(no subject)
Lots of stuff has been going on that I haven't been updating on, so here it comes all at once.
Our vacation to Pennsylvania & San Diego, while starting off with hilarious travel-related misadventures, was quite wonderful overall. I connected with my mom's family in a way I never really had before, Josh met some family members who hadn't made it to the wedding, and we even got to stop into Jersey and see some of Josh's family. Familial obligations == taken care of. In San Diego we saw our non-biological family, which was of course wonderful and magical. It was odd how little it felt like anything had changed, despite the fact that we had been physically absent for a year. Relaxation & reconnection == achieved.
Returning to Vancouver, we cuddled with the kitties (almost a whole month apart!) and dove into moving to our new apartment. With a total move distance of down one set of stairs and half a hallway, it was the easiest move in the history of the world. The second bedroom makes all the difference in our quality of life, and the bigger kitchen and dining area doesn't hurt either. Nerd cave == all systems go.
Shortly thereafter school began again. I have a delightfully commitment free Fall term: no classes, no TAing or teaching, just 30 hrs/week of research assistant work on two different projects, with 1 weekly meeting. Pretty sweet. Josh, by contrast, as a class and crazy amount of TAing, so he's busy with hours of stuff everyday.
My main research project, the museum guide system that I've talked about before, is really ramping up. We've finished our initial museum study phase and are moving firmly into design and prototyping, with an end goal of installing and evaluating the system next summer. We got a paper accepted in a conference, which constitutes my first ever real publication. Hooray! I will be presenting the paper, along with one of the other grad students on the project, next month in Toronto.
I also just finished working on another paper, together with one of my supervisors, related to the other research project I'm on. This paper, on sustainability & interaction design, has just been submitted to CHI, perhaps the biggest conference in our field. It has an acceptance rate of around 10%, so it's a bit of long shot, but it was a fun paper to work on, and I think it's pretty solid. So here's hoping. If it doesn't get in there, we can submit it other places, so eventually it will get published. All in all, things are looking good on the research & publishing front, which is awesome, because that was the aspect of grad school that was scaring the bejesus out of me last year. Classes, I can do. Got that whole thing down. Formulating original research questions and making contributions to my field? Definitely still a work in progress. But it seems more and more feasible.
Let's see, I think that's the big stuff. Some random items: Had a housewarming/birthday party last weekend which was quite fun-14 people packed into our place, which worked surprisingly well. Much Wii was played by all. BTW, to the person who recommended Mario Party (Chewie, I believe?), all I can say is thanks. My parents & brother are coming for a fairly quick visit in mid-October, which I'm looking forward to quite a bit. Yesterday we had a startlingly fierce thunderstorm including very nearby lightening strikes & thunder claps setting off car alarms. Today it was gorgeous and sunny. However, the temperture has dropped dramatically in the last few days, to the point where I'm considering running the oven just to warm the place up until the building heat is turned on for the winter. The new place gets almost no sun, and has big drafty windows, so once it gets cold, it stays cold.
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but that's what I've got for now.
Our vacation to Pennsylvania & San Diego, while starting off with hilarious travel-related misadventures, was quite wonderful overall. I connected with my mom's family in a way I never really had before, Josh met some family members who hadn't made it to the wedding, and we even got to stop into Jersey and see some of Josh's family. Familial obligations == taken care of. In San Diego we saw our non-biological family, which was of course wonderful and magical. It was odd how little it felt like anything had changed, despite the fact that we had been physically absent for a year. Relaxation & reconnection == achieved.
Returning to Vancouver, we cuddled with the kitties (almost a whole month apart!) and dove into moving to our new apartment. With a total move distance of down one set of stairs and half a hallway, it was the easiest move in the history of the world. The second bedroom makes all the difference in our quality of life, and the bigger kitchen and dining area doesn't hurt either. Nerd cave == all systems go.
Shortly thereafter school began again. I have a delightfully commitment free Fall term: no classes, no TAing or teaching, just 30 hrs/week of research assistant work on two different projects, with 1 weekly meeting. Pretty sweet. Josh, by contrast, as a class and crazy amount of TAing, so he's busy with hours of stuff everyday.
My main research project, the museum guide system that I've talked about before, is really ramping up. We've finished our initial museum study phase and are moving firmly into design and prototyping, with an end goal of installing and evaluating the system next summer. We got a paper accepted in a conference, which constitutes my first ever real publication. Hooray! I will be presenting the paper, along with one of the other grad students on the project, next month in Toronto.
I also just finished working on another paper, together with one of my supervisors, related to the other research project I'm on. This paper, on sustainability & interaction design, has just been submitted to CHI, perhaps the biggest conference in our field. It has an acceptance rate of around 10%, so it's a bit of long shot, but it was a fun paper to work on, and I think it's pretty solid. So here's hoping. If it doesn't get in there, we can submit it other places, so eventually it will get published. All in all, things are looking good on the research & publishing front, which is awesome, because that was the aspect of grad school that was scaring the bejesus out of me last year. Classes, I can do. Got that whole thing down. Formulating original research questions and making contributions to my field? Definitely still a work in progress. But it seems more and more feasible.
Let's see, I think that's the big stuff. Some random items: Had a housewarming/birthday party last weekend which was quite fun-14 people packed into our place, which worked surprisingly well. Much Wii was played by all. BTW, to the person who recommended Mario Party (Chewie, I believe?), all I can say is thanks. My parents & brother are coming for a fairly quick visit in mid-October, which I'm looking forward to quite a bit. Yesterday we had a startlingly fierce thunderstorm including very nearby lightening strikes & thunder claps setting off car alarms. Today it was gorgeous and sunny. However, the temperture has dropped dramatically in the last few days, to the point where I'm considering running the oven just to warm the place up until the building heat is turned on for the winter. The new place gets almost no sun, and has big drafty windows, so once it gets cold, it stays cold.
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but that's what I've got for now.