Chris and I just moved to an awesome apartment overlooking Dolores Park in the Mission. (We’re taking over a 1-year lease from some friends who will presumably move back at the end of the year.) It’s been one of the most draining moves ever, mostly because of how long it’s lasted!
First, I sold all my furniture in San Diego so I could fit my life belongings into my Honda Civic! Then we drove Hwy 1 from SD to SF (stopping at the Sycamore Hot Springs for a night and later at Hearst Castle); and finally, spent the last week making about 7 car trips of boxes and things from Chris’ place in SOMA to the new place in the Mission. Finally, we hired movers (OneBigMan) yesterday to move our furniture (so worth it!).
I’ve now been in “moving” mode for about 2 weeks and I’m exhausted! I haven’t done any work in this time except review one paper and have a one phone meeting. Sigh. Our days have been so packed, we pass out from utter exhaustion every night. (Quite a different feeling than a long day on the computer!) But we are nearly done!
What’s been interesting to add to this mix is that we’ve both been selling several things we’ve owned (or acquired through the years) — which has amounted to quite a chunk of change! What better way to fiance our move? In the last 2 weeks, we’ve collectively sold enough things to make $1410! Sweet!
Thanks to Chris Messina for filming this video during my 3rd year talk (end-of-year presentation to my department)! The slides are available here.
Brief summary: in this talk I present some work that I’ve done (withcollaboratorsatPARC) related to social search, or how social interactions and social resources help individual users during search activities. I discuss an unexpected finding from a recent project and discuss how social presence theory may be used to account for information sharing and communication practices in large online social spaces (like social networking sites). However, social presence alone fails to account for the differences we’re observing (as illustrated by how Twitter and Facebook would be categorized as “low social presence” media per Robert & Dennis’ classification [1], since interactions there occur asynchronously and are distributed through time). I propose a notion that I’m calling “inhabitedness” that may account for social search behaviors (and other information sharing practices) on social networks—it borrows from social presence theory but also takes into account other things (e.g., structures, features, and “socialobjects” made available on different sites that influence user activities.)
[1] L.P. Robert and A.R. Dennis. Paradox of richness: A cognitive model of media choice. Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions, 48(1):10-21, 2005.
We have all experienced it: we go to introduce ourselves to someone new, only to learn that the person remembers us quite distinctly! How embarrassing! Or its milder cousin: we recognize someone but fail to recall their name, occupation, or the context in which we originally met them. Do we go re-introduce ourselves? How do we overcome the awkwardness of this scenario?
I was part of a 3-person project team this quarter (Spring 2009) that tried to design a solution for this problem. Our “Social Shirt” prototype is intended to mitigate the awkwardness during social interactions with people who we don’t remember well or with distant acquaintances. It presents relevant information to the user through an LCD embedded in the fabric of a shirt near the wrist, which we found may referenced with minimal interruption during a normal conversation. We describe our data collection and prototyping (research and design) process in this report and in the video below.
There is a lot of uncertainty and mis-information about Swine Flu. But as with any flu outbreak, it’s wise to be proactive and think smart about our health and wellness (e.g., wash your hands!).
If you are inclined to take a proactive approach with natural remedies, this post may be useful. I got this information in an email from a homeopathic physician and family friend, Dr. Franne Berez. She runs the Squirrel Hill Family Wellness Center in Pittsburgh. I hope you find it useful!
The general flu preventative advice:
I suggest that everyone have a bottle of INFLUENZINUM 30C as well as OSCILLOCOCINUM. Take 2 pills of the INFLUENZINUM 30C nightly for 3 nights as a preventative. Make sure to take a high-potency natural vitamin, a daily probiotic, at least 2000 units of vitamin D3, vitamin C, and Pro Reds.
If you feel you have a depressed immune system, add IMMUCORE (one tablet three times a day).
But at the first sign of symptoms:
At the first sign of symptoms (fever; sore throat; weakness and aching in legs, arms and back; loss of appetite; dry cough; headache; and burning eyes) take 1 capful of OSCILLOCOCINUM. Begin OPTIBIOTIC 3 times daily which is a highly effective antiviral agent with high doses of GARLIC, ECHINACEA, GINGER and ZINC. Whey Protein has also been shown to increase immunity.
I'm Brynn Evans, a PhD student in Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. I've been studying how people use social web services for information sharing, discovery, and sensemaking.
Chris and I just moved to an awesome apartment overlooking Dolores Park in the Mission. (We’re taking over a 1-year lease from some friends who will presumably move back at the end of the year.) It’s been one of the most draining moves ever, mostly because of how long it’s lasted! 
