Mike Oren.com

Since my last update, I had a fairly busy week running studies and analyzing data and such and what not. Plus, with just a few short weeks to go before my internship ends, I've started getting briefed on the state of the haptic research project I'm working on over there. Plus, I've started formulating some places for a couple of CHI papers (one for my audio game, and a CHI Notes for a research method I've adapted this summer--assuming that's approved to be released). So it was a fairly tiring week. So to end the week, I decided to take a 3 hour nap on Friday before heading over to the San Jose Borders and picking up my midnight copy of the latest installment of Harry Potter (due to lines and such, I didn't actually check out with my copy until close to 1 AM, but close enough). I then proceeded to stay up until 11:59 PM on Saturday (roughly 23 hours of straight reading) finishing the book. Crazy? Perhaps... But I knew that if I didn't read the book this weekend then I'd either overhear spoilers at work, somebody would IM/e-mail me a spoiler, or I'd get a spoiler from the news (I'm a news addict, so it's hard for me to avoid news, and even though I tried to avoid reading the news I still managed to accidentally read part of a spoiler...) But now I've read it all, and I wish to share my thoughts on the book...

***Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are below--you have been warned)***


First off, let me say that I thought that Rowling did a fantastic job of wrapping up the story completely and satisfactorily in this book--she covered the back stories of interest, finished fleshing out characters that had mysteries around them/lacked character flaws, and provided us with all the information we could have wanted about the fates of the characters we had grown to know and love. The most annoying part for me, as an adult reader, however was that while the themes of the story are mature and mature language ('damn' and 'bitch') appear in the book, thus driving it even further from the "children's book" aura... Rowling still dealt with many issues as if it were still a children's book--glossing over many details and not providing the readers with rich, visual descriptions. This is, of course, understandable but I never the less found it fairly annoying at parts. Equally annoying was that the characters, especially Hermione (supposedly the smartest in her class) seemed so dense as they struggled for pages to figure out mysteries that I had solved 50-200 pages beforehand (or 600-some pages beforehand in the case of Harry not being killed despite getting hit by Voldemort's killing curse--I wasn't sure about the Horcrux, but I knew Dumbledore's happiness regarding Voldemort using Harry's blood to ressurect himself would likely mean he couldn't kill Harry--and everybody already knew Harry had to die, at least for a bit...) There were a couple of big twists that I was unable to predict though, namely how to open the snitch (I had assumed he needed to place it completely in his mouth and close his mouth--which is how it was when he caught it); the secret of the Elder Wand owner (I had completely forgotten that before Snape killed Dumbledore, Malfoy had disarmed him); the creator of the silver doe; the fact that Dumbledore had less than a year left to live when Snape killed him (I knew Snape wasn't evil, but I wasn't sure why Dumbledore allowed himself to be killed); or the full story of Dumbledore's murky past (although there weren't many clues to that... unless I missed something).

The death that I found the saddest was that of Dobby. Not because I particularly liked Dobby, but because of the events surrounding his death and the events following it. In a VERY close second place are the joint deaths of Lupin and Tonks, mostly because I felt bad for the child they left behind. In third place was Fred, just because he (along with George) was one of my favorite secondary characters. Neville's death probably would have topped my list had he died--that kid had a lot of spunk and his grandmother was freakin' awesome. Snape's death was kind of pathetic, not because it wasn't emotional (it was very emotional, especially given the chapter after he dies)--it was more pathetic due to the way he died unable to really put up much of a fight despite being one of the most powerful wizards of his time (easily the most powerful Death Eater).

One thing that I never got why it wasn't really explained was why Harry was allowed to continue to think that everybody was dieing for him. The people fighting at Hogwarts weren't dieing for the sake of saving Potter's life, they were dieing because they wanted to see an end to Voldemort and saw Harry as being able to bring the end of their suffering. They all would have rather died then lived in a world ruled by Voldemort.

Speaking of Voldemort... We all know he was arrogant and everything, but why would he think he was the only person who ever found the Room of Requirement (and in particular the version where you hide things of importance)? Also, why is it that he left it without any booby traps in the way? It just seemed kind of a cop out on Rowling's part. Sure, adding a new booby trapped location would have made the 768 page book even longer... But then there were a good 100-200 pages of nothingness that could have been cut without me caring (pages of Ron, Harry, and Hermione whining/bickering/etc. as they tried to figure out a plan--yes it was necessary in terms of the relationships and such, but it did get slightly annoying).

I could write more on the topic of Harry Potter, but I think that I'll leave it at that for now. Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments.

Danielle flew out on Monday morning. We ended up getting things more or less patched up by Friday night, so things have returned to normalcy on that front, and in some ways better because it shows we can overcome these little life hurdles and such. The first weekend she visited we ended up going on a dinner/dance cruise around the San Francisco Bay and that was pretty fun, but it was a little bit chilly that day so we weren't really able to be outside all that much and the fog was pretty bad that day so some of the sites we weren't able to see as well as we would have liked. The next day we drove down to Big Sur State Park and drove along the coastal highway a bit (taking plenty of pictures along the way), we then hiked for a total of maybe 5 or 6 miles (fairly light hike) around Big Sur to take in the sights. On the way back from Big Sur, we stopped in Carmel-by-the-Sea and walked around a little bit there (bought some truffles) and then went to dinner at a little Italian place (great ambiance--like everything in Carmel, but rather disappointing food as the dish Danielle got had sauce that wasn't spiced correctly, it tasted almost flavorless). On Sunday we didn't really do much, although I did give her a tour of the Google campus and we did some grocery shopping so she'd have food for the week--oh, and we went to Gordon Biersch so she could try the garlic fries (which are phenomenal).

On Wed. during the week we went with some other Google interns and saw the premiere of Harry Potter 5 at the IMAX in San Jose (I REALLY wanted to see the Ministry of Magic battle on the IMAX--it was as good as I expected on the IMAX, but far too short for my tastes... especially since that was THE scene I had been thinking about for over a year when it came to Harry Potter since it just screams big screen scene...) Then on Friday we went to some Ethiopian restaurant in San Jose, that was the first time either of us had tried Ethiopian but it was pretty interesting. Saturday was spent in San Francisco where we went to Lombard Street (I tried going up the steep part of it, but because the traffic was stop and go--meaning when I stopped my gas engine would shut off and switch to the electric--and the street was steep, I wasn't able to make it all the way to the top as a little over half way up I had drained my battery and the electrical assist was therefore no longer available and without that I had a measly four cylinder engine to work with and that wasn't cutting it). I ended up having to wait for the battery to recharge to at least one or two bars and then I simply did a u-turn and navigated around the steep portion of the hill and to the bottom of Lombard Street so we could walk around and view the curvy portion of the road/take pictures. After that we headed over to Fisherman's Wharf and walked around a little bit over there--it was pretty nice, I expected a lame excuse for a tourist location (like Navy Pier in Chicago), but even though it's equally commercialized it was pretty nice and there were some decent photo locations. We ended Saturday with dinner in Chinatown where we made the mistake of having dinner at Chinatown Restaurant (they were the first place to hand us a flier--with a coupon even) and they have some of the worst service I've ever seen in any restaurant (the food wasn't bad though, but the service was absolutely horrendous), and what's more was that they didn't take the percent off from the coupon at first so I had to bring that up with them--but the worst part was that even though there were just 2 of us they added the tip into the actual bill (and it's a handwritten bill, so not only do you have to read the bill, which from my experience many people don't do--they just look at the total--but you also have to decipher their rather bad handwriting to realize that the tip is written into the bill).

On Sunday we ended up going to Sonoma County. The first winery we went to was Gloria Ferrer, which specializes in sparkling wines (those and dessert wines are my two favorite types). They don't do traditional tasting so you have to buy the wine by the glass--we bought two glasses (one of the sparkling rose and the other of the royal cuvee) and tasted them. I probably would have bought a bottle of the royal cuvee as I liked the mildness and the subtle fruit flavors of the wine, but after spending $16 on two glasses of wine, I opted not to buy a bottle from them. Since a glass of wine is more than we really wanted to do at multiple wineries (and as we got into Sonoma late), we didn't stop at any other winery into we got into the actual town of Sonoma. When we got into town we went to the local grocery store (The Cheese Factory) and sampled some cheeses and had a peach champagne sorbet--which was really good (the cheese, at least the kind available for tasting was pretty bad though--most were various varieties of Jack cheese and all were low quality cheeses). We then went over the the Castle Winery (their vineyards are located throughout Sonoma County--they just have a little building where they do the tastings in the town itself) and there we did a tasting. Castle Winery, unlike Gloria Ferrer, does tastings the way tastings should be done--you pay $5 per person and then you get to taste an actual sample size portion of all of the wines they have available for sale (we chose to sample just the 5 that were of greatest interest to us). I enjoyed their Pinot Noir, but I ended up buying a bottle of their port instead as I enjoyed that even more as it had just the right level of sweetness for me. I also bought a bottle of their chocolate sauce made from the port, which I highly recommend--it is incredible chocolate sauce. Drinking the chocolate sauce and then tasting the port though changes the flavor of the port considerably--the port by itself is fairly sweet but if you taste the chocolate sauce and then taste the port afterwards the port has more of a bitter red wine taste to it. Oh, and Castle Winery waives the tasting charge if you buy a bottle (making it even more of the right way to run a wine tasting). We ended the day by making a quick stop at Muir Beach for the sunset and the nightfall--we would have stayed a bit longer, but the beach closes at 9.

Outside of Danielle's visit, I'm down to my last three weeks of my internship (once this week finishes up tomorrow). This week was pretty busy and these next few weeks promise to be equally busy. I'm definitely going to miss the California weather. I'm also not looking forward to going from running studies/writing reports/writing occasional code to writing code/writing research papers/running an occasional study as my preference is in running studies more so than writing lots of code (I enjoy the writing part in both cases). There's also the fact that I've met some pretty cool people over here and most of the people I hung out with in Iowa are now gone (finished with their PhD or Masters). I do enjoy my research though--both my funded research (which is a pretty cool project in its own right) and my unfunded audio game project (which I just find fun to work on/like that it exposes me to the visually impaired community that I've learned a lot from). On the topic of grad school, the blog entries I wrote for my class last semester (along with the blog entries the rest of the class wrote) have now been compiled into a self-published book available as a freely downloadable PDF or available for purchase, both of which can be done here: http://www.shinyhappyusers.org. So check it out (and I don't get any money from the book--our class is selling it at cost, so feel free to just download the free PDF version). Credit for the book goes to Derrick (the professor who taught the class) as it was his idea to put one together and then to the rest of the class who spent the time editing it (with moving out to California/starting my internship, I ended up not being able to put much time into the book at all).

And speaking of books... I actually decided to pre-order a copy of Harry Potter at a local Borders, so I'll be getting my copy of it at midnight on Friday. My weekend will likely be spent just reading it until I finish it--this way I won't have to worry about overhearing people talking about it/spoiling it. Plus it IS the final book, so it's worth the loss of sleep to a degree.

On a final note, I recently started being active on LinkedIn (the social networking site aimed at professionals), so if you want to join my network feel free to add me through my profile page.

I wasn't feeling the whole firework thing today (I've kind of grown bored of them, although I still like them when they're set to music, but I didn't feel like searching for one in the area that does that). So I decided to stay in tonight and get a post in (as it's been awhile). Since my last update, I beat Super Paper Mario--it was a fun game, but the ending was kind of disappointing (the final fights were too easy and while you save the world from destruction, it just doesn't feel complete, partially because you never get to see Tippi's true form). So that's my nerd moment for this post.

I also ran some basic analysis of my audio game study that I ran with people who have visual impairments. The initial results are promising but not quite as good as I had hoped from the first few participants we ran. The mean scores are useless due to the high standard deviation, but the median indicates that while people with visual impairments performed better playing the game with only audio cues than fully sighted subjects playing audio only; the sighted participants playing with graphics still complete the levels a good ten to twenty seconds faster. I should, again, note that these results are in no means final--I crunched them quickly in preparation for the ICAD conference, but they do present promising findings.

Danielle is arriving tomorrow (Thursday) evening. I'm flying her out because despite a previous post about her and I being broken up and such due to opposing life goals, we both still want to try to see if we can make it work. And if it's clear we can't then at least this way we'll get better closure by actually seeing each other and spending time together than we ever would have just breaking up while miles apart. We haven't really spent much time together since January. We did spend half a day together in March, but to be honest I had completely forgotten about that half day for awhile. So it might just be that the only reason things had fallen apart was from lack of contact with one another--I had been really busy last semester preparing for conferences, wrapping things up for the summer, and preparing to move out to California for the summer and she had been busy preparing to graduate and enter the "real world". Anyway, we'll see how things go. Friday night we're going on a dinner and dance cruise that's leaving from San Francisco and then Saturday we'll probably head over to either Santa Cruz or Big Sur or something. So it should be fun at least. Although the timing of her trip is somewhat ironic. July 11th would be/is our 4 year dating anniversary and this would be the first one we actually spend together, but it's also the only one where the future of our relationship was ever really in question...

Next week Harry Potter comes out, and I have tickets to go see it at midnight at the local IMAX theater with a group of other interns (and Danielle since she'll be in town--she's an afterthought since I planned the trip/bought the tickets before she was coming to visit). I'm pretty psyched for that, although that'll mean I'll be showing up to work late on Wed. (need to get some sleep after the movie ends around 2:30 AM), which is fine as I was able to move everything important back so nothing starts until around noon.

Actually, next week will be pretty hectic as I have things scheduled throughout the day from Monday through Friday, with some days 6 hours of thing scheduled with half hour breaks in between them. So it'll be taxing, but I think it'll be a fun week overall. There's some potential that it won't be such a good week, but I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that everything will work out like it should.

In other news, I mentioned the Authors@Google talk last post, and I went to another one since that last time, this time a novel entitled The Whole World Over by Julia Glass. I haven't started reading it yet (I was finishing up the book of short stories I had received at the last book), but from her reading of it the story sounds interesting although she appears to need some serious work on writing realistic dialogue. I know it's difficult as I struggled with it for a long time, but it was really almost painful listening to her read these conversations (although, since I haven't read it the problem may just be in her inability to properly voice the characters). Still, like I said, the story sounded good and it should be a fun read for later (and I'm really enjoying the Authors@Google series--I'd list it as one of my favorite perks right up there with the free food and the free shuttle).