Month: September 2009

  • Distributed Disc Tossing: The Value of Jerks

    My department had a BBQ on Toronto Centre Island last Sunday. I am a frequent Ultimate Frisbee player, so I brought my disc to toss around. Some others did too, so we had an M tossers and N discs situation. I had just started the last course of my Master’s the week before, Distributed Computing,…

  • People Suck at Computers.

    Most people are afraid of computers. Even something as gloriously inviting as the Microsoft Surface, which I worked on during my internship at Microsoft Research, has people interacting with it cautiously. At least this is what I saw in my user studies. My participants were mostly professional adults (read: the people who actually make the…