at the hypertext conference i heard dan gillmor talk about his experience of journalism, and something at that moment resonated with me. there are things that a journalist does (communicating, writing, explaining) that i would like to be doing more of in the future.

i just happened upon meg h. blogging about switching careers from technology to cooking which is similar to a fantasy i have about culinary school.

at work we’re going to be unveiling a new website look and feel, and for some reason it was never demoed to me and i haven’t been asked if i’d like to give it a critique. the confidence i have in my ability to do so makes me think about all the unique and special skills that i (as well as others) have which tend to fall outside our primary work responsibilities. and thus go under-utilized.

a few weeks ago i was poking around rebecky’s design work and projects. her stuff makes me wish i was doing more to develop my graphic design skills. i would love to spend time studying fonts and typography. i would love to be doing more with digital photography.

my relationship with my former graduate school (and university) falls somewhere between playful and adversarial. after participating in a scholarly communications panel at the library and seeing doc searls give his talk on campus, it occurred to me that i might eventually like to pursue some sort of slow phd.

this past summer i emailed the assistant dean at SILS to let him know i’d love to teach one of the intro database classes at sils. i’ve poked around durham tech and wake tech, but haven’t pursued anything seriously yet.

perhaps i never exactly was. perhaps i will be again.

i mean i just went to a framing shop to get my undergraduate *and* graduate diplomas framed. to hang in my office!

and i’ve been reading phd comics for the first time just recently, and i started to feel like an outsider looking in. i relate. but i’m reading about drama that is only peripherally part of my life.

usually happy hour is at “the library” but when school ends, they don’t open till later, so we started heading to “he’s not” to enjoy the weather. haven’t done much picture taking this semester, (who knows maybe this was the last official happy hour of the semester) so anyway, decided to get some pictures of friends and revelers

he’s not here on the village green / chapel hill

the sils crew

kathleen and christy

larisa presents justin the sils shushing librarian tshirt

portrait of patrick with two bluecups

Note: These photos originally appeared in my photo galleries.

that was last sunday. the “procession” on the way to the commencement ceremony. ah. all done.

action shot (score one point for photographer-dad)

a shot with mom and dad

and the obligatory old well shot

previously: graduation #1

Note: These photos originally appeared in my photo galleries.

this represents my 4 year long sils career in one big outline. links point to online assignments.

Spring 2004

• INLS 172 Information Retrieval – Bob M. Losee
• INLS 252 Metadata Architectures and Applications (Dublin Core) – Jane Greenberg
• INLS 392 Master’s Paper – Gary Marchionini (advisor)

Fall 2003

• INLS 201 Research Methods (SPSS) – Bob M. Losee
• INLS 357 Seminar in Human-Computer Interaction – Gary Marchionini
• JOMC 144 Censorship – Chuck Stone
• JOMC 391 Virtual Communities – Paul Jones

Spring 2003

• PSYC 123 Introduction to Cognitive Science – Peter C. Gordon
• INLS 257 User Interface Design – Barbara M. Wildemuth
• INLS 281 Internet Issues and Future Initiatives – Paul Jones

Fall 2002

• INLS 150 Organization of Information – M. Cristina Patuelli
• INLS 259 Web Databases (ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, XML) – Kristin H. Chaffin
• COMP 120 Computer Organization (MIPS) – Lars S. Nyland

Spring 2002

• INLS 131 Management for Information Professionals – Fichman-Shachaf
• INLS 180 Human Information Interactions – Gary Marchionini
• INLS 258 Database Systems II (MySQL, Oracle) Kristin H. Chaffin

relevant undergraduate coursework

• INLS 70 Organizing and Retrieving Information (Relational Databases, Entity-Relationships, Microsoft Access) – Ruth Monnig
• INLS 90 Independent Study in Information Systems (Linux, Samba) – Scott Adams
• INLS 162 Systems Analysis (Contextual Inquiry, Entity-Relationship Diagramming) – Joel Dunn
• INLS 183 Distributed Systems and Administration (Linux) – Greg Newby
• INLS 184 Protocols and Network Management (Ethernet, TCP/IP) – Jim Gogan
• COMP 114 Foundation of Programming (Java) – Stephen F. Weiss
• COMP 117 Introduction to World Wide Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java Applets) – Ketan Mayer-Patel

7 years of elementary school (hagen)
2 years of junior high (orville a. todd)
4 years of high school (spackenkill and pflugerville)
4 years of college (unc)
2 years of graduate school (sils)
=
19 years of formal education

there really wasn’t that “this is the *last* class i’ll ever take” feeling during undergrad. that spring semester i was taking three sils classes and i knew i was going on to the masters program. this time is different. wednesday is the last day of classes. my last class will be information retrieval at 8am with dr. losee. wow.

1. financial information system underway, check.
2. masters paper written, 65 pages, check.
3. masters paper approved by Dr. Marchionini, check.
4. masters paper reviewed by Lucia Zonn, check.
5. masters paper printed on 100% cotton paper, check.
6. masters paper signed by Dr. Marchionini, check.
7. masters paper turned in to Lucia Zonn, check.
8. masters paper approved by Lucia Zonn…pending.

reflections
as is the fashion, i’ve posted my paper, Design and Implementation of a Web-based Financial Information System, in a semi-permanent location. before you print it out to read on a rainy sunday afternoon, be forewarned, it really isn’t that interesting, except maybe to that one person Measure will be hiring to assist me with the financial information system’s development.

in it i explain (somewhat superficially) Measure Evaluation’s motivation for developing a custom financial system, i survey the existing Microsoft Access system, i describe the web-based implementation i’ve developed, and i reflect on the project thus far.

in a sense, it’s everything we were instructed in research methods that our masters paper should not be (project-specific, excessive scope, etc.). but that’s ok, because we were also instructed that anything our masters paper advisor would let us get away with is fair game. i guess in exchange for not bothering my advisor all semester (and not being bothered), i got to do what i wanted: to work on this project at work during the semester and document the process and the system at the end.

this paper is a beginning, sort of an awkward snapshot of a prototype system in development. not only does the system need extensive and further development, but it will grow to become part of a currently envisioned management information system, which itself will be part of an internal website. accomplishing this, or at least figuring out how to coordinate all this is my job now and in the near future. my hope is that some of the problems i encounter or solve along the way (probably glossed over or briefly introduced in the masters paper) will provide enough fodder for some novel research and publication in the future.

Natural Language

One person can be in one or many photos and one photo can contain zero, one, or many people. List all the people who are in photos along with the filename and the description of the photo(s) they are in. People and photos may be listed multiple times, but a person will never be in the same photo twice (assuming the photos haven’t been doctored).

Microsoft Access Query by Example (QBE)

SQL generated by Microsoft Access

SELECT [tblPeople].[LastName], [tblPeople].[FirstName], [tblPhotos].[Filename], [tblPhotos].[Description] FROM (tblPeople INNER JOIN tblPeopleInPhoto ON [tblPeople].[PeopleID] = [tblPeopleInPhoto].[PeopleID]) INNER JOIN tblPhotos ON [tblPeopleInPhoto].[PhotoID] = [tblPhotos].[PhotoID] WHERE ((([tblPeople].[LastName]) Is Not Null) And (([tblPeople].[FirstName]) Is Not Null));

SQL cleaned up for readability

SELECT tblPeople.LastName,
tblPeople.FirstName,
tblPhotos.Filename,
tblPhotos.Description
FROM (tblPeople INNER JOIN tblPeopleInPhoto ON tblPeople.PeopleID = tblPeopleInPhoto.PeopleID)
INNER JOIN tblPhotos ON tblPeopleInPhoto.PhotoID = tblPhotos.PhotoID
WHERE (tblPeople.LastName Is Not Null) AND (tblPeople.FirstName Is Not Null);

Relational Algebra

join tblPeople and tblPeopleInPhoto

R1 ← tblPeople equijoinPeopleID=PeopleID tblPeopleInPhoto

join the result of the first join, R1, with tblPhotos

R2 ← R1 equijoinPhotoID=PhotoID tblPhotos

select only those R2 records where LastName is not null

R3 ← σ LastName != Null (R2)

select only those R2 records where FirstName is not null

R4 ← σ FirstName != Null (R2)

intersect (AND) R3 and R4

R5 ← R3 ∩ R4

project 4 fields (columns) in the final Result

Result ← π LastName, FirstName, Filename, Description (R5)

Note: If the characters above don’t look like arrows, sigmas or pis, try the PDF version.

These posts are related to my time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel (UNC), specifically the School of Library and Information and Science (SILS), where I graduated with a Master’s of Science in Information Science in 2004. I also received my Bachelor’s degree in linguistics at UNC in 2002.

Some Popular Posts

• Spring in Chapel Hill
• UNC, lookin' good
• hell yeah i graduated
• North Carolina Ice Storm of 2002
• Fall in Chapel Hill