Kun's Blog

What is Funny for me in Graduate School

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:12:51 -0500

As an international student from China, I really like the diversity here. In my eyes, we have a fantastic community - IST: our people have different cultures and backgrounds. During the past one year, this diversified climate always stimulates my desire to learn , to communicate and to share with others.

Culture is the essence of a nationality. In culture, there are spirits, beliefs and legends. I took culture as my interest since I was a kid and I always regard learning different cultures as one of my most enjoyable activities. I would like to know what makes a nationality unique and what they believe in. From the image below, we can observe the different aspects regarding to a culture. Among those I prefer the aspects of art, street life and architecture.

Graduate school provides me a great environment to know people from other countries. Implicitly, this also gives me good opportunities to learn different cultures. I have made friends from Thailand, Korea, America, and Europe. When chatting with them, we made many funny moments, result from the differences among cultures. For example, American student always cannot understand why college students in China rarely go to bars. Actually, they are very surprised when hearing this. Then, I need to explain to them the reasons, related to Chinese policies and Chinese education. Through this explanation, both of us can get a better understanding about not only the cultures, but also the people and the countries. I like this free and interactive communication style and it really brought me a lot of happiness.

Interesting Pics

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:47:40 -0500

Here are some pictures I would like to share with you.

1

2

Hope u like them. ^_^

How to flourish in graduate school

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:32:35 -0500

Everyone has his/her own way to organize the graduate study and life. As for me, graduate life gives me a brand new experience. Before and after I joined graduate school, I changed a lot. I changed from a child to an adult, I changed from a student to a scholar, and above all, I changed from a knowledge-receiver to a continuous thinker. Graduate study gives me so many hints for my own life and it really stimulates my enthusiasm for exploring, thinking and communicating. To summarize, this period really helps me to know who I am, what I want to do, and which way I should go.

This is my way to lead my graduate life.
1) Hard working. I want to say that no matter which phase you are at, the basic thing for graduate students is doing good jobs. We need to work hard and show that we are capable enough to do thing well.
2) Making friends. There is a saying in China: you can rely on your family when you are near them, but when you far from them, the only thing you can rely on is your dear friends. This is very true. Friends is the most important part of my life and I always treat them as my families.
They do always support me when I need help and they never made me feel lonely.
3) Communication. As for me, I think communication is an integral skills for one to head to success. Through chatting with others, I found I can learn so much from them, communication skills, the experiences and most of all, the opportunities. It is also a saying in China: among three persons, at lease one can be your teacher.
4) Writing. To be honest, I do not like writing, but recently I forced me to write regularly. I have realized the importance of it. In my viewpoint, if one cannot write, it means that he has lost the entrance to impress and record himself.
5) Finally, I like Good food, Good sleep, and Good play. I hope Enjoy myself and Look for fun. But before that, I always checked if I have done all the jobs that I should do.

A dramatic museum

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:30:32 -0500

This is a picture of a museum located in Japan, do you like it?

This museum, named "Ghibli Museum, Mitaka" is designed by a famous animation director: Hayao Miyazaki. He left some notes on how he planned and designed this museum and I think we can learn something from it. How to design your PHD? That is, to make your PHD as prominient as this, please have a distinctive concept and make a clear plan.

Here is the notes he shared with others.

This is the Kind of Museum I Want to Make!

A museum that is interesting and which relaxes the soul
A museum where much can be discovered
A museum based on a clear and consistent philosophy
A museum where those seeking enjoyment can enjoy, those seeking to ponder can ponder, and those seeking to feel can feel
A museum that makes you feel more enriched when you leave than when you entered!

To make such a museum, the building must be...
Put together as if it were a film
Not arrogant, magnificent, flamboyant, or suffocating
Quality space where people can feel at home, especially when it's not crowded
A building that has a warm feel and touch
A building where the breeze and sunlight can freely flow through

The museum must be run in such a way so that...
Small children are treated as if they were grown-ups
The handicapped are accommodated as much as possible
The staff can be confident and proud of their work
Visitors are not controlled with predetermined courses and fixed directions
It is suffused with ideas and new challenges so that the exhibits do not get dusty or old, and that investments are made to realize that goal

The displays will be...
Not only for the benefit of people who are already fans of Studio Ghibli
Not a procession of artwork from past Ghibli films as if it were "a museum of the past"
A place where visitors can enjoy by just looking, can understand the artists' spirits, and can gain new insights into animation
Original works and pictures will be made to be exhibited at the museum
A project room and an exhibit room will be made, showing movement and life (Original short films will be produced to released in the museum!)
Ghibli's past films will be probed for understanding at a deeper level

The cafe will be...
An important place for relaxation and enjoyment
A place that doesn't underestimate the difficulties of running a museum cafe
A good cafe with a style all its own where running a cafe is taken seriously and done right

The museum shop will be...
Well-prepared and well-presented for the sake of the visitors and running the museum
Not a bargain shop that attaches importance only to the amount of sales
A shop that continues to strive to be a better shop
Where original items made only for the museum are found

The museum's relation to the park is...
Not just about caring for the plants and surrounding greenery but also planning for how things can improve ten years into the future
Seeking a way of being and running the museum so that the surrounding park will become even lusher and better, which will in turn make the museum better as well!

This is the kind of museum I don't want to make!
A pretentious museum
An arrogant museum
A museum that treats its contents as if they were more important than people
A museum that displays uninteresting works as if they were significant
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Logo PK

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:17:13 -0500

Logo PK -- How to design a logo

It is not only simple PKs, but also the reasons why some wins.

How to design?

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:59:15 -0500

I think it is better to put this entry before the "Design 1" ^_^

Here is a famous diagram to show three aspects related to a good design. When we are turning our head to human as IST, we still should not ignore the significances of market and technology. We should always keep in mind if our works could meet the market's requirements and if the technology is available to support the working process? By the way, LoL.... <-- This "LOL" is a good design.... :)

"A great design could be art; but art can never be designed which is rooted in you." -- Kun

Go shopping with your fish :)

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:54:24 -0500

If you are a fish lover, have you thought to go shopping with your friends?

Here it is !!
It is design by: Michal Shabtiali

Interested Researchers

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:18:27 -0500

Here I want to introduce two researchers who I am interested in, one is MacEarchearn and another is Zipf.

Alan MacEachearn is one of the top scientists of geography, a professor in Geography Department in Penn State. Through his academic life till now, he made much contributions to GIS community, both from theoretical/methodological and technical perspective. As for me, his work helps me to gain a big picture about GIS -- how does it emerge, how does it progress along time and what is the challenging now. Besides, I am also impressed by his attitude to science. He is such a serious guy and spent most time in a day doing research. Though I may not think that is not a good way for living, but that makes me honor him. In my life, I always choose someone to be my "idol" for me to catch up with. And now, he is one of them.

Compared to Alan, Zipf's work is more specified, focusing on mobile GIS. I interested in him because what he is doing is very similar to what I want to do. He aims to integrate context-awareness, personalization and GI service into a mobile GIS system, thus to provide users adaptive information and interface based on the real-time situation.

About my academic communities

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:27:24 -0500

Till now, I have participated in two academic communities: one is GeoVista center and another is CSCL Lab.

GeoVISTA is a professional GIS communities comprising of professors and students from both GEOG and IST. It is one of the most prominent GIS communities all of the world, aiming to solving a wide range of GIS related problems, including technical ones and psychological ones. From this community, I can obtain and update my knowledge of my research area, and it provides a great climate for making research progress.

I was also involved in CSCL Lab in our department. It is a psychological centered community and tries to analysis user-computer interaction problems from a psychology background. From this community, I gained another kind of knowledge -- psychology, and began to use theories from this perspective to support my research.

In current days when multi-disciplinary research areas emerge from anywhere, communities following one certain direction could no longer satisfied the multi-disciplinary exportation. As my observation, most of our classmates around me are taking participate in communities from several areas. I think this is especially important for us who are from IST, which is inheretly multi-natually structrued.

Bo Yu

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:59:21 -0500

Bo is a 3th year graduate student in my lab. We have the same advisor - Guoray Cai, and his research does also focus on GIS. In my view, he is a real technical guy who experts in lots of computer skills. In the first year of my PHD study, he helps me a lot, letting me know what I should know about GIS, and what should I do as a phd student.

In this year, August, he passed his comprehensive exam, with the topic concerning with adaptive GIS. He aims to implement a GIS system adopting adaptive theory, in order to make the system being aware of ongoing dialogues among people and futhermore, participate in dicision-making process.

Till now, he has publish several good papers, including:
1. A Query-Aware Document Ranking Method for Geographic Information Retrieval, GIR Workshop 2007', CIKM, Lisbon, Portugal
2. Research on Spatial Data Access Middleware. Computer Engineering and Applications, April 2005, 178-181.
3. Modeling Fuzzy Spatial Objects Using Design Patterns. Presented at International Symposium on Spatial Data Quality 2004, Vienna, Austria

About our similarity, I think we are both technical guy, both from China. But compared with him, I lack some working and research experience.

Academic Communities

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:48:03 -0500

Why academic communities
Before talking about academic communities, I would like to illustrate the significance of them: Why do we need academic communities? In my point of view, I think academic communities support research progress from two perspectives: 1) As knowledge is expanded and multi-disciplinary research is explored, researchers from different background need to be working together. At this sense, the community is the right thing that connects these different knowledge links. 2) Community can provide a convenient climate to facilitate the intelligence-brainstorming for a specific research topic or area. 3) A community as a basic unit for science, is a good structure to organize the research outcome and facilitates others' search and retrievel.
By the way, I cannot say that all of the researchers need research communities, but I think most of them do.
Please see Figure 1, which I think does make some sense.

Figure 1 Communication Composition & Issues

How to choose academic communities
I think most of graduate students join academic communities by following their advisors. Indeed, this is good because: 1) advisors know better about their students' research areas and what they need. 2) advisors are experienced researchers thus have a better understanding about different research communities, which is good or bad.
Then, how to select academic communities by myself? Actually, I would like to do it by the objectives -- what I am doing and looking for, because to the common sense, communities do always have different research topics.

My academic communities
GeoVISTA is a professional GIS communities comprising of professors and students from both GEOG and IST. It is one of the most prominent GIS communities all of the world, aiming to solving a wide range of GIS related problems, including technical ones and psychological ones. From this community, I can obtain and update my knowledge of my research area, and it provides a great climate for making research progress.
I was also involved in CSCL Lab in our department. It is a psychological centered community and tries to analysis user-computer interaction problems from a psychology background. From this community, I gained another kind of knowledge -- psychology, and began to use theories from this perspective to support my research.
So far, I did not join so many communities. But I think, as for PHD students, except for those research-related communities, they also should join some other communities driven by their interests, such as music communities. ^_^

Acdemic Life of My Advisor

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:04:41 -0500

In decades, research of GIS has drawn more and more attention and made rapid progress. As a member of this community, my adviser has published lots of papers to the top journals of this area. Such jounals include GeoInformatics, International Journal of GIS, Transaction in GIS, Environment and Planning B and so on. As GIS is a multi-disciplinary research area, his research does also cover a broad research scope including geography, hci and cartography (Figure 1). Among all of his works, DAVA_G system can be his most important accompliments. This system escapes the old way in which people communicate with map, instead, it provides a multi-model means (verbal, gestures) for real-time communications.

Figure 1 GIS Related Issues

For research, it is important to meet others and exchange ideas. This is especially important in the area of GIS, as research of GIS needs different expertises working together. Till now, there have been several conferences founded for GIS, which can be checked from http://gislounge.com/events/. Among those conferences, what my advisor attended include Virtual Geographic Environment; ACM workshop on Geographical Information Retrieval; Intelligent User Interface, etc..

Then, except for the research, my advisor also has a rich teaching experiences. In the past years, he taught technical classes for undergraduate students, including database and visual analytic.

About My Advisor

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:16:25 -0500

My advisor -- Cai, Guoray, is from China. He received a Bachelor and Master in Electrical Engineering from Tianjin University, China; a Master in Geography from West Virginia University in 1993; and a Ph.D in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999. Right now, he is an associate professor of College of Information Science and Technology in Penn State University.

Cai's research covers a broad area, including geographical information systems, geocollaboration, human-computer interaction, information retrieval, and spoken-dialogue systems. His recent work involves developing visually-mediated multimodal interactions techniques for enabling geocollaborative crisis management, and annotation technologies for geocollabroation.

In my view point, except for specific academic knowledge, what I can benifit from my advisor is the attitude towards research. He is always full of passion for his research and when he was doing his work, he was always 100% concentrated and careful. He likes talking with us about his previous research experience and hope we can treat research as an challenging and interesting life.

Besides research, Dr. Cai also has a very happy family. His wife is also a faculty in Penn State, and his daughter and son are both in junior school.

I-School In My Eyes

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:03:14 -0500

Definition

About the definition of I-School, in my view of point, I think I-School is about the use of information by human through technologies.

Technology, people, information, these three components construct the core of I-school. Are these component evenly balanced? I do not know. Where should I start my research, T, P or I? I also do not know. In fact, I-School requires ourselves to decide our own research, where to start and where to focus.

Scope & Branches

As I-School involves different perspectives from ITP. It covers broad research areas, such as behavioral science, psychology, computer science, social science and others. It is expected to mix these disciplines together in order to obtain a comprehensive viewpoint of the problems. For example, when designing a platform for geocollaboration, we need to think about not only what functions collaborators need, but also need to care about how people user the environment, how information should be provided and what technologies are available for the development.

Right now, I-School has been a new research paradigm all of the world. As shown below, many countries have joined into this community especially developed countries.

Advantages & Disadvantages

The advantages of I-School:

1) Compared with other schools, I-School is more flexible.

2) I-School may equip you with a much broader perspective to view the world.

3) As a new emerged school, I-School has huge potential to develop.

The disadvantages of I-School:

1) As I-School covers so much, it lacks internal structures. I still think about if I-School needs this.

Suggestions:

Evaluate yourself first then decide whether join or not.

I & I-School

Before I came here, I know nothing about I-School; I only knew this is not computer science but has some relationship with IT. Besides, I knew I can meet a lot of different people here and absorb different kinds of knowledge. Currently, I have gained a good understanding of it, and think this research is meaningful.

About My Life

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:15:33 -0500

hmmmmm...... My life is pretty easy.

My attitude to life :

1) I do not like well-off and smooth life.
2) Life is full of interesting.

3) Life is way of thinking.

4) Give yourself more time.
5) Finally, FOOD makes my life better.