Enter Smart Phone

After some peer pressure I caved and upgraded my little 3 year old flip phone to the latest and greatest release of Android devices, the Galaxy Nexus.

And I just figured out how to take a screen shot.

That's my current home screen, complete with 3D clock and weather. I have lots of thoughts but not the time yet to thoroughly review, so I'll just start by saying I'm still faster typing t9 at the moment since Swype doesn't exist yet on Ice Cream Sandwich. But speech to text is a pretty good substitute when I'm in a quiet environment. I miss having arrows to move around the screen or to correct text typed incorrectly, but the wealth of apps and connection speed, at least on 4G, is pretty sweet.

This post brought to you by the blogger app.

Safety Features

apparently my laptop bag and purse together weighs enough to be a small child according to my car. it detected enough weight to think there's a child seat in place and as safety it auto deactivates the passenger air bag.

183610 miles

I said good bye to my old car just now. It's been a long road and a good 17 years. It went to the Make-a-Wish Foundation's Wheels-for-Wishes program. Maybe someone will buy it at auction and fix it up and drive it another few years. I'll miss you.

New Car!

2011 nissan rogue in brilliant silver. There are some interesting things about the UI of the nav and music console I'll have to look at in detail later. So far it's pretty sweet. :)

Details in design

check out the detail on the back of the chair in my mount washington hotel room. I'm afraid to know how much each of these cost.

Bath Tub Renovation

When I was buying my place, the home inspector thought the cracking in the caulk along the tub and bath floor were from settling. I caulked all the cracks the day I closed, and when I took my first shower I witnessed the water from the walls collecting down at the tub edge, run around to the front of the tub then out onto the bath floor, following the path of all that I had caulked.

Turns out the cracks in the caulk weren't from settling - they were from water damage. The tub was not level - it was tipped forward and out. Not only that, some of the liquid nail wasn't applied well and there's a bulge on the long side of the alcove, making recaulking a difficult task. The water run off was damaging the dry wall right at the edge of the tub too, causing an unsightly gash to appear.

I found a stop gap solution in theses plastic corner shower guards for most of the year, but it gave out finally and I had the choice of trying to strip everything and recaulk - knowing I'd have to do this again and again - or fix it for real.

Fears of needing to touch the subfloor to level it and lack of budget made this difficult to do, but after some research, I found out that when replacing the tub, it can be leveled out, and I can also tile the walls while I'm doing this to get rid of the ugly acrylic wall panels. I wasn't budgeting for this yet, but it had to be done, so I say goodbye to my car fund and off we go.

I found a well rated full service contractor through ServiceMagic and originally they were going to use white tiles with a feature strip of my choosing. I don't have anything against white - I just didn't want a white wall. I already have a white floor and don't have the budget to redo that right now, so white and white wasn't going to cut it. I shopped around and found this combination.

 

The idea was the blue cloud swirl tile would be the base tile, and there would be a strip of 3 square tall of the mosaic across all 3 walls of the alcove around eye level. I've always wanted a seashore feel so I thought this combination was perfect. 

We place the order, everything seems great, then a few hours later the tile place calls back and says sorry - the blue base tile is discontinued and their supplier doesn't have any left in stock. AAAHHHH!!!! I even did a search online for the distributor - they're in Malaysia. I email them and they replied that style had been discontinued for years, so they don't know of any US suppliers who might still have some left over stock. Drat!

So I run around to find more tile samples, and because the contractor was supplying two corner marble shelves that have grayish veins, I thought this combination (from Home Depot of all places) would work best. It would just be the plain base tile without the decorative trims. Home Depot guarantees 7 business day delivery so we place that order.

The day before work was supposed to start Home Depot doesn't have the tiles. The order was placed 2 weeks before and they said it'll take another 5 or 6 business days!! I went back to a different tile company with yet another tile option who not only had stock, but could deliver the tiles in 2 days, so the final choice was this from Roma Tiles, which is lighter than the original blue, but still had a bluish look to it.

So the demolition was pushed back a day, since the tile wasn't around to install anyway. It didn't take long for the crappy dry wall to come down.

They put in cement boards and new tub while we waited for the tiles.

The next day, tile work was on going while I was at work.

By the end of the day everything was done except for new shower head, curved shower rod, and some odds and ends. We needed to wait to install the new shower rod since it required drilling through the tile, and it's best to do that after the tile has settled in and completed dried. So I kept the tension rod I had before in the mean time.

Today, they came back to caulk any cracks that appeared from settling, and installed the rest of the hardware, including move the glass shelf up a little and installing the originally oddly placed towel bar beneath the glass shelf.

So, after 2.5 cumulative days of contractor labor, 3 base tile options, 6 trips to different hardware stores, 10 trips to different tile stores, over two dozen calls with the contractor and several thousand dollars later, I finally have my new tub and tiled alcove with shiny marble corner shelves. I'm in awe of how caulk can get on absolutely everything in the bathroom and I've mastered scrapping excess dried caulk off of tiles and tub surfaces with a razor.

I can't imagine doing this on my own as a DIY project, and having it last multiple weeks. I don't have that kind of stamina. So I guess I will always be paying the premium for a place that requires no work, because I don't want to do this again.

What to do with old business cards

Ever wonder what to do with old business cards? Back in the day, we didn't have the magic of Google to help us figure this out, but nowadays it's really as simple as typing in "what to do with old business cards" and voila! there are many answers to choose from.

One of the most fun ones I came across is to make cubes. It takes 6 cards each, and you make these "U" square brackets with each one. Then with some finagling they fit together without any tape or glue to form a cube! When you make enough of them you can stack them and do other fun things with them.

cubes pyramid!

The key is not to take them apart. I gave them to some engineers and the first thing they wanted to do was pull them apart to see how they were put together. But the card's fold elasticity gives out if you do that and it won't hold the shape anymore. So don't take it apart!

I made a whole bunch before hand to give to people, but still had a good third of the box left, so I was teaching everyone else how to do it too. We did this at the bar, and the bartender was very confused. At one point we made enough boxes to build a short wall, and I was trying to get to the menu beneath - I was boxed in, literally. =P

You can also make more intricate things like a frog, which if made correctly, can actually jump when pressed. At one point one of these little critters made it onto my shoulder.

Watch out for that frog!

But it's all good! I wouldn't be so calm if it were a real frog.

Teresa, Michelle, me, and Len

So all is well in the end. We tried to get a normal group photo but someone had to be super tall when they're already tall for some reason.

Katie, me, Teresa, Ksenia, Len, Craig

I think someone else must have a normal photo of us somewhere. But for now, this is the best I got. :)

Puerto Rico!

Vacation in tropical paradise! Got to see the Arecibo Observatory, Caves at Rio Camuy, El Yunque rain forest, El Morrow and La Castillo in Old San Juan as well as eat some really tasty local foods! Got to swim in La Mina falls in the rain forest and ride horses on the beach! What more can I ask for? ;)

One thing I found funny was that the high ways had barriers that were painted in specific color patterns of 2 or 3 colors. But I didn't quite figure out why they chose the colors they did. But it was cool regardless.

green, red, and yellow

purple and yellow

peach and blue

purple, turquoise, and green

I thought the local frog - Coqui - is one of the cutest sounding things I've ever heard, and couldn't resist buying a stuffed version that replicates its chirps that resonates throughout the night.

The Arecibo Observatory has the world's largest radio telescope and it actually rotated while I was visiting.

Swimming in La Mina falls is only second to swimming in one of the Maui falls on the road to Hana.

 

And El Morrow and La Castillo in Old San Juan captured the magic of the old world.

Trail riding is brought to a new level when you can ride directly on the beach with the ocean waves crashing at your feet. My horse was Tyson (the smaller one in front), and I actually got him up to a full gallop a few times. =P

My horse Tyson is laughing!

No tropical paradise trip is complete without great food. Tostones, monfongo, empanadas to start. But don't go anywhere without the ketchup-mayo. It's the most amazing dipping sauce ever.

See the full slide show of the entire trip photos. :)

Got My Grades!

So my instructors actually submitted the grades mid last week, but I had the hardest time trying to figure out what my grade was! The online version of the unofficial transcript wasn't very clear, and I finally contacted the course administrator asking if the grade was actually posted. She said it was, but then I realized the online version doesn't show my name so I couldn't submit that for reimbursement.

The only version I could get that would have my name on it (that didn't require paying for an official transcript) was a printed unofficial transcript that I would need to get from Student Services, in person. Sigh... And even after I got the print out, I wasn't quite sure what my grade was. Here's a snippet.

I actually stopped a student and asked them if they could locate my grade for me. And right now it might look obvious (because I cropped in to the 15% of the page that actually matters), but it really was confusing to me because the course name is "Applied Software User Interface Design", and I didn't know if that "A" after "DESIG" was an abbreviation for "Applied".

When you actually realize there are column headings at the top, then it seems pretty obvious the "GR" column is the grade. So yes, I got an "A"! :)

Icon Design for Banana Republic

We come back from break to do an exercise in icon design. The premise is that main navigation categories on the Banana Republic website is being swapped out with icons. And off we go.

I created hand drawn sketches of the options and created a formal survey requesting rankings of first impression / visual appeal, clarity of meaning of each icon, and overall success of communicating the intended meaning (after those being surveyed took a stab at identifying each icon of each option first).

As with all design, not every option is good, so much hilarity ensued on some of the more ambiguous icon designs.

It was unanimously voted by those surveyed that Option C was the way to go.

So Option C is the concept that got graphically designed out. I did some general surveying on Facebook on how well these icons work, and they communicated what they needed to quite well, so I was happy that it worked out. :)

KitchenAid KitchenMentor Fridge and iPhone App

Our individual project assignment was to create a touch screen interface with accompanying iPhone app called KitchenMentor for KitchenAid's smart fridge. The goal is to help busy everyday folks manage their food and groceries by providing timely information such as when certain food items are low or out, or will be expiring soon.

Many other features are included, but one of the more interesting things we did was hack PowerPoint to create an interactive prototype/demo. I recorded the portion of the presentation that was the demo in the video below. For some reason blogger's video screen freeze is really pixelated below, but the actual video isn't so bad. Give it a bit of time to load fully before playing for best view experience. :)

The demo is just illustrating the touch screen interface that is mounted on the fridge. There is also an accompanying iPhone app that has a subset of the full functionality the fridge mounted display would have. Here are the samples screens that illustrate taking the user from Home -> KitchenDoc -> Recipes -> Recipe Details.

It's my first iPhone app design. Given Apple's rigorous guidelines on buttons and navigation at the top it looks pretty standard iPhone app. But I was glad I could get the custom colors in there to match the fridge display.

Riding Camel & Feeding Giraffes

Finally got around to scanning the souvenir photos from the Miami Zoo in.

The giraffes were so beautiful! Look at those big eyes! Look closely under my hand and you'll one of them sticking his tongue out, reaching for the green leaf I'm holding. They have tongues that can wrap and grab, and that's what happens when you feed them, they reach out with their tongues and when they find the food they'll wrap around it and pull it in. Your hand can get slobbered a bit but it was super fun!

I got to ride Charlie the Camel here. They built a ramp up so you just hop on (without the camel kneeling). While the handler was leading him around this figure 8 track she asked if I had any questions. The conversation went like this.

"So, where are they from?"
"Oh, they're from Wisconsin."

Wisconsin? *blink* *blink*

"They're from Wisconsin?"
"Yup, there's a camel farm there."

... why is there a camel farm in Wisconsin?...

"Uh... so... isn't Wisconsin colder than Florida?"
"Yes, but the desert gets really cold at night so it's well within their natural habitat temperatures."
"Oh, I see..."

so yeah, I was riding a camel named Charlie from Wisconsin in the Miami Zoo.

I almost got to pet a hippo named Johnny! But he wouldn't come when they called out to him. He was half submerged in his pond, and they rang this bell and called his name for like.. a minute. He barely acknowledged us puny humans and stayed submerged. Oh well.