Better after operation?

The second head could blink and smile! But the picture is scary, check it out. It seems like the second head has no body. Maybe some of their neurons are connected, making it an impulse for the second head to do the same action as the baby. I don’t know, it’s freaky. I sure hope she’s doing okay though. They were vague with the description of the results.

CB put up some freaky C++ code. I have one too. Well, it might not be freaky for C++ programmers, but it totally goes against scope rules for C.

Try this in C++:

for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
{
//do something
}

//i should not exist in this scope, right? So I should redefine it in the next loop.

for (int i=10; i<20; i++)
{
//do something
}

But I get a redefinition error! That just freaks me out. I expect it to be ‘alive’ only within the for-loop. Is this just an IDE error, or does C++ really work this way?

Maybe that’ll fix my trackback spamming. Download it here.

The WordPress options don’t work. I said I won’t allow link notifications from other Weblogs. Well, it’s still allowing it. Although TB’s trackback didn’t show up as a comment in my post. Ah well, whatever. I don’t get it. Also, yesterday, I tried putting a trackback on TB’s post. I entered the post’s address in the little box that says

TrackBack an URL: (Separate multiple URIs with spaces.)

Apparently that doesn’t do anything. Whatever. I’ll just have to follow TB’s instructions on this post. In the mean time, I’ll be getting stupid quotes about family members dying from free online poker. Thanks for brightening up my day.

By the way, apparently, a correct TrackBack is nothing more than a link to a post. Let’s see if that little link I put on TB’s post shows up on his as a TrackBack.

I was writing the date on my to-do-notebook and I wrote down February 23, 19… Oops! 19__?!?!?! Geez, I feel old. I mean, we’re only on the 5th year of writing 20__!

Last week, a girl at work asked me how old I am and I said 25 turning 26 this year and she said, “Wow, I thought you were my age.” She’s 22.

Ouch.

I know, it’s only 3 years, but it made me feel old. Ah well.

Oh yeah, CB and Daisy, this post’s for you. I’m so mean.

Global blogger action day called

1. I have spam again! Word Press Hash Cash was working perfectly until today! Oh no! Well, it’s not a huge disaster, at least I can still do the batch delete, but still. I hope it was just a fluke. But I doubt that. I’ll have to check if there’s a new version available, or if there’s a way I can let the dude who wrote it know about it.

2. Sideways is playing in our local indie theater! I should’ve checked. They’re only playing it 2 more days, and on both days, I have plans already. I wish they were just showing it tomorrow. Well, they’re probably still playing it in NY. I’ll be heading over there this weekend.

3. Well, okay, this last one’s not an oops. It’s a tip. Driving to New York? Staying there for the weekend? I found a good parking resource: Icon Parking Systems. You can supposedly be guaranteed a spot, and the rate I have is $30 for Friday-Sunday, arriving and leaving withint 30 minutes of the time I gave them. I’ll see how well they really are. I don’t think I missed any fine prints, but we’ll see.

At work right now, no long weekend for me. But I had a pretty good weekend nonetheless.

Spent a lazy Sunday with my sister. Had some at-home hanging out instead of really doing stuff in Keene. It was too cold for that and we were both lazy. No, more tired than lazy, actually.

I picked her up from Boston Saturday evening, went to Trader Joe’s to get dark chocolate bars to last me a month, nuts, and cheese and crackers. The chocolate bars are for testing which one’s the best - idea I stole from CB’s roommate. Had Indian food for dinner. Good, but too filling. Their mango shake tasted like corn (maiz con yelo) so it was disappointing. Non-Philippine mangos always turn out like that.

Anyway, the next day, I was voting to go snowboarding, but I’m glad my sister opted against it. We went to church, had lunch at Timoleon’s, did some shopping, and hung out at the bookstore. I got 3 more books to add on to the 3 other books I have lined up to read at home. Let’s see, I got Life of Pi, Anna Karenina, and something else about immigrants from an Indian author.

We saw Brother Bear when we got home. (Sideways wasn’t showing in the theaters.) It was okay… ending was weird for a Disney movie. After that I started making dinner - a rich beef stew/casserole to test out my new personal-sized casserole pots. The whole time I was preparing it, my sister really got into the “He’s just not that into you” book, reading passages aloud, saying which ones relate to whom. Fun times.

I was being sarcastic.

After she exhausted that, my sister tried out watercoloring. She did a what-if painting - not really doing anything but just putting color and water on paper. We had cheese and nuts as appetizers before proceeding with our delicious, hearty, winter-y meal topped off with vanilla ice cream and frozen berries. Yummmy!

We were supposed to watch Phanton of the Opera, but were too lazy. We ended up watching Serendipity - a stupid, senseless romance about fate and destiny. I really like John Cusack, but even he couldn’t make this work. After a little while, my sister and I tried different beauty products, only to come to the conclusion that neither of us knew how to use makeup. Oh well.

It was all in all a good weekend. I couldn’t take her to the bus stop this morning because I had to work, but she called a cab and got picked up by a blue pick-up truck! Woo! Go Keene! We’re in the boonies! Yee-haw!

Wait, that’s Texas… Wicked cool!

That’s more like it.

I spent the day shadowing users today. I think it might actually pass as a usability test, but I’m not sure. I forget the differences between methods. I hope Prof PT won’t see this. Anyway, most of HCI is so common sense that it becomes boring but it’s really important that engineers learn and apply the concepts. From webpages to the controls in the car, to the design of door handles, everything pretty much needs to apply the HCI concepts. Most CS majors probably frown upon HCI, but hey, if the UI can make or break an application/product, it’s important.

These are a few of the things that I can remember from class, which I found all apply:
1. If engineers make assumptions without doing field research, a lot of those will be proven wrong
2. Less user interaction, less errors
3. Feedback
4. Standardization
5. The design should make the use intuitive (i.e., chairs afford sitting, handles afford pulling)
6. Simplicity

I don’t remember the other concepts, feel free to mention it in the comment if you remember something. It’s just amazing how even the most well thought of design gets lost in implementation and as features get added on. But also, a lot of the hard work for UI engineers is the research into actual use, balancing trade-offs especially between complexity of the task and simplicity of the interface.

I helped out in HCI research for about a year and a half, but I still won’t buy a PDA because I hate the input methods.

Anyway, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m really tired. Been ‘working’ from 6:30am-10pm. I think that means I should go to bed. Gnyt.