Xmas Party!

Thanks to Gamel for the nice photographs!!!!

"Hedonic Computing" by Dr Barry Brown

Dr. Barry Brown of the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Glasgow has visited the IDC and has given a talk on Monday, November 28th on “Hedonic computing: the computer science of leisure and enjoyment”, followed by open discussion.
Abstract:
This talk explores the opportunities for a ‘hedonic computer science’. Within many parts of computer science there has been a subtle change in approach: from video conferencing to mobility, from flight simulators to video games, from artificial intelligence to A-life. These changes open opportunities for a computer science that is as concerned with enjoyment as much as it is with formalism.  I discuss how we might take leisure seriously as a goal within computer science.  In particular, I discuss three examples of playful technologies - a piece of RCA designed furniture known as the ‘drift table’, an online virtual environment called There, and a collaborative tourism system we have designed. These examples suggest how we might build systems differently to support activities such as wasting time, sociability and enjoyment.

Barry Brown, Equator Research Fellow, Dept. of Computing Science, Uni. of Glasgow

Survival and Demos

Over the past couple of weeks we did it all. The SFI review and then Science Day. Thanks to all brilliant IDC postgrads and staff, it worked. If any of our efforts will bring more resources and more science and technology graduates in the future, it was worth it.
Keep on hacking...

Some Shots from Mikael's surprise party

Thanks to Gabriela, we have these lovely shots taken last week at Mikael's surprise party for his 50th birthday. Happy Birthday again from all in the IDC as it wouldn't be the same without you.

Fivezero experience

So this is it. It’s been a very intense day. The Amazing IDC really got me. I didn’t think it was possible to catch me off-hand like this, but they did. I was aware that there was The Mysterious Flash piece in progress (after walking into the lab and everybody standing around Ian’s desk pretending to whistle). The rest, I wasn’t prepared for.
As I had said before, my expectation was to keep on working and do the fivezero another day, so when the surprise happened, I found myself having very disparate feelings. The Working Man was very angry for getting his schedule wrecked, the Human Man was really wobbly, and in between those two my brain was trying to figure out what the hell to do. I guess I’ll live to see the photos.
I would just like to thank all the lunatics in the IDC asylum, the Masters students on the Insane Media course, and everybody else who made this day a – SURPRISE.
Still, I find it pleasing that I got to the IDC blog first ;-)

Bye Bye Microsoft Windows

After rebooting our exhibit in the City Gallery a few times, I have decided NEVER to use Microsoft Windows again for a public installation. Despite the fact that it's running on a fine little machine (Shuttle), and works fine on any Mac OSX, on Windows XP you get all kinds of trouble. In my case you're talking about a pretty normal multimedia file (Flash), about 230 Meg. EVen when everything seems to be running smooth, suddenly the evil Microsoft stuff pops up a dialogue that perhaps we need a Windows Update! No, no and no again.
So, from now on, if we're putting up machines in public installations, it should be Linux or OSX.
Goodbye Mr Gates. May you rot in reboot hell.

"Re-Thinking Technology in Museums"

Take a look at the programme for our IDC workshop "Re-thinking Technology in Museums". Really good papers and speakers from all over the world!

Evaluating Roomba

I had the opportunity to borrow a Roomba – robotic vacuum cleaner – from one of my colleagues. For many years, I’ve believed that the touchstone test of robotics is if humans can make affordable machines that automatically can clean a house.
So, what’s the outcome?
In terms of smartness, the Roomba is fine. It’s really blind as its main sensorium seems to be by bumping in to things (touch). It was really amazing to see it drive in under a kitchen chair and developing eventually applying a suitable behaviour to get out of there again.
Did it clean our wall-to-wall carpets, removing both dust and dog hair?
No. It did the dust but didn’t manage the dog hair. Compared to my old Nilfisk industrial grade manual machine, the power of the fan in Roomba is just a fraction, hence it’s understandable that it can’t deal with this kind of situation. If we didn’t have carpeted floors, e.g. wooden floors, I guess it would have worked.
Verdict: Smart but lacking power.

St Patrick's Day and many of us are NOT in a pub...

It's a strange year. I haven't had time or energy for months now to take a break, go to Guerin's and just live for a while. This St Patrick's Day several of us IDC:ers are busy writing research grant proposals, papers, budgets, etc. It's crazy! Why can't we just tell the world that if it wants our contribution, it'll have to wait a wee while.
Still, I guess I'm lucky. I've been out in the warm and dry weather several times today. My dog Charlie is really great at commenting on my writing when we're out walking.
- Should I cite XYZs paper do you think?
- whoof.
- OK, I'll leave it out.

Sad day in interaction design

Jef Raskin, the author of "The humane interface - New directions for designing interactive systems", possible creator of the Mac, etc., passed away today. He was a good warrior, striving to remove clicks and key strokes, to enhance user experiences.
We'll all miss him.

Where is the new building?

We need to update the IDC web site so that visitors don't go to the wrong (and dreadful) place.
I took a couple of shots of the new building the other day:

Especially the evening shot shows clearly where the activity is at night ;-)

The move: We made it!

Finally, we're in. OK, there are many things still not working and we'll discover - day by day - that new circumstances will require new working procedures, but, overall I think it feels really good to finally have escaped teh CSIS building.

Moving times

So, finally it's time to actually move to the new building. We should keep track of:
1. How many boxes are lost.
2. How many computers they drop.
3. How long it'll take to get everything writed again.
Still, I'm looking forward to the whole thing. It'll be great not having to go to the CSIS building, unless it's a lecturing day. Over this weekend I've had so many positive vibes - All The Things We Can Build and Do - now that we'll be in a dedicated research space.

The disappearing sink – Un-building a building

Today we discovered that they had removed the sink, water supply, etc., in our new premises. The whole worktop surface had been replaced, looking like there had never been a sink there! Last week when I checked, while it was still there, it worked fine! I suspect a major conspiracy here – somebody in Campbell Catering Ltd is messing with senior management at UL, to make sure that we cannot make our own coffee and tea (at cost price), to ensure continued extortion of both faculty and students in their over-priced and bad and low quality cafes and restaurants.
I suggest a total boycott on Campbell catering, until we get things the way we want them!

Have you stopped typing?

What's happened to our, normally, dynamic group? I've checked your personal blogs (no action) and this one has gone stale. We should be trashing out current issues here!
- The move to new building.
- New curricula
- Will you get paid next month
- Writing new exciting proposals
- Finding new truths
As I'm kind of off-campus a lot, I look at IDC web activities and see, very little. What's happening?

A toast to Tony's success

Long-term IDC member Tony Hall successfully defended his thesis today and was awarded the PhD!
Tony's thesis is entitled "Disappearing technology, emerging interactivity: A study of the design of novel computing to enhance children's learning experience in museums", and deals with the application of a framework inspired by Interaction Design practice to the development of educational museum exhibitions.
Tony's external examiner was Dr Lydia Plowman from Stirling University. Dr Eamonn McQuade was the internal examiner.
Congratulations to Dr. Tony Hall on his success!

Irish Electric Showers

This is really a mystery of lack of design and usability. I’ve just encountered a newly installed Centon Generation M888EP Multipoint Step Control device. It has a built-in pump to provide enough pressure to make you believe that you’re not standing outdoors on a soft day. But its thermal control just sucks. It has three settings: Low, Medium and High. In terms of water temperature, these settings result in Freezing, Cold and Scalding. This leaves you, as a user, with only a few options. You can either keep switching between Scalding and Cold, or, you set the dial to Scalding and try to put the showerhead really high and then you kneel down, hoping that the air will cool the boiling water on its way down. Alternatively, you can set the dial to cold and just suffer and shiver. Perhaps the design of Irish Electric Showers is a scheme devised by the Catholic Church. When modern times arrived and fewer people went to Mass, the Electric Shower was devised to make people realise what Hell might be like – in a very physical sense.
When will somebody teach Irish designers about continuous control and things like triacs, pulse-width modulation, control using feedback, etc…? With a small bundle of electronics, for less than 10 euro, you could easily provide constant and continuously controlled temperature of the water.

Forthcoming IDC seminar

IDC Research Seminar
Friday, November 12, at 2.00PM
Venue to be confirmed.

Programme
2.00-2.30 Ian O'Keeffe
"A Video-Driven Soundtrack Composition System Utilizing Video Stream Event Detection And Automated Music Generation"
Current soundtrack composition practice relies either on the use of a contracted composer to write from scratch or the use of music excerpt libraries to select the type of music required, with related costs linked with such an approach, royalties and musicians rights issues (IMRO). It is proposed that a new approach be taken for the generation of such incidental music, by composing or generating suitable music, probably driven by a 'wizard'-style interface or prompting method, which would be influenced by the content of the selected video stream with regard to rate of change, shot rate, and so on. After further investigation it has transpired that the alternative of applying more direct control over the marking of events would also be desirable, as would the facility to input EDL (Edit Decision List) files, these being a de-facto standard across the video industry. A number of approaches for the music generation are being investigated, the heuristic and statistical techniques being most prevalent.

2.30-3.00 Darragh Murphy
"Use of Biometrics as a database security measure" Goal of this project was to investigate the use of fingerprint recognition as a suitable
biometric measure for an authorized secured access to a database. The project entailed research into methods of fingerprint recognition and how it
has been developed and improved since its conception. While on co-operative education, Darragh was involved in Web Development and
maintenance, Developing online surveys, Software testing, Online services evaluation and he orchestrated the organizations computer auditing project.

3.00-3.30 Iride Bartolucci
"Interactive Playgrounds: how to stimulate the physical activity of children through playing, using new technologies"
Iride's role on the project was to formulate activity scenarios, with the aim to try and define necessary requirements for the implementation
of a novel playground. In particular, Iride designed a game to be implemented on the tiles-platform, that had the goal to develop the physical and cognitive
activity of children. Iride tested the game with children and also videotaped the activity to analyse the video through an ad hoc
observation grid she developed. The video-analysis activity was important to find new requirements about the prototype and to have significant data
about the physical performance and the cognitive activity of children and also about the design of the artefact.

3.30-4.30 Tony Hall
"Disappearing technology, emerging interactivity: A study of the design of novel computing to enhance children's learning experience in museums"
Museums are key sites of children's learning. However, they increasingly face competition for children's attention from other edutainment
activities and centres. In order to make their museums more appealing to children, curators and museum designers and educators are installing
computers in their galleries and exhibition spaces. However, the way in which this technology has been deployed in museums has often proven
problematic, serving to detract from, rather than enhance the interpretive experience of children. This has largely been the result of the inherent
limitations of standard computing. However, can novel computing (pervasive and ubiquitous computing), with
its potential to transcend problematic constraints of the desktop PC, be designed to enhance children's learning experience in museums? This is
the question that this thesis explores through development and evaluation of an innovative computer-supported exhibition, which was
designed to enhance children's museum learning. Emerging from the analysis of children's experience of the exhibition, the thesis firstly
proves that there are new interactive possibilities with novel computing to enhance the educational potential of museums. The thesis also
produces design guidelines, which identify the criteria of an effective computer-augmented museum educational experience for children. These
guidelines furthermore clarify the design informants and resources, which need to be consulted in order to effectively create such an
experience.

DAWN 2004 is on!

Want to try on augmented jewellery, experiment with interactive drama, experience time travel, explore wearable technology, visit an interactive art gallery, listen to electroacoustic music, and much more?

Visit DAWN 2004:

Interactive Media Exhibition: 23-25 September, 10AM-5PM in the C Block, opposite entrance to library

Music Technology concert: today, 23 September, at 3PM in CSG01, Computer Science Building

For details about the works, visit the DAWN website

DAWN04, the annual showcase of work by the Masters' students in
Interactive Media and Music Technology, is taking place at the University
of Limerick this week. The exhibition is in its fourth year and is already
known to show groundbreaking examples of what technology, media and music
might be tomorrow.

Prof. Tony Cahill, Head of the CSIS Department, officially opened the exhibition.

Congratulations to Luigina and Enrique

Major congratulations are due this week to Lui and Enrique as we have a new PhD and MSc respectively!

Here are a couple of pictures from the big day on Wednesday!