I just came across this blog post by Nicole Sullivan.

For those guys that complain about computer science scholarships that are tailored for women only.  For those of you who have said “who’s sexist now?” when I tell you about computer science girl camps we hold on campus, please read the blog post.  Here it is again.

Thank you, Nicole.

Don’t get me wrong — I love what I do and I can’t think of another career that I would be happier with.  Even if I could go back in time and pick again, I’d still make the same choices.  But boy, is it a tough one.

A few quotes by an assistant engineering professor at the Dalhousie University, taken from the article:

“That’s probably one of the biggest problems we have in engineering. It’s catch-22: There aren’t a lot of women in engineering and to attract more women to engineering, we need more women in engineering,” she says. “I think any opportunity we have to put that thought in girls’ heads is a good thing.” — Corinne MacDonald

Female role models, even plastic ones, help young women visualize themselves as engineers, she says. — Corinne MacDonald

Both of the ladies interviewed in this article pointed out that they never had “female engineering role models” to look up to.  Unfortunately, I think this is still the case.  But considering how Barbie’s 125th career is now a computer engineer, I think this is a good start!  And it’s good to know that more and more people are becoming aware of all the opportunities in the computer/IT industry, and how they aren’t just for men.

But yeah, just a thought I wanted to share. :)

As some of you may know, I participated in Google Summer of Code 2008.  And the project I worked on is called Cytoscape.  So if any of you are interested in this project, here are a few links:

Google Summer of Code 2010 — GenMAPP, Cytoscape, WikiPathways & Reactome

• Organization Profile
• Cytoscape-Discuss Google Group
• Project Ideas

For those of you who are interested in working on the project idea I worked on two years ago, it’s this one:

IDEA 16: Automatic (Smart) Node and Edge Label Layout

Cytoscape currently has a large number of layout algorithms that place nodes according to various criteria. However, a common problem with all of these layout algorithms is that node and edge labels are not accounted for in the aesthetic criteria of the algorithm. This means that labels frequently end up in awkward locations which are hard to read, overlap or obscure other labels, and otherwise don’t look quite right. As a consequence, users are frequently forced to adjust the position of labels s, which is a time consuming and tedious process. To fix this, we propose developing a layout algorithm for labels. Perhaps this algorithm could be integrated with a normal layout algorithm, or perhaps it could be a subsequent step that lays the labels out in an intelligent fashion once the nodes have been placed. Some work has been done on this, but more layouts are needed.

Language and Skills: Java, graph layout algorithms

Idea by: Mike Smoot

Potential Mentors: Ruth Isserlin, Gary Bader

My blog posts that are related to this project can be found here.

MarkUs: Dashboard Prototype

Feedback:

• Karen: Instructors often like to know the assignment average as a fraction in addition to the percentage.
  New Format: “Assignment Average: 70/100 (70%)” — for example

Please visit our MarkUs project blog here if you have any questions/comments/concerns, and leave a comment!

After finishing the prototypes for the grader assignment view, I moved on to re-designing the group formation tab.  Here are some prototypes:

Group Formation: Adding a student to a group

Group Formation: Removing a student from an existing group

Group Formation: Filtering -- Only show valid group formations

Group Formation: Filtering -- Only show invalid group formations

They can also be found on the MarkUs project blog here.  These prototypes will be used in a simple usability session this week, and I will be reworking these prototypes according to the usability feedback we get from the session.  More updates to come! :D

Professor Karen Reid and I just went through this design plan, and it is now posted on the MarkUs project blog.  Please check it out here.

After a bit of poking around, I found a thread in the Wordpress forum that had a fix to the problem.  I’m not sure why my footer was missing the following line, but here’s the fix:

In footer.php, make sure you have this line:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

Before these lines:

</body>
</html>

Hope this helps!

Leigh Honeywell will be speaking at the event.  She’s had a ton of experience in IT security and is an amazing (and inspiring) speaker — I’ve attended her presentations a few times, and she’s got lots of experience and knowledge to share (as well as interesting stories).  Leigh is the co-founder and director of HackLab.TO, attended the University of Toronto, and is a mentor for the Google Summer of Code program.  So she’s definitely somebody you’d want to meet!

As for me, I’m definitely going to go if work and school permits.

And yes, this is a ladies night out — sorry gents!

I know it’s only 5 days into 2010, but I’ve got good news already!  This term, I’ll be working on MarkUs, an open source online grading tool, under the supervision of Professor Karen Reid.  Huge thanks also goes to Professor Greg Wilson for giving me this opportunity to be part of the 49X project team this term!

What is MarkUs?

Here’s a brief overview of what the project is about:

MarkUs (pronounced “mark us”) is an open-source tool which recreates the ease and flexibility of grading assignments with pen on paper, within a web application. It also allows students and instructors to form groups, and collaborate on assignments. It’s predecessor OLM (Online Marking) was originally written in Python on top of the TurboGears framework.

The MarkUs project is a re-implementation of the Online Marking system using Ruby on Rails. The goal of this project is to take what we learned from OLM and our forays into Web-CAT, and build a web-based marking tool that includes an early submission and testing system in support of test driven development.

For more information, please check out the project site here.

What will I be doing?

I’ll be primarily working on the usability and user interface design of MarkUs.  In terms of which components and/or areas of focus…etc., these still need to be determined.  More details still to come!

Meeting the team

We’ll be having a 3-day code sprint on campus from January 15th to January 17th.  It’s going to be our chance to meet everybody else that will be working on the project, and I’m sure it’s going to be lots of fun!  I’m really looking forward to meeting everybody on the team!  :)

That’s all for now — Hope everybody had a warm and fun-filled winter holiday!  Happy New Year! :)