I woke up early to check if anyone I knew was online, and I had a nice
chat with Marcelle. I fell asleep waiting for Dominique to come back
online, though, and I had such a vivid dream that I didn't wake up
until an hour or so later – by which time even my mom was starting to
feel like she was talking to cyberspace… =)

Anyway, it was such a nice chat that I didn't mind being late to the
clothing show held at Exhibition Place. Quinn and I eventually made it
there at around 12, and we browsed for an hour or so. I bought a
bracelet and two necklaces, all made of shell. I thought they might go
nicely with my ethnic stuff. I didn't really find anything else that
particularly struck my fancy, as tiered skirts are getting a _little_
too popular for my tastes. I might shift back to nicely colored
skirts, and of course I like wearing stuff from home. I wore the red
malong as a skirt today, matching it with a colorful abaniko fan.
(Thanks, Mom!)

That's why I was late to the Ruby meeting. =) That was cool, too! As
soon as he saw me, Austin said, “You know Steve Perelgut!” (He's one
of my mentors from IBM, and a totally totally cool person. The fact
that he reads me blog (Hi Stephen!) has nothing to do with the
gushiness of the previous statement. =) ) Austin shared what he'd
learned from the Ruby code jam (lesson 1: be better prepared!),
particularly the effectiveness and _fun_ of pair programming. It
worked out really well because Ruby novices were paired up with Ruby
veterans, but the Ruby novices were also good at other aspects that
the Ruby geeks might not have learned about. In this case, they were
porting an archiving library to Ruby. =) Good stuff.

We also had a fun chat about how people can learn to read and write
code. Apparently, I _am_ really weird in that I rather enjoy reading
code… =)

Jed and Quinn were there too, although they dropped in and out of the
conversation, as I fangirled a bit about Ruby and got some interesting
tips. Should check out the Water framework for testing web
applications, although that might need Windows. Also, Austin suggested
SVG + PDF for my graph outputs. Whee!

Jed mentioned a samba jam at an art gallery on Queen Street West. In
keeping with my plan to get to know a wide variety of people and
experience more than what I'd ordinarily get just hanging out with
computer geeks and talking about computers, I decided to go. It was
tons and tons of fun! I told them I had no sense of rhythm and that
I'd be perfectly happy just listening and taking pictures, but Jed
wouldn't take no for an answer. Heck, he didn't even ask if I wanted
to join. Instead, he held up two instruments and asked which one I'd
like to play. <laugh> I opted for a small drum, and I found
myself picking up the rhythm thanks to the coaching of people around
me.

A photographer wandered in, too, so I adopted her. Marie had just
joined a camera club and was thrilled to stumble across such a cool
event. I gave her the tips my dad shared with me about using long
exposures and lower ISO speeds to capture dramatic action, and she had
a lot of fun exploring that, too. =)

I made it back for coffee time at Graduate House. I had so much fun
catching up with Sam. She wants to do really cool things with
accessibility, and she's in a terrific position to do so! I'm also
really excited about her application to be an RA for the dorm. I think
she'd be a terrific one. I told her about what's cool in my life: the
Delta Kappa Gamma fellowship, my research up at IBM, the thrill of
introducing people to other people… She nodded and told me how much
she enjoyed that too. When I learned that she hadn't yet read Tipping
Point, I ran upstairs to grab my copy. I lent it to her, pointing out
the section on Connectors and adding a note about context. I'm also
going to have to get myself a hardcover (if I can find it!) of Love is
the Killer App, which is another thing that she will _so_ be able to
identify with. (Thank you, Maoi, for introducing me to that book!)

Afterwards, I had a wonderfully geeky chat about computer science and
assorted things with Mike and Joe. In particular, Joe's overlapping
clustering algorithms _might_ be fun to run against tag clouds, social
networks, and other cool things. I need to show Mark a sample and see
how we can ask for suitably anonymized data…

Happy girl. Full day. Great fun. =) Lots of interesting people!

One of the wonderful things about Graduate House is that the Graduate
House Council organizes a lot of social events. Tonight I enjoyed a
free Singaporean noodle dinner in the common room. As food goes, it
wasn't bad. I was there mainly for the conversation, though, and I
wasn't disappointed. =D I had tons of fun chatting with Keynan(sp?)
and Elizabeth (both Emily's suitemates). Andrew joined us too – he's
the English major I played Scrabble with once. Stefan dropped by to
tell me about the vegetarian cooking classes he found, but the only
nearby one focuses on Indian cooking, and I'd rather have something
more general.

Emily was impressed with my outfit. “You have legs today,” she said. I
had decided to wear The Miniskirt today because I just find it _so_
much fun to shop for computer stuff all dressed up. It confuses
salespeople, particularly when I ask for Linux-supported wireless
cards. ;)

Anyway, Emily told me that she almost always saw me in very pretty
skirts, but this was the first time she saw me with a skirt that
short. (Yes, yes, thank you Kathy for getting me a skirt I'd never
have dared get myself. Come to think of it, where _are_ those barkada
pics? Hmm…)

After most people finished dinner and left, I played billiards with
Stairos (sp?) and Tarun. I'm still not very consistent in billiards,
but I managed to sink a few good shots. After Tarun left, Stairos and
I played table tennis. He likes smashing, and whenever he does that I
tease him about being such a bully. I'm happy to report that I managed
to make contact with the ball a couple of times – probably more by
accident than reflex. Lusine joined us and we practiced for a while.

I'm not very good at table tennis yet, but I find it a lot of fun. My
coordination used to be absolutely terrible, but after a while I
realized that I didn't have to be able to think about how to intercept
the ball, I just had to actually do it. For some strange reason,
playing table tennis makes me feel like a character in a Japanese
animation.

And yes, I did manage to get some writing done. Not much, though. I'll
have to wake up early tomorrow to do some more work on it before the
cooking workshop…

One of the most wonderful things about social bookmarking research is,
well, how very social it is. We congregate around our systems like the
way people used to gather around water coolers. I love the way that
the first impression I get from a page is not of link counts or tags,
but of people with varied interests, and I want to improve support for
collaboration in order to bring people out even more.

Another remarkable thing about social bookmarking is that people into
it _love_ sharing information. They share bookmarks, bibliographies –
heck, even blogs. I can browse around a social bookmarking site and
get a sense not only of what I need to know about the system itself
but also the other hobbies and interests of the early adopters.

It's an amazing field to get into, and very very exciting.

Check out Gibbity, a way for gamers to
list their favorites and find other people into those games.

I'm thrilled to report that a large company has given the go signal
for research on social computing. Social search, in particular. I'm
particularly excited about the opportunity to work with their internal
projects. This year is going to be so interesting!

Check out http://www.oks.ph , a Philippine social news site along the
lines of digg.com . Stories are bookmarked and voted on by users, and
popular stories are displayed on the front page. It's a new site and
doesn't quite display properly on Mozilla Firefox, but hey, it's nice
to see other Filipinos into social bookmarking… =)

I love application essays. They make me think about what I'm doing
with my life. Sure, I could probably just make something up or use my
StatementOfPurpose from last time, but I actually like having to stop
and think.

And I've figured out a little bit more about how my project with Mark
Chignell fits into the grand scheme of things!

You see, I'd like to make it easy for people to collect and share
Internet resources that they've found useful. For example, consultants
in large software companies should be able to find out which documents
other consultants in their group found useful. They should be able to
find experts on a given topic, and they should be able to explore
other people's interests too.

Although several web-based services allow social search and discovery,
they haven't yet been widely adopted. My thesis will give me time to
think about what we can to do make these systems easier to use. My
human-computer interaction coursework will teach me how to measure the
effects of the changes we make to the interface. My background in
programming and computer science will allow me to quickly prototype
new interface designs.

And the grand scheme of things?

I think it would be fantastic if teachers could have that kind of
network. Imagine if I could filter my search for programming exercise
ideas according to what other introductory computer science teachers
found useful, or if I could explore what other people found useful.

Imagine if teachers could choose a set of useful webpages and make it
easy for students to prioritize those pages when searching. Imagine if
students could contribute their own hyperlinks. I think that would be
really cool.

But the interface needs to be much simpler, and it needs to be robust
and accessible. We can't rely on constant high-speed Internet
connections. Consultants use laptops and teachers in the provinces
might connect only once in a while. Both sets of people are Really
Busy and don't have the time or patience to muck about with
complicated interfaces. It needs to be simple and distributed, and it
needs to pack a lot of value.

Right.

That sounds like a great challenge. That's what I want to do, and I
can see how it might be useful. If only because I would _love_ to know
what other teachers bookmark, and I want to have a quick and easy way
to tell people about interesting websites without flooding their
mailbox…

Mmkay. I'll formalize this after I wake up, but I think I'm onto
something here.