Category Archives: Musings

Poland – Part 1: Departures and Arrivals

Note:  As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a hostel in Warsaw.  It’s 5AM, and the cable to connect my camera to a computer is buried at the bottom of my backpack.  So, while there are photos to go along with this story, they’re going to have to be added later.

June 15 – 2:45PM EST

I’ve been to Pearson Airport in Toronto a few times before, but only ever to pick up some passenger after they’ve come back from a trip.

I’ve never been one of those “departure” people.

Well, today was my day.  And man, it was confusing.

It started off smoothly enough.  My Dad, girlfriend Emily, and her sister Cassie, had brought me to Pearson to see me off.  I was able to get my boarding pass from a machine (which was nice and easy), after finding fellow passengers Reid, Anj, and Olya.  What a relief to see those three, because I honestly had no idea where I was in the airport, and had no idea what was going on.  Pearson is huge, and I was only in Terminal 1.

After our goodbyes, I stood in a line to get my carry-on bags scanned.

That was my first mistake.  Wasted 20 minutes getting to the front of that line, only to find out that I had to go to another line somewhere else in the airport to check my stowed luggage.  So there was some momentary panic while I raced around the airport, trying to find the right place.

So, lesson one:  it’s always OK to ask when you’re way out of your element, and it usually makes things go faster.  I knew this already, but this was a clear-cut example.

3:20PM EST

After some more running around, and a trip along a few moving sidewalks, I made it to our departure gate, where Olya, Reid, and Anj were already waiting.

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Eventually, the rest of our comrads showed up.  And now, for your edification, here’s a list of the UCDP people who were flying with me that day:

  • Anj Mulligan
  • Reid Linforth
  • Olya Ryabets
  • Jiv Parasram
  • Ryan Cooley
  • Chantelle Hedden
  • Alexi Marchel
  • Yev Falkovich
  • Peter Freund
  • Alex Rubin

After a lot of sitting around and waiting, we board our flight.  After even more waiting, the plane begins to move.

Take-off:  6:00PM EST

Our plane took off at exactly 6PM EST.  We were half an hour behind schedule.  Already, my companions were taking bets on whether or not we’d miss our connecting flight from Frankfurt (not Brussels, sorry!) to Warsaw.  We only had 50 minutes once we had landed in Frankfurt, so it was going to be tight.

Anyhow, we’re in the air.  And I’m excited, of course.  I haven’t been in a plane since a flight to Toronto from Miami in 2004, and I sure as hell haven’t flown outside North America.  This was going to be a new experience for me.

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It didn’t take long for three minor disasters to happen:

  1. I had packed a bag of mixed nuts/cashews in my carry-on.  To my dismay, when I opened my backpack, I found that the bag had exploded and that my carry-on was filled with loose nuts.  A bunch spilled on the floor, and immediately I began worrying about other passengers who might have nut allergies…all it takes is a whiff, and bam – out like a light.
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    Anyhow, Ryan Cooley helped me clean/conceal the mess as much as possible, and I did my best to clean up the mess inside my bag.  Reminded me a bit of this story I had written earlier in the year…
  2. The pen I’ve been keeping my notes with started leaking.  Ink all over my hand, and some on my shirt.  Yech.  Luckily, I brought spares…
  3. The instructional safety video, which was supposed to be broadcast to the screens in front of each of us, did not work in my row.  It looked like scrambled cable.  Had to crane my neck to see it on someone else’s screen.  Not too bad, but it’s a bit discouraging when the mandatory safety video doesn’t work.

The flight was mostly eventless.  Besides some minor turbulence (which freaked out one of our more sensitive flyers), there wasn’t much to do.  My Dad had let me borrow his noise-cancelling headphones, which were awesome.  I listened to classical music on XM radio while I wrote my notes.

6:37PM EST

Food started making its way down the aisles, and it smelled pretty good…

But then we hit a patch of turbulence.  One of my companions is really not into flying, and so we consoled them while the plane shook around us.  The calming thing was that the flight attendants looked calm as ever, and kept handing out food.

I chose the pasta.  And a Canada Dry ginger ale.

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I hear a few of my comrads are already taking advantage of the free beer/wine/spirits on board.  Hilarity ensues.

6:52PM EST

Great meal.  Pasta in tomato sauce, a bun, some veggies in dressing, and chocolate mousse for dessert!  Felt very pampered and content.  Was reminded again of this Louis CK video.

And it’s even better knowing I haven’t paid a cent for it!  Free always tastes better…

7:00PM EST

Around this time, I figured out that the in-flight mapping system wasn’t working, and I had no idea where we were.

I trusted our pilot knew where he was going.

Also around this time, Yev started saying that the shadows were getting longer…the sun was going down…the shortest night of my life was coming.

I’m reminded of a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey – the scene near the beginning (after the ape fights), where a character is flying to a space station.  Our flight feels futuristic.  Maybe it’s the lighting.  Maybe it’s all of the video screens winking at me.  Maybe I’m just over dramatizing it.

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Or maybe it was that Phillip Glass music I was listening to…

At this point, I’ve decided that I’m bored, and that I’m going to watch an in-flight movie.  After some deliberation, I choose The Watchmen, which I had already seen, but didn’t mind watching again.

8:10PM EST

It was pretty dark outside our windows at this point.  Yev seemed to think that we were over Greenland, but how she could tell that through all the cloud cover, I have no idea.

I kept watching the movie.

9:15PM EST

At this point, I decided to get up and walk around a bit.  I stretched.  Our trip to Frankfurt is about half over.  So is The Watchmen, for that matter, but I decided to try to sleep instead of finishing it.

11:00PM EST

I had no luck sleeping at all, despite amazing noise-cancelling headphone technology.  I rolled about.  I chatted with my travel mates.  I listened to music.

It was starting to get light out outside.  The sun was coming up.

I don’t think anyone slept that much during the flight.  I saw a few people dosing, but that was it.

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I knew that I’d have to stay awake for as much of the following day as possible, so it was a bit discouraging to be unable to sleep.  I pretty much figured I’d spend most of the next day in a daze.

11:20PM EST

Breakfast arrived, and according to Yev, we were flying over land again!

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Breakfast is a muffin, yogurt, and orange juice.  Nice.

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Muffin was good, but non-descript.  No idea what flavour it was, but I liked it.

When they brought the food, I asked the flight attendant what land we were flying over.  He said he had no idea, but that we would be landing in about an hour.

Maybe if I knew how fast we were going, I could figure out where we might be.

I found it strange that the captain never really addressed the passengers.  Never told us the route, altitude, speed, etc.  Things are changing, I guess.

11:45PM EST

It was almost midnight back home, and the sun was rising where we were.

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I had no idea what time it was.  My body felt very confused and disoriented.  I felt like I’d been up all night, and I guess I had been…all 3 hours of it.

June 16 – 12:25AM EST

We began our descent around here.  Phase 1 of our journey was about to end.

Why do all pilots sound the same?  Always with that croaky voice… or maybe it’s the microphones that they use.

Lots of turbulence going down, but it was a smooth landing.

June 16 – 3:15AM EST, 9:15AM Local

I still hadn’t adjusted my watch yet, and that was starting to freak me out.

So, the main event was that we missed our connecting flight from Frankfurt to Warsaw.  We were about 20 minutes too late.  50 minutes is not even close to enough time to get processed at the Frankfurt airport.

Alex explains:

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So Frankfurt airport was my first taste of Europe.  My impressions?  Honestly?  Not that different.  I didn’t feel like I was in a foreign place, really – except I couldn’t read any of the advertisements.  Everything else had English attached, so that was nice.

After some chit-chatting with Air Canada, we were booked on a later flight.  There was a lot of running around, lots of in-between-destinations stress, and we almost missed that flight too.  But we made it.

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A couple of casualties though:

  1. Ryan Cooley left his windbreaker on the plane that brought us from Toronto
  2. Reid Linforth lost his watch during the security check in Frankfurt.  That really sucked for him.

At this point, I could really feel how tired I am.  My body was buzzing.  I had been awake since 9:30AM EST, and it was 3:22AM EST at that point.

The plane we took from Frankfurt was much, much smaller than the one from Toronto.  It was only going to be flying for an hour, and it looked like a lot of the passengers took this trip every day.  I tried to nap on the plane, but no luck.

4:08AM EST, 10:08AM Local

We were on route to Warsaw.

We were served some kind of cheese sandwich for our in-flight meal, which was good.  Really wasn’t sure what was in it, and sure didn’t take a picture.  Why?  I was starving.  Scarfed the thing right down.  Hadn’t slept, hungry, grumpy.

There was lots of turbulence in the smaller airplane.  Pretty shaky.  Kinda scary.

I wiped my face with a lemon scented wet-nap to wake myself up, and had a cup of tea.

Eventually, I got into a conversation with the lady sitting next to me about theatre.  She was a Bulgarian business-woman going to some sort of seminar.  We talked about Poland, sight-seeing, and Bulgarian theatre.

And then we landed.

And we were in Poland.

Click here to go to Part 2: Dazed in Warsaw

Click here to go back to the Prologue

Sorry about that…

WordPress 2.8 came out yesterday.

I clicked the update button, and all hell broke loose. I glanced in the directory that held my blog, and it was empty. My heart sunk.

Luckily, my database survived. So, my posts are here. My downloads, sadly, are not. This will be rectified eventually.

Give me time, and this thing’ll be back to normal soon.

The Courtesy of Giving Outs – or The Illusion of Choice

I don’t plan on doing much pontificating, or ranting on this blog, but I thought I’d talk about this.

Here’s a scenario:

You have a friend who is throwing a party, or a get-togther, or something.  They’ve sent you an invitation, and tell you that they “hope you can make it”.  For some reason or another (it could be any reason, really), you can’t actually make the party, and say “Sorry, I can’t be there!”.

At which point, your friend completely rejects your decision, and starts questioning you on why it is that you can’t make it.  They try to find solutions for you, just so that you can show up.  They just can’t take “no” as an answer, and leave it be.  It just doesn’t sink in for them.

That really pisses me off.  And it doesn’t have to be an invitation to a party, either.  It happens anytime someone gives you a choice, and then rejects your decision. This is not a choice – it’s the illusion of a choice.  The only way it seems like a real choice is when you choose in the other person’s favour – in which case, everything is peachy-keen.  Choosing otherwise, however, becomes a hassle.

It gets even worse if they try to punish you, or shame you for your choice.  “Oh come on, don’t be a jerk…”, “That’s lame, dude…”, “You’re really letting us down…”, etc.  It sort of implies that you (the person who was given the choice) are not capable of making the “correct” choice, or are not capable of forseeing the outcomes of the choice.  To me, this type of behaviour, while not intentionally malicious,  is highly manipulative and disrespectful.

The best situation, is when the other person simply respects your choice.  They might question you on your choice out of sheer curiosity (“are you doing something else that night?  Oh, that’s cool, no worries…”), but no struggle.  I refer to this as “giving outs”.

For example, anytime I invite people over, I do my best to “give outs”.  I say something like, “want to come over?  If not, that’s cool – I just thought it’d be a nice day to hang out”.

Honestly, I think it’s just a matter of courtesy and respect.

That’s All Folks! Now for Celebration Rituals…

Today, I wrote my first and last final exam for this semester.

So my undergraduate career appears to be finished.  I’ve gotten confirmations of program completion from both the Computer Science and Drama departments.  New College is holding out on me with their blessing, but I think it’ll arrive in the mail soon.

I won’t be going to convocation – I’ll be in Poland.  I’m not that upset about it – Poland is totally worth it.

Besides, I have a Masters degree to complete now – my parents can go to THAT convocation.

Now For Celebration Rituals…

I’ve completed many a school year with my friends, and over time, rituals have formed to celebrate the end of the work.

In grade school and high school, it usually consisted of a symbolic “note toast” (the burning of our most hated assignments) along with a barbeque, and camp-out party.

Somewhere along the line, things changed for University.  Now, when one of us completes their last final exam, we’re given license to crank Sisqo’s Thong Song (usually restricted in our household for just this event) and dance up and down the halls.

If you’d like to celebrate with me, feel free to crank this wherever you are (NSFW):

Alternatively, the Thong Song can be replaced with either:

MOP’s Ante Up (NSFW):

Or Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough:

Since I’m finishing my undergrad degree, I’m totally going to rock out to all three.

Feel free to join me, remotely.

The Relationship Between UI Design and the Culture of Entitlement

Today, in my apartment, was spring cleaning.

As I helped Doug, one of my roommates, plunge a putrid black foulness out of the bathroom sink, my mind wandered, and I got to thinking about something that’s been bugging me for a few days:

In my User Interface design class (CSC318: The Design of Interactive Computational Media), we were given lots of tips and ideas on how to make our software interfaces easy to use, and invisible.  If we do our job right, the user should not even notice the interface they use in order to get what they want.  For example, a well designed doorknob is more or less invisible to the user – they just know they want to get to the other side of the door.  The only time they really notice the doorknob is when it stops working.

Which brings me to the other side of my thought:

I was reading something on CBC.ca about how Bell was changing their network so that competing ISP’s that use their network can no longer offer unlimited bandwidth.  Bell’s argument was that this would reduce network congestion, something like that.  Don’t quote me, I’m paraphrasing here.

Naturally, there was plenty of outrage in the comments.  Plenty of people posting about how Bell’s service is terrible, and that they’re less interested in network congestion, and more interested in handicapping their competitors.

All of this is just scenery, by the way.  What I’m getting to, is one particular comment that was posted, where someone complained about the “culture of entitlement” that we have, and that of course we should be billed for the amount of bandwidth that we use, just like we’re billed by how much water we use.  The user went on to say something about how we’re all spoiled brats, and that when we ask for something unlimited, we’re asking for others to pay for it.

Now, I neither agree nor disagree with this user.  I don’t know much about this Bell thing, and that’s not what I’m writing about.  What I’m interested in is this idea that we’re in a culture of entitlement, which immediately makes me feel like a spoiled brat.

Remember that video I posted a while back?  Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy? If you haven’t, take a look.  It more or less sums up this “culture of entitlement” idea.

So how does this relate to UI design?

Well, when we create something so easy for our user to work with, aren’t we just contributing to this spoiled culture of entitlement?

By making our software so blindingly simple, aren’t we catering to this mentality that things should “just work”, which fuels the outrage when things “don’t work”?

I know.  Part of my job is to make things that just work.  I know that.

But don’t you see where I’m getting at?  We’re making really cool technology, and really cool gadgets – but take a look:  doesn’t it seem like we’re all becoming a bunch of spoiled techno-brats?  Don’t we become howling imbeciles when our iPhone won’t work, or a web page loads slowly?

One of my Professors, Greg Wilson, taught me that when two options look bad, it’s more or less about trade-offs.  I guess that’s what we have here.

Because I’m completely split on this matter.  My UI self is saying “Yes!  For god’s sake, make it simple for people.  Make the interface invisible so that the user can get their work done.”

The other half of me is wondering:  what is happening to our culture?  I see people walking around with laptops out, demanding wifi and groaning when it doesn’t work, getting frustrated with their highly sophisticated phone, and getting upset at a global network of computers for having “congestion”.

I see this “culture of entitlement”.  I’m not sure that I like it.  And, regardless, I’m not exactly sure what I can do about it.

UPDATE:

I’ve thought about this some more.

This “culture of entitlement” idea…why do I get the feeling that this isn’t new?  If we look back at the older generation, of course they will call ours a “culture of entitlement”.

But what if we go back even further?  If we were to go back in time to, say, the 1950’s, and ask the old folk if the young people were part of a “culture of entitlement”, what would their answer be?  Probably yes.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but it seems inevitable:  the older culture will always think the younger one is spoiled.

Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy.  Of course things are amazing, and of course we take things for granted.  I don’t think that will ever change.

Meanwhile, while I’m typing this, I’m working on a state of the art piece of machinery.

I guess that makes me one big ol’ hypocrite.

But I think that’s true of anyone who starts complaining about the “culture of entitlement”.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

Another Update: In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have used the term “culture of entitlement”, since it seems to have a more sophisticated meaning than I originally intended to convey. Maybe I just meant “culture of spoiled people”.