I have been in the Informatics program at IUPUI since the beginning of 2008. I feel that so far, it has been an overall positive experience. However, if I were to offer advice to someone considering Informatics as a major, it would be this: Do not rely on the Informatics courses to give you the skills that you will need to land a job.
Lacking applicable skills
If you are trying to become a developer of some flavor, the courses offered by the School of Informatics will not adequately prepare you, unless you want to do Flash/ActionScript. For someone who wants to work with a real man’s language, like PHP, Ruby, Java, or C, walk down Michigan Street and get a certificate or minor from the School of Computer Science. Even better, save some time, money, and sweat and make CS your cognate area.
Learn independently
I have found that as a result of the School’s lacking technical instruction, it has become necessary for me to learn job skills on my own. When I was an intern at Mobi Wireless earlier this year, I was dropped into the deep end with Ruby on Rails. I went in knowing nothing about Rails and came out with a working knowledge of the framework. Much of that knowledge and experience came from independent work while on the job.
I think that there are a lot of smart, passionate, creative, and talented people in the School of Informatics, especially at IUPUI. I have had many opportunities to work with them and learn from them. I do not blame them for the screwy curriculum. This is a new area of study and a new school. It will take some time to work out the kinks.
Dean Kaplan recently sent me a free iPhone Application Sketch Book. Before I go on, I would like to clear up a couple of things. First, I did not get this book for review purposes. I got it for winning an online drawing. Second, this is not an iPhone application. It is an actual book. I have had people be mistaken when I tell them I recent got an “iPhone sketch book.”
After winning the contest, I received the book a few days later via Amazon. 
I was impressed right off the bat with the quality of the book. Despite being a few sheets of spiral bound paper, it feels like something I can throw in my backpack and carry around with me. There is plenty of margin space to jot down notes about your interface’s paper prototype. The screen is life size and will give an accurate picture of what your application will look like when it is compiled.
I have used it to prototype the interface for an application that I working on and I enjoyed using it.
While this is a great thing to just carry around and work in, there is a disadvantage to having a notebook like this. There are 100 iPhone sketching pages. Eventually, you will run out of paper. That is why I think that keeping a good stencil around is a good call. Do your rough sketches by hand, then move on to the stencil, then put your finalized UI designs into the iPhone Application SketchBook. I recommend this design process because it forces you to go over the same design again and again before it is finally implemented and put in from of users. More importantly, it will help you conserve precious pages in your dedicated UI sketch book.
Overall, this is an excellent product. If you have not already purchased one for $9.99 before midnight on October 29, 2009, then you are out of luck. However, I believe Kapsoft will return with a new and improved sketchbook. My opinion of this product: highly excellent, useful, and practical.
I keep hearing a lot of bitching about how Obama and the Democratic congress have failed miserably to change things for the better. I feel that this is a fair judgement and an unfair judgement, simulatneously.
What I see is the continued presence of a vocal minority, a group of ideologues perched on the fringes of the political spectrum, left and right. The extreme right wing is rallying people who are mostly right-wing extremists themselves into action, creating a furor that will inevitably garner attention from the mainstream media because, let’s face it, extremism sells. So, these people who carried out the teaparties and other right-flavored protests against nonexistent political actions. On the far left, there are people calling those people “teabaggers” and “facists” while they themselves are called “communists” and “socialists.”
(At this point, I want you to inhale deeply through your nose and exhale out of your mouth. Do it three times. Relaxed? Good.)
I think that despite whatever this minority says or does, change will come because we all know the status quo is unsustainable. We HAVE to change. It is a fact. It is an inevitability. I believe that the majority of the American people are sane, calm, rational people who simply do not have the time, money, or emotional capital to invest in fervent political polarization of America. They have to go to work. When they get home, they don’t have the energy to get too invested in what’s going on beyond their walls. However, I feel that that same group of people is not satisfied with the status of the economy, energy prices, or other things that directly affect their lives. That is what matters to them. If there are enough people who want something and they see that many others want the same thing, then they will start to speak out. They will start to demand the action that they think is necessary to put things in the world right.
I do not care how loud the ideologues on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, or any other outlet get, they cannot match the power and scale of the broader American public. They can yell and scream and shout all they want, but eventually we will all get wise to what they are doing and walk away. It is within our power to get dramatic, meaningful health reform. We can get ourselves off dirty, nonrenewable fuels and create jobs in the process. I do not care what those noisy naysayers claim. The general American public will come around and demand these things.
(At least, I really hope I’m right about this.)
As I stood in the the shower this morning, I started to ponder the ethics of human cloning. I have no idea why. My mind tends to be both scattered and extremely active first thing in the morning. This is beside the point.
I was thinking about a Jon Stewart stand up routine that I listened to in which he went on for a bit about human cloning and how truly pointless it really is. As he put it, “There are already six billion people in the world. Clearly, fucking is working.” I would agree on this point. There is no point in cloning an entire human being when we already have unsustainable population growth as it is.
I can, however, see the utility of cloning specific tissues or whole organs for transplant procedures. There is a constant shortage of organ and tissue donors. In this context, human cloning is beneficial and merits increased research and expenditure in this area. On the subject of cloning an entire human being, my opinion is different.
I feel that cloning an entire human being for reproductive purposes would be inhumane. Only 1-2% of all attempted clones are viable and of those, 30% are born with genetic deformities that lead to a low quality of life that most, if not all, of us would find intolerable. I do not believe that the science of cloning has advanced to the point where we can safely and ethically clone human beings or create new organs that are safe for long-term transplant. Cloning is also too expensive and inefficient for widespread use.
Do not get me wrong. I think that the subject of human cloning is fascinating and merits a great deal of research. However, it has not reached the point where it is practical. In this case, practicality is the same as being ethical. Being able to simply grow new, healthy organs safely, effectively, and cheaply is a worthwhile goal and has the potential to greatly expand the human lifespan. It is definitely something that we should pursue.
References:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml
Rumors have been flying about for many years that Apple will do a tablet device that will be like a scaled-up iPhone. Now the news comes out that Apple’s manufacturer in China, Foxconn, is producing them for launch in the first quarter of 2010. I have to say, this only strengthens my feelings on this topic. My feelings are as such:
STOP TALKING ABOUT THE FUCKING APPLE TABLET PLEASE!!! I have been hearing podcast after podcast where pundits and others who I deeply respect go on and on about a device that has been talked about but never produced or even hinted at. They have been creating this device and the real-world need for it in their distorted minds.
This sick obsession with a purely theoretical product is hindering efforts to produce meaningful, serious discourse through new media. I can no longer listen to a Mac- or iPhone-related podcast without a third of the conversation dominated by conspicous wanking over details of a product that hasn’t even been announced yet. Blogs are only marginally better. They still go on and on about the Apple tablet. This is probably because prolific podcasters typically make for prolific bloggers.
Let it go, you guys. If Apple announces a tablet next year or in five years, then that is when it will happen. Of course, if it does come out, the bloggers and podcasters who so enthusiastically fantasized about it will criticize it for its perceived shortcomings.
If the tablet is announced, then it is announced. Until then, just let it go and be patient, PLEASE.
Patrick Proctor was here 