E1n1verse

Fame & Fortune

From this week's Bulletin, newsletter of the University of Sussex.

A part-time DPhil student in the Informatics department has won a national Associate Lecturer Teaching Award from the Open University (OU). Michelle Hoyle started teaching in the OU's Faculty of Technology in May 2000 and delivers internet technology courses, primarily online. The award will be presented on 20 April at a ceremony in Milton Keynes and comes with £1,000 to be used for personal and/or professional development.

It's also on the front page of the Informatics web site at the university. It's my 15 minutes of fame this year. (-:

MATLAB & MDS

I need some help in using MATLAB and MDS, so I looked to Google to find resources. There seem to be more MDS resources than when I last looked quite some time ago. I found a useful page with links and pointers to MDS-related resources at http://www.granular.com/MDS/. From there, I obtained most of the resources for a pyschology course organized around MDS taught by one of the MDS's primary researchers Forrest Young. I downloaded all the notes in PDF format and stored them away to browse through. Young is the same researcher responsible for developing the ViSta software (Visual Statistics System), which looks a lot like that Canadian object-oriented, icon-based programming language. I remember looking at ViSta before, but I don't think it supported doing things like MDS and it hasn't been recently updated for anything other than Windows.

David L. Jones had a series of MATLAB pointers which included links to toolboxes for non-metric multidimensional scaling. The latter toolkit, developed by Mark Steyvers, doesn't come with any documentation and includes some DLLs, so I wonder if only works in Windows somehow? I couldn't find any other reference to it on the web.

I was waiting for the Mac support person to come install a new version of MATLAB for me. The demo installation and toolkits I installed last fall have long since expired. I'm also still waiting to hear back from the UNIX software support people in the department about acquiring one of the pool licenses for use with a copy of MatLab on my Macintosh off campus. Latish on in the day, I found the Mac support person and acquired a valid license file. It didn't work right off the bat. I had to edit the file and change the linefeeds from Macintosh ones to UNIX ones. After that, it worked great and it looks fantastic. So I should be able to start doing something with that soon. It also works from home, surprisingly enough, as long as I have an Internet connection, so that will be quite convenient. Hurrah! I am moving ahead.

Meeting with Supervisor

I had a short meeting with Thufir today to check on how much progress I have made at reintegrating myself back into the flow of university life. The number of things I managed to check-off from my last to-do list was woefully short, but still progress of a sort. For example, retroactive intermission was granted. I now have until September 30th, 2006 to finish my DPhil. That required very little work on my part or my supervisor's to put through. It was the fastest resolved intermission request ever. I also wrote up my 30 words and scrounged up a picture for the next HCT brochure. The only other completed task off my list was sending an e-mail to the Bulletin mentioning my Open University teaching award, about which I have yet to hear anything. As I only submitted that late last week, he figured it was still early days.

Despite my pitiful progress on the items on my list, I hadn't been completely idle. I was able to report that I had been investing time in helping coordinate and set-up the new FirstClass intranet to be used by the IDEAs Lab. I have also been providing some advice to Julie Coultas on creating a web-site specification for her EduServ project. These activities do not directly further my Ph.D. work, but Thufir pointed out that they serve to help relieve the intrinsic isolation of my position in the group, as I am not working on a project with others and my work is not very directly related to most of the Lab's projects. I must be careful, however, not to spend the majority of my time on Lab-related work.

On my list of things still to do is to sort out my MATLAB problems. Prior to leaving for Canada last October, I was in correspondence with Dr. Tom Browne, who is responsible for academic license management here at the University of Sussex. While the software can be run directly on campus from various UNIX boxes, copying and pasting data/diagrams between the UNIX machine and the Mac isn't particular convenient. Sussex maintains a pool of MATLAB licenses. Purchasing individual licenses and toolkits is very expensive, so I have been trying to acquire the use of a license for use on my Macintosh. I need to follow up and see what the status of this last was.

One of the things Thufir is concerned about is that I have been basically stuck at the same point of my Ph.D. for several years now. Of course, that has not been helped by my lengthy absences due to work and my poor health over the past few years. It also has not been helped by the fact that the analysis I need to do is quite tricky and not understood by many people. Thufir admitted that the statistics was beyond him. Imagine a supervisor not knowing everything, but he was happy to admit he's not the end-all, be-all for everything. He tried forwarding me to various people and I spent ages asking people for advice and help all over the Internet and locally before I chanced across something on my own. The other factor that has been impeding the analysis is that statistics is not my strong point. I do not enjoy doing this analysis, yet it is hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. He worries the analysis tarpit is making my Ph.D. a chore and leading to anxiety and a constant circling without any substantial progress. He is looking for ways to help me break the "logjam." He suggested two things. One thing was to look for something "fun" that I could start work on now, which might help rekindle my enthusiasm for my project. Another related idea is to see if there is something I can do which does not hinge upon the results of the analysis, perhaps, for example, some of the writing. I promised to look at that as I continue my work on updating my timeline.

Finally, we discussed my general health and wellbeing. I confessed to being tired, after a hard week the last time he saw me of preparing for a big client demo and then following it up the week after with energy-intensive marking. He wondered if I could afford to not do the work at the Open University. The financials do not allow that at the present time. Almost half of what my company paid me (pre-tax!) went out as rent here in England. Without the OU income, I would have been in the hole. Nevertheless, I did discuss with him my idea of working more at the OU, maybe up to three days a week and none for my own company. I would probably make more money, be less stressed, and have more time to spend on my Ph.D. Doing so, particularly without planning and warning, would place my own company in a precarious position, so I will need to muddle along as best as possible for the moment.

Next meeting is April 2nd at 16:30.

Task list:
- Resurrect and review Ph.D. plan.
- Sort out MATLAB issues
- Work on CSR version of my paper so that I can submit it for publication and send it off to my external advisor

Bulletin Bravada

I spent part of today working on a 100-word statement that the Open University wants to put on their web site closer to the time of the award presentation ceremony. I find it ironic that, after writing two pages about myself in order to apply for the award, I have to write another 100. I find it even more ironic that I also had to suggest a sentence to put on the certificate. For the certificate, Stephen and I eventually settled on "for outstanding dedication and excellence in on-line teaching."

That still left the hundred words to be written. I reviewed my original award application material and put together the following:

Michelle focuses on Internet technology courses delivered primarily on-line. In TT280/TT281 (Design, Development, and Management/Client-Side Scripting), she provides extensive guidance through the development of supplementary course materials, in-depth FAQs, and a strong breadth of knowledge. She is a passionate communicator about technology, believing technology is sometimes only as difficult as people make it. Therefore, demonstrating a belief that students can achieve is a key to student success. In computing and technology, where women are scarce, she is a visible role model that women can succeed well in these traditionally male-dominated fields even if they have tangible weaknesses to overcome.

Once I had that out of the way, I decided I might as well go whole hog and e-mail the The Bulletin as suggested by Thufir. Not being familiar with the publication and what information they might require, I probably went overboard.

Greetings and Felicitations.

I'm a part-time D.Phil. student in the IDEAs Lab in Informatics. My supervisor suggested that I contact The Bulletin as I've just won (or will shortly be awarded) an Associate Lecturer Teaching Award for excellence in teaching at the Open University, one of two awards to be given out at the national faculty level in my faculty.

In order to win the award, I was competing against all associate lecturers in the Faculty of Technology at the Open University across the United Kingdom. While I'm not sure how many ALs that is in total, I do know that my own region has about 50-60 ALs alone in Technology. The award will be presented on the 20th of April in a ceremony at Milton Keynes and comes with a £1000 to be used for personal/professional development.

Here's a personal statement I wrote for the OU about myself with respect to the things I've done to win this award:

Michelle focuses on Internet technology courses delivered primarily on-line. In TT280/TT281 (Design, Development, and Management/Client-Side Scripting), she provides extensive guidance through the development of supplementary course materials, in-depth FAQs, and a strong breadth of knowledge. She is a passionate communicator about technology, believing technology is sometimes only as difficult as people make it. Therefore, demonstrating a belief that students can achieve is a key to student success. In computing and technology, where women are scarce, she is a visible role model that women can succeed well in these traditionally male-dominated fields even if they have tangible weaknesses to overcome.

I started at the Open University in May of 2000. During my tenure, I've taught:

M150 Feb 2004
T171 Feb 2003, Feb 2002, Feb 2001, May 2000
TT280 Oct 2002, May 2002
TT281 Oct 2003, May 2003
TU170 Feb 2002
Course Team Work TT280/TT281 Feb 2003

M150 is Data, Computing and Information
T171 is You, Your Computer, and the Net
TU170 is Learning Online: Computing with Confidence
TT280 is Web Basics: Design, Development & Management
TT281 is The Client Side of Application of Development

The award is for my efforts over the span of my OU career so far and not just the last year.

I'm not sure what else I can tell you that might be helpful or interesting. If you have any questions, please do ask. E-mail is the best way to contact me. I can provide a photo if you need one.

OK. I did get a bit unfocused and go overboard, but I find it so difficult to write positive things about myself. Whatever hapened to the adage "the Rabbi who praises himself has a congregation of one"?

Brochure Bravada

As part of my tasks, I need to acquire a suitable image of myself plus put 30 words of copy together for the annual Human-Centred Technologies brochure. 30 words isn't very much, and I wasn't quite sure whether those should be about me or about my project or about both. In the meantime, I set the EinSweetie to sorting out possible pictures. I dislike having my picture taken, so our collection isn't vast and many of the pictures were taken outside where I'm wearing my sunglasses.

Here's the picture I chose for myself. Even though it's several years old, it was the best we could find on short notice and spending several hours trawling through iPhoto.

That still left the 30 words. I settled on the following 31 words:

Michelle concentrates on Internet information retrieval: improving the indexing and return of search engine results using semantic relations. She is an award-winning Open University lecturer, incorporating IT into distance education.

Not quite 30 words, but close enough.

Of iPods, Infrastructure, and Intermission

Today was my first day back at the University after an extended absence. I filled it in by doing mostly administrative things. Let there be iPods, bibliography software, and printing everywhere!

Planning:
I started off the day by trying to set myself up a new research calendar of days at the University. The calendar left on the door only went until October and, of course, none of those dates were ever used. I consulted with Stephen and arranged to have 5-7 days a calendar month for my research. In most months, 5 of the days are in a row with the other days being made up of Fridays about two weeks before and after the week-long period. I tried to take into account that we might be taking a week off in May to go walking in Scotland. The other days chosen are mostly Fridays because that's the day we have our IDEAs Lab weekly meetings. One of the things I complained about at our last "away day" was feeling isolated. If I attend meetings, then I won't be so isolated. The proposed calendar can been using iCal at webcal://ical.mac.com/eingang/Ph.D..ics or on the web at http://ical.mac.com/eingang/Ph.D..

I'll need to take the proposed dates and map them onto my research plan timeline. Oh boy, another battle with Fast Track Schedule. Is it so much to ask for that a piece of software allow you to edit some things and then have things dependent on that automatically update? Apparently it is, because it's a pain in the butt to do, but there isn't a lot of choice of project scheduling software available for the Mac. If somebody knows of something better, please do let me know.

Infrastructure Changes:
After 6 months away, the wireless roaming network is finally live across the campus, but you can't print from it. Apparently, it was mostly designed with students in mind and students (undergraduates) don't have access to free printing. I'm hoping they come up with a cunning plan, because it's kind of weird to not be able to see any of the printers on the network and I can't, apparently, print to them by IP (although I don't know why).

While my office was still intact, I needed only to shove some stuff aside, the printers around the building have changed. I had to do all the "Adding" of printers, where I discovered that Mac OS X's (10.3.2) discovery of printers via AppleTalk is somewhat slow. It seems to take a bit of time to "sync" up when you first connect. In theory, I should now be able to print seamlessly, while plugged in via ethernet, to either printers on the COGS research network or on the teaching network. The teaching network printer is a lot closer, being only a few doors down. The rest of the printers are on different floors.

I had Christian give me a copy of EndNote 7 for the Macintosh. I had requested a license from the lab when they were ordering licenses for themselves. I've previously always bought and paid for my own academic license. Version 5 of EndNote, which only runs under Classic, worked with text files, other word processors, and FrameMaker MIF files. As I typeset all of my papers in FrameMaker, this was very convenient. Version 6 dropped that and only supported typing papers into Microsoft Word. At least this version allows you to use something other than Microsoft Word, but it's still RTF, which isn't as convenient for me. If I want to make changes, I have to update the FrameMaker file, produce an RTF document, parse that to insert the references, and then print the RTF file. We'll see how that works. When you change formats, some formatting always gets lost, so I am not completely hopeful.

Intermission:
I picked up a new photocopier card from the postgraduate secretary. The regular school secretaries wanted me to have a research grant to apply the charge to, but I was pretty sure I was entitled to a quota of copying per year as a research student, as indeed I am. I also asked her about the whole intermission process as my supervisor wants me to intermit. Apparently, I can only intermit entire terms, so I need to intermit for the fall and spring terms. I guess that makes any time I spent in March bonus time, assuming I'm granted intermission. She says she doesn't know of any limits for postgraduates on intermitting, which is good, because I'm apparently going for some kind of record. I also don't need to write another letter. If my supervisor e-mails her, she'll prepare the necessary paperwork and all will likely be well. I e-mailed my supervisor and suggested he do so to get the ball rolling. I'll check back on that in a few weeks.

FirstClass:
The IDEAs Lab has just teamed up with the new Creative Systems group to purchase a FirstClass server and some client licenses. The intention is to create a shared space for the IDEAs group people to be able to collaborate/discuss papers, have shared resource calendars, and update the IDEAs web site automatically with content from FirstClass. I was just discussing this with my supervisor at today's meeting. As I was searching for some BluTak in our resources room, a contingent of people came excitedly down the hallway looking for me. They knew that I was very familiar with a href="http://www.centrinity.com/" title="FirstClass from Centrinity">FirstClass from my work at the Open University and that I was also a technical web person. They want me to liaise with the FirstClass configuration person, so I've added that to my list of tasks to undertake in the next week.

iPod Study:
Michael Bull is doing a study on the use of iPods. Siufai saw a Wired article about Michael Bull and how he's looking for female inverviewees. Imagine my surprise to discover that he's at the University of Sussex too. Actually, I'd read an article in the New York Times (online) edition a week or so ago entitled The World at Ear's Length, all about how people completely shut out the world by using iPods in New York. That article also mentioned Michael Bull. Anyway, I had contacted him about being interviewed, being an iPod junkie, and had arranged to meet him this morning. I arrived at the appointed time, waited twenty minutes, and there was no sign of him. I left a note and followed up with an e-mail, but I haven't heard back from him.

So, there's lot to do, but time has run out for today. I need to wrap up, file things away, and head for home until the next day.

Meeting with Supervisor

I met with my supervisor briefly this afternoon. Given that I'd just been gone for another 6-month period, his first serious question was whether I wished to continue with my Ph.D. or whether I needed an "easy way out." I assured him that I still wanted to finish my Ph.D. and that I didn't need an "easy way out." That question once again settled, we then proceeded on to the practicalities of actually doing a Ph.D. With my recent long absence, he was all in favour of me applying to extend my last batch of intermission to cover the fall and spring terms. He suggested I write another letter to Phil Husbands, asking for intermission due to work.

As always, the issue of my health and medication was included. I assured him that my health had been good of late. He thought I looked a lot healthier, too. My medication usage, I had to relate, was not completely perfect, but it was a lot better. I explained how I was trying to balance my life a lot better, taking weekends off and suchlike. I have been aided in this quest by a dynamic to-do-list manager called LifeBalance. I showed him my desired versus actual pie chart and today's to do list and explained how it was time- and place-sensitive. By trying to do things only in the time slots allocated for them and relaxing outside of work/research hours, my health has improved and I'm not quite as stressed.

Nevertheless, I still had to confess that I basically had not accomplished anything since our previous meeting on the 23rd of September and that our librarian was hounding me to submit my revised paper as I promised her I was going to publish it as a Computer Science Report last year. She now has a gap in her numbering and wants me to cough up the goods. My supervisor thought that would be a good place to start in getting my mind back into my research. Revision of that paper and publication of it is also what I have been waiting on before seeking assistance from an external advisor, so it all ties together nicely.

He also thought I should make sure that I am represented in the upcoming annual HCT publication, with a picture and a description of my project. As that was already on my list of things to do, that is not a big deal. I believe I can even recycle previous material. I showed him my to-do list and my latest calendar for working on my Ph.D., which reminded him that I should unearth my research plan and update it for past progress and new timelines. I am not looking forward to that, but it is good to have a timeline. My new proposed timetable gives me between 5 to 7 research days at the University a month.

I mentioned, almost in passing, that I will be winning a national award for excellence in teaching from the Open University. He was extremely pleased and suggested that I drop a note to the editors of the Bulletin, a weekly newsletter here at the University, as that's the kind of tidbit they'd likely want to publish. That also led into a discussion of what I am doing at the Open University and my usage of FirstClass there. Our Lab is getting a FirstClass conferencing system for sharing resources and updating web pages. I wasn't sure how well it would work for updating web pages automatically, as I have not seen FirstClass really used for that, beyond shared calendars, but I think it's a neat experiment.

Finally, I told him that I'd actually put together a research blog which was currently very short on content and unindexed by Google, but it was a good place to start my efforts in building myself a community. It's another positive step forward.

At the end of the meeting, we closed, as usual, by selecting a new meeting date. Next meeting is a half hour squeezed inbetween other appointments on Tuesday, the 16th of March, at 16:15.

Task List:
- Send another letter to postgraduate dean about extending intermission from October to end of February.
- Send HCT Info to Rose's secretary for inclusion in annual publication.
- Resurrect and review timelines for my research plan.
- Send note to A.F. of the bulletin about winning teaching award at the Open University.
- Review the paper for submission to the library.
- Send e-mail to F.S. saying I'm alive and include revised version of paper.
- Review MATLAB application acquisition status.

The Return of the Student

Today was my first day back at the University since leaving for a three-week trip to Canada at the beginning of last October. I've been a student at the University of Sussex since, I think, the fall of 1996. Yes, I've been a Ph.D. student now for 8 years. While, that doesn't beat the record of Dr. Robert Runte, a celebrated perpetual student in my personal circle of friends, it's certainly getting up there.

The last time I went away for an extended period of time, I came back to discover my desk was now occupied by someone else. Space is always at a premium here, even though the IDEAs Lab is fortunate to have their very own space fairy. This time, however, I only needed to shove aside a few piles of electronics gizmos. My "new" office is shared with the lab equipment manager, who made good use of my empty desk space.

Everywhere I look now, the signs of the University's decision to rearrange the school so that there no longer is a School of Cognitive and Computing Science are in obvious fruition. Even my building, previously known as COGs, is now just relegated to the not-so-glamorous Pevensey II. Printers have moved, the wireless network is finally launched to the public, and I cannot find the departmental support pages to save my life. Irrespective of the changes, it's good to see that some things never change: Darren is still "almost done" his Ph.D., like he's been for the last two years; and Rob is still pursuing his Ph.D. slowly but surely. I'm in good company, I figure.

I ran into Beate in the hallway and she seemed glad to see me. She's also working part-time on her Ph.D., but she started several years after me. Nevertheless, I was quick to assure her that she would probably finish first. Shortly thereafter, I ran into Darren, too. He also seemed pleased I was back. It's nice to be welcomed and assured that there was a slight bit of worry that I might have "slid in the depths of Brighton's underbelly." All in all, it's good to be back.