San Francisco, with stops in Crescent City, Arcata, Grants Pass, and Petaluma. The weather has been beautiful so far!

Here's what the Golden Gate bridge looked like this morning as we pulled into San Franisco:

A few of the other highlights have been trips to the beaches on the way down, visiting Coit Tower, and dinner at my favorite SF restaurant, Cafe Divine.

One of California's many beautiful beaches.

Coastal Road Trip

2011-11-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

I got the week off for Thanksgiving and an office move, so I'm going on a road trip to Northern California. I hope to see more of this:

than this:

Sometimes I find myself missing grad school.
Then it snows, and I rejoice in the knowledge
that I'm not stuck up there anymore.

To the detriment of my attempt at NaBloPoMo, posts after today might be spotty. I'll sure try though! In the meantime, enjoy the snow, folks!

Logicomix Review

2011-11-18T18:47:00.001-08:00

This morning I finished "Logicomix", a graphic novel I picked up in Portland at Powell's Books.

I really enjoyed the book and finished the entire thing in about six hours. The story takes place on three levels: first, there are the authors contemplating how best to tell the story. Second, there is Bertrand Russel giving a lecture in 1939 to US isolationists on logic, and third, there is the story of Russel's life as told through his lecture. The 'meta' aspects of these layers of story is quite unique and engaging, and help the authors portray some of the philosophical ideas more easily and in a more consumable format for lay people.

If you're looking for a fast read, this is a fun book that lays the groundwork for modern CS. Actually near the end Christos Papadimitriou mentions that he would like to do another novel concerning Von Neumann and Alan Turing, which I am eagerly awaiting!

Seattle Girl Geek Dinner #13

2011-11-17T17:30:00.001-08:00

I just got a timely (I say timely, since I've been racking my brains for a blog post topic all day) invitation to the 13th Seattle Girl Geek Dinner - this time the Holiday Dinner version.

If you've never been to one of these events, now is a great time to start! The basic idea is to get technical women together and share a meal, listen to a technical talk, and network. Each time a different company sponsors the event, so I've been to talks at Amazon, Facebook, and of course Microsoft, and met lots of fabulous people each time!

The last Girl Geek Dinner I attended was at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square. It was (almost) too crowded!

Have you been to one of these events either in Seattle or your home town? Do you have something similar? I'd love to hear about it!

Cool Workspaces

2011-11-16T19:38:00.001-08:00

Yesterday's post had a theme on productivity. Carrying on along those lines (and because I'm running out of good blog post ideas this week, quite frankly) it got me thinking about what makes a good work space for engineers/computer scientists.

I've seen many examples over the years of creative collaborative work spaces, like those at Google:

or Facebook:

The emphasis is on creating a fun space for people to work in. I think that it can be novel and fun to use these spaces, but they have to be functional and not distracting.

What about offices? Or open-plan desks? There's been research on this for some time, with some touting the negative aspects of open plan offices and others championing them. I've worked in both, and find I like the individual office system better. I like the noise reduction - when I worked in an open-plan office, my desk was quite close to the kitchen, and there would be overflow conversations taking place right behind or beside me all the time! It was quite distracting. Another reason I like the office system better is for the ability to personalize and decorate, something I find makes a great conversation starter! I've turned my office into a bit of a starbase, with a few added comforts like my couch and mini fridge:

Of course, I have a desk too (not shown) and multiple monitors, which makes multitasking easier. Yes, I do actually get work done in this space! I think making it comfortable and personalized has made me happier to be there, and thus increased my productivity, too.

How do you make your office your own and do you find that this makes you more productive? Do you like adding personal touches or do you keep it standard? Do you prefer the open-plan or individual office system?

On Productivity

2011-11-15T19:50:00.001-08:00

The other day I read an article (thanks for posting, Gail!) on productivity which I thought was pretty interesting. The article is called, "Time Management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers - and finishes by 5:30pm" and details how to live the 'fixed schedule' lifestyle.

I have to say, it is pretty impressive that Mr. Newport can somehow manage to do everything between 8:30 am and 5:30 pm and keep his evenings completely free, while also fitting in an hour long dog walk and exercise. And to be honest, I'm still a bit skeptical. However, I do think there is good advice provided, especially on saying 'no' more often to busy work or work that isn't as important as other tasks. This is a pretty hard thing to learn how to do, especially as a new or junior employee in industry.

Mr. Newport's observations on his email usage are also interesting. Rather than constantly reading and replying to email throughout the day, he concentrates the bulk of his email work in a one hour time slot after lunch. Maybe this is a good way to get back into a concentrated work mode after taking a break for lunch, especially if you experience a 'food coma'!

How do you stay productive at work without working crazy hours? Do you work on a fixed schedule? If not, do you think it would be feasible for engineers in the tech industry? And have you found some good strategies for saying 'no'?

Looking Forward to GHC12

2011-11-14T21:29:00.001-08:00

Like many people, I came back from GHC11 supercharged and excited to get back to work! GHC is energizing, motivating, and inspirational. So naturally, I'm already thinking about next year's GHC, which will be in Baltimore, and topics for possible talks, panels, or BOFs. The theme next year is, "Are we there yet?"; here's a few ideas kick off the brainstorming:

Are we mentoring new grad women well enough yet? I think the transition from academia to industry is hard, and especially if you've gone from a place with a great support network for women in tech to one where that support network is minimal, it can be even harder. What are we doing to help make this transition easier for female new grad hires?
Related to 1: How to figure out what you need to know that you don't know as a new grad hire - what to ask for, what strategies to move your career forward, how to manage up.
Mobile web development, testing techniques, and/or something web app-related. Maybe looking at how different companies' techniques differ?

What topics are you interested in seeing next year? If you're interested in presenting, what topics would you like to present? I'm also curious to know which presentations you thought were the best this year.

A Day in Portland

2011-11-13T14:47:00.001-08:00

I have never been to Portland before, but got a chance to go last week for this year's Grace Hopper Conference. My impressions of Portland (at least, the downtown area), were of a small, dense urban center well-connected by cheap (read: free) public transit and full of beautiful greenery. The weather was quite good for so late in the fall too, and the colours were gorgeous:

Beautiful fall colour display outside the convention center.

Oregon Convention Center.

Here's a few of things I managed to fit into my one non-conference day.

A small corner of Powell's Books
in Downtown Portland.

Powell's City of Books
My first stop of the day was at Powell's City of Books. If you love books and/or spending time browsing bookstores, you will adore this place! It's so big it takes up an entire city block, with a smaller additional building the next block over, and requires a detailed map to navigate!

Decorative column at the
entrance of Powell's books.

I was delighted to find the most Jack Vance books I've ever seen in any one location at once, and the copy of "Tales of the Dying Earth" I've been hunting far and wide for. In the Graphic Novels section, I also found a copy of "The Complete Maus" by Art Spiegelman, and in the section for Technical Books I found a copy of "Logicomix", which I'd heard about when it first came out and then promptly forgotten. Check out the 'trailer' (actually, a short film showing how the authors collaborated on the story) for the book here. I'm already about half way through the book and am really enjoying it.

Luckily I only had an hour and a half to spend in Powell's, or they would have taken much more of my money I'm sure! I'll definitely be back some day soon.

Portland Saturday Market

Entrance to the Portland Saturday Market.

Next it was off to meet with my friend and grad-school lab-mate Ming Hua and some of her colleagues from Facebook. We headed to the Portland Saturday Market to grab some food from Portland's famed food trucks and check out the local goods.

We had yakisoba noodles, terriyaki and rice while a band played an impressive 8-person xylophone tune:

Ming at the Saturday Market.

The wares at the market were unique and interesting, from 'log soap' to animal puppets to beautiful hand-crafted wood items (puzzles, jewelry boxes, and toys).

Shopping and Eats in Downtown Portland
Downtown Portland has plenty of small boutiques, large department stores like Nordstrom, and chain stores like Banana Republic. After wearing ourselves out shopping we headed to the happy hour at the Brasserie Montmartre. The food was delicious and we had mussels, pommes rites, and my all-time favorite, frogs legs! It was a perfect snack on a rainy afternoon just before my train ride back to Seattle.

Me at Brasserie Montmartre.

GHC11 Day 3 Recap

2011-11-12T07:53:00.001-08:00

I mentioned that days at GHC are long - mine went from 8am yesterday til well after midnight! Here's a summary of the events of the day:

Ming Hua giving her talk.

Keynote by the Honourable Shirley Ann Jackson, PhD: read my summary here.
Facebook technical talk (Large Scale Computing track), "Understanding Relationships through Data": This talk was presented by my grad school labmate, Ming Hua. Read my summary here.
Kinect Lounge: This was a really cool initiative by Microsoft. They set up a 'Kinect Lounge' in the exhibition hall, where anyone could drop by and play Dance Central. It was great to see so many people come out and try Kinect, many for the first time! It was also nice to hear the 'oohs' and 'ahs' when they used the voice control feature. I also met another Kate who works at Microsoft and is Canadian there, which was an unusual coincidence. We had a great conversation! :-)
Systers Luncheon: If you are a technical women and not on the Systers mail list, you should be! I get so much value almost every day from the questions and insights posted here, and it was so nice to meet some fellow Systers in person!
Plenary Session: In the afternoon there was a great panel discussion with sponsors and their sponsored colleagues. Sponsorship is a new concept for me so it was helpful to hear about the difference between sponsorship and mentorship and how to negotiate the nuances of the sponsor relationship.
Industry track talk on "Understanding your Customer": read my summary here.
Sponsor Night: Sponsor Night is a GHC tradition where the conference's platinum sponsors (this year Google and Microsoft) host an evening of food, t-shirt giveaways, music and dancing! It's a great way to unwind after the packed conference schedule. Anita Borg loved dancing, so this is a nice way to honour her. I think the food at the dinner was the best food I had at the conference all week! So delicious!

A bit dark, but here's what ~3000 technical women dancing looks like!

No Customers, no Business: What if you could delight your customers?

2011-11-11T15:48:00.001-08:00

This session started off with a discussion of the art and science of customer satisfaction, structured as a dialog between the panelists and audience. The panelists included:

Eva Manolis, VP of Retail Customer Experience at Amazon
Kaaren Hanson, VP of Design Innovation at Intuit
Marie K. Daniels, Senior Director at CA Support
Pat Shriver: Senior Director, Development Services and Technologies at NetApp

The facilitator was Jeni Panorst, Product Line Manager at Intel.

To start the dialogue off, the facilitator asked, what is the most important skill for customer interaction?

Eva said: have empathy, how will the customer think about the product? Keeping that in mind to drive your work.
Kaaren said: not just having empathy yourself, but how to get others to have that empathy too, so they stay awake late into the night thinking of how to help their customers
Marie said: Be accountable. Don't blame the computer, process, or environment, own the problem and work to solve it.
Pat said: listen and adjust. Listen to the problem you are given, not the solution they are trying to give you. If you delight your customers, they become an advocate for you. If you don't, it will take them a long time to believe you.
Jeni added: You need to deeply understand the problem and have a desire to have that understanding before you can go about solving it.

Are you required to give the customers everything they ask for or just solve their problems?

Eva said: The number one question Amazon asks is, 'did we solve your problem?'. It's the key metric they track for all of their customer experience.
Marie said: If you just give the customer what they ask for, you miss a real opportunity to really listen and understand what the customer is trying to do. You might be able to solve their problem and not just answer their question.
Jeni added: Sometimes you can go down every single path to try to solve a problem and can't. Sometimes you need to back up and go down a completely different road to solve the problem. Work collaboratively to solve problems.

Sometimes customer loyalty is borne out of an ability to recover from a negative situation. What is a negative situation you've recovered from:

Kaaren Hanson said: people notice when you don't truly care. It's important that it comes through in your dealings with them.
Marie Daniels said: you can recover with genuine apology and going the extra mile to do so.

Eva Manolis touched on an interesting point that to truly understand your users or customers, you really need many kinds of data: usability studies, research, data from the product. Kaaren seconded this by talking about conducting ethnographic studies. Marie Daniels said you have to have trust to bring forward ideas/problems: executives have to support innovation and creativity in terms of customer delight, but you also have to hire people who really care about it. Eva says you need to have every single person in the company to have a 'customer obsession'.

Are technical women uniquely poised to provide solutions for customer interaction/delight?

Pat said: people who work in services have to be 'wired' for it, regardless of gender.
Kaaren said: if you have empathy in your engineers, then you have the 'secret sauce'. Women in general are slightly better at this than men.

An audience question asked how you develop for global customer experiences?

Kaaren said: you really need to be in a given country to design a good experience for people who live in it. You need to really understand the culture and it's hard to do that without proximity to it.
Eva said: some problems are global; at Amazon everyone needs to buy things. However there are surprises. For example, the wish list is used different in different countries - the name just didn't work in French. Once the name was changed, the performance of that feature tripled almost overnight. You really need to test the customer in their environment to understand what's going on.

Another key point made was that if your employees aren't happy, your customers won't be happy. You need to delight internally in order to delight externally.

Understanding Relationships Through Data

2011-11-11T10:00:00.001-08:00

This session on the Large Scale Computing track called "Understanding Relationships Through Data" was presented by Ming Hua, one of my lab-mates from grad school! Ming now works at Facebook so it was great to see her again. Of course, I knew from being a student with her that her talk would be excellent. :-)

Ming began the talk with some data - there are ~350 million users on facebook with 80 million photos uploaded. Billions of pieces of content are shared every week, with people listening to music, checking in with friends, and posting photos and videos and sharing those updates with their friends. The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages, groups, locations, etc. This can be organized as a giant social graph.

The key point Ming makes is that there is a 'data generation loop', with reciprocal relationships between shared content, social context, and social connections. Each node in this loop brings up different questions:

What do people share about?
What do people do together?
What do people connect with?

To explore these questions, Ming presented several aspects of her research. First, she spoke about her investigations into 'happiness analysis', in which she tried to predict if people (Facebook users) are happy. She stressed that they conducted a voluntary study where they received feedback from users and analyzed their facebook updates. An ideal measure of happiness requires:

a reperesetnative of sample population
should be based on naturalistic behaviour
is computational (no human raters)
is efficient (must process millions of updates per hour)

She conducted sentiment analysis on FB status updates:

there are billions of status updates are shared monthly
these updates are used for self-expression
the identified updates are then published to friends and the public

The words in Facebook statuses can be mapped to emotion:

there are word categories to represent psychological content
this is well validated in many corpa
i.e. "Fred hates passive aggressive Facebook updates, but loves irony" - "hate" and "aggress" are negative emotional terms, "updates" is a neutral term, and "love" is positive.

The hypothesis is that happier people use more positive and/or fewer negative words
Facebook recruited 1341 English speakers to complete the study. They looked at the percentage of positive and negative words in updates and graphed the gross national happiness in US as a result. It was interesting to see that the happiest days of the year according to the data are Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years' Eve, Valentine's Day, Easter, and Halloween (however Ming stressed the need to normalize for phrases like 'Happy Halloween' in Facebook status updates).

People also like many pages (owned, authentic pages, sourced pages like wikipedia, community pages), so Ming asked, what if we represent all entities in the world by facebook pages, thus turning them into connections in the graph? We might be better able to provide page recommendations, insights, ad targeting, and de-duplication of existing pages and pages provided in results.

Another interesting application of this kind of data analysis is to predict hours of business based on user check-ins using the words and data provided in their status updates. There are other applications as well, given by the demographic and temporal data mapped geographically. For example, check-ins could be predicted. A study was done by holding out check-ins and trying to predict them by feeding the features into a logistic regression, works well for check-ins. It doesn't work as well for predicting comments or 'likes' on a given check-in.

Responses to check-ins could also be predicted: Ming found that responses are more likely when the person checks in far from their usual location. For example, when Ming checks in in Portland, she gets more responses than her check-ins in SF, which are much more common for her. Also, if you check-in close to a commenter/liker, then you will are more likely to get a response.

Ming showed us several prototypes; for example, one that suggests better content for you based on the people you tag. Or, instead of searching for pages when you type in #ghc11, you would get events, pages, friends statuses, etc. The goal is to rank things that best match your original purpose. There are new features based on geolocation, and real-time search of friends status updates. Ming ended by reminding us that the ultimate goal is to stress the loop to make the world more open and connected.

There were many questions including one of my own: what are the concerns/implications around being able to identify people's moods? Do happier people have more happy friends? What are the future directions for Facebook along these lines? Ming said that happier friends may have more interactions with their friends, so that can help identify them.

What If We Lived on the World Stage? GHC12 Keynote

2011-11-11T09:03:00.001-08:00

This morning's keynote was presented by the Honourable Shirley Ann Jackson, PhD. This was especially cool for me because Dr. Jackson is a physicist by training, which is what I started out in during my undergraduate studies. I found Dr. Jackson's talk extremely compelling, both in style and content. Her style is calm and confident, and I loved her slides - just pictures that complimented the points she made, without distracting text or animations.

Dr. Jackson's theme was "What if I lived on the world stage?". She touched on two big themes related to it:

the importance of cultural and social understanding in a hyper-connected world
the increasing complexity of data, and the technical challenges related to social-cognitive networks

In general, Dr. Jackson wanted us to realize that we are part of the technology culture, and it is international in scope. Our disciplines are global disciplines that reach past language, nationality, cultural boundaries. We have an opportunity to have impact on a global scale. For example, engineers speak the same language! Dr. Jackson said that it's often easier to get engineers to work with other engineers in other countries than it is to get engineers to work with sales people from their own country/culture! So our work can span these cultural/linguistic boundaries.

In addition, the work we do has broad appeal. We solve problems, which gives everyone a foot in the door of international relations. So, we need to think and create with a view towards what it means to all people on this planet. What could we do together to solve our shared challenges in energy, security, sustainability, food production? Dr. Jackson has high hopes for what we can accomplish.

Dr. Jackson provided guidance for how to do just that with five areas we should consider. I've tried to summarize them here for you:

cultural listening: What we say is more nuanced/poetic in our own culture than when translated. For example, yes does not mean the same thing in all cultures. The absence of cultural nuance/understanding is why Watson can seem painfully culturally incorrect. An AR tool providing real-time context while whispering 'advice' might save us from embarrassing misunderstandings. However, the best advice she gave us is to learn and try to understand. She said we need to share stories, interests, and perspectives from our cultures. Relationships at all levels require the willingness to negotiate, give and take. GHC is an experience that can help us build this.
identifying genuine conflicts: Dr. Jackson said that we need to find real conflicts, not just the apparent conflicts, and we need to sort them out in order to understand them. New tools to arrive at facts and enhance communications may come from cognitive and artificial intelligence, but we are prone to intentional bias and illusions of control which can have critical impacts on how we deal with conflict. Identifying these are critical for everyday operation and collaboration, and the more we are aware of these cognitive biases, the more we can overcome with them. However, bias continues even when we are aware of it. Until we get an 'automated arbiter of truth' we will have to rely on our own intelligence.
building trust: Dr. Jackson said that the more we trust, the more we can accomplish. The less we trust, the more time we dedicate to creating rules and regulations to create it artificially. However, no rules and regulations can ever be complete. In the end, trust does not cost much, but verification does. We need a better understanding of what trust is, and this will help us on the world stage. One area to think about is algorithms as agents - like the algorithms that trade stock on the NYSE. What if these algorithms were more sentient? Could we trust them?
understanding technological effects: How can we structure data in ways that are more machine readable? We need to allow the computer to take in multi-modal infromation (human senses). How can we get the computer to display this so that all the human senses can be used to explore it?
anticipating risks: How do new technologies impact trust? Dr. Jackson says we need to develop a greater appreciation for unintended consequences. We need better tools to anticipate and assess the various risks and mitigations. For example, think about etiquette. In international diplomacy, there is a kind of etiquette. It works better than many technologies we come up with to deal with the unintended consequences that come up. Is there an etiquette for the internet/social networks? What if we could have reduced the negative consequences of the new tech on the internet? on the other hand, it is thanks to this new tech that we have the opportunity to work in a coordinated way. This represents important work for all of us.

Big ideas get me excited! I love strategy, thinking of the future, and big-picture stuff in general. Thinking as a generalist and drawing on broad range of sectors to think about technology/the future is a fun exercise for me, so I really enjoyed Dr. Jackson's talk. What did you think?

GHC11 Day 2 Recap

2011-11-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was another whirlwind day at GHC11. Since I was busy with activities from ~8am until 10pm, I didn't get a chance to post a summary of what happened! Here's an outline of the events I attended:

Sheryl Sandberg's GHC11 Keynote: This was really wonderful to hear. I highly recommend watching it here, and you can read my thoughts on it here.
Mobile sessions: I attended two sessions related to mobile browsing, which were pretty cool. Read my summary here.
Microsoft Booth: I dropped by and helped out by talking to attendees interested in working for Microsoft! It was lots of fun. The yahoo ladies traded me a purple nail polish for our chocolate and promised me a 'code like a girl' t-shirt later on - I'm holding you to that ladies! I also used this opportunity to participate in Picture Me In Computing Day, see my post here.
Poster session: Saw many interesting posters on mobile technology (how to use Android/Google Maps and haptic feedback to create directions for blind people, bioinformatics/data mining techniques, how to make your workplace happier)
Arduino Programming/E-textiles session: I thought I'd just get to learn about how to program the microcontrollers and more about the different applications of embedded electronics/e-textiles, but I actually got to make my own project! That was pretty cool. Here's a video:

What did you enjoy most about GHC11 so far this year?

11110

2011-11-10T15:45:00.001-08:00

Picture Me In Computing Day has finally arrived (appropriately on 11110)! Here's a pic of me with some fellow Microsofties:

Mobile Talks

2011-11-10T10:05:00.001-08:00

I attended two talks this morning related to the mobile space. The first focused on determining whether your mobile browser is secure, and the second concerned HTML5 and mobile browsers. I'll summarize them both here.

Is Browsing the Internet on your Mobile Phone Secure?
Chaitrali Amrutkar, Georgia Tech

Chaitrali's research focuses on the security of various mobile browsers. I was impressed that she covered 90.5% of mobile browsers in the market in her study, in which she evaluated three major areas of security:

User Event routing: Overlapping elements in the browser can be a hazard; the study found that in mobile browsers in general, the event routing is inconsistent, which means that sometimes the user may think they tapped the top-most element on a webpage, but actually a hidden element beneath it was tapped instead. This opens the browser to potential attacks such as cross-site log-in attacks, which allows an attacker to phish the user and log the user in with the attacker's credentials. The attacker can then monitor the user's actions on the web. Vulnerable browsers were android (both mobile and tablet).
Boundary Control: Here the related attacks were display ballooning and password control.
Navigation: Here top level frame navigation policy allows top level frames to be navigated by any of its descendants regardless of their origin. This is by design in all mobile browsers.

The researchers conclude that mobile browsers are not the same as desktop browsers; mobile browsers fail to provide similar security guarantees as their deskto counterparts. Also, the blind adoption of all widely deployed policies make all mobile browsers vulnerable.

The Power of HTML5 on Mobile

Matt Kelly, Facebook

Matt gave a very nice talk on HTML5, which he presented as consisting of HTML, Javascript, and CSS. HTML5 is new technology, with several interesting aspects:

cache manifest: files can be downloaded and served when the user is offine. This has efficiency benefits too.
local storage
canvas: allows pixel by pixel access to the dom and allows you to create rich apps like games.

Some examples of apps that use these features are gmail, facebook, and words with friends.

So, why HTML5?

Right now, if you want to share the app experience, you need to have the same experience built for the same device across your friends

you currently need to develop for multiple platforms with multiple languages
HTML5 allows ONE codebase and you can deploy to any device
Facebook is working on 'Faceweb', a horizontal approach, using HTML5 to build apps that work on any device

Matt described coding a web app as a paradigm shift in that data is thought of as separate from layout. You can add local storage or hash manifests. Only loading data minimizes data sent to client over the wire - something I think will be useful going forward given that unlimited data plans are being phased out. Another interesting thing is that this lets you eliminate zooming, something which is nice for tablets.

Stay In It, Sit at the Table, Raise Your Hand High(er): Sheryl Sandberg's Keynote at GHC11

2011-11-10T10:02:00.001-08:00

Wow. I didn't expect to dedicate an entire post just to one keynote at this year's GHC11, but Sheryl Sandberg's keynote really deserves it. I strongly encourage everyone, whether technical or not, and regardless of gender, to watch her talk. It's excellent.

In her talk, Sheryl addresses issues of gender differences in STEM fields and paints a pretty discouraging picture of the declining numbers of professional women especially in our field. But she gave hope as well, with five steps we can all take to improve the situation:

Believe in yourself: Sheryl urged us to exude that extra bit of confidence we don't have, and to step up to take opportunities we aren't sure we're ready for. Afterall, no one can succeed at something they think they can't do.
Dream big: Sheryl pointed out studies that show declining ambition of women compared to men in a variety of industries. She told us to be ambitious and 'keep your foot on the pedal' if we want to, or think we might want to, rise to the top of our fields.
Make your partner a real partner: I thought this was particularly interesting because it's not something you hear talked about by many tech execs. Sheryl advised us to find a life partner who would truly be a partner both at home and professionally, citing studies that show that women in a heterosexual relationship usually do more of the housework and childcare duties than their husbands. She also said that if you look at top women in academia or industry, they all have husbands who are either supportive enough to share in these duties or who stay home entirely.
Don't leave before you leave: I liked this advice as well since I've seen several acquaintances succumb to it. Basically the idea is to not avoid taking on more responsibility, more contributions, or a new role/opportunity with greater challenges because you might want to make the decision to scale back down the road, or to improve your work-life balance in a few years (for example, to start a family). She said if you don't have a job you value, you won't have something you love to come back to. She also said women needlessly limit themselves before they even have to make the decision. After many years speaking to Women in STEM student groups about working in industry, I can say I've fielded many questions from single girls in their early 20s about when the right time to start a family is, or how to balance childcare with professional life. And, I can assure you, I've never had any such questions from male students.
Start talking about it! Sheryl said that people warned her not to start doing her talks on this topic (for example, at TED and Facebook). They said it would hurt her career, but it didn't. If we all start talking about it, it will be on the agenda, but she also said to pick the time we choose to discuss it wisely.

I thought Sheryl's advice was broad, timely, and inspiring. She managed to bring together many facets of the complex issue of why there are declining numbers of women in STEM and offer real solutions. Besides the content, Sheryl is also an extremely fluid and engaging speaker, and had the entire room of ~3000 GHC attendees on their feet when she finished her talk. Please watch and share her video, it's worth your time and something everyone should be aware of and talking about.

GHC11 Day 1 Recap

2011-11-09T23:58:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of GHC11 and it started very, very early for me. I'm only just finishing my day now (around midnight) so it's been a long one, too. Here's something like how it went:

5 am: wake up call! Time to get ready. Oh, and pack up and check out too, since I could only stay at the Marriot one night (it's a long story^*).
6 am: free breakfast time at the hotel! I was too bleary-eyed to even think about taking a picture. You'll have to trust me that there were delicious eggs, sausage, muffins, and granola with yogurt. Oh yes, and coffee (which didn't help).
7 am: MAX train to the convention and Hopper's^** meeting.
8 am: Hopper's meeting finished an hour early (?!) so I checked out our recruiting booth in the exhibitor's hall and stopped by the Microsoft attendees' breakfast where I picked up a super cute t-shirt.
9:30 am: After a little over an hour helping the recruiters, it was time for the ABI Ambassadors meeting. Had a great sync-up with other ladies in industry on what we can do to get better participation from women in future conferences and ABI initiatives.
10:30 am: Time to switch hotels^*. That took until lunch. :(
1 pm: Time for Jo Miller's excellent session on "Building Your Brand as a Technical Expert or Leader". Read my summary here.
5 pm: Phew! Speed networking done, time to charge batteries and find some food!
6:30 pm: Time to do my volunteer shift at registration. Met the awesome Terry O and had a great chat.
9 pm: Time to go home! Met up with Liyang from SFU who is excited for her interview tomorrow.

Luckily, Portland's MAX transit system made getting around super easy for me (and free)!

If I had to sum the day up, I would say that today was really about networking and leadership. I met some really wonderful women, made some great connections, and got some very helpful advice. Tomorrow there will be more technical sessions, which I'm really looking forward to.

The great thing about GHC is that there are so many aspects to it, it's really a learning experience that can benefit your career in a multitude of ways, whether you are in academia or industry. If you don't believe me, as the ~3000 other attendees here this week from all sectors of technology! Unfortunately, the problem with GHC is that many people don't realize what they are missing. If you don't go, you won't know you need to know what you don't know. So go!

Also, the swag is great. :-)

*I originally planned to come down to Portland on Wednesday morning, so I only booked my hotel for Wednesday to Saturday. However, since the Hopper meeting was so early, I had to book a room for Tuesday night. Since my original hotel did not have any space for that night and the second hotel only had space for Tuesday night, I was stuck with having to take both and switch mid-day today. It wasn't as bad as I thought but did require much use of the MAX light rail system.

**Hopper is the term used for the conference volunteers. It's a pretty fun experience and a great way to meet other attendees.

Jo Miller on How to Build Your Brand

2011-11-09T20:54:00.000-08:00

Today I was lucky enough to be one of 850 attendees at GHC11 to attend Jo Miller's session on 'Building Your Brand as a Technical Expert or Leader'. She started the session by congratulating us all for taking the time from our day-to-day work to work and reflect on this topic, and I'm very glad I did!

The session was designed to help users identify their ideal career niche and create a personal brand statement, in addition to providing tips on making your brand visible and practice with speed networking. The advice was very practical and insightful. For example, attendees were advised to consider brands that are scalable and that evolve as your career does, from entry level through mid-level to the senior level. Jo asked us to consider where we want to be in two years and five years, and articulate our career plan to our leaders, since they often have access to networks and opportunities that we can't see. When we tell them our plans, we empower them to make decisions about the people working for them earlier.

Jo also discussed ways to promote yourself. I especially liked how she encouraged us to promote others. She told that it's just as important to promote others as it is to promote yourself, and I couldn't agree more. I've given friends and colleagues recommendations on LinkedIn, public kudos at work when colleagues were helpful or proactive, and I always take care when writing feedback for evaluations. If you do these things thoughtfully it reflects on you just as much as the person you are writing about.

Part of the session included a panel of women at different stages of their careers, including Judy Priest, a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, Ami Khatri, a Web Applications Architect at Massachussets General Hospital, Nehal Mehta, Director of QA at NetApp, and Kiara L. Williams, an Event Program Manager at Microsoft. Each of the women offered great career advice, such as:

'Build a brand that will stick with you through various jobs and sectors. Make it consistent and timeless'. ~Judy Priest
"Do things you are passionate about. Don't be afraid to try something new." ~Ami Khatri
"If your brand is negative, turn it around. Document and publish what you do" ~Nehal Mehta
"Reflect on what you have accomplished and what you will accomplish." ~Kiara L. Williams

Once you've created your brand, you need to make it visible. Luckily, Jo provides five steps to doing so:

Work less: work strategically, don't waste time on tasks that don't add the value that your organization really needs.
Communicate your brand: you may need different brands for different audiences. Try to create a 30s 'commercial'; what's your job title, what are you known for, what do people come to you for?
Have career planning conversations with your leaders: State your intention and ask for their help.
Work hard on the right projects: Women who succeed get demonstrated results. Choose projects that align with your brand and showcase it, and thatimprove the bottom line.
Promote your accomplishments: You can start small by presenting in meetings, blogging, sending status updates. Ask to be nominated for awards (advice my mom always gave me!) or ask a colleague to 'toot your horn'.

Portland!

2011-11-08T22:44:00.000-08:00

Finally got into Portland after taking the train down from Seattle. Amtrak's trains are no Shinkansens, but it was fun and there were no airport hassles, so I'd do it again (and will, on Saturday's return trip).

All those women in front of me? Headed for GHC11! :-)

As usual with the trip to GHC, you can usually spot many others headed the same way. My train car was about 95% GHC attendee!

I have a busy day tomorrow but plan to post about as many of the sessions I attend as possible. Look for those posts soon!

Playing with Portal 2

2011-11-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

For the past few weeks I've been working my way through Portal 2 on Xbox. I'm really enjoying the elements of story and puzzle-solving, so I thought I'd share a bit of my experience so far here.

Since I normally find it hard to fit hours of time in front of the TV into my busy schedule, I end up going through games pretty slowly. I've never finished Mass Effect 2, and my pace at Portal 2 is about one chapter per every 1.5 weeks. I also had an initial setback having downloaded the game for PC and hit the Data Execution Prevention problem, which eventually made it impossible to play. I like the game on Xbox much better anyway; I find the controls much easier to use than a keyboard/mouse combination.

For some reason I don't really enjoy solitary gaming either, so in the past I've spent more time playing board and card games with friends rather than playing video games. I'm not a huge FPS fan (I'm not coordinated enough to run, shoot, and look around at the same time, although I'm great at doing one or even two of these actions at once, and I also don't like the feeling of being snuck up on). The nice thing about Portal 2 is that (at least so far) it doesn't really have the traditional FPS elements. It also has a very entertaining cooperative mode that lets you play with a friend and truly work together to solve puzzles. I also like that the puzzles you solve in cooperative mode aren't straight copies of the single-player mode puzzles, but rather the experience is completely designed to be most appropriate for the mode you choose to play in.

Another element to this game that I think help keeps players engaged, and that is the clever writing, particularly the lines delivered by GLaDOS, such as: "Sorry about the mess. I've really let the place go since you killed me. By the way, thanks for that.". If you like puzzles, problem-solving, crazy physics, and most of all dark humour/sarcasm delivered by an affectionate robotic voice, you'll probably enjoy Portal 2! Give it a try and let me know your thoughts!

Course Review: Presenting Data and Information by Edward Tufte

2011-11-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I had the opportunity to attend Presenting Data and Information, a one-day course taught by Edward Tufte. If you have an interest in user interfaces, HCI, or data analysis, this is definitely the course for you!

The main point Tufte makes is that there is an abundance of poorly presented data that leads to bad business decisions. He provides many examples, the most convincing being the Columbia shuttle accident, where a risk assessment using data that was ambiguous at best was presented in such a way as to lead NASA engineers to approve the shuttle to land. The course provides tools and guidelines for analyzing data and presentations, presenting your own data more effectively and convincingly, and analyzing the design of the interfaces we work on so that we can make better business decisions.

Tufte opens the day with a visualized piece of music, like this one:

This is used to illustrate how including multiple types of information in a single graphic/visualization can be much more useful than what is usually done - narrowing down information until we have only one or two metrics shown. Here the visualization helps the consumer distinguish the different instruments heard, the length of the notes, and value of the notes themselves (a low C from a middle C, for example). This theme occurs again and again throughout the course - Tufte also uses the Minard Map as a good example of how to visualize multiple data points and metrics in a single place:

Edward Tufte has a reputation for disliking Powerpoint (OK, he did write an article on how it is 'evil'...). He has a section on this in his course, but to me it seems his dislike is not so much for the tool itself as much as how it is used. Specifically, he states that the problem is:

people often show too little data on slides (due to the limited space they provide)
many people simply re-read the bullet points when presenting, rather than supplementing them with additional information
powerpoint slides can be dictatorial/autocratic: the leader often reads the info to the audience, but the audience doesn’t have the notes/background material that went into creating the slides, only what is presented on them

Of great interest to me was the section of the course on mobile interfaces. Most notably, Tufte has provided some criticism on both iPhone and Windows Phone 7. He appears to like the former much more than the latter.

There are some really nice things about how Tufte presents the material in this course. First, I like that he shows pictures and talks to/about them, rather than showing bullet points and reading from them. The course ends up much more like a dialogue than like a lecture because of this. Second, students are given all four of Tufte's books on data visualization, which is a great resource that helps continue attendees' education well after the course has ended. Finally, Tufte uses all four books liberally throughout the day, so attendees get a good overview in the content contained in each; now when I have a question or point of interest I need to look up, I have a better idea of where to find the answer in his books, which has saved me a lot of time since.

Overall I would highly recommend this course. The training on presenting data is very useful - I've implemented his recommendations and received positive feedback on several of the reports I wrote using it. The information on layouts and interfaces was also very helpful. My one hope is that more technical people outside of user experience designers and researchers find the time to attend - engineers of all sorts, from developers and testers to Q/A engineers could all benefit.

A Journey to the Land of Foss

2011-11-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

Back in September I took a trip with my good friend from school, Kerry, to Iceland. We had a wonderful time there, and since it was so lovely I wanted to share a bit of it here with you.

View of the first farm we stayed at
on the West Coast of Iceland.

Our timing was quite serendipitous, both in the planned length of the trip and the time of year we chose. First, a week is the perfect length of time to travel in Iceland; sine the country is so small you can see all the major spots in that time without too much rush. Second, we hit the transition from the 'high season' to the 'low season'. This meant there were far fewer tourists and far more choices when it came to lodgings (we chose to do 'farm stays', which is when local farms open guest rooms so you can get a glimpse of working farm-life while travelling. Basically the farm is like a B&B, but providing a little more unique experience). Third, mid- to late September is when the annual sheep and horse roundups happen, and around the country communities get together to sort out the sheep herded in from the countryside. We were lucky to be able to see a bit of this in Faxi:

Sorting sheep by their ear tags.
Once the correct family is ascertained, the sheep is unceremoniously
thrown into the appropriate pen.

Sheep round-up.

There was also a giant waterfall nearby which is quite impressive:

A 3 photo panorama I took of Faxi Foss in Southwest Iceland.

Iceland is actually famous for its waterfalls, called 'foss' in Icelandic (we were only able to pick up a few words of this difficult-to-read language, including 'foss' and 'tak', which means thank you). Here are a few more:

Gulfoss, also in Southwest Iceland (the Golden Triangle).

Detifoss, said to be the most impressive in all of Europe.

Goðafoss, located in the Mývatn district of North-Central Iceland.

Another beautiful area of Iceland is includes Lake Mývatn and its surrounds. The lake is a huge bird sanctuary, there are sulfur fields, hot springs, and otherwise beautiful scenery:

Lake Mývatn with cylon raider (ok, maybe it's just a bird).

Sulfur vents near Lake Myvatn.

A fun thing to do in Iceland is go horseback riding, which is how I got some great shots of the lake I wouldn't otherwise have been able to. The Iceland Horse is very sturdy and surefooted and can easily traverse the rugged terrain (especially around the lake, which is mostly surrounded by lava fields). It also has a special gait called the tölt which makes travelling very fast and smooth.

Kerry and our guide ahead on Icelandic Horses.

We had two beautiful rides in Iceland, and I highly recommend doing at least as many if you are planning a trip for next summer/fall. Icelandic horses are also very friendly and (at least the ones we encountered) had very lovely dispositions, so even if you are not an experienced rider you will have a great time!

We met a herd on the road while out walking, and they came over to say hello. Lots of pats and nuzzles all around. :-)

It wouldn't be a trip to Iceland without a visit to the Blue Lagoon. On our first day in Iceland, we went right from the plane to the spa, which is a wonderful way to start your trip! We spent five hours soaking and relaxing in the hot water, cold air, and bright sunshine:

The Blue Lagoon, before it opened that morning.

And, we enjoyed it so much that we decided to have a second visit on our last day in Iceland, before boarding the plane. Sadly, there was a storm that day and the atmosphere wasn't quite as serene. However, at least one trip to the Blue Lagoon is highly recommended for anyone traveling to Iceland.

Picture Me in Computing Day

2011-11-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

In the past few years we've seen a few different initiatives set up to help encourage women in STEM (or to enter STEM) fields, most notably the Ada Lovelace Day initiative, where people around the world blog about women in tech to increase their visibility.

Recently I came across "Picture Me in Computing Day", an initiative to encourage young women to imagine themselves in technology and computing. The idea is simple: bombard the internet with information and images of women in these fields to raise awareness and bring role models to the forefront.

Here's how you can participate (lifted directly from their site):

How to ParticipateTo participate, all you have to do is bombard every social networking site that you know of with information on women in computer science during the day of Nov 10, 2011. Including:
Upload a picture of yourself with technology to PicasaRecord a video blog and upload it to YouTube with the tag "picmecomp"
Tag all of your tweets for the day with #picmecomp
Blog about picmecomp and what it means to you.
Our goal is to get the entire tech world to take over every social networking site on the same day (11-10-10) in solidarity of women in computer science. The first step to creating more female computer scientists is to introduce them to the craft while they're still in their formative years. That's why we're coming to them! We're going to introduce ourselves to them using a medium that they already frequent...The INTERNET!

It's fortuitous that this will be happening right in the middle of this year's Grace Hopper Conference, so there will be a large number of women in one place mobilized to participate! I'll kick things off with an older photo of me 'computing'... How will you get involved?

Confidence Builders at Work

2011-11-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

Today I came across this article on how to build your confidence at work and it reminded me quite a bit of the 'Imposter Syndrome' session hosted by Maria Klawe that I attended at GHC09. I think the advice provided can be useful to many people regardless of their confidence level or gender!

My favorite piece of advice was #3 on the list, "Keep Track of Successes", which advises keeping a list of even your smallest 'to-do's during each day and crossing them off as you go. I like this because it helps me realize how much I do during the day, even if I don't feel like it was very productive, but also because when it comes to setting commitments for the year or doing self-evaluations, I have a lot of data to include and show off.

One problem, however, is that a million little 'to-do's at 9am can seem overwhelming! So, sometimes I find it helpful to only write down big items, and if I finish some small ones only include them once they are complete.

Another tip I've learned for particularly daunting days is to leave something small and easy to accomplish for the end of the day, and quickly finish it. This way I always leave feeling like I completed something, even if it was the only thing and I am still blocked on everything else. I like leaving on a positive note, and not like this:

Happy Birthday CBC!

2011-11-02T21:30:00.000-07:00

Today is the CBC's 75^th birthday. Each time I live as an expat I feel even more appreciative of it - great quality [radio] programming (with a few exceptions, and I'm not including TV here either) that ties our country together and helps tell our unique cultural story. For $35/year/Canadian, I think it's totally worth it (that's including the TV, which I would happily sacrifice to save our radio if need be)!

Now that I live in the States, I listen to NPR almost as much as I listen to CBC, and although there are a few programs I love, the pledge drives and lack of cohesion between stations are things that make me long for the good old CBC.

Jian Ghomeshi had a nice essay on his show Q that pretty much summed it up for me.

Getting Back Into Blogging

2011-11-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

You've probably noticed various tweets and posts about Nanowrimo, which just started today. I've always wanted to try it and have made a few attempts in the past, but given a pretty hectic schedule this year I'm giving it a miss. I am, however, going to try to step up my blogging, and do at least one post a day (I got a head start and posted twice in October, but, being November 1st, today is my first official post).

To kick us off, I thought I'd share a bit about some cool things I've seen lately (Twitter and Facebook mostly). Topics generally fall into a few different themes:

Technology News

Bendy screens: This week I saw press about bendy screens from both Samsung and Nokia. Excited to see what cool things they build with it next!
Kindle Fire: The latest offering from Amazon and their entry into the tablet space. I'm very curious to see how this is going to work out and just how good the device will be. Although I find tablets in general to be very cool and a tempting purchase, I can't quite justify them to myself as anything more than a toy just yet.
Kinect Ads: I was impressed with this ad. Not only is it really well put together and beautifully done, but it tells a compelling story about the product (and it's obvious what the product is).

Women in STEM/Business & Related Issues
A couple of interesting articles I read recently include:

The Myth of the Ideal Worker
Female Professionals No Longer Finding Mentors
Huffington Post's new series on Women in Tech

I also heard about Sheryl Sandberg's latest investment in Levo League, which is dedicated to helping Generation Y women rise professionally. It's a great idea, but I wonder if they will branch out to other generations if the initial effort is successful.

Other Useful Resources

Catalyst: Catalyst provides research on various aspects of women and business. Their articles are informative and help bring issues like the gender wage gap to light. I quite like their blog.
Spark: This program on CBC Radio styles itself as an 'ongoing conversation on technology and culture'. Not only does host Nora Young provide excellent commentary and interviews with leading experts on subjects such as human computer interaction, robotics, and social networks, but she always makes an effort to pop in items related to women in technology (and the relative lack thereof), which is very cool. You can find podcasts here.

Latest Reads

2011-10-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

In the past few months I've been browsing Seattle's many excellent second-hand bookstores and recently picked up two anthologies of Science Fiction comprised entirely of stories by female authors.

So far my favorite has been Octavia Butler's "Blood Child". Although I read a lot of Sci-fi, I haven't read any of Butler's work before, and I think I've been missing out.

In an effort to get more reading in I've decided to multitask: I'm working my way through "Guns, Germs and Steel" on the side, and am also meandering through the latest Margaret Atwood ("In Other Worlds"). So far she's mentioned Homer, Leonard Cohen, and Ursula Le Guin all within a few pages of each other, so I would say I'm quite pleased with it. :-)

I've had several conversations recently (and coincidentally it seems) about how female Sci-fi authors don't seem to feature [m]any positive/strong male characters in their work. I disagree in general, but it made me think about how even today there are still not many positive/strong female characters in Sci-fi, and how growing up it was finally refreshing to encounter them in books like Atwood's, or Le Guin's. One exception I can think of is Gregory Benford's book "Cosm" which features a female physicist as the main character, but I'm having a hard time coming up with other examples. Can you think of some? I'm always interested in recommendations!

Site Update

2011-10-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I've received a few messages from my old school that I will soon be cut off from using their web hosting for this site. I can't complain seeing as I graduated in mid-2009 and it's now nearly the end of 2011!

I debated what to do - should I get my own domain and find storage somewhere else? Instead, I found another solution - Blogger Pages. This [somewhat] new feature allows users to create static pages in addition to their blogs, and with a little template magic I was able to pretty much clone the old pages - apart from the URLs I think the migration has been pretty seamless, and am quite pleased with the results.

Since I have pretty much written my own template and gotten rid of almost everything except the bare minimum blogger-related code, I had a few challenges in migrating to the new page system. First of all, I was using CSS before to switch the tabs' appearance when you switched pages, so the current tab was always emphasized. In the new setup, I had to do this all within the template. What I did was use conditional blogger tags. Before, the list that forms my tabs looked something like this:

<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>

Now that I have a single template, I needed to use the conditional blogger tags to put a tab 'switcher' within the template itself. Looks like this:

<div id='menu'>
<ul>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html"'>
<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>
</b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html"'>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>
</b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html"'>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>
</b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html"'>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>
</b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html"'>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>
</b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "static_page"'>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/home.html'>Home</a></li>
<li id='current'><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com'>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/academic.html'>Academic</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/professional.html'>Professional</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/personal.html'>Personal</a></li>
<li><a href='http://kjtsouka.blogspot.com/p/contact.html'>Contact</a></li>
</b:if>
</ul>
</div>

Have you found conditional tags useful in your blog(s)? I think this is pretty cool and in a way makes me less reliant on the various css, javascript, and html hacks I was using before to achieve the same effects.

Grace Hopper 2011: What If I Could Attend Every Session I Was Interested In?

2011-10-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

After several years of missing out, I'll finally be going back to the Grace Hopper Conference this November! A combination of a more advantageous time with respect to my work and vacation schedule as well as my involvement with the Anita Borg Institute's Ambassador's program and recruitment efforts at work meant I could more easily fit it in this year.

It's always exciting to look at the schedule but with so many responsibilities to coordinate with sessions I want to attend, I find it useful to create a visual map of my schedule. I did this for GHC 2008 and I've done it again this year, returning to Microsoft Visio to create it. I have to say, I haven't found anything quite like the timeline feature in any other software and really like how easy it is to plug in my schedule using it! I've converted mine to a graphic to share:

You can click to enlarge to a more readable size. :)

This year I'm particularly excited about a few of the mobile technology-related technical sessions, particularly the Thursday morning session on display security in mobile web browsers and HTML5 and mobile. What sessions are you planning to attend? Which ones are you most excited about? Am I the only one crazy enough to map out my schedule like this?

A trip to Ada

2011-10-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

**This post sort of coincides with the arrival of Ada Lovelace Day (on October 7 this year, get ready!).**

I've walked past Ada's Technical Books a few times in the last few months and noticed some very cool window display items (such as Neal Stephenson's Reamde), but I was always there when it was closed. Yesterday however, I happened to be in the area when it was open and got a chance to finally browse inside.

Outside Ada's Technical Books on Capital Hill in Seattle, WA

This store is so neat! It's named for Ada Lovelace, widely thought to be the first female computer programmer. There were little references to technical women throughout the store, including a book about Grace Hopper in the biography section, greeting cards featuring technical women at the front of the store, and of course the name of the shop itself. Besides this, there is a very nice selection of technical books, quirky puzzles and games, biographies about famous scientists, programmers, and mathmeticians, and even a small sci-fi and young adult section. In the latter I spied a Marvel comic version of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game - have any of you read it? Would you recommend it?

I really enjoyed my visit to this shop and if you are in the area, I'm sure you will too. :)

Two Years!

2011-07-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my second anniversary of working full time for Microsoft. It has been an awesome two years that seem to have flown by, but at the same time it feels like I've been here for much longer (in a good way)!

One of the things that is so cool about my job is that while I have plenty of opportunities to work on cutting edge technology, I also get to do things outside of straight-up engineering, such as:

helping with recruiting efforts
mentoring college students
product design and planning
pie-in-the-sky prototyping
taking fascinating training

and the list goes on! I'm still excited to come to work every day and hope there are many more years to come. :)

A Few Updates!

2011-05-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Just realized I haven't blogged for a while and wanted to add some updates!

I'm attending Edward Tufte's course (Presenting Data and Information), which I've heard a lot of good things about. For those of you who haven't heard of him, Edward Tufte is an expert on data/information presentation and is well known in UX design circles. I'll try to have a review of the course up here soon!

I noticed recently that I've been neglecting to look after my website, and it seems broken on some browsers. I'll be working on that in the coming weeks!

Finally, in other news, I've updated my resume.

Kindle Update

2011-02-28T22:22:00.000-08:00

I promised a review of my Kindle in my last post on e-Readers, but have been totally swamped at work and haven't had time to even think about it until now. I still don't have the time or energy for a full post, but wanted to give a brief update on how I'm doing with it.

So far I finished one fiction book: Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep". I had previously bought a hard copy from Half Price Books (I'm not a big book buyer, being a library lover, but this is my favorite bookstore hands-down). I found I read just as much post-Kindle reading as I did pre-Kindle, but one disappointment is that e-Books are sometimes missing some of the little extras that exist in the hard copies (and often cost the same). For example, Vinge's book postulates a theory wherein the galaxy is divided into 'zones of thought' (basically, computers work differently in each zone, and I wondered if he was trying to put forth the idea that P=NP might be true in some galactic zones and untrue in others - a neat idea). There is a diagram at the beginning of the book that shows what this would look like, but it is absent from the e-version. I think this would probably make the ideas in the book harder for readers to understand, or lead to misconceptions. Differences between e- and hard copies of books is something that deters consumers and should be avoided.

I'm also reading some non-fiction, including "The Boglehead's Guide to Investing", which is perfect as an e-Book. Kindle has a great interface for quickly flipping through books by chapter, it's easy to use the table of contents and also search through books or place bookmarks for easy access later. Kindle might even be better for reading non-fiction than it is for fiction, but I'm undecided on this point so far.

One thing that I only discovered recently was how to access footnotes. In reading "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest", I realized there were tonnes of footnotes, but only once I was about a third of the way into the book. I think Kindle could do a better job of making the footnotes more obvious on the page. Also, instead of flipping you to the back of the book, it would be nice if they could appear like dictionary definitions, which sort of pop up at the bottom of the page. This would make it easier to read footnotes at a glance just as you would in a hard copy book.

Finally, a note about the device itself - unless you have really great lighting, get the case with the built-in light. I find I use it about 90% of the time, since I often read in low-light and the screen's contrast makes it hard to see the letters. I got the case shown in the picture above, and really like it.

Anyway, I'm thoroughly enjoying the Kindle so far and have lots of books waiting in my queue. I still highly recommend this product!

Watson Wins on Jeopardy!

2011-02-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

Just finished watching the first episode of Jeopardy featuring IBM's Watson computer in competition with two humans (two of the most successful/celebrated contestants ever to appear on Jeopardy). A few quick thoughts:

In some ways it doesn't seem a fair competition; on the one hand a computer can store a huge amount of data and retrieve it very efficiently, but there is only so much the human brain can memorize. On the other hand, it seems to me that humans would have the advantage in lateral thinking and making obscure connections in clues, where an algorithm might have a more difficult time with this.
The explanations of how Watson works were really well done - nice visuals and simple ideas, easy for the audience to grasp.
I'm really interested in why they made the 'avatar' the way they did. Why not give it a humanoid appearance? The voice also sounded smug to me, and at least one other person I've spoken too thought so as well - she even caught herself hoping it would get the answer wrong. Incidentally, I feel the same way about Alex Trebek.

Technology Observations in Japan

2011-01-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

I've already mentioned my thoughts on e-Books and e-Readers, which were provoked by my recent trip to Japan. While there, I noticed a few other things that might interest fellow techies, and thought I'd share them here.

QR Codes

I'm starting to notice QR codes in North America, but their use seems pretty limited so far. I've seen one or two in magazines and a few on items like coffee cups, but nothing widespread or in mainstream use. In Japan, however, they were pretty ubiquitous. For example, they were used on all my boarding passes, and passengers scanned them in a machine to get on the plane, similar to a train ticket turnstile. I thought that was pretty cool! Boarding seemed to go a lot faster than on my flight from Seattle, but maybe that's just because anything to do with traveling seems much more streamlined and organized in Japan than in North America.

Cellphones
In North America, smartphones are pretty common. The cost has come down significantly and you'd be hard-pressed not to notice them in any major North American city. I also saw quite a few smartphones on my trip to Europe last year. In Japan, however, the same style of flip phone I used when I lived there five years ago is still popular. I was surprised to see so few iPhones (I think I saw fewer than 10), or even any phone with a touch screen. I suppose that the Japanese phones are much better at handling Japanese script/kanji, but it was also interesting to note how more people seemed to use their phones as actual phones than I see here too.

Of course Japan is full of technological wonders, most of which didn't phase me since it wasn't my first visit. A few things are changing though - it seems to me that credit card use has increased, and you can now use cell phones to pay for even more goods and services, which is pretty cool. The contrast of cellphone types and the use of QR codes are the main two things that stood out to me the most.

Additional Thoughts on e-Readers, or, Why I Broke Down and Got a Kindle

2011-01-16T12:00:00.001-08:00

Several months ago I wrote a blog post on problems I see with the current e-Reader offerings and why I wouldn't buy one. Since then, however, I have changed my mind, and I wanted to explain why.

The main reasons are:

It's useful for traveling: you don't need to lug several heavy books with you on long trips, you only need your e-Reader loaded with whatever e-Books you want to read. You can also put guide books on an e-Reader and after trying it out, the maps are quite readable. Finding English-language books can also be difficult when traveling.
The price has come down a lot: at the current Kindle WIFI-only price, I can use it for a few years and not worry if a newer version comes out that has colour or has other improved features.
Reading free books is now easier: there are hacks now for several systems so ePub and other free books can be read on many devices. There are now many more options for reading books for free, which was a big complaint of mine in the past.

It all started with my recent trip to Japan. Once I finished packing my bags, I realized I couldn't find my book anywhere. At the airport, I couldn't find any novels I really wanted to read, so I went without. I was annoyed because my book was a page-turner, and I didn't want to buy another copy of it just for this trip. While in Japan, I didn't bother looking for books because I already knew that English language books are expensive and the selection can be pretty limited.

Throughout the trip, I saw people reading eBooks, which I have to admit made me a little jealous. In addition, my guide book, although highly informative and very useful for finding out-of-the-way restaurants and temples, was very heavy. Carrying it in my purse along with my SLR and a few lenses was weighing me down. I thought about how handy it would be to have an e-version that I could whip out, check a map on, and then fit back in my purse at a fraction of the weight, while at the same time also carrying novels for reading on long train trips.

Finally, when I got back, someone showed me a Nook that had been hacked to access the underlying Android operating system, which could then be used for browsing the web and using the Android Kindle app to read books. After doing some research I read how several people had hacked the Kindle to read ePub books (the free format that most libraries use). After trying it out in the store, I decided to go with Kindle since it's cheaper and I find the interface, interaction, and responsiveness much better than that of the Nook's. It's arriving later this week, and I'm looking forward to writing about my experience with it here!

Do you have a Kindle, Nook, or other eReader? What made you decide to get one and how are you liking it so far? Do you find you read more or less than before?

Last Night in Japan :(

2011-01-03T03:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight is my last night here in Japan. I'm sad to have to go and of course have my next trip all planned out!

Since Okinawa proved so difficult to get around, I decided to spend the last two days sightseeing with a Japanese tour group. I was able to see quite a lot in two days this way, including:

several WWII sites such as the Japanese underground naval headquarters
a cave with over a million stalactites (at Okinawa World)
a giant aquarium holding 75000 cubic feet of water and at least three whale sharks
the remains of an ancient castle at Nikijinjo
and Nago Pineapple Park (which needs to be seen to be believed)

Even better, both tour guides spent the long bus journeys teaching us about the differences between the Okinawan dialect and Japanese, and today's tour guide taught us several songs. She had a beautiful voice (luckily).

A few things I'll miss in Japan:

things that sing (trains, kitchen appliances, toilets)
Japanese television, particularly the news (so informative!) and the many programs showcasing people eating
cheap, delicious food (I still don't think I've ever had a bad meal in Japan)

I'm sure there are more, but I have to get packing. I'll leave you with some videos taken at Manzo Beach in Central/North Okinawa today:

Cliffs at Manza Beach

Waves at Manza Beach

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

2011-01-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! Actually, New Year's Day is almost over now. I spent the day up at Shuri-jo Castle enjoying the sites and New Year's Day's festivities.

Usually on New Year's Eve in Japan, people go to the nearest shrine or temple at midnight. There is amazake and sometimes sweets. They also sometimes watch the NHK New Year's extravaganza, Red vs. White, in which the Red and White teams compete against each other by singing songs. There's really nothing quite like it, and in the past the costumes have been pretty extravagant. This year's was quite toned down. White won for the 6th year in a row!

I don't really have any New Year's resolutions for the coming year. 2010 was a pretty banner year for me, so I plan to keep doing what I'm doing and try to remember to make time to relax, spend time with friends and family, and keep blogging!

Visit to Okinawa

2010-12-31T22:18:00.001-08:00

When planning this trip to Japan, I wanted to try to see some places I hadn't had a chance to when I lived here previously. One of these places was Okinawa, which many of my former students had raved about, so I decided to make it my last stop on my way back home.

I couldn't find much information on Naha, the main city in Okinawa-honto, and none of the guide books had very large sections on the whole of Okinawa at all (although Rough Guide had the largest, which is partly why I went with it). There's a good reason why: there's not very much for most tourists to do in Okinawa, unless you have a car and you are traveling at the high tourist season. I am doing neither. :(

On the other hand, the food here is fabulous. I have had several food 'moments' akin to my lunch at Ume no Hana. Given what I've written about with regard to Japanese food tastings on TV, I think I know why my students love Okinawa so much. Also, if you are into water sports and visit at a less wintry time, there is a lot of excellent diving and snorkelling here.

Unfortunately, it is too cold right now to even go to the beach; as NHK English news puts it, it is 'unseasonably cold' for Okinawa. It's roughly 8C here, and incredibly windy (so probably much colder with wind chill). I am wearing my winter wool coat and CBC scarf. I haven't resorted to my monkey toque yet, but may have to if this continues! So much for 'sub-tropical'!

I've decided to make the best of it, though, and so far have had some good experiences:

chatting with Japanese tourists from Osaka who were very friendly
chatting with a lovely old woman selling pottery in Tsuboya Pottery Village
eating jiimamii dofu (peanut tofu), my most favorite Okinawan food so far!
watching Okinawan New Year's Day celebrations at Shuri-jo Castle, and getting a free ride and Japanese narrative tour of Shikinaen Royal Gardens from a very nice taxi driver, Ota-san

This is despite the initial impression I got when I first arrived in Naha. I visited Kokusai-dori, which is a recommended sightseeing spot, but really didn't like the tacky souvenir shops and tourist-trap feeling I got there. Also, many people answered me in English and wouldn't interact in Japanese with me, and I didn't feel the same friendliness I did in similar tourist shops in mainland Japan. I think the key is to get away from those super-touristy areas, try to visit places most foreign tourists don't, and make a big effort to interact with locals. Once you do so, you will find this impression fades and traveling here can be a rewarding, if different, experience to traveling in mainland Japan.

One such place I visited was Ryukyu -mura, which I visited on the bus. There are many Japanese tourists here but very few foreign tourists. Unfortunately, it is extremely time-consuming and expensive to visit on the local buses! Thus I've booked two Japanese tours, one for tomorrow and one for the day after next, which include lunches, transportation, and most of the entrance costs to the sites we'll visit. In fact this is about the same cost or cheaper than going it alone, and I hope I'll get to see more of the island this way. Updates (and photos) to come!

Usuki Stone Buddhas

2010-12-31T03:44:00.000-08:00

After all the relaxation in Beppu, I decided to go to Usuki the next day to see some of the finest stone Buddha carvings in Japan, if not the world (now that the ones in Afghanistan have been destroyed). First, however, I had to try the onsen in my hotel, where I watched the sun come up through the windows (the outdoor onsen didn't open until the afternoon, unfortunately, and it was also very cold outside). Earlier, while it was just becoming light out, I had watched from my room's window as a pod of dolphins (at least I think they were dolphins, they were too far away to tell exactly) swam across the bay. Later, I had a tasty buffet breakfast (similar to Toyoko's, but with way more options). Held on the 12th floor of the hotel, there was a great view of the harbour on one side and the city on the other.

Usuki is about 40 minutes from Beppu on the local train, and then you need to take a bus for about 30 minutes to reach the Buddhas. I spent about an hour there admiring the carvings and taking in their surroundings, which are serene. The park is set in the Japanese countryside, among farms, fields, and a forest mixed with deciduous trees and bamboo stands. Getting back to Usuki is a bit of a pain though, as it was difficult to understand the bus schedule and there's no other way to get back (short of an expensive taxi). Finally a bus arrived which didn't quite go to Usuki Station but got me close enough. It just goes to show how much more awesome trains are than buses.

I also took a stroll through the 'old road' of Usuki, which apparently once housed samurai. I didn't have a lot of time but it was very atmospheric. Unfortunately, however, a vicious storm started just as I started my walk, and I got pretty soaked! It started to clear up just as I reached the station. :(

After my walk it was time to head back to Hakata. I really wish I could have spent more time in Oita prefecture, since it was such a relaxing place and I had such a great time there. There are many small towns like Usuki, in addition to the obvious choices like Beppu, to keep tourists occupied no matter what their interests are!

A Trip to Hell and Back!

2010-12-30T04:37:00.000-08:00

The day after my trip to Nagasaki, it was time to head to Beppu, a hot spring resort town on Kyushu's west coast, and about two hours from Hakata on the limited express train. Although the main part of town is near the beach, the best parts of Beppu are in the surrounding hills, which you can get to by bus.

Once up in the hills, the first thing you notice is the steam venting from all over the place - in the streets, between the buildings, and from the Hells themselves. It's very impressive!

I decided to check out the Jigoku (Hells), first. I visited Kamado Jigoku (Cooking Pot Hell), which has several statues of demons and has some muddy hot springs. It was nice, but not really worth the entrance fee. The second hell, Umi Jigoku (Sea Hell), was far better, with beautiful blue water and a much more tasteful presentation. Finally I visited Chinoike Jigoku (Blood Pond Hell), which had one pond of blood red water. While very pretty to look at, it's also not really worth the entrance fee.

I decided to cut my tour of the hells short, since it was getting on in the afternoon and all that sightseeing made me hungry. As part of the bus day pass I bought, you get several discounts on restaurants and onsens, so I decided to head to Ichinoide Kaikan, which wasn't listed in the Rough Guide but was on the map provided by the tourist information office. Unfortunately, the map wasn't topographical and I ended up on a 15 minute hike up the side of a mountain! It was definitely worth it though, since the view from the onsen was spectacular. From the milky blue outdoor pool you look out over Beppu, the harbour, and the bay beyond. On a good day, they say you can see all the way to Shikoku, and while it was a beautiful day there was the usual haze you see in Japan, so I couldn't see that far.

I didn't take a camera to the onsen as there were other people in it. This is someone else's picture taken from the second pool (on the day I went, set aside for men - the women's pool had a much better view). There are more pictures in the link above.

One funny thing was, on the day I went they were fixing a tower a little down the mountain. The tower came up to about the same height as the onsen though. Once in the tub, several of us noticed that people were working in the tower (you can see it in the link to the website above), which the other women seemed to find hilarious. They kept saying, 'Today they are so lucky! But not yesterday!' (the pools switch genders each day).

I think that this type of onsen might be a little intimidating for people new to onsen culture - for one thing, it's not in the guide books, and the staff (at least where I went) don't speak much, if any, English. However, once inside you'll find most onsens have English signs that provide clear instructions, and people are very friendly and welcoming.

Part of the deal at Ichinoide Kaikan is a set lunch along with your onsen, but they prefer you eat after bathing. The set was really delicious and perfect on such a cold day!

Lunch set at Ichinoide Kaikan

I wasn't done with onsenning though, and headed next to Onsen Hoyoland for a mud bath. The mud is slimy and a little unsettling, but it is still relaxing and a great experience. I highly recommend it!

After all that relaxing, it was time for dinner, so I headed back to the hotel. I got a Japanese-style room with a view of the harbour:

Hotel room!

A kaiseki dinner came included, which was fantastic, but there was so much food. I'm sorry I couldn't completely finish it, because every bite was delicious.

Kaiseki. These are just the appetizers. O_o

Kaiseki dessert!

Beppu has been one of my favorite places so far on this trip, and probably one of the most authentic. If I were coming back to Japan it would definitely be a must on my list of places to visit. There were hardly any other foreigners there, and in some sense I felt like I had the place to myself! I can't recommend Beppu enough!

Sit at the Table!

2010-12-26T13:59:00.000-08:00

I just watched this TED talk and felt compelled to share it here. It's fantastic. Sheryl has three basic messages for women who want to stay and succeed in the workforce:

sit at the table
own your success
don't leave before you leave

I think her talk is so important because I've seen exactly what she's talking about many times over, whether it be as a student or otherwise. I've seen women who literally sit at the back or sides of the room rather than at the table with the leaders, and I've seen women play down their success and attribute it to luck, help from others, or hard work (heck I do this a lot myself). I've also fielded countless 'when is the right time to have a baby' questions from students in first or second year university, who likely won't be having children for years to come.

I really hope people of both genders watch this talk, which isn't judgemental or preachy; it made me sit up and realize what kinds of messages are being sent to women and men in the workforce around me, and I hope it will do the same for you too.

Day Trip to Nagasaki

2010-12-26T03:40:00.000-08:00

Today I took the limited express train from Hakata to Nagasaki. It had leather seats!!!

The train takes about an hour and 45 minutes, with a few stops along the way. Nagasaki is, of course, famous for being the second city in Japan to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. However, there are plenty of other things to see too. Interestingly, the city is reminiscent of San Francisco, set as it is in the hills by the see. There are even antique streetcars to transport residents quickly around town!

Unfortunately, though, the weather also matches what I know of San Francisco. It was quite nice for a while even after I got off the train (a rarity in recent days). However, as soon as I reached the Nagasaki Peace Park, the weather changed dramatically, with rain, hail, and snow pelting down. There was also a pretty fierce wind, and it was a pretty miserable. When I finished with the park, I went immediately to the nearest combini (convenience store) to buy an umbrella (these are usually available cheaply, for a few hundred yen, and last about as long as you can expect for that price). While waiting for the light to change two Japanese tourists shared theirs with me. We chatted a bit and they asked to take a picture with me (unfortunately I didn't get one with my camera). I wonder if their curiosity was at least in part sparked by my monkey hat. :)

The Peace Park itself has a somewhat different atmosphere from the one in Hiroshima, which I've also visited. It's hard to put words to it, it just feels a little subtler somehow, even though the main statue in the Nagasaki park, by Seibou Kitamura, is quite bold.

At the Peace Fountain, there was a couple there taking each other's pictures and I offered to take one of both of them, so they got one of me too (coming soon). The fountain is a dedication both to world peace and to the victims of the bombing who died searching for water, and is supposed to resemble the wings of the dove of peace.

There are several other statues donated by sculptors around the world which are spread throughout the park. They are as moving as artifacts of the bombing, which you can see at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

The museum, like its larger counterpart in Hiroshima, presents the events leading up to and after the bombing, as well as the history of nuclear weapons development. As the Rough Guide says, it's quite an informative place, which interestingly doesn't shy away from the fact that roughly 12,000 foreigners were killed in the blast - mostly Korean forced labourers, but also POWs from various countries. Outside the museum there is a poignant sculpture and written apology to these victims.

I highly recommend a visit to both bomb sites; you can't really understand the magnitude of the impact and effects of nuclear weapons until you do.

Apart from the bomb site and related sites, Nagasaki has several delicious food specialties to try, mostly related to Chinese cuisine (Nagasaki was one of the main points of contact with China in ancient times). For lunch I headed downtown for a chawanmushi set, consisting of a bowl of the chawanmushi custard, a bowl of rice with toppings, as well as pickles.

Rice with toppings, pickles in background.

Chawanmushi custard, containing fish balls, pork, shrimp, ginko nuts, and other treats.

There was yet more to see at the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, a gorgeous glass cube set in the heart of Nagasaki's harbour. The special exhibit of art from children's books and stories was very nice, although I wish there had been even just a little English (or at least, hiragana/katakana and not exclusively kanji) so I could read the author's names. The main exhibit was also great, containing a Picasso and some works by Dali. There is also a free exhibit on the first floor! Again, I'm amazed at how many high-quality museums you can visit so cheaply in Japan.

It wasn't that late so on my way back I hit the recreated Dutch village of Dejima. Here they have reconstructed the buildings used by the Dutch East India company for trade in Japan before it was restricted by the Tokugawa Shogunate. The museum is extensive to say the least, if a little repetitive. Still, the displays of ceramics and other artifacts of the time, as well as the recreated captain's quarters, are impressive.

After that it was time to head back to Hakata. I'm sure there's much more to do in Nagasaki - I would have liked to see more of Chinatown, try champon, and visit the Glover Gardens and Dutch Slope, but there just wasn't time. It was still a good day trip from Hakata, and if you have the JR Fukuoka Rail Pass it's easy (and free) to get to by train.

Meri Kurisumasu!

2010-12-25T04:47:00.000-08:00

Somewhat appropriately, it snowed on Christmas Day. In fact, it was extremely windy and cold and the weather was pretty miserable. Nevertheless, I still had a great time!

I started out the day with a trip to Canal City where I planned to strategize for the day in a coffee shop and visit Muji, my favorite Japanese store. While there, I decided to take a walk over to the Fukuoka Art Museum. I like to take at least one walk when I'm traveling in a new city, because you get to see things you might not otherwise. It turned out to be a very long walk (about 3.5 miles!) however, and while walking it started to snow, sleet, rain, and become very windy. By the time I got to the museum I was quite chilled! Thank goodness for my sock monkey hat.

The museum itself is very nice - in fact it's quite inexpensive (a few hundred yen only) and shows off art and culturally important artifacts from ancient times to present day. Ironically, the modern art collection is traveling in the US currently, but what remained was still worth seeing. I am constantly impressed by the quality of the museums in Japan and love that they are so affordable - even though there aren't many people visiting them (at least not right now). When was the last time you went to a museum of that quality in Vancouver for less than $10? Or Seattle for that matter.

One of the things I noticed on my way over to the museum was a Freshness Burger (there are definitely rewards to walking around!). I used to eat there occasionally when I worked in Japan before, so I decided to eat lunch there for old time's sake. Delicious!

One of the best Xmas lunches ever!

The weather was still terrible, so I took a break back at the hotel for the afternoon and then went out for Christmas dinner in the basement of Canal City - a simple tonkatsu set and beer. Fast, hot food! Apparently everyone else decided to do the same thing, however, since every restaurant had huge line-ups.

Xmas lights in 'canal' part of Canal City.

You might be wondering what it's like to spend Christmas in Japan - do people say 'Merry Christmas', decorate their houses with lights, and eat Christmas dinner like we do in North America? The answer to all three questions is yes, but as I've found with many non-Japanese things, Japan takes them and puts its own spin on them, making them uniquely Japanese. For example:

Christmas dinner: I watched a program on TV about what to eat for Christmas dinner, where Chinese dumplings were featured as an appetizer. 'Kurisumasu Keiki' (Christmas Cake) was found at a combini (convenience store), and it was not fruit cake. Everything looked delicious, however!
Christmas music: it's often played in stores or train stations, but usually there are no lyrics, and sometimes they are pretty obscure (when I arrived at Hakata Station the first time, they were playing the Huron Carol).
Christmas lights: people don't tend to light their houses here, as electricity is pretty expensive. I noticed more commercial buildings lit up now than when I lived here five years ago, however, and both Osaka and Fukuoka have had 'Christmas' light shows. They are really only loosely Christmas related, however, and more like festivals of light. In Osaka, they had individual light sculptures, one being a dragon! Very cool, but not exactly Christmas-y.

Watching the English dubbed version of the NHK news (yay, bilingual TV!) on Christmas, there weren't very many Christmas-related news stories, except one about shopping and a few short interviews with kids about what presents they are getting/got. I find that in North America, holiday-themed stories start in the fall and continue all the way to December, and take up much of the news time! I much prefer how they do it here. And somehow, when you aren't completely inundated with it, the occasional 'Meri Kurisumasu' seems much more meaningful. :)

Dazaifu

2010-12-25T02:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to Dazaifu, which has several shrines and an 'important' (according to Rough Guide) museum, the Kyushu National Museum. I visited Tenmangu shrine, which many students visit to pray for good results on their exams (I did see quite a few students there, but apparently it gets crazy around end-of-year exam time). The Rough Guide also mentioned the best restaurant in town, called Ume no Hana, so I ate there. It was so good it warranted an entire post to itself, which you can read here.

One of the roofs at Tenmangu Shrine.

Tenmangu was nice, but the real highlight of the trip was the museum. For 420 yen, you get to see exquisite examples of pottery, sculpture, musical instruments, and more from all over Asia (covering everything from West Asia (Turkey, eastern Mediterranean) to South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) to other Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, the Philipines), with good portions of Chinese and Korean samples too. The museum shows how the different cultures spread and influenced each other, as well as the similarities and differences between them. There is a free audio guide and there is ample didactic material in English. In addition, there are tonnes of staff, many of whom speak perfect English. The highlight for me was the section on masks, and I especially liked the ones from Nepal. The building itself is impressive architecturally as well, with a huge curved roof covering the entire museum with bamboo struts on the underside. All in all, I highly recommend a visit, and hope more people go to support it (it was pretty dead when I went).

Lobby of Kyushu National Museum

When I got back to Fukuoka, it was still pretty early, so I walked over to the Asian Art Museum, which had a special exhibit by Chinese artists in addition to its main exhibition. It's a really nice museum that you can get through in about an hour, so it's a good filler if you're looking for something quick to do. By the time I got done with that, I was feeling a little hungry again so went for ramen near my hotel. The cooks were all wearing santa hats and informed me that it will snow today. "Kurisumasu Puresento". I guess I will get to wear my sock monkey toque after all! :D

I am getting more confident with my Japanese now that I've been here almost a week (!), and am having more conversations with people. It really makes for a memorable experience when you are able to interact with people more! I am sure I make a zillion mistakes, but it is fun nonetheless. :)

Ume no Hana

2010-12-24T02:38:00.000-08:00

Eating at Ume no Hana (梅の花) was so wonderful that I felt it deserved a post of its own. If you've ever watched Japanese variety shows, you've probably seen the guests take a bite of some culinary delight and then practically jump up and down with exclamations of 'oishii!!!' and 'mmmmmm!!!' and 'ehhhhhhhhhh!!!'. Well, from the first taste I had at Ume, I finally understood how they felt!

Entrance (top) and entryway (bottom) of Ume no Hana - it took a while for me to figure out where the restaurant is as it's a bit off the beaten path, but luckily there were signs (in Japanese). Rough Guide's map is, well, rough. :(

Ume no Hana is a restaurant chain specializing in tofu. They have several branches in Japan, but apparently the nicest is in Dazaifu, and since I was going there anyway I decided to check it out. The restaurant is set in a garden and each diner or group of diners is given a private tatami room, some of which have windows overlooking the garden (unfortunately I got a stone wall view instead). You enter the rooms through doors that are only 3-4 feet high, so you have to crouch to enter (but the rooms have normal height ceilings so you can fully stand up once inside). The tables are traditional, floating over a depression in the floor where you can put your legs. You sit on seats on the tatami mats that have backrests. It's very comfortable.

Door to enter the room. Only the bottom half is an actual door!

Alcove with decoration.

While you can choose individual items, I decided to try one of the sets instead. Each set comprises a several-course meal, with each course consisting of several small plates of food. The first course was a tofu dish with a green sauce:

You'll see that almost all the pictures have bites out of them already - the food looked and tasted so good that I got a little carried away before I remembered to take the photos! This dish was really lovely - if you think tofu is boring or plain you need to try the tofu at this restaurant! It was so creamy and really did 'melt in your mouth', as the Rough Guide claimed it would.

Next came the yudofu. This is a dish of boiled tofu and some veggies that are cooked in front of you. You then put a little in a bowl and add some freshly grated ginger, ground sesame seeds, and soy sauce. It was also excellent, but I couldn't finish it because there was still so many things to try, and there was quite a lot of it! Portions are not a problem at this restaurant.

yudofu

While waiting for the yudofu to finish cooking, two other dishes arrived: a bento box with three drawers, each containing an assortment of different foods, and a dish of shuumai (dumpling). The dumpling had a little mustard, which was very strong and went perfectly with the dumpling, as well as a special dipping sauce:

The bento box contained veggies, some small tofu items, and sashimi, and was very nicely presented:

After these came a gratin dish. The box was very pretty:

This was followed by tofu salad (also containing melt-in-your-mouth tofu) and a custard with shrimp, mushrooms, and ginko nuts. Unfortunately the lighting wasn't very good and the pictures turned out a little blurry (didn't use my DSLR):

Finally, dessert was youkan accompanied by hojicha, two of my favorite Japanese treats:

All in all this was one of the most enjoyable meals I've had in Japan or otherwise! In addition to great food, the service was great and my waiter tried his best to ensure I had a good experience. I'm not sure how many foreigners end up here, but they did a very good job, especially in explaining things simply so I could understand. We had a nice chat too - but even if you don't speak much Japanese I think you would have a great time at this restaurant! Be sure to check it out if you're going to Dazaifu!

Sometimes You Just Have to Wing it...

2010-12-23T03:53:00.000-08:00

Today was a travel day from Osaka to Fukuoka (or Hakata, as it is also called). I had considered using the morning to visit the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka, but wasn't sure about the timing of the trains so decided to just get to Shin Osaka to catch the Shinkansen. It's a good thing, too, since by the time I got to buy my ticket I only had 4 minutes left to catch the train! I ran to the platform, lugging my bags all the way, only to discover there was no escalator. After brief consideration, I hauled the bags up the stairs myself and dashed onto the train just as the doors were about the shut. Well, at least I got my workout for the day in.

By the time I got to my hotel in Fukuoka, it was already 2 pm, so I thought I'd head out for a walk and find a yatai for Hakata ramen, the local specialty. I ended up checking out a bunch of temples and shrines in the vicinity first, and then found a small fast food ramen stand. Although delicious, I was a bit miffed that there was only one piece of pork, and it was small at that! But for 290 yen, I guess beggars can't be choosers.

America-ya, a clothing shop across from the ramen stand. I thought the horse was a nice touch.

Rough Guide mentioned that nearby the shrines there was a covered arcade shopping strip with a shop selling zenzai, which is a hot soup made with red beans and mochi (incidentally Rough Guide, you are wrong! It's only 450 yen, not 600). They serve it with ocha (tea) and daikon (pickled radish), which tempers the sweetness of the soup and provides a nice contrast. This is quite a lovely thing to have on a cold day (although in all honesty I didn't need my coat today, it's that warm).

Ocha, zenzai, daikon. Umai!

In the shop there are small tables and benches and people all sit together, but no one wanted to sit at my bench. :( I think people are very hesitant if they think they will have to speak English. I kept saying 'doozo' when they looked at my bench, but they would squeeze in somewhere else. Finally one lady sat down and chatted a bit, with the standard 'where are you from' and 'isn't this delicious'. I think by that time there just weren't any other seats, though. :(

You can find the zenzai shop because it is the only one that contains a giant festival float.

After this I had a break back at the hotel, then decided to have a late dinner. I didn't feel like much because of all that food in the afternoon, but thought I'd take a look and see what was out there anyway. The guide book said that the nearby Canal City had lots of good places to eat, but when I looked it just didn't seem appealing. It was mostly Hakata ramen, which I had had for lunch, or tonkatsu and other fried foods, which seemed too heavy. However, across the street was a little sushi place, and a few pieces of raw fish seemed like it would hit the spot. Although the outside menu didn't have pictures or English (even the prices were in kanji, which I can guess at but don't know very well), I decided to go for it.

When I entered I could tell there was some trepidation from the staff. They did have an English menu after all, but it clearly didn't match the Japanese one, and anyway I know enough about sushi to tell what I like. I ended up getting a set of eight pieces (Jou), including the very best uni I've ever had - really creamy and sweet.

Already feeling very conspicuous, I didn't take a pic, but this is the set from their website. Oishii!!!

Meanwhile, there was a very drunk salaryman a few seats away who made sure the staff knew I was ready to order, and he and the sushi chef chatted a bit (evidently about me, I could tell from the pointing). The sushi chef told me I was bijin and that he and the salaryman thought I had a nice face (this could be creepy, but they were just joking around and were very friendly). Then a large bowl of miso filled with clams arrived for me, as a sabisu¹ from the salaryman (he asked if I wanted to finish off the giant bottle of sake/shochu he had in front of him too, the largest bottle I have ever seen, perhaps nearly two feet tall, but I politely declined). The salaryman had to leave but I had a nice chat with the sushi chef and his assistant - they were really nice people and although it was a little weird to be bought miso soup, at least it helped break the ice!

The restaurant is called Ganeya and is in the Tenjin district, very close to Gion station. I highly recommend it; if I go back I will try something from their live menu. It wasn't even that expensive for sushi in Japan (which can easily become extremely pricey very fast). Lesson learned: sometimes the guide book has good advice, but there sure is a lot missing. Besides which, I've never had a bad meal in Japan, and I think finding an 'off the beaten track' restaurant will often be as good or better than the more touristy places provided in the books.

1. Sabisu is an English loan word, service, which in Japanese is used to mean a gift or free item. I couldn't find a reference online but I used to get sabisu at the noodle shop I went to about once a week, I usually got a discount or a free bowl of noodles. I also got sabisu tickets when I went to the dry cleaners; once you had enough tickets you could get an item cleaned for free.

Marathon Day

2010-12-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my last full day in Osaka, so I decided to make the most of it (and the nice weather). I'd read that the Osaka Aquarium was the best in Japan and decided to go check it out first. Little did I know that I would end up walking nearly eight miles - not a real marathon but exhausting (in a good way) nonetheless!

The aquarium is impressive for the number of species and design of the tanks. It's pretty cool how you start at the top and slowly circle your way down to the bottom of the building. As you do so, you see the top, middle, and bottom of the tanks - so at the top you may see otters playing on logs, and at the bottom you see fish swimming around. Most of the tanks are akin to what you'd find at the Vancouver Aquarium, where they try to simulate the natural environment by putting things like logs, coral, and plants in the tanks. However, some of the tanks are just completely empty except for some gravel on the bottom - and that makes it look pretty sad. There is one such tank with a finless porpoise swimming around in circles with nothing but the porpoise and the bare tank. I also have trouble with the caging of large mammals for aquariums and zoos; there were no whales but the larger otters, dolphins, and porpoises didn't have very large tanks and some of them, particularly the otters, looked pretty listless. :(

That being said, the largest tank contains large manta rays and whale sharks. The best time to see them is during feeding time. I've seen manta rays while snorkeling but never whale sharks, and I don't know if I'd ever get a chance to see them in the wild, so I appreciated that quite a bit. They are impressive creatures! The spider crabs and jellyfish exhibit were also neat.

After the aquarium I walked over to the nearby Suntory Museum. This is a modern art museum and the exhibit was the history of posters, which was pretty cool! My favorite was the IBM, but they had some Jimmi Hendrix, old French art house, and WWII US Army posters that were neat too. The museum is two floors for 500 yen, and given the beauty of the building itself combined with the extensive exhibit, I think it was more than worth it.

Eye Bee Em

Everyone had told me how the ferris wheel nearby was really great and much better than the one in downtown Osaka, but actually I thought the view from downtown was more exciting. Maybe it was because I did the downtown ferris wheel at night, while I did this one during the day, but I just thought the view wasn't as grand. However, there was a nice view of Osaka Bay and Kobe, and the weather was great. This ferris wheel seems a bit older and rickety than the one downtown too, so be warned. Also, to get to the wheel you have to walk through a pretty depressing shopping mall.

Me, on the giant ferris wheel.

At this point it was lunch time (since I'd had a pretty early start to the day) but I couldn't find anywhere good to eat nearby. I decided to head to Sumiyoshi Taisha, which Rough Guide describes as "Osaka's most important shrine", and was apparently built in the 3rd century and has a unique architectural style called sumiyoshi zukuri. I got some snacks from the station and went for a walk around to take pictures, which was pretty fun. :) The compound also hosts some ancient trees, some of which are actually merging with the shrines built beside them!

Since it is apparently a '15 minute tram ride' (you so lie, Rough Guide) from Tennoji station, I thought I'd head up there to try to find Shittenoji temple, which I'd had such a hard time finding the day before. It still took me an hour to find it the second time. :( Rough guide did not include any maps and Osaka could do a lot better about posting signs for such places. I finally did find a sign, but only after first asking for directions at the Zoo, walking through Tennoji Koen, stopping for takoyaki at a roadside stand and asking the owner, and walking far more than the Rough Guide's stated 15 minutes from Tennoji station. I did, however, find it, because at that point I probably would have done a grid search of the entire area to do so, that's how determined I was! The takoyaki was a find, though, best takoyaki I have had so far in Osaka and the owner was really nice, telling me to 'take care' as I left (the whole exchange was done in Japanese too!). Incidentally, on this long trek I also found a remnant of my former alma mater:

OMG, it lives!

Shittenoji is a large temple complex which apparently has some ancient costumes on display (which I never did see), but what the Rough Guide doesn't tell you is that you can actually climb the pagoda. I saw the doors were open and went to take a look inside, and there was a very friendly attendant there. We had a chat about Canada and then he told me I could go up as long as I put on slippers, so I did. Unfortunately, this got me reaquainted with my afforementioned love of stairs. -_-

On your way up, the walls around the inner stairway are lined with small gold sticks with writing on them. I am not sure exactly what they are but there must have been hundreds on each floor. Also, I think people were a lot shorter/smaller back then, because I'm 5'2" but I still had to crouch and squeeze through a lot of places in the tower! Once at the top, you can stand on the ledge outside for a fantastic view, but only if you can fit through the roughly two foot wide, three foot tall openings to get there. There was another attendant at the top watching this with great amusement, and another visitor who chatted with me in Japanese and English about the view and the tower. Sugoi ne! People are very friendly in Osaka - I never had attendants chat with me like that in Kyoto or Tokyo, and a higher percentage of everyday people seem to like to talk as well (and not just to practice their English, which happened to me a lot in Tokyo).

I guess not many people actually climb the tower, since it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the guidebooks and it's not very discoverable otherwise (particularly if you don't speak Japanese). That's a shame because it's a neat experience and gives you an inside view of the temple, its architecture, and its artifacts.

You would think that after all this, my day would be done. Well, I did have a bit of a rest at my hotel, but I had worked up quite the appetite and decided to head to the Osaka Hikari Renaissance, a light show by the river nearby my hotel. There were tonnes of exhibits, but my favorite was the 'tree of many colours' (which changed ala the horse in the Wizard of Oz) and the dragon made of sticks with marshmallows stuck to it (for snow, I guess). The highlight, however, was the festival food! At Japanese festivals you'll often see tents set up filled with vendors selling snacks such as yakitori, yakisoba, korroke, etc. (mostly fried delights). I ended up having a korroke, yaki ika on a stick, okonomiyaki on a stick, and some osakan donuts. Oishii!!!

Washoi! Washoi!

2010-12-21T12:48:00.001-08:00

Yesterday started off with a trip to the Museum of Oriental Ceramics with Angelica, who met me after breakfast at my hotel. The museum is ingeniously designed to show off some pieces using natural lighting only, which is filtered through hidden skylights behind the displays. You can see examples of ancient Chinese, Korean, and Japanese pottery, and although the English descriptions are sparse the artwork speaks for itself. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed.

After the museum we headed off to the main attraction for the day (and highlight of the trip so far!) - a Taiko drumming lesson (thanks Groupon)!

Keito-san with Taiko drums.

We were impressed with the lesson since we expected to just be taught a few simple things - how to properly hit the drums and maybe a few simple pieces. However, we actually learned an entire piece and then performed it on those large drums seen with me in the picture above (there were about 10 of us students, almost all women, with two or three to a drum depending on the size), while the instructor played a smaller drum and another person accompanied us on flute. We had so much fun and really enjoyed the experience. Here are the lyrics:

ドン、カ、ドン、カカ、1、2、3、4、どら焼き食べた。

クリームパンダ、コーヒーカステラ食べた！

And here we both are with the drums:

Keito- & Anjerica-san :)

All that drumming worked up our appetites, so we headed back to Umeda,where Angelica remembered there were some places on top of the Yodobashi Camera. We ended up having delicious Osakan-style okonomiyaki with ika and buta (pork), which is different from the Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki I've had before - it's much less battery and the batter is mixed with the toppings, whereas Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki has the batter and toppings separated more.

Again, I found the portion sizes much larger than I remembered, and we couldn't finish everything (we had two sets - each came with one okonomiyaki, two onigiri, and a bowl of miso soup). My favorite was the one with ika and noodles.

Oishii!!!

After that food-coma inducing lunch, Angelica left for class and I went downstairs for a visit to Yodobashi Camera. It's basically eight floors packed with high-tech goodies and accessories; if you're into technology a visit to a Yodobashi or Bic Camera is a must on your to-do list!

I still had some daylight left so decided to head down to Tennoji to check out Shitennoji temple and the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. The area is pretty run down compared to downtown Osaka and is filled with Pachinko and Pachislo parlours. There is what seems to be the equivalent of a night market at the station, however, which was neat to see, but I never did find Shitennoji (there are few signs and I didn't walk far enough, apparently). I did find the museum though, which is small but for 300 yen was very nice; it has some really nice 6th century Chinese Buddhist stone carvings, Chinese and Japanese paintings on silk (dating from 6th to 17th centuries), and Japanese brush paintings from more recent times (18th and 19th centuries). The museum displays are spartan, as is the building, but it was still quite enjoyable.

That pretty much ended the day; now to decide what to do today - it will either be a day trip to Koya-san, another attempt at finding the elusive Shitennoji, or a trip to Kobe. Stay tuned to find out!

Toyoko Delights

2010-12-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit more about the Toyoko Inn I'm staying at:

The place is spotless. I'm not sure I've been in a cleaner hotel than this, regardless of price.
The room is pretty large for Japan:

Room with(out) a view (there's a freeway & baricade, but they are remarkably quiet at night).

I like how you don't need to ask for a hair dryer, and there are lots of other goodies like free internet, flashlight, tea kettle and tea, safe, and a pants presser:

Instructions.

TV is bilingual
Did I mention it's cheap AND has free breakfast! I had several types of delicious onigiri, pickled daikon, radish, and sour plums, three types of salad, miso soup, spinach & veggie gomae, and orange juice (being about the only foreigner there, I felt too conspicuous to take photos). Oishii! :D

Also, the room comes with the obligatory fancy toilet (also accompanied by instructions, but don't worry, I won't post those here).

If the key fits...

2010-12-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

Today was a travel day as I moved from Kyoto to Osaka, but I still managed to get quite a bit done. I have to say that having a rail pass makes things pretty easy to get from place to place - you simply show your pass to the attendant at the turnstiles and that's it, except for trains with reserved seating where they need to print you a ticket. If you are going to be in Japan it's worth checking them out, and even if you don't need the universal pass there are several others that are reduced in both scope and price.

Once I got to my hotel I dropped off my bags and decided to check out Osaka-jo. Although it's pretty close, it still took a while since the castle grounds are pretty huge so the walk is loooong. Still, it's a pretty sight and the museum inside has some neat stuff too (although it's a bit repetitive; I think I now know just about everything regarding Hideyori Toyotomi, his extended family, and all the battles at Osaka-jo). If you go, get the English audio guide. It's free and a lot faster than reading the text provided, which isn't as extensive as the guide anyway.

By the time I got done with that, the sun was setting and I was hungry. Luckily there were plenty of takoyaki stalls so I had a pretty yummy snack! Oh octopus, how delicious you are even without the sauce toppings (apparently they only provide seaweed topping in Osaka, but I think the insides are saucier than the kind I'm used to).

After that I thought I should go check out the giant ferris wheel in downtown Osaka. But first, dinner at Matsuya, mostly because I wanted something quick, familiar, and cheap. Is it me or have the sizes increased since I was last here in 2005? For 390 yen I got a large bowl of salad, miso soup, gyudon, and an egg. It seemed to me there was much more rice than I used to get, but maybe that's because I used to eat at Yoshinoya more than Matsuya, or my memory is just faulty. Anyway, pretty decent dinner.

On to the ferris wheel! I have to admit, it was a little kowai yo¹, but mostly since I went through many earthquakes when I lived in Tokyo and of course the image of swaying buildings was prominent in my head the whole time). The view was really quite excellent however, and it was a pretty enjoyable ride for 500 yen. They could up the scariness a little more by putting a pause in at the top.

Back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the evening. So far, I'm really liking this place - at about $40/night, it's extremely cheap, but the room is also decently sized (for Japan), there is free breakfast included, and it is very centrally located. It also has free internet, which of course I love. The one problem when I got here, however, was that no one explained that there is a trick to lighting your room. When I first opened the door, the room was dark, but I managed to feel some light switches on the wall. When I flipped them though, nothing happened! I found another one but it wasn't immediately obvious what to do, it just says 'in'. Since it was dark I couldn't see anything and ended up using my netbook as a flashlight (although it turns out they provide one of those under the desk). Eventually I figured out that you have to insert your key in the 'in' hole, and the lights then turn on. Pretty tricky!

Who knew?

On today's list of things I forgot I loved about Japan:

Hot canned coffee
Japanese English
Yukata & slippers
Ordering your dinner from a vending machine
No tipping
How there are always unexpected discounts and gifts at the last minute (like at the hotel, and how I used to get 'service' tickets at the dry cleaners, noodle shop, and veggie stand when I lived here before)

On today's list of things I forgot I didn't like so much about Japan:

Stairs. My god, there are a lot of stairs. I usually don't mind so much, but with luggage it is a pain. Even major stations are often elevator- or escalator-less. I think I climbed as many stairs today as when I climbed the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. :(

Sums up my feelings on stairs today.

1. Kowai yo = very scary. Incidentally, the ferris wheel isn't the only thing scary about that area. It was a little tricky finding the ferris wheel entrance and I ended up at Joyopolis by mistake. When I saw the sign for 'live dolls', I got out of there fast!

Things I forgot I loved about Japan

2010-12-19T14:18:00.001-08:00

So I'm on vacation in Japan, just got here yesterday. I'm planning to spend the next few days in Kansai, then just under a week in Kyushu, then just under another week in Okinawa. I'm pretty excited now that I'm actually here!

Since I didn't get in until 7:30pm last night, there wasn't much time to do anything, but here's a recap of what's gone on so far:

Flight: 11hr,45min flight from SEA to KIX on which a child screamed at the top of her lungs the *entire time*. Yes, there always seems to be one, doesn't there? Thank heavens for small mercies, at least she wasn't in my aisle. My question is, why would anyone expect a child to sit for such a long time without bringing toys/entertainment/extra food? In addition, this is not the first flight where parents have decided to simply ignore the problem rather than deal with it. When I walked by, each time she was climbing all over everyone in that row, screaming all the while, while the parents were blissfully staring off into space. :-\ On the other hand, this meant for a productive flight for me, since sleeping was not an option. I got through the entire New Yorker, Scientific American, and Rough Guide sections on Kyushu, Okinawa, and Kansai. Also got through all the brochures the travel agent provided and made a good stab at the Eye Witness travel book too. Reviewed some common Japanese phrases.
Customs: When you get off the plane, first you go through immigration, then you go through customs after collecting your luggage (which arrives instantaneously, amazing!). Both customs and immigration officers were lovely - very respectful, courteous, and polite. I'm not sure if they did this when I came last time, but they now take your photo and two index fingerprints. Interesting. Also, what's with people not filling out their customs/immigrations forms? That's the first thing they told us to do when we boarded our flight! Getting up to the front of the line with blank forms is *not* ok, people!
Immigration: The immigration officer asked me why I came to Japan. When I said, 'for tourism', he said, 'Oh really?!', in a very surprised voice. I wondered if I was in the wrong line up, so I asked if I did something wrong, and he said no, nothing wrong. Then he proceeded to ask if what I wrote on the customs form was true (not bringing any illicit materials into the country etc), showed me some pictures of illegal items and asked if I possessed any (I didn't), and then proceeded to remove everything from my luggage, apologetically. At least he put everything back, albeit not in my clever packing fashion that left half the bag empty. :(
Dinner: Since I was now running late (flight came in 15 mins late, delay for the baggage check), I missed the train I was supposed to catch to Kyoto. I had planned to meet Kenzo at Kyoto and from there go on to see the light display at Arashimaya, but it would be over by the time we got there so we decided to have dinner instead. We went to a delicious tonkatsu place, where great pains were taken to provide an English menu and explain all the sauces in English. :) It was so yummy, but in my jetlagged haze I didn't take any pics. Sorry.
Afterwards: We met Angelica and came back to their apartment, which is great! I managed to stay up til 12pm talking about tech and robots with them and then slept until 7am. Hopefully the worst of the jetlag is over! :D

Here are a few little things I forgot I loved about Japan (it's all about the little things, isn't it?):

Very polite officials. No one was rude when people didn't have their forms done correctly, and they were nice about checking my bag. No endless rigamarole about why I was coming, and very straightforward questions with no tricks or trying to get a rise out of you.
The train staff bow to the train car when entering or exiting it. I love that!
Trains. Have I mentioned how much I love trains? :D
In general, people show such concern for your welfare - like the JR staff who wanted to make sure I really wanted to activate my pass that day and was going to get the most out of it, or the waitress who went out of her way to make sure I understood what was going on (although I could have managed in Japanese, really!).
Vending machines.
City view at night (especially as seen from a fast-moving train).
Fast internets (thanks Kenzo & Angelica)!

That's it so far, but I'm sure I'll think of tonnes more. Will try to keep the blog up to date during my trip, but likely will have to add the pictures retroactively, as I did on my France trip. Today it's on to Osaka to see what I can see. Mata ne!

Star Trek in the News

2010-12-15T18:50:00.001-08:00

Over the past year, it seems there have been a number of advances in Star Trek-like technology. Just consider the advent of transparent aluminum, the capture of antimatter, and now Vger's latest attempt to go where no one has gone before. So when will the Klingons arrive?

Hillary Clinton Is Asked What Designers She Wears Moments After Making Point About Sexism -- Daily Intel

2010-12-14T07:55:00.000-08:00

Saw this article the other day about how Hillary Clinton handled the question "Which designers do you prefer?". She answered, "Would you ever ask a man that question?". It made me laugh and I was pretty impressed with how she handled it - she didn't get mad but made it into a joke on the interviewer. However, it did remind me of my own experiences, where I've observed that people seem to find it perfectly acceptable to make all sorts of comments on a woman's appearance in professional situations, but hardly ever comment on a man's.

I myself have received all sorts of these kinds of remarks, from the innocuous 'You look nice today.' to the annoying and mildly offensive 'Why are you so dressed up? Do you have a date?/You must have a date.' Sometimes it's just a nice comment, and sometimes a response like Clinton's is necessary. Still, I've always found it curious why appearance is so important for one gender and not the other. In fact, I can think of only one occasion in the past few years where I've observed one man remark on another man's appearance in a professional situation, and the comment was 'Why are you so dressed up? Do you have an interview?'. See the difference?

I think this is just another example of some of the issues faced by women in tech or really any non-traditional role. What do you think?

Taking a Break

2010-12-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

This post by Dana Boyd on her upcoming 'Email Sabbatical' is pretty interesting. I really like the idea as I'm pretty bad about constantly being online, with at least two email accounts open at any one time in addition to (during my 'down-time') Facebook and Twitter.

This summer on my visit to France, I was pretty good about checking these things only at night, and being offline during the day. I hope I'll do a bit better during my upcoming trip to Japan over the winter holidays. This will likely be helped by the lack of a data plan for my phone while I'm abroad, and hopefully I will be able to at least refrain from checking my work email daily. :) On the other hand, I'll take my netbook so I can keep in touch with family and friends over Skype (and wish them a Happy New Year remotely).

Still it's interesting - we've only recently had the ability to continue our 'constant' online presence while traveling. It used to be that a postcard was the best you could do, or a telegram in emergencies. Now we can constantly email, chat, IM, and even make free phone calls over the internet. One has to wonder how this changes (in some ways detracting, in others enhancing) the traveler's experience.

Another Sublime Leonard Cohen Concert

2010-12-05T22:13:00.000-08:00

This week I took a trip up to Vancouver for my second Leonard Cohen concert. Even though I went in 2009 as well, the concert was really wonderful and different enough from the first to make it totally worthwhile. The performers are all impeccable (and each play an impressive array of instruments), and really, who will give you artistry the way Leonard Cohen will? He ad-libs and changes lyrics on the fly, making each performance clever, unique, and moving at just the right moments. His timing, as usual, is flawless.

Standouts for me during the ~3.5 hour evening included A Thousand Kisses Deep, Aint No Cure for Love, Dance Me to the End of Love, and Bird on a Wire. I particularly liked If It Be Your Will (done as a duet by the Webb sisters) as well, and there just happens to be a video of it for you to enjoy (not taken by me):

We got to here one of his new songs too: 'The Darkness'. It might be a little too dark, even for me! But still very enjoyable.

As usual, Cohen is a little self-deprecating, but also funny and entertaining too. Here are two more:

My Tweet Cloud

2010-09-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

Kind of a neat way to visualize what I've been talking about for the past year on Twitter.

E-Books & E-Readers: the Future of Reading?

2010-09-22T19:16:00.001-07:00

Today I came across this piece on future directions for e-books and readers and was really excited by it. There are some really neat ideas here linking traditional media with social networks, data visualization, and new types of interaction for users with other devices (smartphones, for example).

While these prototypes are quite interesting, I'm not sure they'd be enough to get me into an e-reader. They've been around now for a few years and I do think that the light-weight device and e-ink are compelling. However, there are a few things that are still dissatisfying with the current offerings:

The borrow/lending model is either non-existent or not quite there yet. I want to be able to lend books to my friends, just as I would my real books. I want to be able to do this for any amount of time I choose, and then get the book back. I haven't seen a good end-to-end solution for this yet.
I really like the look/feel of paper.
I don't usually buy books. This goes to back to point #1, but if I can't borrow any library book I want, I don't really need or want an e-reader.
What will be done to ensure the availability of books that are now out of print? There are plenty of excellent books no longer published, and the only way to access them is through libraries, lucky finds at second-hand book shops, or borrowing them from friends. I'm worried that as we move to e-books, our choice will decrease.

Couple these with new findings that reading speed is faster for printed books than to e-books, and one can see that there is still a lot of refinement needed to the consumption models and feature sets currently available. So, at least for the time being, I'll be sticking with tried and true print media.

Have you tried e-books? Do you own an e-reader? What are your experiences with these devices?

Attending GHC From Afar (Crosspost)

2010-09-16T17:49:00.000-07:00

As my friends well know, I'm really passionate about GHC. In person, I ramble on and on about the benefits of attending. Online, I blog about GHC, tweet about GHC, and post countless FB status updates about GHC. This year, I've even been helping out with the GHC Communities Committee to help spread the news about GHC through the various online communities (Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and here on our blog). You can understand my sorrow, then, when I realized that circumstances would prevent me from attending this year. Undaunted, I figured if I couldn't bring myself to GHC, I'd try to bring GHC to me! Thus, this year, I will be GHC-ing from home.

Due to the early sell-out of the conference, I don't think I'm alone in this. In fact, I think there are probably a lot of people in exactly the same situation. What can we do to keep the GHC spirit alive from wherever we are? Here's a few ideas:

Follow up on sessions by reading session notes on the GHC Wiki

Read our blog to get the latest updates and info

Have a real life meetup (local restaurant, coffee shop, etc) during GHC to network and discuss issues related to advertised sessions.

Are you unable to attend GHC this year in person? Which of these ideas would you use to participate from afar? Do you have other ideas on how to connect?

p.s.: I'm in Seattle and would love to meet others who are missing out on GHC this year and learn about what you're working on! If you're interested in meeting up in Seattle or elsewhere, leave a comment below. I'd love to help people connect no matter where they are.

Summer Reading

2010-08-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

Continuing on with my Cormac McCarthy addiction, I recently read "All the Pretty Horses". I've read reviews by others who said that this was the first book they felt they could really enjoy because of its slower pace and because it doesn't have the relentlessness of "No Country for Old Men" or "The Road". Unfortunately, I feel just the opposite and really prefer his more fast-paced works. Still, there are some really beautifully written passages and I really enjoyed this one nonetheless.

After finishing the McCarthy pretty quickly, I spent the rest of the summer slogging through Stephen Baxter's "Coalescent". It's really got an interesting take on evolutionary theory and covers a grand span of time, from ancient Rome to the far future, but man, is it ever slow. Baxter, get an editor! The first three quarters could have done with condensing.

Last Year Recap & Takeaways

2010-08-25T21:42:00.001-07:00

I've been working for just over a year now, after completing my Master's, and it struck me that I never marked this with a blog post. It's been a pretty eventful year in which I:

moved off my mountain (and out of the country, again)
started a career in software testing and tried my hand at a little recruiting
visited Europe for the first time
read a lot, and
learned to play ultimate (well, still learning).

I still have tonnes to learn (note how hard I'm clinging to my Canadianisms), but I do have a few takeaways from my experiences so far:

Don't be afraid to keep telling your ideas to people who will listen, even just informally. Use these discussions to keep refining them and don't give up if you think they are interesting. Eventually, it may pay off!
It's easy, when starting out, to get sucked into the minutiae of your daily tasks. Try to keep an eye on the 'big picture' and what's going on around you. Maintain your vision!
Take advantage of slow times to rest and gear up for the hard times, because there will be lots of them. No one can keep a pace of 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week forever without burning out! Keep going to the gym, get up from your desk regularly, and meet your friends for lunch. Work hard the rest of the time (and keep the 6 day weeks to a minimum). :)

Of course, I'm guilty of not following my advice on many occasions... but I've seen how these things can pay off so I try to keep reminding myself to stick to them anyway!

How to Make the Most of Facebook for Grace Hopper

2010-08-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have been to GHC know what a great opportunity it presents for networking - and those of you who haven't been before are soon to find out! Facebook is a great tool to help you make new connections and maintain them after the conference, so I wanted to share a few tips on using it to help you get the most out of this year's GHC.

Setting up Your Facebook Account
If you don't have a profile on Facebook, you can set one up by going to the site and signing up. If you have concerns about privacy, there are options on Facebook that let you secure your information. For example, I tend to keep my profile fairly locked down - I don't turn up in public searches and if you aren't my 'friend' on the site, you can't see any of the details of my profile, including photos, my wall, and videos I'm in. I don't list the year I was born or give out my specific address or phone number, either, and I'm pretty careful about who I add as a 'friend'. Facebook's Safety Center has more tips and advice on staying safe on the site.

Just because you've locked down your profile doesn't mean you can't use Facebook to network, however! I'll mention several tips throughout the post, but one neat feature of the site I use is its 'lists' (Facebook has a useful FAQ with details on how to set them up and use them here). For example, you can set up a list called 'ghc10 attendees', and if/when you decide to connect with someone from the conference, you can add them to this list. This is useful for two reasons: first, you can keep track of where you met people and when you follow up with them after the conference, it will be easy to find them in your contact list. Second, you can restrict your profile for that list, so that you only reveal some of your personal information. That way you can maintain your privacy but still use the useful features of Facebook to keep in touch with your new GHC buddies.

Before the Conference
Before the conference you might not yet know any of the other attendees - but you can still interact with them (even without adding them as friends) by perusing our Grace Hopper Celebration page on Facebook and discussion boards. You'll find conversations on all sorts of topics, from introductions, to your favorite memories of the conference, to the very helpful rides & roommates discussion, which several attendees have successfully used already to find accommodations, roommates, and transportation for the conference! Finally, don't forget to RSVP to the GHC 2010 event on our Facebook page to let others know that you'll be attending!

During the Conference
During the conference is a great time to add your connections on Facebook. I found that you meet so many people it can be really overwhelming, so keeping up as it goes along is much easier than trying to do it all later, especially once you are back to your regular work/study schedule. When adding people, Facebook allows you to add a message to your invitation to connect. I strongly suggest adding a personalized message so they can easily remember who you are and the context they met you in - especially since they will likely receive a tonne of invitations during the conference! Something like "Hi ____, it was great meeting you at GHC today and chatting about our careers in networking. Let's keep in touch!"

After the Conference
Facebook provides several ways to keep in touch with your new-found connections. You can send private messages, write on your connections' walls, and of course keep posting on our Facebook group page! Keeping your profile updated can help you too - you never know when you might meet your connections again. I've found that several friends joined my company long after the conference was over - and since they updated their profiles I knew about it and was able to reconnect with them once they had arrived, which has been pretty cool!

All Year Round
Keep in mind that our GHC page and discussions are up long before the conference, and are useful for other things than just logistics. For example, for GHC 2008, I met several other female students from around the world on the GHC page. We discussed presentation ideas and put together a BOF that was eventually accepted for the conference! If you've got a cool idea for GHC, keep it in mind and feel free to share with us. You might just find some great co-presenters or get the perfect feedback to help make your proposal the best it can be!

Do you have Facebook tips, advice, or recommendations? How have you used Facebook to aid in networking? We'd love to hear them, so feel free to share them in the comments below.

You can learn more about other Grace Hopper communities on this blog all week, or by checking out the communities page on the Grace Hopper site!

GHC Memories - What's Your Favorite?

2010-08-16T21:28:00.001-07:00

This year I'm working with some wonderful people on the Grace Hopper Communities Committee, and it's got me thinking about why I enjoyed GHC so much in the past and what my favorite memory might be. GHC is such a multifaceted experience; you are challenged technically as you attend a myriad of fascinating talks and sessions, you are inspired as you listen to female pioneers and Computing giants like Fran Allen and Barbara Liskov, and you are supported as you network with top go-getters at all career stages, from academia to industry and nearly any field of Computing you can think of. It's a whirlwind of lunches, panels, and great conversations! As you can imagine, anyone who attends would have a hard time finding the one memory that epitomizes their time at GHC. Nevertheless, I'm going to try.

In 2007 I attended GHC with a few girls I knew from school and through the GHC Facebook group. We didn't know each other very well at the time, but attending the conference created a bond between us and we have since maintained our friendship, even though we are now scattered across the world. We talk to each other frequently about our careers, issues facing women in technology, and life in general, and support each other through all our ups and downs. In 2008 we took it a step further by getting even more girls to come from our school and a few more from around the world. It was thrilling to be able to introduce the new girls to GHC and watch them experience it for the first time, as we had previously - the icing on the cake! So given all this, what's my favorite memory of GHC? Dancing with all of them - and 1500 other women in technology - at the final celebration (I don't think I'd been in the same room with more than 15 technical women prior to that, let alone 1500!), and being one of this gigantic group yelling at the top of our lungs: "I am a technical woman"!

If you've been to GHC before, what's your favorite memory of GHC? If you haven't been, what are you most looking forward to? Feel free to share in the comments below and on our Facebook group, where I've cross-posted this!

Latest Reads

2010-06-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm on a plane I manage to get through a few books. This latest trip was no different and I had taken two books with me - Larry Niven's "The Integral Trees" and Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men".

Larry Niven is to be commended for the intriguing worlds he creates - most notably the Ringworld, a disc surrounding a star that supports life. In this book he hypothesizes what life would be like within a gas torus surrounding a neutron star, such that the environment would have very low gravity. Unfortunately, Niven's imagination for worlds is not matched for his imagination for characters; they always seem quite two dimensional to me and are very predictable. If you are interested in the different types of worlds made possible by the laws of physics, you'll enjoy his books, just don't expect too much in the way of plot and character development.

As for Cormac McCarthy, I wrote a post a while back about the film based on his novel The Road. Soon after watching the movie I read the book, which I absolutely loved. The same goes for his novel No Country for Old Men, which I also saw as a film before reading. The writing style is spare, like that of The Road, but in No Country you are given a little more insight into its characters. There is a little more dialogue and you are given a sort of diary from Sheriff Bell which poses some of the more interesting philosophical questions in the book.

Even with the leanness of the writing, the story is very compelling; the world is rich with complex characters and events. The book is dark, gritty, and thoroughly engrossing, and I finished it in short order. Highly recommended!

Public Table Extraction Dataset

2010-05-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

I am posting a copy of the table extraction dataset I created for my thesis here.

The dataset has three parts:

PublicTableExtractionDataset, a SQL database to keep track of the html pages and tables and which contains the manual labels of 'data table' or 'layout table'
JavaCrawlerTestDump, a folder containing all the crawled html pages
TableDump, a folder containing all the extracted tables from each crawled html page

Practical Information

Schema: PublicTableExtractionDataset consists of two tables, HTMLPages and Table_Contents. HTMLPages contains information on where html pages are located and how to identify them, while Table_Contents contains information on each table extracted from each HTMLPage, as well as the type of table it is (a value of '1' indicates a layout table, while a value of '2' indicates a data table).

The schema for the two tables is as follows:

HTMLPages:

File_ID (int, not null)
File_Name (varchar(200), not null)
Page_Domain (varchar(200), not null)
URL (varchar(1000), not null)
Page_Type(int, not null)

Table_Contents:

File_ID (int, not null)
Table_ID (int, not null)
Table_File_Location (varchar(200), not null)
Table_Type (int, null)

Format: This database is a backup of the original SQL database I used. You will need to import it to a new database using the 'import database' wizard provided with SQL Server. I have tested this with the express and full versions of SQL Server 2000 and 2008, so please let me know if you have any questions.

Accessing html pages and tables: I have removed the folder locations from the database, but you can easily add your own. For example, to update the HTMLPages SQL table to add the locations, you could use the following query:

update HTMLPages

set File_Name = 'new location' + File_Name

from HTMLPages

The same query could be used to update the Table_Contents table, just remember to change HTMLPages to Table_Contents.

Dataset Statistics

I collected 9,365 HTML pages which contain the <table> tag from 512 random domains. These pages contain a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 1,539 table pages. 6,620 table pages consist only of non-data tables, while 2,745 pages consist of at least one data table.

The total number of tables collected was 78,438, with 74,202 (94.6%) of these being non-data tables, and 4,236 (5.4%) being data tables.

More Details

You can read more about this data set and the experiments I used it for in my thesis.

Day 12: Paris from the Outside

2010-05-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

The bad weather that various weather services kept threatening finally hit us today. First on our agenda was Les Catacombs, the famous boneyard of Paris. On the way, we stopped by the Cimitiere Montparnasse, burial ground for Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoire, and several other literary and art giants. This cemetary lacks the atmosphere and the wildly differing styles of headstones and monuments of Cimitiere Pere Lachaise; I would put the latter first on any list of must-dos. Maps are available but only from the main entrance, however the grounds staff were helpful in pointing us in the right direction. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to find their graves among the many similar-looking stones, and we had to give up.

Down but not out, we headed to the catacombs, which we found were closed due to flooding. I managed to find out (in French!) that they would only possibly reopen on Saturday, the day both of us are due to depart. So much for the catacombs.

Thus thwarted, we decided to head to Musee Jacquemart-Andre, where a special exhibit "From El Greco to Dali" was taking place. Unfortunately, on arrival we were told that the museum is not covered in the Paris Museum Pass. So we ended up seeing that too from outside only.

Instead, we decided to visit the tomb of Napoleon in Les Invalides, and see the Musee de l'Armee while we were at it. We decided to walk the entire way there, but stopped off for a 'cafe au lait' and macaron at a small cafe. We sat in the window and watched it pour, while the parisians in stylish yet casual business atire paraded by with colourful umbrellas.

Parisians in the rain on Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Helmet at Musee de l'Armee.

All the war, arms, and death at Les Invalides helped us work up a healthy appetite. We had planned to try for the Louvre again in the afternoon, so decided to walk there, ending up at Le Zinc d'Honore, a small bistro in the Tuileries area. We had a delicious salad and fish main, and had a very nice waiter as well. I would recommend this cafe for those looking for cheap eats after or before visiting the Louvre - it's a bit of a walk but the staff and food were fantastic compared to those of the cafes in the Louvre (although our terrace lunch on the Louvre was lovely if only for the location).

The downpour really got going at the tail end of our late lunch, so we were stranded for a time in the nearby Marche d'Honore, a kind of mall with several interesting furniture/interior design shops. Finally we braved the rain and made it back to our hotel, since the Louvre had closed. Along the way today we were able to get a few street shots and even though we didn't see much of the insides of any attractions (except for Napoleon), we did see some parts of Paris we hadn't before, and were able to enjoy the slower side of Parisian life with our long coffee and lunch breaks, and ambling walk along the Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Day 11: The Palace of Versailles

2010-05-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

I somehow skipped this day in blogging and photo processing, so am retroactively adding it in!

Today we went to the Chateau Versailles. It was a pretty quick trip out at about an hour and a half, as Versailles is really on the outskirts of Paris' suburbs.

One thing to note when you go is that you should really take a map with you. The local tourist offices don't provide them, and the directions are not exactly clear when you exit the station. We thought about just following the huge crowd of tourists, but they all went to the tourist office so that plan didn't work out so well. We also took the long route when leaving the chateau and getting back to the station, so a map would have been helpful.

At any rate, Versailles is pretty spectacular. I was fully expecting a tourist trap, but it's really pretty nice even if it is full of them. It seems larger than Fontainbleau and Chantilly (although I didn't have time to see the entire grounds of the latter, which are also pretty enormous), and the main chateau has very intricate, ornate architecture within and without. We got the free audio guide and spent three hours exploring the main palace. The guide, as I've found at other sites, was invaluable and really gave good information about what we were seeing. It was also free, included with the ticket to the chateau (or in our case, included with the Paris Museum Pass).

Marble hallway at Chateau Versailles.

Example of the 'busy' decorative scheme at Versailles.

The famous Hall of Mirrors.

After our visit to the main palace, we walked out to the gardens and had lunch at one of the outdoor cafes. The weather was a bit changeable and rained off and on, but we had a lovely lunch with very nice staff. The water was not as excellent as at previous restaurants, but was pretty good. Probably in the top three of our samplings, and refreshed often by the staff.

Walking in the gardens towards the Grand Trianon.

After lunch, it was on to the Grand and Petit Trianon, the estates of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. These are much simpler, smaller mansions. After the intense detail of the main palace, I could see how anyone would want a less 'busy' place to relax. On our way out we passed by the stables of what I think might have been the Zingaro riding school. Nice horses! :D There were also some sheep. Huma took many pictures of the sheep, while I of course took many pictures of the horses.

Grand Trianon

Petit Trianon

Horses at Versailles. Like a painting!

After that it was back to Paris. We sampled the chicken shawarma of a small fast food joint near our hotel, which was tasty, but not as good as those of the Marais.

Day 10: Two Aunties visit the Eiffel

2010-05-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

Today one of our friends was returning home, so we had to switch to a smaller room. We were extremely pleased when Hotel Innova offered to transfer our bags for us, so we would be free to roam the city without coming back to the hotel midday to transfer our bags. This is a very nice service and saved us a lot of time and trouble (and money in train tickets)!

We got an early start and made it to the Eiffel Tower by around 9 via a leisurely walk along the Seine on the quay. We had a reserved ticket for 9:30 which we had purchased on the web prior to our trip. Although the website is a little hard to navigate, it was worth it since it saved us a huge line-up and wait. There was still a little bit of a wait until the opening, however, during which we were repeatedly harassed by hawkers selling cheap Eiffel tower keychains. When we ignored them, one of them spoke to Huma in Hindi and called her 'Auntie', which is apparently a bit insulting! Needless to say, neither of us bought any keychains from him.

Me at the Eiffel.

We spent about two hours at the Eiffel enjoying the sights and taking loads of photos. We also saw the garden on the first level which was quite nice, albeit a bit small. The tower had the cleanest washrooms I have encountered outside our hotel so far, but that could be because it had just opened. One thing is, if you buy the tickets online it is hard to figure out how to get the full ticket to the top. Our ticket only took us half way, but we still enjoyed the trip and don't think we missed anything, having had several other birds-eye views of Paris before visiting the Eiffel.

In the garden on the Eiffel Tower.

After the Eiffel, it was off to complete our viewing of the Musee d'Orsay, which we hadn't been able to get through on our last visit. We saw the remaining Rodin sculptures we'd missed before and the entire first floor, including many Monets, Matisses, and Van Goghs. Then it was on to a lovely outdoor cafe lunch at Evangelista, near the museum. Guide books warn against cafes too close to tourist attractions, but this one was cheap and delicious, and the staff were very nice as well. They were very prompt with the water and we think it was the best we've tasted so far in Paris (most of the water tastes terrible, and waiters seem reluctant to provide it). We had delicious pizza and neopolitain salade, which had artichokes and broccoli, as well as olives.

Delicious pizza at Evangelista, near Musee d'Orsay.

Quite unexpectedly, we still had time and energy left after all of this, so we headed off to Notre Dame, the famous cathedral with distinctive gothic arches, flying buttresses, and the largest organ in the world. It also has two bell towers, one of which you can climb - 400 steps in all (Huma counted). The highlight for me was the gargoyles, and leaving after climbing down the 400 steps again.

Om nom nom.

From Notre Dame we managed to walk all the way back to the Marais, where we could try that little falafel shop across from L'As du Falafel. We sampled their chicken shawarma, and were extremely pleased with the spicy sauce provided in squeeze tubes. Unfortunately, we have yet to encounter any pickles. The shawarma was delicious to be sure, but perhaps not the best we have ever had. We still need to try their falafel to compare with that of L'As du Falafel, so we are planning on yet another trip back on our last day in Paris.

Day 9: To be or not to be...the Pompidou

2010-05-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

After a bit of a slow morning, we thought we'd check out the Marche d'Aligre, a market with interesting food stalls and apparently many North African goods. Unfortunately, it is closed Mondays - a fact that slipped the minds of the writers of our guide books.

After this unsuccessful start, we tried for the Marais, where my friends wanted to do some shopping. I tried instead for the National Archives or the Musee Cocques-Jay, both of which were also closed for the holiday. I ended up in a park for a short respite from walking, then headed over to the Centre Georges Pompidou, where I would be meeting my friends. Being 20 minutes early I walked around the Centre and took some pictures, and ended up watching the third act of a small production of Hamlet, in French, with only three actors rotating roles and using puppets to fill in the missing characters.

Centre Georges Pompidou

The Centre itself was quite interesting; we had free admission to the 4th and 5th floors using our Paris Museum Pass. These floors contain the main exhibits. On the 4th floor there was an exhibit on female artists, of which few gain national and international recognition. Unfortunately, although there were a few gems here, we were largely disappointed with the show. On to the 5th floor then, which contained a large collection of Picassos along with a few Dalis. One of the highlights of this section was Reinhardt's "The Ultimate Painting", which we tried long and hard to figure out!

For dinner we headed back to the Marais to try the "#1" falafel shop, L'as du Falafel, according to our guide book and others. We ate it in a park which closed at 8pm, so we were kicked out. Everything closes so early here! It's a bit frustrating. At any rate, the falafel itself was good, but we were disappointed by the lack of spicy sauce and pickles. We also felt very sorry for the falafel shop across the street, which had 4-5 men trying to lure customers into their shop without success. We decided to try them out on a following visit.

Day 8: Mona Lisa Overdrive

2010-05-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the Louvre. Here again the Museum Pass was great, allowing us to bypass the long line and go right in. We went to the Mona Lisa and Italian & Spanish painting section first, and then moved on to the Greek & Egyptian antiquities. People are quite crazy about the Mona Lisa, pushing others out of the way to get to the front of the crowd. It's a lovely work, to be sure, but there is no need for rudeness. :P

The highlight of the Louvre so far for me has been seeing the Victory of Samothraki. Very beautiful and impressive sculpture. I also enjoyed the Greek and Egyptian antiquities, particularly the Greek pottery and Egyptian sarcophagi.

After a few hours of museuming, we had lunch at the Cafe Richelieu on a terrace at the Louvre. It was sunny and lovely, except the staff were typically Parisian - which is to say that sit-down meals here will usually take you 2-3 hours.

After lunch, we walked through the Jardin de Tuilleries to the Musee de l'Orangerie, where Monet's famous water lilly paintings are displayed in natural light, the way the artist apparently wished. They were quite lovely. The bottom floor of the museum also contains Picassos, Mattises, Renoirs, and Cezannes, which we very much enjoyed. The nice thing about this museum is that it is small enough that you can easily get through the entire thing in roughly an hour without rushing, so you don't feel like you have to miss things, the way you do at the Louvre.

Me at l"Orangerie. Photo credit Huma!

Next we walked from the l'Orangerie all the way along the Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a little further than expected and extremely crowded due to the Biodiveristy expo, so we rested for a bit with some ice cream before climbing the 280 steps to the top of the Arc. The views were fantastic!

Arc de Triomphe

Day 6 & 7: Napoleon is shorter than me!

2010-05-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

On day 6 I visited Chateau Fontainebleau, famous as a residence of royals, Napoleon, and for starting the Two Painting Schools of Fontainebleau. The building has been expanded many times over the centuries by various kings, so you can get a good sense of the evolution of architectural styles since the 1200s. There is also a wealth of art and sculpture.

Staircase entrance to Fontainbleau.

I took the audio tour of the chateau, which I highly recommend, since there is very little didactic material otherwise and I doubt unless you are an art connoisseur that the details and history behind the points of interest would be evident. There is very little English signage as well, so the audio tour is good for those explanations. The tour takes you through the grands apartements, where the various royals lived, but to see the petits apartements, where Napoleon chose to reside, you need to take a guided tour. Unfortunately it is entirely in French, but I think I got the gist of most of it.

One thing I was impressed by was Napoleon's work ethic. Our guide told us how he would often work late into the night and only sleep 3-5 hours a day! There was a [very small] bed near each desk. Apparently he would work for a while and take short (ha ha) naps on these beds.

It is quite worth visiting this chateau as well as Chantilly, I just wish I had realized it was covered in the Paris Museum Pass, as I would have got one for last week as well as the coming one.

On Day 7, a Saturday, we checked out of our first hotel and into the second, Hotel Innova. It's a great little hotel in Montparnasse, very close to all the museums (walkable if one wished), with a subway station right outside the door. There are also a few conveniences nearby, like bakeries, cafes, and cheap restaurants. Our room is quite large and has a great view of the Eiffel Tower.

View of the Eiffel from our hotel room.

After dropping off our bags, we headed off for a planned breakfast, now lunch, at 'Le Deux Magots', a cafe in the St. Germain area famous for its literary and artist clientele. Past patrons have included Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus, Picasso, and Hemmingway. The food was delicious and it was lovely to relax outside in the sun.

Quiche of deliciousness and green salad at Les Deux Magots.

After this, we headed off to Musee d'Orsay and bought the Paris Museum Pass, which is awesome. It basically lets you bypass the long lines of people waiting to get in and saves you some money if you plan to do a lot. Even if the pass cost a little extra, I think it would still be worth it for the speed getting into attractions.

Unfortunately though, the Musee itself is just so huge that we couldn't get through all of it, and plan to return later this week. We did see most of the top floor including some wonderful Rodin statues before leaving for the Musee du Moyen Age. Unfortunately this had closed early, so we walked by La Sorbonne and up to Pantheon, which had also closed early. We then visited St. Etienne du Mont, which contains the tomb of Blaise Pascal, the mathematician. That church also displayed fine gothic architecture and a large organ loft.

Pantheon.

On our way back to Musee du Moyen Age, we walked through the Jardin du Luxembourg. We sat for a while in the sun by the fountains on the green metal chairs that locals rearrange to different areas of the park. Finally, it was off to dinner for moules and frites and crepes for dessert. Yum!