From time to time I sit down to blog about my recent activities, for the delight of my family and friends, and so that they may be reassured of my continuing existence. When I do so, I am generally tempted to begin with a paragraph apologising for my generally tardiness and lack of commitment to the blogging enterprise. Sometimes I get as far as actually writing the paragraph. Then I delete it because it is Bad Writing. Nobody wants to read a blog full of apologies. They want to read about me writing about apologies I’ve elected not to actually make. And then writing about writing about writing about apologies. That’s the good stuff all right. Nothing’s too meta for my loyal readers, assuming I still have any what with all the tardiness.
I am currently ensconced in the University of Auckland’s HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) lab. It is a small room with three desks, a nice big window with a view of the city, and a pile of telephone directories. Notably absent from the standard equipment are computers with which humans may interact. I have brought my own computer to interact with, in order that the whole enterprise not become a sort of existential mockery.
My purpose here in the HCI lab is to undertake a summer scholarship related in some way to prototyping user interfaces using tablet PCs. Further detail is expected to develop as soon as I have access to a functional tablet PC. One was allotted to me last week, but it ceased to function almost immediately and is currently being nursed back to health by highly-skilled technicians. So, after a week of work I am approximately seven days behind schedule.
My two exams seemed to go fairly well, and during my various chats with people around the Computer Science Department I have been informed that the marking for one of them is finished and that I will likely be pleased with the result.
Keith the technician has just visited to say that the tablet PC is almost ready - it just needs Visual Studio to be reinstalled. This sounds like good news, but I have developed over the last week a skepticism towards signs of progress with the tablet PC, which I feel is conducive to good mental health. Keith is a friendly chap, who apparently approves of my really being a Mac user.
In other news, I shall be undertaking a visit to Christchurch in December. If you’re in Christchurch and would like to catch up, I shall be arriving on 16 December and leaving on 30 December.