03 Apr 2021
WMSCI 2021 2021 is
an international forum for scientists and engineers, researchers and
consultants, theoreticians and practitioners. The purpose of the conference
is to promote discussions and interactions between researchers and
practitioners focused on disciplinary, interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary issues, ideas, concepts, theories, methodologies and
applications. The conference is particularly interested in fostering the
exchange of concepts, prototypes, research ideas, and other results which
could contribute to the academic arena and also benefit business, and the
industrial community.
Sal Petrilli and
I submitted a paper titled Re-Envisioning a Computer Science Curriculum,
which is based on our experiences redesigning a CS curriculum.
After a multi-stage peer review, we are happy to learn that the paper will
be published in the conference proceedings. Once it is finalized and
accessible, I’ll post a public link here.
19 Mar 2021
The article that Jai Punjwani and I authored for Ledger Journal is now live.
It is accessible as an open access publication at the journal
website.
10 Mar 2021
Ledger Journal was launched in 2015
to address the growing need for a traditional academic journal dedicated to
cryptocurrency research.
I am pleased to write that the journal accepted a paper that Jai Punjwani
and I co-authored as a result of his Honor’s Thesis research. The title of
the paper is Enhancing Electronic Voting With A Dual-Blockchain
Architecture, which fairly accurately describes its content.
The article will be included in an upcoming issue of the journal. Once it is
published, I’ll announce it here.
21 Feb 2021
IEEE ISEC’21 is a conference where
academic discuss cutting-edge research and experiences with integrated
approaches to the study of science, math, and technology through experiences
and activities based in engineering and other design disciplines.
Katherine Herbert,
Thomas J. Marlowe,
Robert M. Siegfried, Jeanette
Wilmanski and I collaborated on drafting a work-in-progress paper in which
we explore the effectiveness of establishing computing competencies in
interdisciplinary STEM education.
The paper will be published in the conference proceedings and will be
presented at the 2021 Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC). Once it
is finalized and accessible, I’ll post a public link here.
14 Dec 2020
Several times per year, I start feeling very overwhelmed by all the work
that must be done. At the same time, I start feeling sad about the work that
could get done, but isn’t.
I recently came to the conclusion that one of the reasons for that was that
I let my professional life be dictated by my email Inbox. This came as
somewhat of a surprise, since I have spent quite a lot of effort to
automatically filter much of the stuff that isn’t time-sentitive into
folders. Years ago, I have also turned off all email notifications, thinking
that it would help not getting overwhelmed.
Obviously, that wasn’t enough.
So, on top of all of that, I have adopted a new approach that seems to be
working well for me. It is based on the simple premise that Email is not a
To Do manager.
Sure; many To Do items will come in via email. Explicitly recognizing them
as To Do-items, and taking the effort to manage them separately from email
is indeed a bit more work in the short term. However, that short-term
effort pays back in long-term piece of mind.
The Inbox-0 movement is not new, and I did not invent it. I have tried many
times to adopt it, since I have always like the idea. This is the first time
that I feel that I might have found a method that is based on its ideas, but
omits some of its shortcomings.
For the last month, I have used the following principles:
-
Reading email and properly responding to it is a task in its own right.
Do not confuse it for overhead, and make sure to only open your Inbox when
you can spend time on processing it properly.
-
Be generous with delete. Much of the email we get is unnecessary and does
not warrant your (scarce/valuable) intellectual cyles.
-
Email is not a To Do-manager. A To Do-manager is a To Do-manager.
-
If you choose not to delete an email, your options are:
-
Respond immediately
-
Archive (away from Inbox) for later reference
-
Create a To Do-list item to address it
-
Do not stop this cycle until your Inbox is empty.
In tandem with this switch, I also turned off Google’s conversation
view.
I wish I could go back to “old school” email threading, but I understand
that the Gmail approach is different and doesn’t allow for that. However,
turning the feature off allows me to consider each email that makes it to my
Inbox separately.
I chose to use the Things To
Do-manager. It has a number of features I was looking for, even though it
is not the cheapest one out there. Specifically, I looked for:
-
Product must be actively maintained and supported
-
Non-distracting UI
-
Ability to assign deadlines, but not require them
-
Ability to add notes
-
Ability to add tag items
-
Cloud sync across devices
-
Ability to define recurring To Do-items
-
Ability to turn reminders off
-
Not “just” a web app
Things provided all of these. I wish there were a Windows and/or a Web App
of the manager as well, but since my primary productivity infrastructure
consists of a Macbook and an iPhone, this wasn’t a deal breaker.