I’m a rockstar. This quarter I only had one class, but the whole class was basically one long group project with lots of deliverables. The idea was to create a product that doesn’t exist in the market yet today, that is a significant improvement over what is available now, specifically in terms of user experience and ease of use. It is basically a course on usability, so whatever we designed had to be focused on the user.

In any case, our final three deliverables were: a prototype; a poster, and a binder. The binder just had copies of everything we had done through the quarter in it, and looked good. Easy. The poster was for the trade show where we showcased our product and prototype. I designed it and put it all together. Some of the text was written by my group members, but all of it was edited to work better on the poster by myself.  The prototype could have been as simple as a series of printed pictures that gave an idea of what the product did and how it worked. My group’s prototype (and by my group, I mean mine, since I didn’t 90% of the work) was an almost fully functional mock interface built in Flash. Well above and beyond what was required. You can check it out at http://www.jbsil.com/class/426/BlendProto.html if you want.

The Faux Trade Show was instead of our final exam. All three sections of the class from this quarter met at the same time and set up displays for their poster and prototype. Everyone got a piece of paper where they could grade each of the groups in three subjects, from A-F: Poster, Prototype and “I want this to be true.” Also, everyone was able to grade each of their group members in a peer evaluation. Here are my grades and the teachers comments for the entire quarter (only Prototype and Poster comments included):

Heuristic Evaluation: 100%

Design Document: 100%

Usability Tests: 100%

Prototype: 100%
Comment: “fabulous. it is as close (closer) to a real working prototype as any in the show (with the possible exception of mogo, but yours is waaaaaay more complex). looks, functionality, usability: all top notch. little wonder that it took FIRST PLACE in the assessment of project category at the faux trade fair (see graph that i sent you (or will soon)).”

Poster: 100%
Comment: “excellent. classy and professional feeling. good mix of image and text; viewers can get a strong sense of what the device does … and how it does it. little wonder that it took FIRST PLACE in the assessment of poster category at the faux trade fair.

oh, by the way, you also took FIRST PLACE in the “i want this to be true” category. so you took gold in all categories. not bad considering one class was grad students and one was taught by a professor who’s been teaching this for 5+ years. congratulations! don’t forget me when you’re rich and famous! ”

Peer Evaluation: 100%

Cumulative grade for the class: 100/100

For those playing the home game, this was also the last class required for my degree. Oh, and don’t forget my full-course-load 4.0 from last quarter. Talk about a big finish…

I’ve always felt that I will eventually get a Ph.D. in something, whether it’s Information Technology or Computer Science, or something similar, I’m obviously not sure yet. Logically, it seems to make more sense to get a Masters degree first, and then try to apply some of that work towards a Ph.D. There are straight to Ph.D. programs out there that say not to get a M.S. first, but that’s like 7 years of my life I’m not quite ready to sign over right now.

So, I’d much rather get an M.S. now, and worry about the Ph.D. later. I went in to see my adviser this morning, to see what RIT offers by way of Masters programs. As it turns out, the generic M.S. in IT program has fairly flexible requirements. It requires one writing course, to help you write your thesis or capstone project proposal, one elective, and 9 concentration courses. Those 9 can be broken up into 3 courses per 3 concentrations, or 5 and 4. Considering that I already know exactly what I want, I thought it would make sense for me to go for the 5 course web concentration, and a 4 course gaming/design concentration.

There are only 2 courses in the web concentration that I have not already taken (9 that I have taken). There are also only 2 courses in the gaming/design concentration that I have not already taken (2 that I have taken). Apparently, since I took the courses and applied them to my B.S., I’m not allowed to reapply them to my M.S. Therefore, there are really only 4 courses left at RIT that would benefit me, and only 1 of them would actually interest me. In the words of the Volkswagen lady, “You got an F.”

I’m going to look around at other programs at other schools, obviously, but it just sucks that I basically have already taken enough courses to fulfill the requirements for an M.S., but I can’t get the degree. Also, since RIT is one of the leading IT programs in the nation, the fact that they have nothing left to teach me in the specification that I want to go into, is not a good sign for continuing my education

New Zolacat pics!
Check em out: http://www.jbsil.com/zola

Caitlin made a mix for me for Valentine’s Day. I’ve found/created the videos for the songs on YouTube, so you can all listen to it too.
Listen Now!

You may notice four of the videos are uploaded by JBSil. I wonder if that’s a coincidence. Hmmmm

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One, two, three
Counting out the signs we see
The tall buildings
Fading in the distance
Only dots on a map
Four, five, six
The two of us a perfect fit
You’re all mine, all mine

[x3]
Like an apple on a tree
Hiding out behind the leaves
I was difficult to reach
But you picked me
Like a shell upon a beach
Just another pretty piece
I was difficult to see
But you picked me
Yeah you picked me

<3

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