This is a wee update for anyone who stumbles across this blog. Since I've decided to take this logging of my recovery journey seriously, I've set up my own site at http://roughrecovery.com. If you'd like to follow along, I'd be grateful if you checked it out now and again. :)
Sunday 13 December 2015
Saturday 12 December 2015
Making things hard for myself
Again, I'm not entirely sure where this post is gonna go. In future I'm sure I'll be writing more polished, well-drafted, insightful posts but for now this is just a vent for everything I've been experiencing through the day.
Actually today's been a similar day of feeling fine until the evening, where I've got jittery and unsettled. I've thought about it and realised I'm repeating the same mental pattern every day that screws things up for me. Here's what happens:
- Eat very little when I first get up, in case I end up eating lots more through the day.
- Graze a bit but limit it so I'm hungry for lunch.
- Don't eat much for lunch in case I end up eating a lot at dinner
- Graze but limit so that I'm hungry for said dinner
- Don't eat much for dinner so that I can snack more during the evening
- End up not eating until much later, then feeling guilty and anxious that I've not eaten enough and feel like I have to binge to fit enough in.
My whole eating pattern is based on my own fear that I'll be hungry later on, having eaten enough calories too early. This is stupid for two reasons:
1. Having been in and out of anorexia for a long time, I've become bloody good at NOT eating! That's the problem! This fear of being 'hungry later on' has no reasoning behind it. I've been forcing myself to not eat when I'm hungry for years. My real fear is having to force myself to eat when I don't want to.
2. So what if I DO feel hungry later on? I keep trying to budget my calories, but I KNOW that there's no such thing as 'too much' right now. The more I can eat, the better, there's no upper limit whereby I've suddenly gone too far. So why do I keep forcing myself to cram during the last few hours of the day?
Maybe this actually has been an insightful post! Of course, now I've got to act upon it. I've got to start eating more earlier on in the day. That way I should hopefully feel more content in the evening, knowing that there's no pressure to eat shitloads to actually move recovery forward. No harm in trying...
Actually today's been a similar day of feeling fine until the evening, where I've got jittery and unsettled. I've thought about it and realised I'm repeating the same mental pattern every day that screws things up for me. Here's what happens:
- Eat very little when I first get up, in case I end up eating lots more through the day.
- Graze a bit but limit it so I'm hungry for lunch.
- Don't eat much for lunch in case I end up eating a lot at dinner
- Graze but limit so that I'm hungry for said dinner
- Don't eat much for dinner so that I can snack more during the evening
- End up not eating until much later, then feeling guilty and anxious that I've not eaten enough and feel like I have to binge to fit enough in.
My whole eating pattern is based on my own fear that I'll be hungry later on, having eaten enough calories too early. This is stupid for two reasons:
1. Having been in and out of anorexia for a long time, I've become bloody good at NOT eating! That's the problem! This fear of being 'hungry later on' has no reasoning behind it. I've been forcing myself to not eat when I'm hungry for years. My real fear is having to force myself to eat when I don't want to.
2. So what if I DO feel hungry later on? I keep trying to budget my calories, but I KNOW that there's no such thing as 'too much' right now. The more I can eat, the better, there's no upper limit whereby I've suddenly gone too far. So why do I keep forcing myself to cram during the last few hours of the day?
Maybe this actually has been an insightful post! Of course, now I've got to act upon it. I've got to start eating more earlier on in the day. That way I should hopefully feel more content in the evening, knowing that there's no pressure to eat shitloads to actually move recovery forward. No harm in trying...
Friday 11 December 2015
Physical struggles
Again, I'm here with no immediate plan of what I want to talk about. I'd usually vomit all my thoughts and emotions out, read back over and think 'oh shit can't say that', filter, edit, think of more things, lather rinse repeat.
But then, why filter? This isn't about making my feelings and struggles fit for human consumption. I might tidy it up a bit but I'm beyond the point that I care about judgement. I want to be open and honest with you.
Actually I'd really like to focus on my current physical struggles. I pray I can look back on this next year and thank God that I'm not there any more.
I'm about 6st 12lbs just now. I'm about 5'9, making my BMI about 14.2. The technical term for this is "bloody fucking stupidly underweight". I'm not boasting about it, but nor am I ashamed. This is a mental disorder and I shouldn't be embarrassed.
I'm cold all the time, even when inside with the heating on. My skin is dry and cracked. My stomach can't cope with most things and there's a whole load of too-much-information that I won't go into, but basically makes eating like a normal person...difficult. :S
I'm tired, ridiculously weak, and can't concentrate for shit (writing this has taken me bloody ages).
Perhaps worst of all, my testosterone is totally shot. Maybe it's convenient never having to shave, but I'm sure I'd look sexy with a Fu Manchu tache going on. But then even if I did, I've got no libido to back it up.
I keep convincing myself that I'm not that sick. I can still function in day-to-day life, and thank God I've never had to be hospitalised. But the reality is that it's not much of a life. I'm an upwardly-mobile skeleton of health issues and I can't deal with it any more. Change needs to happen now.
Thursday 10 December 2015
Not all sunshine
So yesterday felt good and genuinely quite 'normal'. It's days like these that almost make me feel like there's nothing wrong and recovery is easy!
Today was more difficult. I didn't have lunch with mam, which meant I was left to my own devices again. I've enjoyed eating with other family so making and eating with no other external motivation to do so felt uncomfortable. Much as I'd like to rely on my own hunger I still need some structure in my day to hold me accountable.
My tea didn't sit too well either, and I got this 'hungry but not hungry' symptom of recovery where I needed to eat more, and had a craving for food, but still felt physically full and bloated.
I hate that and it got me really jittery. Talked it through with mam and dad though, which calmed me down. I managed some crackers and cheese, protein shake, and some misc. fridge pickings.
I understand that recovery is all about discomfort, moving away from the habits and compulsions that relieve me of anxiety but ultimately harm my health. Today was a friendly reminder that it's not all gonna be sunshine and rainbows.
Today was more difficult. I didn't have lunch with mam, which meant I was left to my own devices again. I've enjoyed eating with other family so making and eating with no other external motivation to do so felt uncomfortable. Much as I'd like to rely on my own hunger I still need some structure in my day to hold me accountable.
My tea didn't sit too well either, and I got this 'hungry but not hungry' symptom of recovery where I needed to eat more, and had a craving for food, but still felt physically full and bloated.
I hate that and it got me really jittery. Talked it through with mam and dad though, which calmed me down. I managed some crackers and cheese, protein shake, and some misc. fridge pickings.
I understand that recovery is all about discomfort, moving away from the habits and compulsions that relieve me of anxiety but ultimately harm my health. Today was a friendly reminder that it's not all gonna be sunshine and rainbows.
Wednesday 9 December 2015
Dear diary...
I said it'd be important to keep a log of my thoughts, so I suppose I don't have to make everything I write too insightful or descriptive. Just a wee diary entry at the end of the day seems like a good idea, too.
It's been a good day, definitely good. Made some broccoli soup to have for lunch with mam today! It was surprisingly tasty and definitely something I'd make again. Needed the grated cheese and bread, though. Katie had some too, and even dad ate the rest later on, so positive feedback all round.
Got back into cooking these past few days, and I'm enjoying it. Not just for my own benefit, but just like baking I love the satisfaction it brings others. I know that's a common theme among anorexics: the love of cooking for others, reading recipe books, watching Food Network (not just for saucy Nigella shots). Even so, I think it's a much healthier attitude than my absolute loathing of doing anything more than choosing what to have in the Sainsbury's lunch deal to take back to the library.
Had a Nando's later on, too. Standard quarter chicken, corn and fino slaw. Part of me was enthusiastic to try somewhere different, to challenge myself with an unfamiliar menu, but Nando's wasn't my decision and frankly I was happy to roll with it. Minimal anxiety provoking, I guess.
I've eaten a bit of chocolate just now: a square of white chocolate and a bite of Funsize Snickers. I fancied them, and I know that there's gonna be shitloads of that kind of stuff floating around in the festive period so I'd better get used to eating it and not feeling guilty now!
And do you know what? I don't feel guilty. I feel good, I feel positive, and I'm going to try to eat even better tomorrow.
It's been a good day, definitely good. Made some broccoli soup to have for lunch with mam today! It was surprisingly tasty and definitely something I'd make again. Needed the grated cheese and bread, though. Katie had some too, and even dad ate the rest later on, so positive feedback all round.
Got back into cooking these past few days, and I'm enjoying it. Not just for my own benefit, but just like baking I love the satisfaction it brings others. I know that's a common theme among anorexics: the love of cooking for others, reading recipe books, watching Food Network (not just for saucy Nigella shots). Even so, I think it's a much healthier attitude than my absolute loathing of doing anything more than choosing what to have in the Sainsbury's lunch deal to take back to the library.
Had a Nando's later on, too. Standard quarter chicken, corn and fino slaw. Part of me was enthusiastic to try somewhere different, to challenge myself with an unfamiliar menu, but Nando's wasn't my decision and frankly I was happy to roll with it. Minimal anxiety provoking, I guess.
I've eaten a bit of chocolate just now: a square of white chocolate and a bite of Funsize Snickers. I fancied them, and I know that there's gonna be shitloads of that kind of stuff floating around in the festive period so I'd better get used to eating it and not feeling guilty now!
And do you know what? I don't feel guilty. I feel good, I feel positive, and I'm going to try to eat even better tomorrow.
Tuesday 8 December 2015
Where I've been and where I'm going
Another blog update so soon! I feel like keeping a diary of my recovery thoughts will definitely help, although how long I can actually keep it up is anyone's guess. Writing for my own benefit is a strange concept. For one, I don't feel the need to make crap jokes everywhere, which will no doubt make it much easier on everyone else, too.
Big thanks to Ian for sharing my previous post. It means a lot to me that people have read it and hopefully understand my current and past situation.
I realise over the past couple of years, my physical and emotional well-being has fluctuated to the point that I've sacrificed friendships and relationships. There's been days where I've genuinely felt like the life and soul of the party, but always followed by periods where I've wanted to shut the world out completely.
I experienced a long period of this shortly after my supervisor went on sabbatical. With no direct accountability for not being around the PhD lab where I have a workspace, and in a serious bout of relapse, I cut myself off from the entire Human-Computer Interaction group for months. Instead, I'd go to the library where I wouldn't have to talk to anyone I knew, where I was just another face in the crowd of undergraduates stressing over their own completely different problems.
I couldn't bear the thought of the weekly group meetings, sitting in the circle and admit that I'd spent another week spinning my wheels, although somehow putting in countless hours. I especially couldn't bear the lunchtimes: everyone getting together and enjoying each other's company over food, a concept I just couldn't fathom in my state.
After the new year, and an overdrawn Christmas break at home, I felt able to come back and attempt to make a fresh start. Since then, progress has been faster, friendships have been made and others strengthened, but overhanging it all has been the ongoing struggle with anorexic tendencies, physical and emotional symptoms and the fears that I'm not cut out for any of this, that I'm not working hard enough, that I'm letting myself and others down.
Do I deserve to be doing a PhD? That's the Impostor Syndrome kicking in, Forever a question I'll probably be unable to answer. Do I deserve health? Yup, I'm sure of that one. That one I can take action on.
Big thanks to Ian for sharing my previous post. It means a lot to me that people have read it and hopefully understand my current and past situation.
I realise over the past couple of years, my physical and emotional well-being has fluctuated to the point that I've sacrificed friendships and relationships. There's been days where I've genuinely felt like the life and soul of the party, but always followed by periods where I've wanted to shut the world out completely.
I experienced a long period of this shortly after my supervisor went on sabbatical. With no direct accountability for not being around the PhD lab where I have a workspace, and in a serious bout of relapse, I cut myself off from the entire Human-Computer Interaction group for months. Instead, I'd go to the library where I wouldn't have to talk to anyone I knew, where I was just another face in the crowd of undergraduates stressing over their own completely different problems.
I couldn't bear the thought of the weekly group meetings, sitting in the circle and admit that I'd spent another week spinning my wheels, although somehow putting in countless hours. I especially couldn't bear the lunchtimes: everyone getting together and enjoying each other's company over food, a concept I just couldn't fathom in my state.
After the new year, and an overdrawn Christmas break at home, I felt able to come back and attempt to make a fresh start. Since then, progress has been faster, friendships have been made and others strengthened, but overhanging it all has been the ongoing struggle with anorexic tendencies, physical and emotional symptoms and the fears that I'm not cut out for any of this, that I'm not working hard enough, that I'm letting myself and others down.
Do I deserve to be doing a PhD? That's the Impostor Syndrome kicking in, Forever a question I'll probably be unable to answer. Do I deserve health? Yup, I'm sure of that one. That one I can take action on.
Sunday 6 December 2015
Taking time off
I don't write much. Any writing I do is purely for others (Facebook messages, Christmas cards, love letters to Nigella Lawson, the like). So I really didn't really expect to be writing this, and yet, it's been a long time coming.
I don't know who'll read it, if anyone, but it feels important to me to get it out of my head, and onto paper. Well, the monitor, whatever. For my own good as much as anyone else's, but with a small hope that someone else will identify.
I'm now on a temporary leave of absence from my PhD, currently scheduled for 3 months but extendible as needs be. It's not been an easy decision, and even now my mind's a bit all over the place, but the more I think about it the more certain it becomes.
Prior to the PhD I had recovered from a struggle with anorexia. Somehow, through the strength and support of everyone around me, I made a full recovery within a year and was back to a healthy weight and mindset.
Since beginning, these past couple of years have seen me in and out of relapsing almost constantly. After returning from a great conference in the US just over a month ago, my weight's plummeted again through the stress of travel, presenting my research to the pros of the field, returning and trying to catch up on work, figuring out where I'm going with the research question, and above all trying to shun the demons telling me that I'm totally incapable of doing it.
The PhD isn't the root cause of the disorder, but right now, attempting to recover from this nadir while also trying to stay above board with research are two conflicting goals. My ill health means that I can't focus properly, which means work falls behind, which causes additional stress and subsequent ill-health. It's a Catch-22 that needs to be broken.
Everyone told me so, but I pressed on regardless, convinced that I was coping. In fact, the PhD ended up being a distraction; an excuse for not eating properly, for being reclusive, and for generally encouraging all my bad ED behaviours.
I've been blessed to have the full support of family, supervisor, friends, doctor and Student Services. They've reassured me throughout the whole process that this is the right decision; that taking time off to focus on physical and mental recovery from anorexia is necessary. It's got to the point that health can't take a back seat any more.
It's not a failing to admit that I need help.
Success isn't two letters at the start of my name; it's two fingers to the demons trying to take it all away from me, and two hands on the reins to take control of my life again.
I don't know who'll read it, if anyone, but it feels important to me to get it out of my head, and onto paper. Well, the monitor, whatever. For my own good as much as anyone else's, but with a small hope that someone else will identify.
I'm now on a temporary leave of absence from my PhD, currently scheduled for 3 months but extendible as needs be. It's not been an easy decision, and even now my mind's a bit all over the place, but the more I think about it the more certain it becomes.
Prior to the PhD I had recovered from a struggle with anorexia. Somehow, through the strength and support of everyone around me, I made a full recovery within a year and was back to a healthy weight and mindset.
Since beginning, these past couple of years have seen me in and out of relapsing almost constantly. After returning from a great conference in the US just over a month ago, my weight's plummeted again through the stress of travel, presenting my research to the pros of the field, returning and trying to catch up on work, figuring out where I'm going with the research question, and above all trying to shun the demons telling me that I'm totally incapable of doing it.
The PhD isn't the root cause of the disorder, but right now, attempting to recover from this nadir while also trying to stay above board with research are two conflicting goals. My ill health means that I can't focus properly, which means work falls behind, which causes additional stress and subsequent ill-health. It's a Catch-22 that needs to be broken.
Everyone told me so, but I pressed on regardless, convinced that I was coping. In fact, the PhD ended up being a distraction; an excuse for not eating properly, for being reclusive, and for generally encouraging all my bad ED behaviours.
I've been blessed to have the full support of family, supervisor, friends, doctor and Student Services. They've reassured me throughout the whole process that this is the right decision; that taking time off to focus on physical and mental recovery from anorexia is necessary. It's got to the point that health can't take a back seat any more.
It's not a failing to admit that I need help.
Success isn't two letters at the start of my name; it's two fingers to the demons trying to take it all away from me, and two hands on the reins to take control of my life again.
Tuesday 3 November 2015
Coding again!
This week I'm back to coding, (finally) making the modifications to Jeeves that user testing brought up. It feels like ages since I've actually gone and implemented something - it feels good!
I mean, after getting it accepted at the end of May, I started looking at getting the client-side app working. Then I started looking at the systematic review. Then before I knew it it was gung-ho on the CHI submission, then preparing for Atlanta, recovering from Atlanta, now here I am!
It's too easy to get bogged down in one thing. Much as I'm in the habit of getting my head down on one thing until it's done, I'm feeling like maybe that's not such a good thing. I love programming but trying to figure out what the hell I was doing 3 months ago has not been easy.
Moral of the story: Stay focused, but don't neglect parts of my research. Not very catchy, but it's true.
I mean, after getting it accepted at the end of May, I started looking at getting the client-side app working. Then I started looking at the systematic review. Then before I knew it it was gung-ho on the CHI submission, then preparing for Atlanta, recovering from Atlanta, now here I am!
It's too easy to get bogged down in one thing. Much as I'm in the habit of getting my head down on one thing until it's done, I'm feeling like maybe that's not such a good thing. I love programming but trying to figure out what the hell I was doing 3 months ago has not been easy.
Moral of the story: Stay focused, but don't neglect parts of my research. Not very catchy, but it's true.
Tuesday 27 October 2015
Perpetual motion of my wheeels
Do you ever feel like this?
Sometimes I feel like I'm constantly spinning my wheels, taking one step forward, then going '...nah...' then taking a step back again. Then stepping in a different direction, only to wonder whether the grass is greener down that other way. Perpetually spinning my wheels!
Continuing the analogy, it's like my bike's stuck between gears. Any pedalling I do amounts to nothing because the effort's being expended on something offering no returns, no forward motion.
Maybe if I shift my arse a bit further back on the saddle, straighten up my posture a little, then...yup...CLUNK, I'm back into gear and moving again! That shift of perspective, taking a bit of time to step back and think 'okay, I'm thinking about this the wrong way', might well make that clunk happen.
I feel like this has just happened now, while trying to be precise about my research question. I've been getting too finicky about what exactly I'm going to evaluate and how. But I realised that after I conduct an evaluation with my target domain, it might so happen that this specific feature I want to assess might not even be worth implementing!
There's the clunk: I've got the basic direction for sure, but I can't go skipping steps or I might just end up backtracking again. If I shift gears too quickly before I even reach the hill, I'll just tire myself out.
I like this blog idea now, writing that down has helped a bit. Wheels are (hopefully) in motion again!
Sometimes I feel like I'm constantly spinning my wheels, taking one step forward, then going '...nah...' then taking a step back again. Then stepping in a different direction, only to wonder whether the grass is greener down that other way. Perpetually spinning my wheels!
Continuing the analogy, it's like my bike's stuck between gears. Any pedalling I do amounts to nothing because the effort's being expended on something offering no returns, no forward motion.
Maybe if I shift my arse a bit further back on the saddle, straighten up my posture a little, then...yup...CLUNK, I'm back into gear and moving again! That shift of perspective, taking a bit of time to step back and think 'okay, I'm thinking about this the wrong way', might well make that clunk happen.
I feel like this has just happened now, while trying to be precise about my research question. I've been getting too finicky about what exactly I'm going to evaluate and how. But I realised that after I conduct an evaluation with my target domain, it might so happen that this specific feature I want to assess might not even be worth implementing!
There's the clunk: I've got the basic direction for sure, but I can't go skipping steps or I might just end up backtracking again. If I shift gears too quickly before I even reach the hill, I'll just tire myself out.
I like this blog idea now, writing that down has helped a bit. Wheels are (hopefully) in motion again!
VL/HCC in general
As is most likely obvious from my previous schpiel, last week I was in the wonderful city of Atlanta attending the VL/HCC conference! This brought together researchers interested in the design and evaluation of visual languages to support a variety of users in improving their programming experience.
My own contribution was presenting "Jeeves", my visual programming environment for creating mobile experience-sampling applications. If you want to read all about it (please do!) the paper is here, and a wee blog post about it is here.
Blocks & Beyond & Bollockswhywon'tthisstupiddemoload Part III
In addition to getting to demo my work and receive some genuinely good feedback (not so much an ego boost as a "you might not be completely f**ked" pat-on-the-head) I also got to attend three of the presentation sessions.
Due to the unexpected size of the workshop, this had to be a dual-track affair, with talks allocated just 4 (!) minutes apiece. The rest of the time was allocated to discussion.
Discussions
In honesty, I wasn't an active participant so much as a dazed onlooker in the discussions; as they got more heated and lively I was struggling to keep up with what the hell was going on (probably unaided by a late Wednesday night and a rushed hotel check-out that morning). I still don't really know what happened in Sessions 1 and 3, maybe the coffee was drugged.
Session 2, New Features for Blocks Environments was particularly interesting to me, though, with the group discussion highlighting what new features could be incorporated.
- Community-based feedback was one such feature - how best to utilise growing online communities of users in block programming languages? Mentor/peer feedback and code/block sharing both arose, features I was originally considering from a meta-design POV.
- Good programming habits and how to foster them was also a key discussion topic. Given that the orientation of this year's conference was towards education, promoting good programming practice in block language users was an inevitable debate.
- The organisation and refactoring of code came up for discussion, too. A ubiquitous feature in textual IDEs, how can we support this in block-based languages?
Disillusionment
My own (silent) contribution to all this was reflecting upon the importance of good coding practice outside of education. Domain professionals (research scientists, businessman and the like) just want to get the job done, whether their solution is carefully planned and iteratively developed, or clumsily hacked together, surely has no bearing on the end result? I was starting to feel a bit left out, to be honest.
Debugging
A final discussion, and one that resonated more clearly with me, is the support for end-user debugging. I feel that coding with bad practice is like paying for a new BMW in 20p coins; it's ugly, inefficient, but it gets the job done.
Coding without testing is like paying for a new BMW that might turn out to be a Smart car, or a unicycle, or a goldfish. You don't buy before you try.
This is a horrible analogy but it's 1.15am and I'm not about to waste time making better ones. You can get by without refactoring or planned development, but no one gets their program right first time, least of all end-users!
Lyn addressed this in his keynote, suggesting that blocks languages are ideal for expressing dynamic semantics, that is, showing how a program is executing. In this section of his talk, he put forward the following research question:
What to do in cases (robotics, mobile apps) in which the program is running on a device other than the computer in which it’s been written?
A-HA! Now it's getting more relevant!
What to do in cases (robotics, mobile apps) in which the program is running on a device other than the computer in which it’s been written?
A-HA! Now it's getting more relevant!
Direction
This is a problem I'd really like to explore in my application. End-users can build these applications that might sample people under differing times and contexts, but how can they test and debug them? One way could be to run a pilot study, but this could be costly and time-consuming.
What if there was a testing and debugging tool built into Jeeves that let users rapidly try out their applications? What form would this take? I was inspired in this session by the presentation of PencilCode, a tool to help students debug their block-based programs that utilised a slider to step through the events in the program, displaying variable values and control flow as the user moves to different points.
One major difference for my case is that ESM applications don't 'flow' in the same way; rather, their execution is based on event-trigger-action sequences, executed sporadically based on the user's context. It's a niche problem, but it's my niche now, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops!
What if there was a testing and debugging tool built into Jeeves that let users rapidly try out their applications? What form would this take? I was inspired in this session by the presentation of PencilCode, a tool to help students debug their block-based programs that utilised a slider to step through the events in the program, displaying variable values and control flow as the user moves to different points.
One major difference for my case is that ESM applications don't 'flow' in the same way; rather, their execution is based on event-trigger-action sequences, executed sporadically based on the user's context. It's a niche problem, but it's my niche now, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops!
Monday 26 October 2015
Blocks & Beyond & Bollockswhywon'tthisstupiddemoload Part II
The demo session also gave me clarification on my two main concerns that I'd been having prior to VL/HCC
1) Should I have just used Blockly? Is it too late to start? ARGH PANIC STRESS
2) So I've got this environment. Great. So what's the research question? ARGH PANIC STRESS
On the one hand, I keep looking at Blockly and thinking "this looks great, why didn't I start off with this? I could have saved so much time. Nevermore, nevermore".
On the other hand, I have this nasty habit of forgetting what my PhD actually IS. I'm making a novel contribution to research, I'm NOT DESIGNING A PRODUCT. Repeat after me. I'M NOT DESIGNING A PRODUCT. I'M NOT DESIGNING A PRODUCT. (This is my morning ritual.)
The Blockly Dilemma
I got the chance to show my environment to a lot of different people, and a question that came up more than once was "So, is this Blockly/Scratch/App Inventor?" For one, it's flattering that people could confuse Jeeves for these professionally developed environments. Additionally, people's surprise that this was developed from the ground-up reminded me just how much work I put into it. This took months of implementation, and the end result is a tool that fulfils its purpose.
So no, it's not as slick or extendible as Blockly or Scratch, and no, it doesn't let me easily port it to the web for ease-of-access and cross-platform usage, but it doesn't NEED these features. It's good enough to let me answer the research question, so why reinvent the wheel just for some extra functionality?
What next?
During Franklyn's keynote on blocks-based languages, he covered a plethora of possible research questions for block-based languages, including learnability, maintainability, and debugging of blocks. Felienne's post summarises the key points very nicely, and Franklyn's kindly put his research questions online. After everything leading up to polishing my presentation, I suddenly found myself wondering where I actually go from here, and this gave me some great direction. More on this in the last post!
1) Should I have just used Blockly? Is it too late to start? ARGH PANIC STRESS
2) So I've got this environment. Great. So what's the research question? ARGH PANIC STRESS
On the one hand, I keep looking at Blockly and thinking "this looks great, why didn't I start off with this? I could have saved so much time. Nevermore, nevermore".
On the other hand, I have this nasty habit of forgetting what my PhD actually IS. I'm making a novel contribution to research, I'm NOT DESIGNING A PRODUCT. Repeat after me. I'M NOT DESIGNING A PRODUCT. I'M NOT DESIGNING A PRODUCT. (This is my morning ritual.)
The Blockly Dilemma
I got the chance to show my environment to a lot of different people, and a question that came up more than once was "So, is this Blockly/Scratch/App Inventor?" For one, it's flattering that people could confuse Jeeves for these professionally developed environments. Additionally, people's surprise that this was developed from the ground-up reminded me just how much work I put into it. This took months of implementation, and the end result is a tool that fulfils its purpose.
So no, it's not as slick or extendible as Blockly or Scratch, and no, it doesn't let me easily port it to the web for ease-of-access and cross-platform usage, but it doesn't NEED these features. It's good enough to let me answer the research question, so why reinvent the wheel just for some extra functionality?
What next?
During Franklyn's keynote on blocks-based languages, he covered a plethora of possible research questions for block-based languages, including learnability, maintainability, and debugging of blocks. Felienne's post summarises the key points very nicely, and Franklyn's kindly put his research questions online. After everything leading up to polishing my presentation, I suddenly found myself wondering where I actually go from here, and this gave me some great direction. More on this in the last post!
Blocks & Beyond & Bollockswhywon'tthisstupiddemoload
As part of my journey to the VL/HCC conference in Atlanta, I was lucky enough to jump into the Blocks & Beyond workshop, despite my original submission being rejected. Hurray!
Honestly that's worked out rather well; my original position paper on meta-design in blocks-based languages is a track that I just didn't really want to go down. As it turns out, there was a boatload of research and discussion on facilitating the transition from blocks to text languages, with some interesting ideas that frankly blew my shaky meta-design proposal away.
Demo time!
The fact I even got to show Jeeves to other people was great in itself. The fact that I got to demo it to Neil Fraser (creator of Blockly), Brian Harvey (co-creator of Snap!) and Franklyn Turbak (the keynote presenter and driving force towards block-based programming language design) was a tremendous opportunity.
Having Neil stress-test the interface was a bit dicey and he brought up the same issues my participants originally had, which I awkwardly haven't corrected yet :S. As the guy who's spent 4 years developing Blockly, which is now used to bootstrap multiple block-based languages (including MIT's App Inventor), he knows what works and what doesn't, and his position paper Ten Things We've Learned from Blockly is gonna be valuable for improving my own UI.
In general, though, I got really positive feedback on having implemented my own block-based environment from scratch (NOT Scratch. This caused some confusion). Was it worth it, though?
Better late than never
Hello!
Inspired by a couple of fellow PhD students and those who have already been through the mill, I've decided to actually dedicate some time to writing a PhD blog. To be fair I probably should've started this 2 years ago but today I tipped too much instant coffee into my mug and am now feeling fabulously motivated.
Better late than never? Maybe. We'll see. In any case it'll give me a place to vent my frustrations as opposed to unwitting friends and family. Plus I've just come back from VL/HCC so I might actually have some material.
Here's to the next two years of sporadic updates and heavy drinking.
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