Stephen Khuu := Steve Khuu

Tranquility.

2011-06-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Whether looking for a new wallpaper or trying to give yourself a mental vacation, the link below is a large photo collection of magnificent sites across the globe.
A virtual vacation can be advantageous in that it's supplemental imagery for your mind when you picture yourself swinging on a hammock on a calm sandy beach with a cut open coconut in hand. It simply extends the imagination of your dream vacation.

Your gateway to virtual tranquility.

CSC309 Mobile Web Project

2011-05-05T07:29:00.001-07:00

With three other peers, we created an arcade web application that was scalable to both the modern internet browser as well as the BlackBerry. We called our project, Amogia Arcade. Although the server for our arcade is no longer in commission, we are still able to provide the user documentation to teach users on how to use our web application.

The documentation can be found here.

Amogia Arcade is an entertainment platform designed for the web where users can compete against each other's highscores and highest achievements earned. Currently, there are three games on Amogia Arcade: BeGemmed, Memory, and Speed Typing. Trophies can be earned through various accomplishments from each game.

We started this project with the intention of creating an application for the BlackBerry. We decided to construct an arcade system because we noticed the lack of games for this device. Instead of creating just a single game, we decided to create a gaming platform that could allow the experience of multiple games to be shared across users. The challenge of creating this platform was to simplify and minimize the coupling between the games and the gaming platform. If more games are to be added in th future by other authors, we want the process to be as easy as possible. This also coincided with our second challenge of maintaining an open-closed principle. By open-closed principle we mean open for extension and closed for modification. If games are to be added to our platform, there should not be changes made to the server that completely change the way the server behaves.

As part of the requirement for our course, CSC309, we also integrated Nanuk Share. Nanuk Share is still a concept in research. It is a social networking platform designed for BlackBerry users.

This platform was created using XHTML/JSP pages, CSS, Java, MySQL, and JavaScript. The games were created using JSP pages, CSS, and JavaScript.

CSC490 Final Product

2011-05-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

After a month's worth of review and critiques from my peer as well as my professor, the screenshot below is the final revision of my project.

In explorations for the features planned from the previous post, I encountered significant road blocks. The most important one being that frame and iframe html elements to not support the on-click event listener functions. This roadblock would prevent users from interacting with content in frame/iframe window.

In turn, I had to rethink about my project and instead of splitting the viewing window into tow panels, I decided to make a tool for users to customize the layout the way they want. The new project was to create a central hub of tools that users could use to fit their visual preferences. The goal of the new tool was to provide easy-to-use tools that had scalable levels of control to enhance a user's visual experience while surfing the web.

The tools provided in this hub are the following:

- A remover tool to delete unwanted content from a webpage (ads, image banners, etc)
- An image size controller
- A font size controller
- A background and font colour controller with three granularity settings.

The best thing about the last tool is that if a user were to set some colour preferences by any of the three options (page, domain, all tabs), then Google Chrome will remember their settings the next time they access the same webpage, domain, or on the other tabs they have open.

CSC490 P2 Idea Proposal

2010-10-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

After analyzing the different approaches to web accessibility for the visually impaired, I found that the approaches boil down to three types: screen magnifiers, screen readers, and text browsers. Each approach presents its own set of problems. Screen magnifiers tend to provide user unfriendly interfaces, i.e. size of menu is too small, screen readers are too specific, and text browsers don’t always preserve a website’s layout. However, each approach does present a viable solution. The key features I’d like to focus on are the simplification from text browsers and the enhancement from the screen magnifiers.

My proposal is a Firefox add-on that allows users to choose what they want to see and enhance it the way they want to see it. The add-on divides areas of the webpage with transparent red borders. Each of these areas can be dragged into the canvas.
In the first picture, we see an example of the divided areas of the webpage. The blank white space is the empty canvas. In the second picture, we see the user dragging a chosen section of the page and placing it into the canvas.

In the canvas, there are four buttons. One changes the foreground colour, the other changes the background colour, and the remaining two respective buttons zoom in or zoom out of the canvas.

The motivation behind the idea was to simplify the content of a webpage to what a user would like to see. Although there are existing scripts to simplify the layout of a webpage, the end result is never consistent. This also causes a large issue when dealing with unwanted content such as sidebar adds. In the webpage optimizers I have evaluated, none of them managed to get rid of the ads.

NoSquint Add-on Review

2010-10-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

NoSquint is a Firefox add-on that magnifies the content in the Firefox web-browser without displaying the magnified view in a separate field. Rather, the add-on enlarges the content in the browser "on the fly".

The add-on has quite a lot of customization options. The magnification can be changed for each browser or for each site visited. A user can change the size of the font on the webpage as well as the size of the webpage itself. In addition, the colour can be changed for the background, text, visited links, and unvisited links.

However, I find it ironic that this is called "NoSquint". For one thing, the NoSquint icon is located at the bottom-right of the browser. At first, I had trouble finding This icon is the same size as quick launch icons in the Windows task bar. It's tiny. Secondly, similarly to the Virtual Magnification tool, it can't magnify the size of its own options menu.

With some refinement, this could definitely prove to be a useful tool for users with low vision.

Lowbrowse Add-on Review

2010-10-03T13:36:00.001-07:00

Lowbrowse is a Firefox add-on that displays a magnified view of the selected text in the Firefox browser. The tool creates a magnified view window that fits between the address bar and the tabs of the browser. The font displayed in the magnified view is at least 40px in size.

While the concept of the tool sound simple enough, it seems the implementation of it has limited much of its abilities. From my experience with the tool, it enlarges a selection of text and most likely determines what text to enlarge based on text between HTML element tags, e.g. 'p' and '/p'. The major issue with this tool is that it doesn't not enhance text on a webpage line by line. Also, the magnified text displayed is limited to the amount able to fit in the magnified view. If a paragraph of text is placed inside of a 'p', '/p' HTML element, then the tool would only display the first 3-10 words depending on the length of each word. The rest of the text content is ignored. Furthermore, there are no customization or navigation options for this tool. Everything a user gets is exactly what is seen "out of the box". If there is a web page with a red background and green text, then this add-on would be completely useless to them. What would be better is if the user could customize the colour scheme of the magnified view.

Though this tool is extremely limited in terms of what a user will actually view, there is one potential feature that may prove to be helpful in future implementations. The tool's ability to fetch the text from HTML elements can be leveraged in some other way in which all the text will be displayed.

ZoomText Review

2010-10-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

The ZoomText tool from AI Squared is another screen magnifier tool. However, this software also has the optional add-on of a screen reader as well.

After my two reviews of a screen magnifiers, I was expecting this one to be more or less the same. However, the features included with the 60 trial version are vastly superior than any screen magnifier I had tried yet. Firstly, the magnified view can be changed into five different types: Full, Overlay, Lens, Line, and Docked. Full magnifies the entire screen, Overlay places a magnified view of the user's screen in the bottom-right quarter of the user's screen. It's called Overlay because the magnified window is placed on top of any object on the user screen. Lens is a magnifying lens (much like the Virtual Magnifier in the first review), Line is a thin magnifying lens that uses the width of the screen but is fairly short in height. Docked is similar to the Windows magnifier tool but with the option of placing the magnified field on the top, left, bottom, or right. In addition, the magnified view can be set up with a dual monitor.

The enhancement options are the bread and butter of this tool. They allow the customization of the colour scheme of the screen, the size and colour of the cursor and pointer, as well as creating a focus on screen. The focus option in particular, I found was very helpful. The focus option creates a rectangular shape, for instance a red rectangular border, around the object on the screen that the cursor is currently on. It's a great way to demonstrate visual cues to low vision users. In addition, this feature can help with people who experience temporary memory loss, e.g. Alzheimer's. The red rectangle appears on the screen whenever the user has not interacted with the focused object for a short period of time. This can help users stay on task or remind them of the task on hand. Also, it can help low vision users to identify interactive objects on the screen.

Unlike the Virtual Magnifier tool, the ZoomText tool can use it's own magnification to zoom in on its options menu. Also, there are no quirky shortcuts to remember.
Furthermore, there does not seem to be a performance hindrance.

However, no tool is without its imperfections. The focus feature does not immediately work for all components. For one thing, it sometimes leaves a red rectangle on the screen even after the user has clicked on the link. This can lead to confusion in the sense that the non-disappearing red rectangle may suggest to users that there is something of interest when there is really nothing there. In addition, the placement of the overlay window cannot be changed. But that's a matter of preference.

Overall, this is a pretty comprehensive magnification tool that provides some helpful features that low vision users can definitely take advantage of.

Jaws Screen Reader Review

2010-10-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Jaws Screen Reader is an advanced screen reader.

It is an incredibly powerful piece of software able to read any component on the user's screen. It tries to incorporate sound queues into every event on the user's screen. This is immediately apparently upon installation of the product. While the progress bar fills, little ticking sounds can be heard, indicating progression in the installation. When browsing on the web, it reads the text in the title bar as well as the first heading in the web page. It goes on to describe the elements on the page such as the number of links and the element that the cursor is currently selected on, for instance a text box prompt. It also tells the user which key they have pressed while typing.

At times, with the increasing amount of content on the page, the audio description from Jaws is overwhelming. For blind novice computer users, this software is intimidating. Trying to navigate JAWS' menu to slow the speech down proved to be difficult. And as with almost all accessibility tools I have reviewed so far, the screen readers fail to detect JavaScript of Flash objects from pages.

Overall, the information from JAWS is rich. I can definitely help a blind user illustrate a detailed picture of the current state of his/her screen. Though, it may take some time to get used to the initial speed of the voice speech. What would be a nice feature would be a way to repeat the speech. In the time I had to experiment with this tool, I was unable to find such a feature.

Typetester Review

2010-10-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Although Typetester isn't directly an application to assist the visually impaired, it is an applicaiton for the web programmers who are trying to make their websites more web accessible for the visually impaired. It is a JavaScript enabled application that compares up to three different web layout choices in regards to font name, font size, font colour, spacing, alignment, and background colour.

This website does bring out the importance of a well chosen layout of a webpage. For the visually impaired users, being able to see the font clearly will determine the web accessibility of a person's website. Tools like this help web programmers with the W3 compliance of web accessibility.

One thing to note is the font-size unit. It is not initially apparent, but there are actually two different font-size parameters on this applications. The first is clearly seen under the title "size" on the main page. The second located near the top right-hand corner in the "tools" tab. As a web programmer, I am more familiar with the pixel unit of value for font size. I would have preferred if the unit used for the font-size adjuster under "size" was "px" instead of "em". But that's just a matter of preference.

Windows Magnifier Review

2010-10-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Windows Magnifier is a packaged tool that has been bundled with Windows since Windows 95. It uses a portion of the user's screen to show a magnified view of the user's desktop below. It can be customized to follow the cursor, keyboard focus, or where ever text editing is occuring. In addition, users can adjust the zoom level to either zoom closer in (2x to 9x magnification) or to zoom out back to the "normal" view. To use it, users simply type in "magnify" in the command line of the windows prompt screen.

The tool is simple to use. With the options limiting to only several checkboxes on one small panel, it it easy for users to understand how to use this tool. The size of the field magnified view can be adjusted in size vertically. In addition, there does not seem to be any performance hindrance when using the tool.

However, upon initial usage of the tool, I found the magnified view to be slightly nauseating. By default, the magnifier follows the cursor. As someone whose cursor constantly flies across the screen, this was an unpleasant experience. The only option was to slow down the way I use my cursor to navigate through the screen.
Another annoying part I found was that the cursor was not visible in the magnified view if the zoom level was set to "normal". My theory was that since the magnification was on par with the user's screen, the user would just look at their own screen instead. In a sense, the "normal" view in the magnifier becomes useless.
Also, rather than being a separate window, the magnifier "shares" screen space with the user's desktop. I mentioned in the beginning that the magnification field could be adjusted vertically. It can't be adjusted horizontally because the size adjustment is really just the control for how much space the magnification tool will share with the desktop.

Overall, for a free tool, the Windows magnifier is an easy tool to use. It does serve its purpose without depleting CPU resources. However, if you're a fast, multi-tasker type of person, you may want to slow down when using this tool.

Lynx Text Browser Review

2010-10-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Lynx Text Browser is a text-based web browser alternative for the visually impaired. Operated through a command window or Unix terminal, this browser is a multi-platform, lightweight application that only fetches the text content from webpages. It is also designed to be used with text-to-speech software. However, I never managed to get that component to work with this browser.
Instead, this review will be based on Lynx's ease of use and functionality.

The browser is simplistic to say the least. Without reading the instruction manual, I was able to use the browser to navigate links and scroll down webpages in the browser.
The [up] and [down] arrow keys are used to cycle through links on a webpage. The [left] and [right] arrow keys are used to go to the previous webpage or to go into the selected link, respectively.

A couple of issues however, arise from this browser. Text based browsers such as this one ignore all images, Flash objects, and Javascript objects. This makes it difficult to read/view content on some online shopping sites and photoblogs, for example. In addition, if the text is talking about the picture displayed, the Lynx user will have no idea what that picture is. Let alone, the user won't even know that a picture exists! However, we can leave this as to poor accessibility on the web designer's end.

With the rise of HTML5 websites, it seems to be web accessible friendly. The Pixel Blast website, is a great example of an HTML5 programmed website that is both web accessible (i.e. important content of each page on this site can be read by the Lynx browser) and did not have to compromise in layout design.

In short, the Lynx browser is great for browsing the web, given that the visited sites will not heavily depend on JavaScript design functions. There is an advantage to not loading images, Flash, and JavaScript features. The performance of the browser in terms of loading content is quick. With the upcoming HTML5, web content and outstanding design does not have to be compromised for web accessibility.

Adacito Zoom Script Review

2010-10-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

The Adacito Zoom tool is a JavaScript tool that disables all associative linked stylesheets that don't contain the rev attribute set to 'zoom'. In a basic sense, this lightweight tool strips a website down to it's bare bones: text, images, and hyperlinks. This tool can be dragged onto a user's bookmark bar to be used on any website. The name of the tool seems a bit misleading. The only 'zoom' relation to this tool is the preservation layouts with the 'zoom' value in the rev attribute. Alternatively, if they had chosen another name, say "Minimum", then this tool might've been named the Adacito Minimum Script tool.

As suggested by their blog, this tool works best for sites that have the 'zoom' value in their stylesheet. Two provided examples are here and here.
With the suggested prerequisites, this tool organizes the information in a consistent manner. All navigation links are located at the top-left of the screen. The title and the main body of the webpage is displayed in large, block font. All less relative content is displayed towards the bottom.

One thing to note is that this script does not remove ads from the webpage.
Where this script fails is with flash operated websites and websites with heavy use of JavaScript libraries for content management.
For flash websites, content cannot be 'shredded' because the elements on the webpage are not recognized as text or images.
For heavy JavaScript websites, it makes some functionality worse. Most web developers are familiar with the jCarousel feature from the jQuery library. This feature organizes photos in a horizontal or vertical list and limits the number of images displayed at one time. When using the Zoom script, this feature is disabled and all images are shown at once.

As the Zoom script author states, "Clearly, this isn’t an ideal solution but I thought it would be fun to offer it anyway. If nothing else, it’s making use of a microformat: no committees, no specifications, just an agreed use of semantics", this tool gives a simple example of options web programmers can conside for web layout optimization. It's a good start, but does require a lot of refinement.

NaturalReader 10.0 Review

2010-10-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

NaturalReader is a text-to-speech software which simply reads text from the screen and outputs them into audio.
This review will be primarily based upon the free version of the product.
The software promises integration with Microsoft Office products as well as Internet explorer and Firefox. The website gives a sample of the audio output from the reader. From first impressions, I could see that some effort has been put in to make the reader sound more human and less robotic. However, the 'more human' voices are only available on the paid versions of the product.

The free version allows a user to upload a text file from their computer for the program to read. After trying a few tests, the software seems to recognize dates such as "October 1, 2010" (recognizes the date as October 1st, 2010) but fails to understand URLs. A simple failure case was trying to get the reader to read "www.google.com". The reader read this statement as "w, w, w, dot, oogle, om".
This was a reoccurring pattern with any URL I tried.

One neat feature that was included with the free version was the Floating Bar tool.
The Floating Bar tool allows users to select any text from their desktop and have it read back to them. However, neither the Floating Bar tool or the program could detect HTML tag elements.

Despite these features, NaturalReader seems to cater towards people with slight visual impairment and not the blind. The buttons on the toolbar only interact with mouse clicks. Even for people who have limited vision, they might experience some difficulty using the Floating Bar tool. It's a rather small widget which can easily hide behind other objects on the screen. Taking a look at the testimonials, we see that customers were satisfied on either the quick and easy installation process or its ability to assist them in reading tiny text on a webpage.

Virtual Magnifying Glass Review

2010-09-30T12:30:00.001-07:00

The Virtual Magnifying Glass as seen in this link, is a free, open-source tool that is supported for Windows 2000+, Linux, and Mac OS X. It sells itself as being customizable and easy to use.
As the title of the product would suggest, this tool is a magnifying glass for a user's desktop. Recently, they released a plugin feature called "Dynamic Mode". Dynamic allows users to interact with the area inside of the magnifying glass. For visually impaired users, this new feature would help them see what they are typing into textboxes, for example.

Unfortunately, this tool is not simple to use. In fact, there's a bit of irony with this tool. It can enlarge the viewing of items on the desktop but it can't enlarge its own menu options. In order to access the tool's menu, a user must right-click on the magnifying glass icon in the task bar. However, right-click also takes the magnifying glass off of the screen. There are a large variety of options to go through, but a visually impaired user would not be able to use the magnifying glass tool to look through these options.

Dynamic mode requires a large amount of CPU resources to run. In turn, everything else on the user's desktop runs slow. Unbearably slow. Also, there seems to be a poor choice for shortcut keys for dynamic mode. Pressing CTRL+ALT+[arrow key] moves the glass to the direction of the arrow key pressed. However, this is the same shortcut key that rotates the orientation of the screen on many computers and laptops today. For example, is a user presses CTRL+ALT+[right arrow], their screen would rotate 90 degrees clockwise. The only way to fix this is to press CTRL+ALT+[up arrow]. In my experience, I thought that the screen rotation was a feature in the magnifying glass and I found myself pressing ESC to close the magnifying glass program.

In its basic functionality as a virtual magnifying glass, it performs on par. However, this product seems to require much revision around the usability of its features and the performance of its features.

Lotus Notes

2010-05-24T19:55:00.001-07:00

Working at IBM, you being to familiarize yourself with some of the product that your company develops. Take our mail client for example, Lotus Notes. Up until I started working with IBM, I haven't heard of the application before. Then I started hearing about all the large industries that actually incorporate Lotus Notes into their business. Clearly, I wasn't looking in a lot of places. In fact, I found the most unlikely application for Lotus Notes today while checking for the schedule for Victoria Day fireworks.

Take a look at the event listing web page on Toronto's website!

Look at the address and tab icons. Lotus Notes!!

Two 2's

2010-05-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've come across a bunch of items that correlate to the number 2. To celebrate my 22nd birthday, I'd figure why not talk about the number 2. Here we go:

- My current age is a pair of 2's
- I've only had two hair styles in my life
- I do two crosswords every morning
- I carpool two people to work
- My household consists of two of each gender
- I suggest two options when giving advice
- My birthday bash is a combined celebration of two people
- The first item I bought for myself when I started working was a Playstation 2
- I've had two near death experiences
- I lived in exactly two countries
- 2 is the only prime number in which the sum is equal to its product -> 2+2 = 2*2
- The game which I've spent the most time on ever is Modern Warfare 2
- There are two wings places that I go to
- There are two ways I drink my liquor: Chase it slowly or 3 parts liquor to 1 part chase in a glass and chug it
- I'm the oldest of two
- I played competitively in two sports: Badminton and Volleyball
- Count the number of bolded 2/two's

The Gift of Gratitude

2009-12-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across an article this morning in the Hamilton Spectator.

In 2011, my family would be in Canada for 30 years.

Holidays are truly a time when families can spend time together and appreciate the time to have with one another. Finding this article on Christmas morning seemed as if it was timed perfectly to follow a sequential story of a boy who discovers his roots.

Though we're all still close together, outings with the entire family come rarely. Imagine trying to coordinate a schedule between a family of over 30 cousins and their parents.

Though we may not spend much time together, the love we have for our family keeps us together. I write this post as a gift of gratitude. A thank you for my possible existence as well as my sister's. For providing us with a prosperous life where we have the ability to thrive in the world and succeed to our desired goals. It simply cannot go overlooked.

In 1981, my uncle, as well as his siblings came over to Canada with money that would feed them all one small meal. Not to mention, living in less ideal conditions with unfamiliar cold weather and living space meant for a young bachelor.

28 years later, it seems as if none of that ever existed. They have managed to overcome the impossible and earn their way passed what most people would consider a comfortable living. They own their own businesses, their own properties, and are more than able to financially support for their children in their academics.

I'd like to especially thank the Hamilton Spectator for taking the initiative of writing these types of inspiring articles. These are segments that the general public should read not only as awareness of the struggles of other races but as motivation to illustrate the impossible challenges that people can overcome.

Cool thing I found on google.

2009-07-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

Google has it's own sense of humour. It made me lawl =)

What happens when you search for the term "recursion"?

enjoy.

Official Summer to do list

2009-05-13T07:46:00.001-07:00

X Throw a huge summer BBQ
X Use up my Chapters/Indigo giftcards to buy Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- Read my other books that I haven't finished yet
- Watch X-Men Origins
X Watch Transformers 2
X Watch Up!
_ Watch Public Enemies
X Watch Terminator
X Get insurance for my car
- Buy a CD deck for the car
- Build my new bike that's still in pieces in a cardboard box
X Go clubbing at least once
X Meet up with friends that I haven't seen in almost a year
X Buy clothes
- Fix shoes
- Go golfing
X Play badminton
X Oh yes, Start PEY!

more to come!, updated June 09

21!

2009-05-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

It's been over my last month since my last entry.
Now that 3rd year is over, I finally have the time to collect my thoughts.

Things seemed to piece together very well this year, far better than I could imagine.
What I thought was a re-occuring nightmare of a course, turned out to be one of the most interesting and unique courses I have taken so far in Computer Science. At first, the kaleidoscope of linear theory reminded me of a "certain", infamous linear data analysis course that I had just finished the previous term. However, I found that this was one of the most rewarding courses simply because although we are still performing data analysis, the results are represented in the results of synthesizing behaviours with images. In other words, we were able to see our work in a visual stimulating sense, as oppose to decimal number matrices. Thanks Kyros.

At the beginning of the PEY applications, I told myself that I would only look for jobs that were within a biking commute, i.e., within the downtown core. Although Toronto does have its fair share of software companies downtown, I failed to acknowledge some of the larger giants that also resided outside. Ironically, the position that I was most excited about applying to was in Marhkam. For the next 15 months, starting in June, I will be working as a Software Developer in Java at IBM. My hiring manager was kind enough to offer a tour of the facility and I would have to say that there were several things that really lured me in. Although I won't specify them directly, I will say this: They really try to make us CSers feel at home. I can't wait to start!

Today is my birthday. It seems that with every year that passes by I ask less and less in terms of gifts or birthday wishes. I remember that when I started high school, one of the things I wanted the most was a PS2. Of course, the technology was new at the time so the price tag on that giant was around $700 (including mods). I guess as time goes, I become more aware and appreciative of what I already have, instead of comparing with the things I don't have yet. This year, I only had two things in mind. One was to have the time to kick back and relax. Two, for my birthday cake made from a chinese bakery. Ever since my first birthday, I've always had chinese birthday cake in celebration. 20 years later and I still love it.

Coming to the end of 3rd year.

2009-04-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a long journey, but the end of road is coming closer and closer.
With 3 remaining projects to complete by the end of this term, I can't say that I have got to where I am today with at least a few special notions.

Although our assignments test our ability to work independently, I believe that no one in Computer Science can survive alone.

Friendships that one develops have a strong impact on our ability to stay motivated to work. It's not about the dependence on companionship, like the dependence on Red Bull during those dragging all-nighter sessions. It's about people who can answer those questions that one asks oneself.

The concept of Rubber Ducking (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking) is an effective method that helps one clarify their thoughts about their work but there's one problem; communication occurs in one direction.

Like the rubber duck, although one's friends might not understand the background of your project. Unlike the rubber duck, a friend offers the gesture off trying to help you solve the problem by talking through it with you.

Yes, our Computer Science is a frustrating program, but, as a friend mentioned to me at one time, be wise to the things you learn to appreciate along the way. Learning programming languages is great, but learning the language of communication is the essential tool that everyone CS or non-CS should have in their archives.

Taking 30 minutes of out of your day to humor with friends can eliminate hours of code crunching.

Like the CTRL+T and CTRL+W on Firefox, thank you to everyone for making my life in CS a lot easier...

Visual Computing Project: Object Removal

2009-02-28T14:26:00.001-08:00

One of the most interesting courses I have taken so far during my time here at the University of Toronto is Introduction Visual Computing. What I found interesting about this course is the functionality of the programs that we are assigned to build. The amazing part is that some of these tools cannot be found in Adobe Photoshop. The last project I have just finished deals with the concept of object removal.

The idea was, given an initial picture P and an associative input mask M, where M is a binary image, this program deletes pixels of P where M was black. The program would then fill in the missing pixels with a best fit estimate.

The project is based on the idea from this paper
click here to view the paper in a new window

My results:

The Antidote to Poisonous People: Anna

2009-02-11T00:19:00.000-08:00

from the poisonous people article:

"Anna knows more about every subject than everyone else on the team put together---at least, she thinks she does. No matter what you say, she'll correct you; no matter what you know, she knows better. Annas are pretty easy to spot: if you keep track in team meetings of how often people interrupt one another, her score is usually higher than everyone else's put together."

The more familiar term for the all the Annas in the world are called the "know-it-alls".

Analysis (Interruption):
One problem that occurs far too often is the passive behavior from the rest of the group. When Anna interrupts, two common reactions to that follow this behavior are: i) The person that was speaking stops, allowing Anna to speak "out-of-courtesy" ii) the rest of the group stays silent, hoping that the previous speaker will repeat their point or that the interruption would unlikely happen again and let it go.

If this is the case, then this automatically sends Anna the message that her behavior is allowed. The problem that I found personally from encountering a few Anna's myself is that every member of the group believes far too often of the "out-of-courtesy" concept. This system implies wishful thinking in that being courteous will not make you the bad guy and/or will hopefully set an example for everyone else.

Most likely, Anna feels the need to interrupt because she feels that her point is more important than the current issue.

Antidote (Interruption):
The key here is developing a speech scheduler. This does not mean passing around a conch shell, allowing the bearer to speak. If you've ever read the Lord of the Flies in high school, you know that although the conch symbolized order, the conch failed.

One idea that I will mention time and time again is to keep the idea of multi-dimensional thinking, more commonly known as "putting yourself in someone else's shoes"

It is possible that Anna does not see her interruption as a problem because it seems normal to her. Take the initiative to tell her that it isn't. This can be simple as saying, "Excuse me Anna, I am speaking right now and I find it rude when you interrupt." As corny as this may sound, it does accomplish one thing: It identifies Anna's interruptions as a problem.

It is also Anna to interrupt because of a sense of urgency. She may feel that her point can be valued by the group but is in fear forgetting it if she waits till the speaker is done. We see this quite often as well in the example of raising our hands in class. Sometimes you put up your hand for such a long time that you forget what you were going to say, but you know that it was a genius idea. The solution is simple. Ensure that everyone has a pen and paper. Any important notes or great ideas can be silently written and thought out. Not only does this prevent the juggling of ideas in your head, but this also enables creative critiques to be made.

Analysis (know-it-all):
Anna may think she knows everything, but the rest of her group have other ideas in mind. It is frustrating for the other group members to feel that their points are never taken seriously by Anna because she is stuck in her opinion. The negligent approach would be to label Anna's behavior as stubbornness. However, this type of labeling behavior is giving the message, "Anna's not going to budge, so let's either ignore it completely or just go her way otherwise this will never end".

Antidote (know-it-all):
This antidote is actually an expansion from a suggestion mentioned by Greg Wilson during one of his CSC301 lectures. Anna's know-it-all attitude can actually be used in a creative context. She clearly has a very strong opinion and is determined in what she believes in. Offer her the challenge of arguing the opposite side.
Anna believes that the other members of her group pose weak counter-arguments and that she will always have a stronger argument than her opposition. What better way to approach this problem then letting her battle against herself? She is so convinced that her opinion is right, but now she has to argue two sides.

One common goal that Anna may have with this mentality is the need to 'win'. However, arguing both sides, especially against herself, is an endless battle. She cannot win both sides and the thought of losing can be frustrating if this is the case. The point of this challenge is to utilize her confidence in her opinions, she may actually have some good points that the group can use.

If she steps down from the challenge, then identify that it is a sign of weakness. The way to think about this is: If she believes that she can hold a strong opinion, she should be able to hold one for the opposite side as well. If she is unable to do so, then this implies that she is not as convincing as she is claims herself to be. It shows that she is weak in terms of constructing a convincing argument and it also reduces the legitimacy and validity of her argument.

The Antidote to Poisonous People: intro

2009-02-10T23:44:00.000-08:00

This year has already posed it's challenges early into the term. Although, the situations may be difficult and frustrating at times, I'm slowly learning to conquer them one by one.

Greg Wilson at the University of Toronto teaches a project course, CSC301, in which the class is divided into groups to develop a piece of software. One of the main challenges of which is having to deal with group members, which for the most part, one has never met before. According to the research quoted by Greg Wilson, there is an increase in productivity when working with strangers then with friends.

Regardless of who your group members are, productivity does not from familiarity of the people alone. It also has to do with how group members communicate. Greg posted an interesting link to an article title "Poisonous People", which lists a several profiles of group members that are deemed to be destructive to a group. However, in reading it, I realized that there was no solution to these poisonous people.

Applying what I have learned by taking on leadership roles in the past, I am proposing to suggest a possible antidote and diagnostics to the behaviors of the problematic group members.

The idea is not to get rid of poisonous people, but to neutralize the threat that they cause to the group. As a group, every member has the ability to make significant contributions to a great end result. Stephen Covey states, "Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." Through differences, group members can acquire great experience on learning how to approach a solution for those differences. However, similarities are important as well. It is important for a group to keep at least one common goal in mind. This gives a group a sense of direction, a 'striving' factor.

Over the course of the next several blogs, I will post one poisonous model and discuss on the antidote.

Add stuff here...

2009-02-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

So this is a blog huh? yay!