14%

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

-stressed-

In memory, Clippy

My psychology of design seminar today touched on affect and annoying things in technology design, and in the textbook chapter Clippy was mentioned. In case you don't remember, Clippy was that annoying paperclip helper that's enabled by default in the older versions of Office.



As it turned out, although he was intended to help, Clippy generally annoyed more people than he ended up helping (which is how he earned his way into the textbook, I think). And in reading Wikipedia, I found out that Microsoft had designed a series of short videos as part of an ad campaign, publicising Clippy's removal (by default, anyway) from Office XP (watch them! they're funny!).

Clippy Gets Clipped
Clippy Goes Undercover
Clippy Faces Facts

I particularly like how in the last video, there's a short scene with a little computer mouse running behind the wall of the paperclip residence.

So where is Clippy today? Well I also found out from Wikipedia that he's still around, as a Windows Dancer for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (whatever that means). Apparently the white sheet occasionally slips, revealing the thin curve of steel underneath.

Boo Who?
General dance style: Spooky Groove

An avid dancer and amateur contortionist, “Boo Who?” or “Boo” as his friends call him, graduated cum laude from Contoso University in 1994 with a degree in the performing arts. Driven by dreams of fame, upon graduation “Boo” did a short stint of dinner theater in Boca Raton, Florida where he participated in a showtunes revue. It was after a harrowing incident involving a fork that Boo followed his classmates, entering the Information Technology industry where he served as Chief Technology Officer for Fitch & Mather. It was during that time that he formed a rock band and moved to Seattle, only to miss the grunge movement by two days. Disheartened, Boo returned once again to the familiar IT industry working for a short while for a Redmond, WA based software company, where he continued to work until being retired in 2001.

Since then, Boo has been hanging out on the LA mime circuit, practicing his dancing, acting, and singing in the hopes of becoming a “triple threat” on a future reality-based talent show. In his spare time, Boo picks up extra money as a part-time model for children's Halloween costumes.

Hilarious! Microsoft has certainly earned itself many many cool points, in my book. Gosh. Who'd have thought?

Funny conditions

Just saw a couple of psychology-related comics, here are three I rather liked. They all have something to do with conditioning, two are about Pavlov's dogs, they're probably funnier if you actually know the background I suppose.

Inertia

So it seems like I've got most of my third year stuff settled already. I've made contact with two supervisors who seem willing to take me on, though I haven't actually met them to discuss things in detail yet. I've pretty much decided on my third year modules, and they seem pretty unpopular so I think I'll probably get them. Although I'm wondering about the Mind and Brain module, which is currently my second choice for the spring term - it sounds pretty interesting on paper, but (as I found out last term) Cognition can get pretty dry when you go into the theories in too much detail.

Aside from settling admin though, I seem to be having trouble getting anywhere with my assessed work this term. A seminar presentation next Wednesday - basically unprepared for. A practical report and essay due in three weeks - I've barely started on the former, and the latter's untouched. An exam one week after those - let's just not talk about it.

Somehow I just really want to go home and enjoy my summer holidays already, though it seems like I might be spending quite a bit of it finishing my TEFL assessed writeup, starting on my final year project, and my MOE school attachment. But hey, it still sounds more attractive than being stuck here, for some reason!

Careers Day

I'm not sure why exactly I sat through every single talk at the Careers Day event today - I suppose I just wanted to know what the options were for a Psychology graduate. Just in case. It was good, though, because it made me feel more certain about my choice of the education ministry. The other jobs mentioned just didn't interest me that much.

Also, I have actually become more interested in the prospect of a career in Educational Psychology. I'll have to do a little more research on the options available, but perhaps someday I'll be going for that doctorate after all...

Research Assistantship continued

Apparently only four people expressed interest in the BPS Research Assistantship, and I think I might have actually had a good chance if not for my MOE attachment this year, because they want to start their project in July now. Sigh. I really should have done the attachment last year, but by the time I requested for it, it was too late already...

Oh well. Life goes on. And I still have one exam to study for.

BPS Research Assistantship

I received this email on Friday.

To All

We are looking for a student to put forward for the British Psychological Society Research Assistantship Scheme. The scheme aims to provide undergraduates with hands-on experience of research during the summer vacation between the second and third year of their degree.

The recipient of this prestigious award will work as a Research Assistant for a period of 6-8 weeks on a defined research project under the supervision of Dr Claudine Crane. Interested candidates should be expecting to receive a high 2:1 or 1st class degree; be considering research as a career and have some experience working with young children.

If you are interested in applying for this award please contact me as soon as possible.

thank you
Claudine Crane

I've replied and she's asked for my CV, which I've not sent in yet but probably will soon. Initially I was worried that it would clash with my MOE attachment this year, but she said that they haven't decided the schedule yet so I should just apply first.

I wasn't really able to find any information on this particular scheme on the university webpages or even on Google, but I'm assuming it's like the URES programme, with extra prestige. And her field of research is likely to be related to language intervention programmes, which I'm actually relatively interested in.

I don't know if I'll get it (particularly with my sucky interview skills), but... oh well. No harm applying, right? It's going to be a busy summer if I do get it, though. Haha. Wonder if I'm up to it.

Glod is gory

Spoonerism of the day - Praise Glod for he's gory.

(Meant to be "praise God for his glory", as far as I recall)

I'm not sure who this Glod fella is, but I sure hope this doesn't constitute paganism!

For some reason I've been unintentionally producing spoonerisms ever since I finished NS. I suspect that all those months in there have fried my Broca's area and somehow left my linguistic abilities sub-optimal, with some amusing effects.

I often think that God is the ultimate jokester.

Puff the Magic Dragon

Say hello to my latest friend, Puff!

Yiwen pointed me to this video earlier and I was curious about it and ended up at this site. They had a pdf file you could download and print, and voila! A magic dragon is born!

It's essentially a variant of the hollow face illusion, but I think this version is really cute. As Pepper suggested, they should probably create more variants of it, though.

What a great way to procrastinate exam preparation! =P Although to be fair, today was blocked out as a day for relaxation already. Whee.

Ba Da Ga

The fire alarm went off again last night. At three. Bloody. A. M.

Sigh.

We touched on the McGurk effect during lecture earlier and I actually found it quite fascinating. The lecturer essentially played us this video, the first time with only the audio, and the second time with both audio and visual, and surprisingly enough it sounded different, even with the knowledge of what was being said!

I've finished one essay. One left to go. I'm about two days behind schedule, but should still be able to complete everything. Quality might be slightly compromised, though. I really should get more disciplined.

The Milgram Experiment

We covered the Milgram Experiment in lecture today. I'd read of it before, but somehow viewing it on video was really a lot more... shocking.

I'd like to think that I'd have been stronger than that, that I'd have stopped participating in the experiment before the end, but that is what most of them thought, and most of them continued anyway. If I had been ignorant of the nature of the experiment, I suspect I'd have been one of the 2/3 who carried on till the end.

It's just really disturbing (and interesting) to know how pliable humans really are, and how easily the WW2 war crimes could theoretically be repeated.

Dance, Monkeys, Dance

Our lecturer showed this video to us as an introduction to Social Psychology. It's pretty amusing, philosophical ramifications aside.

(As my lecturer said, this video is highly inaccurate. There are plenty of errors - for example, humans are really apes, not monkeys.)

Egg twins and Wife-killing

The egg I fried today had two yolks. It might just be that I'm not that big an egg fan (thus have not been exposed much to the various egg types), but I was really amazed to see it. Made me wonder if chickens have mono-zygotic twins, too.

(As an aside, check out iloveegg.com's egg song if you've not already seen it. It's totally hilarious. And kinda cute.)



This might possibly be the funniest Psychology lecture slide I've come across this whole academic year.

So, do you happen to have killed your wife?

Phonic retardation

My textbook states that "Chinese and Japanese make no distinction between r and l" (Shaffer, 2002, p. 200).

This is mighty interesting to me because while it is true that native Orientals seem to mess up their syllables sometimes, these sounds do exist, at least in Mandarin. Like the characters 路 (lù) and 入 (rù) differ in pronunciation solely in this manner.

So, do Chinese really make no distinction between these two syllable sounds? (I must confess that I've not been listening closely to spoken English by native Chinese-speakers recently.)

If so, why?