On Studying Abroad

Seven years, that's how long I have been planning this trip abroad. Not to say that I have been actively planning my excursions and rendez-vous, but il y a longtemps that I have been planning to visit the beautiful city of Paris. And now it is just a week away, and I am having all sorts of doubts...

I figured that many of my family and friends will want to share with me in the experiences that I have while abroad, so I have decided to create a new section in this blog just for that purpose. I haven't been much of a blogger, but I think with this added photo component I will be a little less lazy about posting. We'll see.

Adieu Chicago! Paris, je te verrai dans une semaine. 

Sweeping Away the Dust

I knew from the moment I created this blog that I wouldn't be much of a blogger. It's a bit intimidating; writing my thoughts. I feel like I'm standing in front of a giant bulletin board trying to figure out the best location for a dull yellow Post-It same as all the rest. And it's been ages since I've written anything creative. I read some of the stuff I wrote as a child and think: wow, I wrote that? Well, here I am again. Thinking again. Writing again.
So I have recently been looking into building a mobile application for the Droid. I have a pretty sweet idea for something a bit fun that could be quite useful for users, but I'm having a little bit of trouble motivating myself to go on with the project. I have Eclipse with Android all ready to go...and I'll be willing to give some more details of the project once I get some code down.
After bombing my very first technical interview ever, and with Twitter at that, I have had trouble staying concentrated on this project. There's just so much I still need to learn and refresh my memory on about programming and data structures and concurrency and even with the internet at my fingertips there doesn't seem to be enough time to absorb it all! And now with February tech interview hell and school only a couple of days away I can really feel the pressure weighing me down..
Anyways, I'll try to be better about posting here. For now I leave you with expectations, and maybe I'll do another hackathon to crank out that app!

Nohemi

Out of the Country- An adventure to Canada

Last week I had the chance to go on an adventure during my Fall Break to what other place than Canada! Thanks to the GNOME travel committee, I traveled from Ithaca, NY to what seemed like another realm. While at Quebec, I finally met up with the GNOME team. From graphic designers to the names I've come to really on for my IRC questions, I met so many people from all over the world.

The Summit was truly inspirational for me. It was a chance not only to meet the people I had admired over the interwebs, but also to become involved in the GNOME community. After the trip I wanted to work so much harder on my project (although, balancing the keyboard project with my school work has proved to be difficult) because I saw and heard people who were truly committed to GNOME.
For more on what we discussed at the Summit, check out http://live.gnome.org/Montreal2011/

I also took some detailed notes on the trip itself for those who'd like to know what the expenses are like.

BEFORE THE TRIP-
-$250 for bus round trip (14 hours each way, gross)
-$280 for 3 night hotel stay

DAY ONE-
+$100 CAD withdrawal
-$3 one way ticket
-$16 three day ticket (this was way more economical & practical, since we were taking the metro a lot)
-$10 Mediterranean food
-$17 Pasta dinner

DAY TWO-
+$100 CAD withdrawal (-$1.50 fees apply)
-$22 for gifts (great gift shop a few blocks away from hotel)
-$15 salad lunch
-$0 for dinner and drinks thanks to Collabora!

DAY THREE-
-$22 for goodies for myself :)
-$15 for pierogi lunch
-$0 for flam snack (delicious) thanks to Karen!
-$0 for Iranian dinner thanks to Behdad!
-$20 for bus food

Total spent before trip- $530 and Total spent during trip- $141.50

So, please don't fret if the "before trip" expenses seem like too much. GNOME travel committee is fantastic, and very willing to help those who need it to come to these events. Along with their informational value, events like GNOME Desktop summit and the Montreal/Boston summit are great opportunities to network and build a stronger, tighter community :)

To Montréal!

So, this year the GNOME Boston Summit will be happening in Montréal, Canada at the École Polytechnique from October 7-10.
For more information go to https://live.gnome.org/Montreal2011/Participants

I am terribly excited to meet the GNOME folk there. I'll be posting more about the conference afterwards, so stay tuned! Hmm...I guess in the mean time I'll go brush up on my French.
À bientôt!

What's the big deal with women in Computer Science?

As I sit here at my friend's windowsill staring out at Ithaca Commons, I realized that I haven't posted to the blog in quite a while. It's not that I don't have thousands of ideas in my head waiting to be written down, but rather that the past month has been difficult for me to overcome, very difficult. Looking back on it I feel that I just wasted away that time, but now I'm back and I have many plans for the future. First, however, I'd like to address the issue I've raised in this post title: so, what's the big deal about women in CS anyways?

At its inception, Computer Science wasn't the "man" thing to do. In fact there were many prominent women figures in the early days working alongside men. If you don't believe me, check this site out http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/admissions/what_is_cs/FamousWomen.html (admittedly, some of the women on this site are more recent additions to our circle, but nonetheless they are amazing). As I continued the unfortunate month slump, I began to wonder why we were so desperate for more women in CS. I'd like to clarify before delving further into the matter: I am not against women in Computer Science or engineering, in fact I am an active member in Association of Computer Science Undergraduates promoting women in these fields.

On that note, I would like to point out that Computer Science consists of problem solving and mathematics, not exclusively but definitely as a basis of understanding. If encouraging women to do CS at an earlier age is such an urgency, then why don't we teach them the basics as well: math, programming, logic, etc? Why is it that we've constrained ourselves to encouraging one subject when there are many parts to a Computer Science education? In my former involvement in college programs like the Society of Women Engineers, I kept hearing that women didn't understand that CS was more than just about programming in a dark corner of the room (though this is also valid). So then, why don't we show instead of tell?

I guess I'm just saying that if getting women into the CS field is a priority, then let's do it the right way, not just the half-hearted attempt we're giving right now. Let's get women (and men) to see what computer science is really about and encourage young people to involve themselves in technological development.

Until another time,
Nohemi

Reflections

After working with GNOME shell for the past few weeks, I feel that I have grown so much as a programmer. From the technical details of algorithmic complexity (which I always tried to take into account when writing the code) to the ability to find code snippets and examples that guide you, I have learned so much. The finished product will be pushed in the next release of GNOME (3.2 release), so as I take this next step in pursuit of improving my programming skills I want to thank you all for the support and I hope you enjoy my contribution to the field.
Remember, if you find any kinks with the work report them to GNOME bugzilla. I'll be posting some more soon on my thoughts about the computer science field, so stay in touch.

So much to do, so little time

Well, my time here with GNOME is coming to a close. This, of course, doesn't mean I won't be contributing to future projects (or maybe even enhancing this one), but it does mean college is on the horizon and my time will be greatly limited by it.
Over the past few weeks, I've been working more on the backbone of the project to write a Gtk module in Vala for the onscreen positioning code. Everyone expects the keyboard to just pop up whenever they click into an input box, and so that's what I've been trying to deliver.
At this point, I've gotten it to where the GdkWindow determines the position of the box and a focus event handler (this one was thanks to Dan) figures out when the focus changes from the entry to a non-entry box. I've also used a global connection within the GNOME shell to tell me when focuses change within the shell.

What does this mean exactly?

Click on the search bar and the keyboard will pop up.

Then just start typing your entry.

Once you're done, click away from the search bar and the keyboard disappears. Well, that's all there is for now.

Until next week,
Nohemi