Category: Posts

All non–archived posts, regardless of topic.

Dissertation Update- April

7 April 2014 / Sinead

The biggest news this month is that I’m almost finished ! After not really having any contact with my supervisor since December, I got an email a few weeks ago asking me to check in with her and say when my finished draft would be handed in… cue panic.

However, I got my first draft finished yesterday, and emailed it to my supervisor straight away…just as well, given that my laptop packed up and stopped working a few hours later.

In all the laptop-repairing drama, I almost missed getting my supervisors response.

But I’m glad to say that she liked it, and especially happy that she thought my writing was good. The only issues were in how the different parts of the introduction didn’t quite fit together (my last-minute rearranging of the introduction obviously didn’t go to plan), and that I mixed up some things like using a term in the paragraph before I defined the term. So hopefully the editing process to make it better won’t take too long. Also, she gave me the good news that some of my correlations were more significant than I thought, which means I got more interesting findings… That can only be a good thing.

So, with two weeks to go until the deadline, I’m surprisingly on track. Things are looking up 😛

Eye-Tracking Research Project

7 March 2014 / Sinead

For my Methods in Neuroscience Research module, we were all tasked with making a mini-dissertation. This involved us getting into groups, making and analysing an experiment as a group, then writing it up. I thought I would show you a little bit of what we got up to in the last few weeks.

So, as you can tell from the title, our experiment was using eye-tracking. Seeing as unless you’re a psychology student you probably won’t ever get to see one of these, I thought I would document it.

Firstly, here’s some pictures of the eye-tracking lab setup. On the left is the participant computer: the metal frame is for their head , and the plastic is for their chin. The computer is running software called GazeTracker, which can track people’s eye responses to pictures and even track their responses inside some software programs.This means it can also be used for user interface data.

Participant Effects and Popular Science

1 March 2014 / Sinead

As you’ve gathered from the last few posts, I’ve been spending the majority of my non-lecture time in uni, hiding out in my semi-underground lab and testing people. I’ve found the process of researching interesting, but it has also worried me a bit: doing my dissertation research has shown me there are many more things to take into account than I expected.

While organisation isn’t my strong point, it can be resolved fairly easily in normal lecture and seminar environments. During data collection, on the other hand, keeping track of many different variables and responsibilities becomes incredibly important, and my difficulty with it has almost got me into trouble already.

The Wolf Among Us

19 February 2014 / Sinead

Last month I posted about my liking for cel-shading. I already said I would play The Wolf Among Us because of that. However, I’ve also found two other very good reasons to play it.

In terms of game settings and aesthetics, I really like cel-shaded looks, cyberpunk looks, and Film Noir settings. The Wolf Among Us manages to wrap all of those things up into one distinctively-styled game, without it feeling like a mess or being over the top.

Game Graphics: Cel-shading

14 February 2014 / Sinead

A common media stereotype is that gamers are obsessed with the graphics of their games and systems. There’s an element of truth to this, but usually with good reason. This media portrayal can just happen because graphical improvements are the easiest way to demonstrate that one game/system is newer or more advanced than another, and also the most obvious difference to explain when talking about consoles to a non-gamer.

I don’t normally put too much attention on a game’s graphics – as long as they aren’t incredibly bad or otherwise distracting, I won’t think too much about them. However, one way to instantly get me interested in a game is to tell me it’s cel-shaded.

I am a (published) scientist!

30 January 2014 / Sinead

You may remember I said I had good news? Well, here it is:

Last year, I helped out with a research study for my placement module. Once the study was finished, the head of it said that he would be writing it up and hopefully submitting it to a professional body this year. We hadn’t heard anything about it for a while, so I’d almost forgotten about this, assuming it may not have been accepted.

However, I got an email on Tuesday saying that the paper has been submitted to the British Journal of Educational Technology, and that I and the two other students who helped research it are all being listed as co-authors.

The first thing I said after reading that was “Does this mean I can call myself a scientist yet?”.

Joking aside, this is really good news, and I’m excited even though it won’t be ready for another few months yet. I’m not quite sure how often undergraduates get to be part of published research, but I don’t think its very common unless you’re either very skilled, or very lucky (like I was). Either way, its both something that may come in useful, and something I’ve had a lot of fun doing.

The Genesis of a Gamer

28 January 2014 / Sinead

Sorry for the pun 😛

While I’m telling you about my favourite games, I have to reserve a mention for my first ever videogame. Drum roll please… its the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive/ Genesis.

I first played this game when I was about 5 years old, which was in 1998 (already 7 years after the game came out, but I guess being five is a good excuse for not being on the cutting-edge of technology). A friend of my aunts had brought the Mega Drive to her house- being curious about what the strange black box with all the buttons on was, I instantly kept asking if I could play with it.

Dissertation Progress Update- January

26 January 2014 / Sinead

I’m now 4 months into my dissertation, which is a scary half-way through. A lot of interesting uni-related things have happened in the last week.

I had originally planned to have collected most of my data by now, which didn’t happen as one of my approval forms went missing. (My uni is good at teaching, but not at organisation- a recurring theme throughout the last three years).

Luckily, as my study is low-risk, I was approved quite easily. The delay meant I couldn’t do anything towards collecting data over the Christmas break, so I instead started writing the other parts of the dissertation such as the history of what I’m studying, the method I’m using, and the introduction. This has been going surprisingly well, and its now about 25% done.

Mass Effect 3, Part 2

24 January 2014 / Sinead

As much as I’ve praised Mass Effect 3, one important thing I should mention about my experience with it is my experience with glitches. I have a tendency to cause bugs and glitches in most games I’m playing, even when other people playing don’t experience these bugs. When playing ME3, this ability is increased to weird levels. (It’s because of this game that my Xbox tagline is now “the accidental glitcher”). So I couldn’t really write about ME3 without explaining some of the strange things that have happened to me while playing it.

1) One minor glitch is an unfortunate consequence of a useful part of gameplay. Some multiplayer classes have stimpacks or temporary skill boosts that are accompanied by visual effects. For example, human Soldiers have Adrenaline Rush, which increases rate of weapon fire and damage – when this is active everything is brighter and colours are more saturated. Krogan characters have Rage mode, which tints the screen red to show their increased attack damage.

While these effects add a visual extra to the game, they are often inconsistent- sometimes the skill can be active without the visual effect, and other times the visual effect will remain even when the power isn’t active. Normally, these don’t cause too much bother: the only one of these that I’ve found annoying is the visual glitch caused by some of my favourite characters, the Volus species. Voluses (Volii?) excel in a pure support role, relying on their Shield Boost ability to refill their own shields and those of nearby fireteam members. The “Volus glitch” comes from using this ability just as you’re about to die. At very low health the screen goes dark red as a warning, but using Shield Boost to recover your health often locks the screen onto this colour, which can only be fixed by losing health and shields again. This means it’s a lot more difficult to see what’s going on, which has caused me to die unnecessarily before.