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Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be able to attend BarCamp3 here at RIT. While I really do want to write a lot about how it went, I didn’t exactly take great notes. Here are the few things I really want to say:

jQuery is cool. Sure, I know everyone else already knew this, but now I am a believer. John Resig gave a nice presentation just demonstrating the basics of the library, and I was sold. I have already started working with it for my XML Transformation class’ web projects.

Discussion is cool. One of the best parts of BarCamp is just meeting up with a bunch of intelligent people, and having chats. My presentation time was used doing just that. I put up the topic of “Social Implications of Technology” and I got about 10 participants, ranging from college age to much older, and the discussion was GREAT. The chat bounced around a few central ideas, which included communication etiquette, hyperconnection, and personalized expectation of behavior. Really interesting stuff.

Meeting people is cool. I met a lot of people yesterday, and even got some business cards to maintain professional contact. Very exciting stuff. Of course, now I have an incredible urge to build my own personal brand so I can make personal business cards. We’ll see if that happens any time soon.

All in all, it was a very long day, but it was a lot of fun. Thanks to the organizers, and I look forward to attending next year.

So, I am pretty sure, if I was presented this exam right before I decided to come to grad school, I might have thought twice.

I find that every week or so I mentally take this test. Trying to balance all three becomes quite difficult.

Laughter Everywhere.

Some people may be satisfied with the yearly Google prank, but not us. The idea to pull off some kind of April Fools joke was discussed as far back as December. Of course, we didn’t plan much, but I think it has turned out great… so… here is how it all went down:

Coming up with names for as many professors as possible was really hard. We should have thought about it more then we did, but with three of us, we came up with about 90% of the target names. Professors we had no experience with were generally left out because we didn’t know much about them, or what they would find ‘funny’. Names ranged all over the place, from simple nicknames and titles like “Resident Hippie | Weez” to “Minivan Driver | Humpty Dumpty”. Overall, the names took about 3 hours to come up with, but I think it was worth it.

The next step was putting the signs up. Mike, Zack and I walked around the floor and started putting the signs up. We only ended up having to reprint 2 signs due to typos… that we noticed. Putting the signs up was actually a lot of fun because we started to really see the scope of what we were doing.

We finished about 1:30am, and headed home. Overall the entire process for the night took a little over 4 hours. Not to bad considering. The only downside was that we don’t usually come in until much later in the day, so for now the plan was for me to wake up early and come see the reactions…

I walked in to building 70 at about 9:15am. I headed up the stairs and started walking towards the grad lab- I mean the “I CAN HAZ TUTORING” room. I got about halfway down the hall, then I heard a voice saying “Yeah, they’ve all changed”. Immediately a smile came. It was going to be a success, I could just tell from the sound in the voice. I started walking around, and I would run in to the occasional professor walking around the halls looking at all the signs. All smiling. Giggles here and there.

Some of the professors immediately could tell I was partially behind it, I mean, why else would I be in 70 before noon… carrying a camera and snickering? I walked back to my lab, waiting patiently for Deb to see her new sign. A few seconds later, I hear her laugh from around the corner. Got her! I walk down the hall to see her facial reaction. She knew it was me right away. I look down the hall and I start to see something I didn’t expect… people taking pictures. First I saw Dr. Kang taking a picture of his sign, then I saw a student walking down taking pictures as well.

What a great success!

Even as I write this blog entry, I can hear laughter as people walk by. Every now and then a good chuckle. The best part, is laughter lifts the spirits. I am happy to be here today, and everyone that is doing their walk around the building is smiling and giggling. I wonder how long everyone will keep their signs up? :).

Thanks to Zack Panitzke and Mike Galey for helping make this prank possible. You guys rock.

P.S. To any professors that might read this, Mike is up for a GA position next year — you should support him!

To learn more about why this comic was drawn, look at RIT’s new policy regarding professors.

Alright. Finally I drew another comic. The quality is down, but intentionally… since I think drawing non-stick figure penises may be considered inappropriate.

Overall this comic is a critique of the current situation here at RIT about the push to become a more research oriented university and the decision that Ph. D’s are required for professors here.

I promise my next comic won’t be stick figures, but I can’t guarantee no penises ;)

Recently here at RIT, there has been a discussion (read: controversy) about a new “requirement” (not actually policy) that professors are required to have a “Terminal Degree” to get a promotion. Several professors that are currently in the pipeline for promotion risk being passed up because of this new decision. This decision is against my interpretation of the real policy. The policy itself is fairly lengthy, but I think it is best described by this paragraph:

The view that teaching is the foremost activity of the RIT faculty is deeply rooted in the traditions of the institution, and the primacy of teaching continues to be a hallmark of RIT. Consequently, the basic consideration, both in initial appointments and matters pertaining to salary adjustments, promotion and tenure, is the extent to which high standards of teaching can be achieved and maintained.

Which mentions nothing about terminal degree. Basically, for a promotion, a professor needs to be a Good Professor. To me, a Good Professor needs expertise, the ability to do good research, must be a good educator, and must have a passion for what they do.

What is expertise?
I find that expertise is one of those “fuzzy areas” that you can’t define easily, but you can determine after knowing someone for only a little while. Expertise is the having of significant knowledge in your topic area. Unfortunately, in academia this significant knowledge can only be expressed in the form of a piece of paper that says Ph.D on it. The most recent statement by the current RIT administration says that if you have many years of industry experience, that it is enough to be qualified as an “expert” as well, but I believe that has only recently come to the current administration’s mind because of the push back from students and professors on the recent “terminal degree” decision. Personally, the expertise of someone should be measured by the people that work him or her every day. Even for students, it’s easy to find out which professors “knows their stuff” pretty quickly in their time here.

What is the ability to do good research?
In the academic world, research is kind of the “my house is bigger then your house” debate. Professors with the most published papers and articles are highly regarded. Ok, fair enough. I am not one to change the way the academic world works. So, when evaluating professors for promotion and tenure, look at their research. It is very clear that this was not considered for the pipeline of the current professors (as some have many published articles, in several prestigious journals), but it should be a consideration overall. With the drive here at RIT to become an innovation university, of course research needs to be done… We just need to remember that academic research is only so good, and that applied research is what will actually cause innovation.

What makes a good educator?
The age old question of every student: Is Professor X any good? Students care about this… a lot. Here at RIT, it’s not that hard to figure out which professors are the good ones: look at the course evaluations. A professor that has good evaluations usually ends up being pretty good. It’s possible to see the signs of a good educator just by sitting in the classroom for a few classes: Look for professors that are actively trying to incorporate different teaching methods to reach more students. Look for professors that encourage questions, and answer them well. Look for professors that have their class fill up immediately. Look for professors that can connect with students to solidify concepts and ideas.

What is passion?
Passion is the most important thing that a professor can have. Passion is the drive and the emotion that gives a professor credibility in the eyes of the students. The professor cares about what he or she teaches, and can show that passion to spark student interest and allow them to develop that passion themselves. Passion is hard to quantify, but it can be found easily. A person that has a passion for what they are doing or teaching has a certain presence and charisma about them that can be picked up by everyone in the room. They truly care about the material and the ideas that they are involved with. I challenge anyone to think of someone who they consider their “best professor” or “best teacher” that didn’t have passion.

What will happen here at RIT? I’m not sure. The professors in the pipeline may or may not get passed up for promotion. Currently, the administration is “reevaluating” the situation, while waiting on input from the various deans. The administration seems to be hard lining to make RIT a “World Renowned” university by increasing the amount of research that happens here. While I would love to see RIT become even more famous, I would hate to see RIT lose what it already is, one of the best teaching institutions in the nation. When I came here, it wasn’t the number of Ph.D’s that attracted me, it was that I was going to learn how to do what I wanted to do… and do it well.

Yep. Another one.

It starts, you toss and turn in bed… and then, the synapses start firing, you have an idea. Sure, it’s a good idea, but not even anything new. You’ve thought it before… but now your brain is thinking about it, more and more.

You turn over, trying to get the rest you know you need… but your brain doesn’t want rest anymore, it wants to keep going. Quickly, you try to tell yourself “It’s too late” or “I have to be up early”, but your brain doesn’t care… it is about to make you the most motivated person on the planet.

You fight the urge to get out of bed, but you are going to lose. You appease yourself by writing down the idea that you are obsessing on, perhaps if you take down the notes, your brain will let you sleep.

No. It doesn’t.

You find yourself tossing and turning once again, what seems like moments later. This time, it’s a different idea. It’s not even an idea anymore, its possibilities. What-ifs on paths that you never walked. Clearly, these are the things that dreams are made of, but they are too strong to happen in dreamland, they must be considered in your conscious state. You let your mind wander. Perhaps if you let your thoughts play out in your mind it will let you doze off. What seems like hours, but at the same time, moments, pass on… the thoughts progress away.

Letting the ideas play out, you start to get drowsy, maybe the sleep is on the way… but then, a new idea comes in. Your brain starts rushing with concepts, designs, excitement. The urge to create, the drive to proceed. You are afraid to even look at the clock, already knowing you are going to get less sleep then you need.

You try every trick you know to put your body to sleep, but your brain is simply to active. Despite not wanting to know, you look at the clock to decide if its past the point of no return. The moment somewhere between 3 and 6 am where it isn’t worth it to goto bed anymore.

It’s coming up on that moment… but the mind just will not let you sleep. The urge to be creative, the drive to design something is too great. Victory is not yours to be had tonight, the brain will win. You sit up and cultivate the idea. You draw, you write, and you ponder more, and more.

It’s another one of those nights. In reality, these are the nights that spark imagination, invention, and innovation… rare occurrences that should be praised and embraced. Of course, they cannot be, because you must consider the repercussions of disturbing the pattern of the next day by losing sleep.

And then, it stops.

Your brain gives in, and stops working in overdrive. Now you must decide, it is time to sleep, or is it time to work.

Sleep.

It’s something that I have done a lot of over the past week.

I find breaks very amusing. I don’t really travel too much, so I look at a break as an excellent time to get work done. I know, I know, I am weird.

So this break I had a list of things to do…

1. Get healthy
2. Work on independent study
3. Finish up capstone proposal
4. Rest

Well, the first one is sorta completed. I still have a little bit of a cough, but I am no longer sick. A warning to all: Do not get the flu on finals week. It sucks.

I was able to complete a little bit of work on the independent study that I have been working on… of course, I only got the work done today, and there is still a lot to do.

Yeah. Capstone proposal didn’t even get looked at.

Rest… now… I got lots of rest. I slept at least 12 hours a day, every day. Holy crap. I don’t know if I can go back to a normal sleep pattern now. However, the down side to doing this is that I really got very little done…. but I got rest… and that was the goal, right?
I wish I could have blogged more. Perhaps I will soon. I have a few comic ideas too. Here’s to week 1!

This past quarter, I was taking a class in which I got to play with web services. I developed a web service in Java and used the latest application server, Glassfish, to deploy it. To consume the service, I was going to write a C# desktop application, and a Flash Lite mobile app. I thought it would be very exciting, and a lot of fun.

I was wrong.

The C# app was nothing remarkable. In fact, I was very impressed at how easy Microsoft has made web services. Just point Visual Studio at the auto generated (more on this later) WSDL file, and you can make the calls easily.

The flash application was…. more of a problem. So, in an attempt to explain why it was a problem, let me make a nice broad claim…

Flash will not work with Glassfish.

Random Yokel: But Dave! Isn’t the point of web services interoperability?
Dave: Why yes! Which is why I don’t know who to be more mad at…. Adobe or Sun!

So, Lets discuss what is wrong!

Using Glassfish, you automatically generate a WSDL based off of your Java code. The WSDL itself is valid XML, and a valid WSDL. However, when I pointed my little flash mobile test application at the WSDL, it failed. The error that Flash Lite 3.0 gave me was:

There are no valid services/ports in the WSDL file!

Weird. Especially because there definitely is a single, valid service and port in the WSDL… but that’s ok. I tried to turn it into a standard Flash application (rather than a Flash Lite 3.0). I removed the little bit of ‘mobile only’ code, and ran it again as a Flash 9 app (but the code was still ActionScript 2.0). It loads… so I try to execute my helloWorld() method (just returns the String “Hello World!”), and it fails:

Element tns:helloWorldResponse not resolvable

Strange. However, at least it appeared to get farther this time. Now, this error message gave me a little bit of a headache for a while… and then I found out the Flash does not support xsd:import. So, because the WSDL file that Glassfish will automatically generate (I suppose I should have guessed it would cause me problems), includes an import to an external schema defining your data types, Flash will choke. Ok. Let’s get around that. So, I took the WSDL that was generated by Glassfish and merged in the schema file. Simple enough, no problems. Run the code, pointing to the new WSDL which I hosted on my server (so: http://localhost/newWSDL.xml, rather then Glassfish app server: http://localhost:8080/Path/File?wsdl)… New error:

Unable to connect to endpoint: <PortURL>

Damn it. Nothing appears to be wrong with my code, C# and PHP can easily connect to my service. I was able to find this document, which basically says that Axis (another Sun app server) is sending poorly formed SOAP packets, and the solution is purchasing Flash Remoting. Right. I believe that. If the packets were poorly formed, I should be getting errors in other languages. Besides, my helloWorld() method is only returning a String! Personally, I want to think that it is some Flash sand-boxing issue, but I truly can not figure it out. Why this is so difficult? My final conclusion on this project was that Flash can not connect to a Glassfish app server (at least, out of the box). If someone has figured out how to make the two play nice, I would love to hear it.

This is bad news for Sun and Adobe. The point of web services is interoperability between systems. If you can’t deploy a simple application using Glassfish (which is the new Sun App Server…) that can be consumed by a simple Flash app… what is the point? Sure. I could go the Microsoft route, but what if I don’t want to? What if I can’t?

Sometimes I wish I could change the world as easily as I can change a computer program.

I don’t think the time will ever come that we can do this to change the world… However, I will always hope there will be new releases every few weeks that make more progress and make it better.

Thanks Elvis for the concept.

I have the flu. I don’t have time to sleep. I have major projects to finish.

This sucks.

I hope to post again when I am through this hell.