In preparation for a gnarly, unpleasant midterm, I created <a href="http://www.hawkes-haven.com/ewu/EastAsianHistory/index.html">THESE NOTES</a> to help me study.
<br>
I wrote them down in my handy-dandy Jornada 720 handheld PC. When printed out, they equal 77 pages of notes!!!
<br>
This is obscene. I don't know how anyone could sort through them when written by hand. With it being digital though, it was a piece of cake, I just hit CTRL-F to find a term to match the notes that match that term, and voila! Copy and paste what's needed to study.
Ah the joys of decent electronic tools!

One of the requirements for East Asian history class is a report on current events in East asia. I had trouble only picking one topic and even then...

The problem became the parameters of the report as set by the instructor.
<br>
it had to be newspaper articles published between December 1st, 2003 and March 1st, 2004.
<br>
I wanted to do it initially on China's policy and piracy of software, and Microsoft's efforts to stop china from abandoning all MS products asmuch of the world is now doing. But alas, most of the userful articles were date late november, and the teacher wouldn't budge on that. So my fallback was on the persecution of the Falun Gong by China. Pretty fair assortment of recent data there, but I was only allowed to use 3 sources, and it couldn't be over 3 pages at double spaced 12 point new Courier. So I couldn't put all the useful research and information I found.
<br>
Anyway, if you're interested in the report:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.hawkes-haven.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=3"> here's a link to download the Star Office Writer .sxw version.
 or choose to download the Microslut Offlice Worm .doc version there as well.</a> ;-P </li>
</ul>

Tyler Byers was a great guest, and we had a great time doing the show. He had lots of great information and interesting stories related to the growth and challenges of his life.
If you missed the live broadcast, you can download the archived version from www.thesyntheticzenshow.com
.
Just click the Downloads link on the left, and then click the "Archived Shows" link.

Unfortunately, it was my first interview, and I did a terrible job on my end from a technical perspective. The microphone volume varied wildly, sometimes too soft other times too loud, but you can hear over 95% of what Tyler had to say. I'm very sorry I did such a poor job with that, and other terrible broadcasting no-no's such as too many aaaahhhs, and ummms, etc. Hopefully with practice I'll get better at that aspect of broadcasting, I usually do fine with my solo shows, this was a new aspect I've not yet developed. But don't let that disuade you from catching the show, Tyler was great!

Well it's "Dead Week" (as in Finals Week) at the University.
So even less time than before.
I have a Recreation Management report due Monday.
Athletic activity report due, Martial Arts report due, have to have the Japanese related to the Karate class memorized (as well as the form, applications, Ran Dori, etc.), final project for Art in Rec. And I've completely blown my Intercultural Communications class. :-(
One point of interest coming up is on June 13th, I have to sing for the Jury Review.
Fortunately this time I have a wonderful accompanist, Carol Miyamoto. I am very fortunate she agreed to work with me this quarter, and I hope she'll continue to do so in the future.
The songs this quarter I have to be prepared to sing are:

I'm currently deeply immersed in school.
I have two classes in a compressed quarter.
The classes are:

Well, Summer is now officially over.
School has begun for the kids (and myself and my wife).
I'm taking 18 credits this quarter.
Some of the classes include:

I have arranged a special interview for this upcoming show with Tyler Byers.
This inspiring young man has just finished his degree in Engineering/Mathematics, works for IBM as a software developer/tester, has just accepted a job with the US Government, has set (and continues to hold) records in various land races, started skiiing at 4 years old, playing basketball at 8, and racing at 9. Been in the Bloosmday races every year for the past 15 years, qualified in the 2003 World championships, and was in the prelims for the 2004 Athens, Greece, Para-Olympics.
And oh yeah, he did all of this with a disability that has had him in a wheelchair since he was born.
This fellow is an inspiration to everyone, whether struggling to overcome the challenges presented by a disability, or anyone struggling through the challenges of life. Don't miss this interview with Tyler Byers.
Wednesday 4 am - 6 am UTC (Tuesday 9 pm to 11 pm Pacific).
Questions will be taken via IM and chat. Live cam will be streaming via Jmeeting at www.jmeeting.com in the NEKKIDRADIO room.
See you there!
-Dr Z & The Synthetic Zen Show
www.thesyntheticzenshow.com

One of the classes for my Recreational Therapy degree I'm taking is "Art in Recreation". Basically crafts. Fun class. First assignment (in time for Easter), was to take a 12 egg carton, and convert it into something creative and still hold 12 objects/eggs. So I made it into a ski lift!


Next we had to create plaster face masks. I'm posting the pics of others so that I can email those folks that asked for this pics, the link to download.
Here's my face covered in plaster, I decided to be different and do it with my mouth open, others did with eyes open, or cast their hands, etc.:

And here's the end result:


Here's pics of some of the others in the class and what they did:
We're then supposed to decorate/paint our egg cartons and masks. My decoration of my ski lift was pitiful. And I'm still working on my mask. I'll post those when ready. Cheers!

I had some tentative discussions last August (2005) about setting up a web-based form to collect demographics information from RPGers as a precursor to a more complete research project I'm developing related to the therapeutic aspects (and/or risks) of role playing gaming (paper and dice games such as D&D ( Dungeons & Dragon), not computers).

I received more than 100 replies just from the Merp.com email list alone from folks saying they'd participate.

Last week I spoke with the director of the Psychology department for the university,
as well as several other psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists, on my
long term plans, and surprisingly received very encouraging feedback, encouragement, and guidance.

Click the "READ MORE" link to this article to read the rest....

After MerpCon II is done, sometime in August this year, I will create a database, and web-based software demographics form. (Probably using Python / Zope / Plone)

I will notify all the role playing gaming lists and boards I can think of when it is online.

There will be a little bit of a verification process, so that there's at least a modicum of control on who fills in the form (so I don't have spammers and
others of more mischievous intent filling the form in randomly).

That will run for a few months. Then the data will be gathered and analyzed.

After that, I will be working with others to put together a grant proposal to fund a complete research project on the therapeutic aspects of role playing gaming.

I hope to submit that proposal sometime in the summer of 2007.

The process for grant acceptance can be lengthy, and I've never done it before. But hopefully within the year after that (August 2007), there will be sufficient funding, staffing, and facilities for the
actual research project to begin.

It will have several stages, and is intended to span 10 years with several different populations studied.

There will be a battery of tests (such as MMPI, WAIS/WISC, IQ, Bender, Mental health
status, etc.) at the initiation of each participant, and then the tests taken again at intervals (such as 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, and finally 10 years).

This will be a large and rather expensive enterprise, because it will be necessary to pay participants (in addition to staff) to keep the attrition levels to as much of a minimum as possible, and will need as large a sample
group as possible (at least 500 participants at a bare minimum, and preferably 1,000+ participants).

Each group will be in triple blind studies, with assignment to control groups and placebo groups as well.

These groups roughly include (but are not limited to):
A group ages 8-12 years old.
A group ages 13 to 20
A group ages 21+.

Some groups may be only people who have never role played before.
Other groups may be only those who have role played before/currently.
There is currently some debate as to the merits of having any groups that are a mix of non-gamers and gamers with previous experience.

I just thought I would share this with folks as a very early heads up. (I have already posted this article on the merp@merp.com mailing list and had positive feedback so far).

I welcome any feedback or suggestions. Keeping in mind, this is in the earliest stages and only a rough road map for the project so far.
You may email me at: hawke at merp dot com.

Cheers!
--
--Hawke

http://www.hawkes-haven.com
Recreational Therapist in training.
Music Therapist in training.
______________________________________
Role-player since 1979
Gamemaster since 1984
Specializing in Middle-earth settings
http://eagroup.merp.com
______________________________________

Don't miss the second annual MerpCon!
Spokane, WA, USA
http://www.merpcon.com
MerpCon 2006, July 28th, 29th, 30th
A convention dedicated to role-playing gaming in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth
RSVP today at http://rsvp.merp.com
merpcon@merp.com
______________________________________________________________________________
Musician and composer.
Internet Radio Broadcaster:
Catch my live Internet broadcasts every Saturday 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm Pacific
Time
Listen online at http://www.synthzen.com
FM Radio broadcaster:
Catch my live radio broadcasts every Sunday 8:00 pm to 10:00 Pacific Time
Listen online at http://www.kyrs.org or via radio in the Spokane, WA area:
FM 92.3 or 95.3 KYRS Thin Air Community Radio.
Martial Arts instructor in training at Kung Fu For Life
http://www.kungfuforlife.org
---
"Holistic medicine treats the person rather than the disease,
it's concern lies with the 'whole person' and with permitting
individuals to assume self-responsibility for their own health.
Whereas illness is the sole concern of 'traditional medicine',
holistic 'well medicine' deals with wellness and health promotion"
Computer Scientist (retired)
AS/CS, SANS GIAC GCIH, MCSE, MCP+I, SCSA, CNA, ASE, PT5SC,
PMI, IEEE, Java Developer, Linux Instructor (Redhat & Suse),
Systems Engineer, Software Developer, & Information Security Specialist.
Electronic Frontier Foundation activist (www.eff.org).
Open-source advocate/Open-thought advocate.
Retired Automotive Technician.
Retired Professional Commercial Photographer.
ICQ: 3218959
Yahoo: syntheticpotato
MSN: msverbsthenoun
AIM: hawkerobinson

In response to a document in the EWU (Eastern Washington University) Library 101 course, I was struck by the (obvious motivation) total bias and negative, condescending attitude of the document's introduction towards public information and free search engines.

I am pasting below my response to this document, though some of the context might be a little confusing since most outside of EWU will not have read the document that this is in reference to. However, most of the statements stand pretty clearly on their own.

Feel free to comment. Cheers! -Hawke

"

It may be true that the media industry is fighting to keep the current paradigm as much in the “quality information costs money” realm. But I STRONGLY disagree with the premise that it must always remain as the future evolution of our society in staying on that course. That is not to say that it might not stay stuck in such antiquated a mode of thought, but that the best benefit to society, and the human race's evolution, is a complete paradigm shift to completely open and free “quality information”. The technology already exists to discern and disseminate that information, if only those who control the data would allow it be released.

One of the better examples of this argument is the “Open Source” versus “Closed Source” debate to developing software, which I've commented on in other parts of the DB, so I'll not duplicate that here. The main point is that societies advance when “quality information” is freely given and shared, and societies are stunted, even devolving, when information is controlled by cost or elitists and those who want to keep the “unwashed masses” under control.

The section on searching with Google is also a practice in sophistry (plausible arguments based on misleading or facetious assumptions), in that it makes statements mostly from the pemise of treating Google as the only search engine, or means of finding (quality) data on the Internet or elsewhere for free.

In regards to Google. it seems that the writer of the document is not very familiar with Google's (and other search engine's) “Advanced Search” and other features. Using operands (AND, OR, etc.) and many other criteria offerings on different sites, one can control results by relevant categories. Google also uses far more complex algorithms for determining the top ranked results than just “popularity”. That is a common misconception that many make, and then those entities wonder why they are 40,000^th in rank order of relevancy. As for categorization, Google is certainly not the best engine for that, instead there are many other search engines out there (freely available, as well as for cost of coruse) that provide exactly that type of searching. Also, most of the Search Engine Directories (Yahoo Directory for example) have information categorized.

There are search engines for specific professional data, like medical search engines, technology search engines, hobby specific search engines, literary search engines, the list is endless. Yes, it does take some time in one's profession or field of interest to find and learn to most effectively use all the tools available, but that is a far different reality from the blanket statements the document makes about Google, and other free sources of information.

I personally implemented and have been responsible for huge corporate and government full-text search engines that cost millions of dollars for the licenses annually, that were not as efficient as many of the now free systems have become. In fact, many of those agencies/businesses have switched to the less expensive or free engines to more efficiently catalog and access their full text data. This not only decreases the costs to the public significantly, it also speeds up the process of data research, as well as improving the quality of relevant data. The document instead belittles the power of the public search engines  Google, Yahoo, and others by referring to them as "duct tape quality and swiss army knife".

I was (in my working days) very familiar with Lexis-Nexis and other similar private "for pay" systems, and their limitations and high costs. As long as people keep buying into the false assumption that “quality information costs”, the stranglehold of information access to the public will continue to be controlled by a minority, when it should be benefiting the majority.

I am also fully supportive of Google's requests to scan in and create full text repositories of everything ever published into electronic format. I am very incensed by the media and publishing industries rigid resistance to this very important evolution of our society (though I am not in the least surprised). In one of my former occuptations I used to be CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of an online digital publishing company (that was later acquired by Barnes & Noble), so I'm intimately familiar with the publishing industry's business model and why there are so resistant and threatened by this topic, thus the rather lengthy response (my apologies if it's an overly emotional response).

Just my (more than) two bits worth of opinion on that. ;-)

Are there classes offered by EWU in training people how to make the most out of using the many publicly available Internet search engines available? If not, it would be good to at least consider having a document included with many classes that at least provides a link to a decent in depth tutorial on fully utilizing the power of search engines.

"

W. A. Hawke Robinson (c) 2007-2008

Recreation Programming

RCLS-385-01 (2007-01-17)

Creative Program Ideas & Trends

Virtual Reality for the Disabled.

Goal

    Use Virtual Reality technologies to help those with various disabilities (except blindness) to engage, in a 'virtual' way in activities that would normally be very difficult, if not impossible for them in the 'real' world.

Technology is quickly catching up to make this a more and more viable option for recreation opportunities for people that would otherwise be extremely limited in their recreation choices. It could quite literally open up an entire 'new universe of possibilities'.

As the technology becomes less intrusive and more transparent, as well as the costs less prohibitive, it will likely become a very effective tool both in recreation and rehabilitation, and the probable trend is that it will become more and more mainstream and adopted by a larger segment of the population each year, including both those with disabilities and those without.

'The goal of a virtual reality (VR) system is to place the user in a synthetically generated three-dimensional environment, that he or she can directly manipulate. Ideally, users cease to think of themselves as interacting with a computer; they think of themselves as interacting with the environment it has created. Special input and output devices allow a user to interact with a virtual environment. These capture the user’s motion and gestures and produce the sensory feedback from the synthetic environment to the user’s vision, hearing and touch.'

'VR technology is of inherent interest to those with disabilities for four reasons (Lanier 1992, Middleton 1992):

• It allows them to perceive what they might not otherwise be able to since it can gather information in a sensory modality in which they are impaired and deliver it to one where they are not.

• It can render a world in a customised manner - this can help people to start learning activities in a simplified form before transferring their skills to the more complex real world. This approach has been used with children who have learning difficulties (Burns 1993).

• VR technology has to be adaptable to the individual senses and capabilities of the user if it is to provide a satisfactory illusion of reality. This means that well-designed VR devices are inherently adaptable to a wide range of individual needs.

• Users of networked virtual environments will have control over the way in which they project themselves to others. This means that those with special needs can interact with other users on an equal footing.

Virtual Reality techniques can also be used in rehabilitation technology through compens-ation of motor and sensory deficits, allowing a disabled person to explore and manipulate new environments. It therefore has the potential to be used as a training aid for skills such as spatial co-ordination and orientation.„ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1810779,00.html Mind power allows disabled to take a virtual stroll

Jo Revill, health editor
Sunday July 2, 2006
The Observer

'A new 'virtual helmet' which harnesses the power of brain waves is allowing severely disabled people to feel as if they can walk and move again, opening up the prospect of using the mind to help them control wheelchairs, computers and even false limbs.

Just by imagining their feet moving, patients using wheelchairs can again experience what it feels like to stroll down a high street, thanks to the work of British scientists who have found a new way of using the power of thought. They have devised the helmet which can link brain wave patterns to a virtual reality system, allowing the wearer to enter an illusory world of movement.'

'I found it exciting, very exciting,' he said afterwards. 'At first it all felt strange, having the cap on and being asked to think about moving my feet, but gradually I felt as if I was in that world. At one point I completely forgot it was a virtual world and that I was part of this experiment. It was really interesting, and much more enjoyable than I expected.''

http://www.tiresias.org/reports/hdti4.htm

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/kuhlen95virtual.html

http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/1999/proceedings/session0031.htm

Virtual reality boosts rehab efforts Life-sized, 3D video game allows patients to ‘be the joystick’

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16266245/

One of the courses in my slowly chiseling towards a degree in Therapeutic Recreation aka recreation therapy, is the Recreation Programming course. We created lots of great proejcts, activities, etc. I came up with an event for the Deaf community with 10 activities, which was voted by the class as the "best" event (separate posting at some point), and we did many items together.

Each year, the Spring class puts together ane event for the Spokane, WA neighborhood known as the Hillyard area. Apparently this is supposed to be "the poorest zipe code in the Washington state and the second 'hungriest' zip code in the USA".

So each year, EWU students put together a fun event for the children of this district, from donations from businesses and individuals solicited by the EWU students around the area. The list of sponsors is lengthy.

Each year there is a different theme. We brainstormed for a while, and I had thrown out there: Medieval (shocker!), (as well as Matrix, and Scifi and others), also Extreme Sports.

I jokingly said, "how about "Extreme Medieval Sports". People laughed, then we all paused and said wait a minute. and unanimously the class voted for that theme.

This included my jousting (on chairs) event, and others had other great themes. I will post some photos shortly for each. It was a blast of an event.

I have to run to an appointment, I'll be back in a few to continue this, as well as upload pics.

TTFN.

-Hawke

Ok. I'm back.

Below are various pics with captions...

Many food donations from various tores, restaurants and individuals: