Mike Oren.com

On Friday my alarm clock decided to break. It's a basic enough battery operated alarm clock that I got for free over six years ago, so it wasn't major shock when I discovered it was no longer working properly. Of course it was a surprise when it was showing the time (about an hour earlier than it actually was, and that I was running late), but the fact that it was broken was no surprise. And when I say it was a basic clock, I mean the only branding on it was "made in China" and it runs off of two AAA batteries that I replace roughly once a year (last time I replaced them was in August). Some of you might be wondering why I'm going into this whole tirade about an alarm clock that (as I've said) is no surprise about it being broken. Simple: I really liked the usability of it. To change the time, I simply held the clock button down (at the bottom of the circular clock face) until it beeped, then I would twist the circle around the clock face forward (to move time forward) or backward (to move time backward)--spinning faster would increase the rate that the time changed on the face. When I find the right time, I simply had to hit the clock button again. No hitting the hour button countless times and then the minute button, or (worse) changing the hours and minutes with the same button but having to select between them. Setting the alarm was just as easy, only the button for changing the alarm time was at the top of the circle. Arming the alarm was a simple slider on the right side of the clock--it was a nice large slider that was easy to operate with the middle setting being for standard alarm and setting closest to the clock face being for snooze alarm. This meant that turning the alarm clock was simply a matter of sliding the bar toward the back of the clock--an incredibly easy process (and much more friendly in the morning than sliding it toward the front, which takes a whole different type of reach). The snooze button was the entire top of the clock (which slid downward to reach a point at the end--giving it a sort of futuristic look). It was small and compact (great for travel) and the fact that it was completely battery operated was (for me) great since I didn't want to waste a plug on a clock (I have too many electronics plugged in as it is) and I didn't have to worry about a power outage stopping it from going off on time (as long as I remembered to replace the batteries--the backlight, also activated by the snooze button--normally served as an easy way to tell if the batteries needed replacing as the numbers were hard to read when the batteries were low and the backlight was on). In other words, it did exactly what I needed to do in exactly the way I needed it to do it (and that made, to me, intuitive sense). This is something that's hard to find these days (in my opinion) as manufacturers keep trying to add more and more features or stylish designs to their product lines to distinguish themselves from the competition and, often, simplicity of use suffers.

I had gone to the store today to replace my alarm clock and looking at their selection, I found nothing that even remotely appealed to me (they all had the same archaic/unintuitive method of changing time by pressing the hour and minute buttons--or using one button for both--to change the time and alarm time and the sliders for turning off the alarm just weren't placed in a position that I felt was ideal or the snooze button was too small or it was plug-in rather than battery operated). So I ended up settling on a $10 Sharp atomic clock alarm clock that runs on a single AA battery--I figure this way I at least never have to set the clock time ever again (with my old alarm clock, the one problem I had with it was that when I set the alarm, the clock stops ticking off seconds, so as I change the alarm several times a week, the clock eventually ends up being minutes behind). There was, of course, no way of testing the alarm clock before getting back to my apartment. When I got back though, I opened it up, put a AA battery into it (not included with the clock), changed the time zone to Central, manually set the time (if I had read the instructions beforehand, I would've known that it takes up to 10 minutes to synchronize the time) as well as the date (month, day, and year--not that I needed any of that). And all of those actions were done by first holding the 'set button' and then hitting adjust for hour until I got the right time, hit the set button to change to the minutes, and repeating that process until everything was set and then I had to hit 'receive' or 'mode' to get out of the clock setting--or else it would return to editing the hour. Then I had to do the same thing for the alarm (after hitting the mode button). After that I had to hit mode again and then hit set (to change the clock time to 12-hour time) and then go through the process again for setting the time as I hadn't realize the clock was in 24-hour time. In order to set and disarm the alarm, I have to hit 'mode' then hit 'set' once for regular alarm or hit set twice for snooze alarm. To shut it off, I have to hit 'mode' to get to the alarm and then hit set once (if in snooze alarm) or twice if it is in the regular alarm mode. Needless to say it is a very annoying, unintuitive (and I think stupid) process that doesn't at all match my task goals and my mental model. It annoys me and makes me want my old clock back (so if anybody knows where I can find an alarm clock like my old one, then let me know--I haven't found anything like it on Amazon yet). I mean, I could just use my iPhone (I like how setting the alarm works for that) and then just use this Sharp as my nightstand clock (it can serve that purpose easily enough), but the iPhone isn't the easiest alarm to snooze and I really prefer an actual alarm clock. Plus, I've occasionally had issues where for whatever reason my iPhone suddenly doesn't have the correct time anymore and then I have to temporarily put the iPhone on a manually set time zone before turning the autosync on to fix it.

Classes started last week--I just have one class that meets Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for about 3 hours (it is an art and design course on usability--my group is looking at doing a comparative usability analysis of the iPhone among different cultures, focusing primarily on the US, India, and China with deliverable of creating a prototype that takes the differences in the Indian and Chinese user groups and redesigns the iPhone to make it work better for those audiences). My original hope for that class was to do something with kiosks or tablets, but the iPhone is still a touch based interface and I've always had an interest in cross cultural usability studies (and it helps that my partners for the project are from China and India). So it should be a fun course and an interesting project. Expect to see more here on it (assuming I find the time to write/update my web site).

Outside of classes, I'm currently in the process of planning a study to evaluate the usefulness of dual-handed vs. single handed haptic device use within M4 (Multi-modal Mesh Manipulation system, which I've formally referred to as my H3D project). I'm always excited whenever I get to plan and run a study, but certain aspects of this study are of particular interest. I'm especially interested in finding out if there's a difference in performance between users who do more traditional 3D art (sculpting, claywork, pottery, etc.)--which traditionally relies on two hands--vs. users who are more familiar with computer based 3D modeling, which typically uses a single hand. We're only testing the system with 3D artists. I am also curious if some actions (such as cutting triangle meshes) will actually result in a decrease in performance when done with two hands vs. one when both hands wield the same tool (due to a difference in dexterity of the non-dominant hand). The study should be taking place sometime by mid-March. Of course, I also need to work on my Master's thesis for my audio game (which I need to defend at the end of March...) Luckily, I get to take the thesis option where I write an introduction and conclusion and then I stick journal/conference papers that have been accepted (or in the review process) as the middle chapters. So it shouldn't be too terribly bad... once I start it... I told my committee I'd have a draft of chapter one to them by the end of this month, so I'm clearly going to be starting it soon (I always make my deadlines).

In terms of leisure, I bought Guitar Hero III for my Wii this past week--placing my number of Wii games at 20 (including Wii Sports and Link's Crossbow training but not including my 30-some virtual console games). I haven't played it all that much (all sorts of other things I SHOULD be doing), but I'm at least competent enough at it now that I can beat the easy songs without breaking a sweat (it took about 10 tries before I could even BEAT an easy song though...). The hard songs I don't stand a chance on though (I haven't tried medium). I'm also trying to make a commitment to eating slightly healthier and I bought a 3 to 4 ingredient cookbook so I can have a plethora of cheap, easy (and quick) recipes at my disposal to help in that effort--tonight I made chicken in orange soy sauce served over asparagus (the chicken was organic and free range--it wasn't that much more than the regular chicken), and it was pretty good and nice and easy with little cleanup (one baking pan, and one frying pan--the frying pan was from the asparagus). I'm also making an effort to avoid high fructose corn syrup (I gave up drinking soda pop except for on rare occasions awhile ago, but now I'm reading ingredient labels to try to avoid it--which is more difficult than one would think as most bread contains it as well as many other common/staple foods).

Now for my (limited) political commentary (I try to keep politics off my site for the most part, but this primary has been too interesting to ignore). First of all, I have to say that if nothing else comes from this primary/election, it appears that many Americans who had drifted away from politics or who many people thought simply lacked an interest in politics are now at the very least paying attention--every state that has had a primary so far has had record smashing attendance and the race for the nominations are extremely close on both sides. This isn't just a contest for who will be the nominee for each party, this is a contest to determine the course of each party in the coming years. Both parties have lost their way and have fractured/been fracturing for years. The current government (Congress and the Whitehouse--Democrats and Republicans) are proving themselves to be ineffectual and too tied up in partisan bickering to actually get anything done. Both parties have lost their way, no longer representing the ideals they once stood for (whether you agreed with those ideals or not). I think the American people are finally fed up with all of this bickering, weary of the economy (tax cuts, if they do anything, are just another temporary bandage--they won't fix the larger underlying problems the economy is currently facing), unhappy about our waning international standing, etc. There are, however, still standing members of the old guard that are afraid of change. If they win, I believe the country loses. We are on the cusp of a critical point in history--not just with the possibility of an African-American, female, or Mormon President, but in our place in the world (not just for the next 4 years, but for decades to come). The facade that the old guard has built is crumbling and while they may try to patch it or hide the damage, the old ways are no longer sustainable. Reaganomics does not work. Unilateralism does not work. Partisanship does not work. However... I will say that Obama needs to stop having these mini battles with Hillary--sure she starts most of them, but he needs to be the better person and ignore them (take a page from McCain who when attacked before the Michigan primary told reporters he was too busy campaigning to respond to a false attack ad). I know the fear of swift boating is over the heads of the democrats, but you don't need to fire off an attack or accusation when proving the other person's accusation false. Just give the facts about the situation and then drop it. Also, if it ends up being Clinton vs. Romney, my hope is that Obama and Bloomberg team up to run as an independent ticket--I would totally vote for them (Clinton and Romney are both extremely polarizing and Obama and Bloomberg will be the first sensible/moderate independent ticket... Obama has the star power and Bloomberg has the cash to make it happen). Of course, I'm told that Obama-Bloomberg (or vice versa) will never happen... but I can dream. Anyway, I'm looking forward to observing how this primary wraps up (and what promises to be an exciting election year).

Yeah, so I kind of dropped the ball on keeping everything updated. It was a busy end of the semester, what with research and class projects and interviews. I maintained my 4.0 GPA, but I'm still in the process of finding a job (having trouble finding something that really fits my interests, and I've been honest with companies when the position they are interviewing me for is not one I'm interested in). I did find out about a position with Motorola doing haptic and sound design that seemed interesting, but I only just applied for that one. I've also been talking with Salesforce.com about a usability analyst position, and I'm waiting to hear back from them about the next steps (the holiday kind of slowed things down a bit). In addition, I've been speaking with another professor here about staying on at Iowa State as a PhD student on his project--he had wanted somebody for the spring, but my current professor needs me to stay on his project, so I'm not sure if I've lost the opportunity to move to that other project later or not. In general, I'm keeping my options open as, for me, it's more important to find something that I'll enjoy and be happy with than it is to just get "a job" and work from paycheck to paycheck.

The holidays were also fairly busy, with the first two weeks spent helping out around the house and running various errands for holiday preparation and such. The third week was a bit more relaxed with some time, and I was actually able to play the Wii (I got 2 new games for Christmas--Lego Star Wars and Battalion Wars 2) for a couple of days before returning to Iowa to caucus for Obama (I had just enough time on my return to Ames to have dinner before heading to my caucus location). Obama, of course, won my precinct (and the state), and I have volunteered to serve as a delegate at the county caucus in March (in hopes of potentially moving on to the national convention--although there are 2 more layers after the county before I can get one of the national convention seats). I'm pretty excited about his win in Iowa, although there's still a long road ahead. It'd be nice to have a moderate President for a change willing to work with both parties as opposed to simply pushing a partisan agenda.

Over break I had also looked at a sheltie with Danielle--she's been wanting a dog for a good 5 years now and she now sort of has the money to buy one and while she's living at home her parents had told her she could get a dog and keep it there. Unfortunately, after I made the appointment to look at the sheltie (Danielle had requested I make the appointment for her), we found out that her parents were only ok with her getting an American cocker spaniel. It was a really awesome dog though, and I had wanted to adopt it myself and even purchased the basic supplies so I could care for it, but then I found out that while pets are allowed at my apartment the deposit and monthly fee were double what I had thought they were, so I had to abandon my plans to adopt him.

That's all for updates right now. I have a lot I could give, but I should be spending my time working on a journal article, working on my thesis, etc.