Brian Kerr

Snippet from a course announcement for a winter 2007 class to be taught by Don Blumenthal at the U-M School of Information:

This course will examine: 1) privacy issues related to the safeguarding of sensitive information against inadvertent disclosure; 2) policy and societal questions concerning the value of security and privacy regulations, the real world effects of data breaches on individuals and businesses, and the balancing of interests among individuals, government, and enterprises; 3) current and proposed laws and regulations that govern data security and privacy; 4) self-help and private sector regulatory efforts; 5) emerging technologies that may affect security and privacy concerns; and 6) issues related to the development of enterprise data security processes and programs that take into account the requirements of all relevant constituencies: e.g., technical, business, and legal.

Here’s the course catalog page for Data Security and Privacy: Legal, Policy and Enterprise Issues. I met Don at a2b3 lunch some time ago. This looks like a great topic and a relevant offering, since — when I was on an outbound trajectory from the department, at least — so much of the dork curriculum actually resulted in half-baked SQL-injectable junk and so forth.

(tags: course networks privacy process security umich umsi)

Course announcement for a winter 2007 class, open to undergraduates and graduates at U-M, highly recommended (see also a recent syllabus):

This course provides an interdisciplinary approach to disability studies, including focus on the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, and professional schools. Some topics include the history and cultural representation of disability, advocacy, health, rehabilitation, built environment, independent living, public policy. The point of departure of the course is the idea that disability provides a critical framework that reorients the basic assumptions of various fields of knowledge, from political science to architecture, from engineering to art history, from genetics to law, from public policy to education, from biology to poetry, and so on. Disability Studies views people with disabilities not as objects but as producers of knowledge whose common history has generated a wide variety of art, music, literature, and science infused with the experience of disability. Students will have the opportunity to interact with visiting speakers from a broad range of fields. The course is offered for 1 or 3 credits. Accessible classroom with realtime captioning. For more information, please contact Kristine Mulhorn and Tobin Siebers.

I took this course in fall 2006. It was a powerful antidote to a bunch of horseshit baked into the School of Information MSI curriculum, and therefore recommended for any HCI types.

(tags: accessible course design edu umich uminds umsi universal)

(A full-size version of this image.)

I’m too busy not to play Shadow of the Colossus. Sixteen days left in the semester, sixteen colossi. Coincidence, or life following ludology? You can learn a lot by watching that kid fall off a colossus, shaking it off, and climbing up it again. Even if it’s maybe a mistake, don’t give up; keep climbing. That’s the lesson.

Regardless, it’s very likely that I’ll see you on the other side; del.icio.us links will continue to entertain you until then.

(tags: games umsi)

Same adapted (hands-free) work process as Have geek looking for artists. The theme was transportation/mapping of space:

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The SmartNav is still super tiring to use, especially for finicky rectangular selection and trying to more or less line things up along whichever axis. I probably don’t use it enough, or long enough, to get truly acclimated.

(tags: design mac media process self umsi)

Screen captures from one of today’s projects, adapting Seashore for easier use with a SmartNav head-mounted mouse. Seashore is a free software Macintosh derivative of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Since Seashore uses nib files for its interface resources, it’s a piece of cake to open up Interface Builder and resize, realign, remove, and re-bind keyboard shortcuts for user interface elements throughout the application. Here’s a simple example, options for the paintbrush tool:

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The original, on the left, uses small control sizes and presents options for a pressure-sensitive devices. The modified version, on the right, uses regular control sizes, and we’ve added tick marks to the slider and hidden controls irrelevant to the human interface devices we happen to be working with. These are small changes, but it’s enough of a difference to make a difference.

Slider controls are tricky because they ask you to first move a tiny target over a continuous range and then stop moving it in order to make a precise selection. In almost all cases, we’ve turned on between 8 and 12 markers, and checked Stop on tick marks only so that sliders snap to markers. You lose a lot of precision that way, but this doesn’t matter if you’ve chosen a strategic number of markers. This approach for slider controls is inspired by the way a similar user interface element responds to stylus or finger control in Animal Crossing.

(tags: design mac process umsi)

One of today’s activities:

Collage of two images from RecentChangesCamp 2007: 1 and 2; a higher-quality image of the result.

Made in Seashore using a SmartNav plus a few labor-saving voice commands. This means, no hands. You move the cursor by moving your head. You click by saying “click” or triggering a button or puffing into a tube. The little tiny hotspots and buttons in Seashore are hard to select; slider controls are the hardest.

OS X is pretty easy to wrangle with this kit, after a learning curve. Some applications are better than others, with Quicksilver (not too surprisingly) coming in dead last. It’s a shame because Quicksilver really helps to cut down on mousing and typing, both at a premium when you’re not using your hands.

See grad student bkerr a4a project for more like this.

(tags: design mac media process self umsi wiki)

Check your e-mail O student comrades — inside track on summer internships, media relations at Coca-Cola!

These roles will provide broad exposure to the diverse strategic issues and opportunities facing global consumer goods companies. These issues might include corporate social responsibility, stakeholder engagement, corporate/NGO strategy, environment, diversity, health & wellness and global aging.

I have a jar. I’m putting one (1) greenback USD into this jar each time I get e-mail about a truly reprehensible job / internship opportunity from the department’s “career” “services” staff. Once I expectorate from the department, I will use the cash to buy oatmeal java breakfast stout next time it’s on tap, you’re welcome to join me.

(tags: umich umsi)