Author: Andrew Nelson

Projects and management

Projects and management

We need to overhaul our project management. To get there, and to work in the open, let’s start by clearly defining the problem, the fundamental challenges, and our circumstances. At Open Austin, our projects are for public good and made in the open. Compared to many open source projects that are often for developers, by […]

Interests

Here’s some things I’m deeply interested in but don’t go into detail describing elsewhere on my site:   High-level The most general way I can describe what I like to do is thus: I like learning how things work together and communicating that with others. For the most part, I’m more interested in the high-level, […]

Interactivity@GT

Interactivity@GT

I designed and built the front end for the Interactivity @GT events’ website from 2011-2013, alongside  Matt Wilczynski for back-end work. My work on the website tripled attendance to the event from past years. Interactivity is a yearly exhibition of projects by graduate students (including myself from 2014-2016) in Georgia Tech’s Human-Computer Interaction and Digital […]

Defining play for artificial intelligence

If humans and animals are both able to play and be considered creative, then could we apply both concepts to artificial intelligence, as well? They are both largely circumstantial so that one would know it when they see it (Henricks, 2008) more easily than logically derive it (Graham, 2010). By better framing them in a […]

Organizational analysis of Open Data Aarhus

Urban planning over the last century has evolved from the idealism of a classical political utopia, to modern planning of “new towns,” to postmodern decentralization. Since the industrial revolution, urban centers have grown into sprawling metropolises as waves of people relocate from the countryside. As they grow and change, innumerable factors contribute to their growing […]

Why I'm going to grad school

As a sort of organizational nut who grew up playing many hours of Sim City and other simulation games, I naively wondered how I can so easily create an efficient virtual metropolis in Sim City, yet how real cities like Detroit can utterly fail. Did Detroit not have the kind of real-time information and analysis […]

Further analysis of VacantFinder

VacantFinder is a result of my continuing work with the Friends of English Avenue organization. The City of Atlanta has allowed me to further investigate public data, specifically to solving issues of property abandonment. My previous project included a static map of properties reported in the Grove Park neighborhood and a public SMS service for […]

Legitimizing Open Sources of Education

Recently, an Atlanta law firm sought an in-house courier to ferry documents between buildings, offered $10 an hour for the gig, and required the applicant to have a four-year degree from a university (Rampell). Regardless of the job’s technical requirements, the flood of applications had to be pared down to a single candidate eventually, and […]

Food and Segyehwa in South Korean Cinema

For LMC 3256-F Spring 2013 – Qi Wang Introduction South Korea of the mid-1990s was in nothing short of a political revolution, with its former President Kim Young Sam targeting corruption and formulating Korea’s long-term globalization policy of segyehwa. This policy to unify Korean interests and pivot itself to the world economic stage included an […]

Work for English Avenue this semester

English Avenue is a neighborhood on the edge of downtown Atlanta, historic for its and past residents as well as its recent social decline. As a food desert and civically neglected neighborhood, its residents have faced declining resources and prosperity. Since 2008, the Friends of English Avenue organization and others have contributed to reinvigorating the […]

Visual Style of Humanization in Battlestar Galactica

LMC 3252-F Spring 2013 – J. P. Telotte Battlestar Galactica’s 2003-2009 re-imagining of its original incarnation challenges what is means to be human, or a person, and what evil lurks in the hearts of humans and machines. This distinction between human and machine is the first challenge that the show presents to its audience, as […]

On Edward Yang's mu-vies

A gravestone is meant to answer the question, “Who is buried here?” Yasujiro Ozu requested his answer to be “mu.” This absence of an answer and denial of the question forces the audience to reconsider what is being asked by the subject and how the object of a scene is modified. Ozu perhaps influenced Edward […]

Analysis of VacantFinder

My work with English Avenue has broadened in the last few weeks since my previous paper, now including collaboration with the City of Atlanta. In late February, I took their concerns and goals to Govathon, a hackathon hosted by the city government to build digital services based on local needs in about 15 hours. At […]

On Ozu and design

Design is a way of organizing complexity or finding clarity in chaos. With his mise-en-scène and editing techniques, Ozu masters the design of filmed space and time, wrangling them from their reality as progenitors of chaos while preserving perfectly familiar characters and their lives as narrative. As an information and visual designer, I can relate […]

English Avenue dataset analysis

English Avenue is a neighborhood on the edge of downtown Atlanta, historic for its and past residents as well as its recent social decline. As a food desert and civically neglected neighborhood, its residents have faced declining resources and prosperity. Since 2008, the Friends of English Avenue organization and others have contributed to reinvigorating the […]

Models of learning in formal and non-formal sources of education

Seeking education outside of formal institutions is gaining ground in both formal and non-formal education environments. It is also one of the strongest cases of popularizing and reducing the cost of education as American students face the highest tuition prices yet in higher education;# however, the dearth of informal sources using an experiential learning approach […]

Analysis of design patterns in MediaWiki

About MediaWiki MediaWiki is the PHP framework of top-ten website Wikipedia. When founder Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia as an academic experiment the site was based on UseModWiki, a general-use wiki framework written in Perl, and not quite yet well-known. Once it found popularity via high-profile bloggers and news sites, their system was failing in overdrive, […]

Semantic networks in cognition and computing

Internet infrastructure currently operates in many networking modes; however, to most people, it is the web: a technology stack of files, their unique identifiers, and transfer protocols to serve to user agents. However, now that the web has evolved to include ubiquitous web services, search functions, and other indirect queries or manipulation, the the underlying […]

Distract and learn

I have a problem with this book. The problem may be that it was written by a couple guys who know exactly what they’re talking about; that they have planned just how and when to answer questions they think the reader will ask; and that I’m expected to learn half the material in this class […]

Cog sci examination of free will

In our class discussion of free will and determinism, I was frequently reminded of “god-of-the-gaps” arguments, where gaps in science are explainable by something supernatural.[1] Instead of science and religion, though, what if the concept of free will is the supernatural, the god, in the gaps of causality? Perhaps free will is a purely human […]

Good Design

If “good design is good business” as former IBM President Tom Watson, Jr. said, and if that business is to encourage users to learn how to code, then good design of a medium must be a significant element in learning. Such a business is Codecademy: a reward-based programming education website with a fairly responsive and […]

Analysis of Internet as a Medium for Informal Education

This research analyzes Internet users learning skills and concepts more effectively on their own time, often in order to accomplish a specific task, via online resources often generated by non-educators. This trend is particularly evident in computing areas like digital media and computer science, where real-life skills can be trained actively or passively, even remediated […]

A New World Computer

My goal for my college education is to learn the foundation and current scope of work in improving how humans interact with computers, how friendly they can be with each other, and how to bring the computer from a thing to be learned and trained for to a simple extension of its user. In essence, […]

Building Digital Experiences: AIML vs Inform

of the myriad lessons from this class I have taken is how to best design an experience for a program’s user. Two languages I’ve learned for projects have been more keen on developing my ability to author such an experience: Inform and AIML. Both allow the user to explore stories, and thus making the experience […]

If Words Were Swords

Computationally. ELIZA and its contemporaries are programs that take textual input (natural language) and produce relative, natural language output that only makes sense if it either directly references the user’s previous statement as another statement or poses a question that is at least indirectly related. Removing the textual and language aspect of this model, it […]

Media Platforms Taking Advantage of Internet as Infrastructure

Over the last two decades of extremely rapid, silently revolutionary development of the user-touser networking platform that is collectively referred to as the internet, or “Web 2.0,” productivity and even a nation’s economy is dependent1 on how its users and contributors continue to develop it. Businesses like Behance LLC, for example, who offers three main […]

User Interaction in Digital Art Programs

Tools and productivity artifacts developed in just the last decade for digital art are absolutely new media that still mimic its original counterparts, paper and pen. While an eminent figure like Theodore Nelson may see this as baffling and counter-revolutionary, it is more of a transitional phase in art history. If art is to express […]

Comic Symposium

Springtime Atlanta is heyday for comics, with Momocon just last month, Free Comic Book Day next month. At Tech, local artists and students met at the first Annual Atlanta Comics Symposium to host panels on comics from their nature and creation to the industry’s ambivalent future.   Programs from Georgia Tech and University of Florida […]

Digital Spaces in Text-Based Games

First let me say that never before have I felt my personal space so invaded than as I attempt to perform (what would in my usual life be un-commented-on) actions. Perhaps I do just want to jump without friend computer condescendingly suggest hopping around the dungeon, expecting itself to applaud, or promoting me to the […]

Eating Atlanta: Sandwiches around campus

Not every sandwich can be called worthy of anything but a mindless pile of meat, cheese, and bread, but when a wise cook knows what they’re doing it can yield a sandwich that’s worth a few more of your laboratory-slaving dollars. It can yield a sandwich that’s worth being called a “sammich.” So before you […]

Eating Atlanta: Ria's Bluebird

In the quaint neighborhood of Grant Park, a recently gentrified neighborhood where quaint houses are still being restored and graffiti is a legitimate form of business advertisement, restaurants here seem to follow a rustic design and a similar class of food. Ria’s Bluebird, a daily breakfast and lunch place, offers one of the best Southwestern […]

Eating Atlanta: Burgers around Atlanta

Too often, Tech students limit their food options to standard on-campus fare without realizing there are dozens of restaurants on the Tech perimeter. The lunchtime hamburger should be a sufficient reason to jump just off campus to grab some good grub during those solid eight-hour class days. While making your way to labs and classes […]

Eating Atlanta: Spice Market

Midtown’s stretch of Peachtree Street NE is a rich belt of fine restaurants, bars, and original eateries. Situated on the north end of the belt inside the W Hotel, Spice Market offers an intriguing experience and cuisine but doesn’t quite substantiate its price level. Spice Market’s two key points of interest are the “tasting menu” […]

Eating Atlanta: Maddy's BBQ

Nearly every city, metropolis or nowheresville in the Southeast includes some variety of barbecue. Atlanta, with its established wealth of cuisine, hosts a bluesy brand of barbecue. Though barbecue restaurants are spread across the city, the best are usually on the east side of Interstate 85. This week, we found our ribs and blues at […]

Whaley markets new product

If there is any kind of practical inspiration for college students, it is seeing the success of a student with his or her own self-launched career. In this case, it is a recent Tech graduate who won the 2010 InVenture Prize in Spring 2010 and has taken that victory far beyond a competition. The athletic […]

Eating Atlanta: Urban Grind and Octane Coffee

Oh, the humble coffee house. From the corporate hegemony of Starbucks to the lowly carts that dot the city streets, coffee shops come as varied as the roasted bean juice they serve. Their caffeine-deprived patrons flock morning, noon and night to these establishments to drink, converse and thrive amid the buzz of grinders and the […]

Eating Atlanta: Panahar

Buford Highway continues to host Atlanta’s finest (even in the recent hothlanta conditions), with Panahar Bangladeshi and Indian Cuisine as one of the best of its kind around. Panahar keeps a low profile as an unassuming, unique experience into the rarely ventured cuisine and culture of Bangladesh. Actually to that note, their prime cuisine, Bangladeshi, […]

Eating Atlanta: Pure Taqueria

(Written primarily by Michael Valente) This week we visited one of three Pure Taqueria locations in Inman Park—one of Atlanta’s most fiercely dedicated communities and home to a myriad of small shops, restaurants and, of course, the glorious hipsters. The first note we made as we walked up to Pure Taqueria in the cold, drizzly […]

Eating Atlanta: Chinatown Square

Driving through Chamblee area Atlanta in the rain around 9 p.m. looking for an allegedly delicious-as-it-is-dingy Chinese cafeteria may not sound like a prime Monday night excursion. However, we found that if the Atlanta Chinatown Square were to transplant itself to someplace like the Varsity, no Tech student would be spared from its slew of […]

Citizens discuss science policy

Tech students and faculty brought the state’s major movers and changers together at the fifth annual Legislative Roundtable this Tuesday, Nov. 16, to make headway in science and technology’s incorporation into state and local public policy. The Office of Policy Analysis and Research (OPAR) of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) coordinated the event with […]

Social equity and its implementation

A significant portion of humanitarian problems arise from social inequity, and the greatest problem in determining how to achieve social equity is how to recognize it. Equity is the logos to the pathos of equality, which people the world over have fought fervently for, taking for example Jamaica’s independence and decline because of social inequity […]

Microsoft puzzles Tech students

Does 381SAFETY964 mean anything? One must be slightly familiar with pigpen ciphers and pop culture icons, or else the annual College Puzzle Challenge might be a little traumatic. On Nov. 6, students at Tech and 26 other American and Canadian universities, such as M.I.T and the University of Waterloo, competed to solve as many of […]

Sustainability receives A- rating

Tech is among the highest-rated universities in the Sustainable Endowment Institute’s latest annual College Sustainability Report Card, one of the most-participated-in sustainability rankings in the U.S. Each year, the report card grades participating universities on sustainability-related features of administration, energy use, food, recycling, buildings, student involvement, transportation and finances. This year’s report card grades Tech […]

Student voters respond to midterm elections

With the 2010 midterm elections drawing to a close, the political landscape has experienced a significant shift in party control, with a Republicans gaining majority of governors and representatives and a nearly even split in the Senate with Democrats still in control. Data shows that projected total voter turnout was 42 percent of the electorate, […]