Since I’ve been to New York City several times for business, I thought I’d pass along some tips.

If you’re in New York City for a week, I would highly recommend getting a 7-day Unlimited MetroCard ($29). A single ride is $2.50, so just two trips a day makes it worthwhile.

However, you can’t use an Unlimited card at the same subway station for 18 minutes. This can be a problem if you use a subway station entrance that allows you to go in only one direction, and you pick the wrong one. So instead of exiting and re-entering in the right entrance (which will lock you out), just get on the next train and go to a stop that lets you cross over. (I found this out the hard way; only the persistence of my traveling companion got us in.)

If you’re flying into JFK Airport, I recommend taking the AirTrain to Jamaica Station. Once you get to the station, you’ll see a set of fare gates and banks of MetroCard machines on either side. You’ll need to get a $5 MetroCard just to leave the AirTrain system, so you’ll have to buy that before the fare gates.

But you can’t buy a 7-day Unlimited MetroCard at either of those banks of machines. Instead, proceed to the subway station at Jamaica (which, by the way, is called Sutphin Boulevard–Archer Avenue–JFK Airport, not Jamaica) and buy a 7-day card at its machines. From there, you can take the subway (E line) all the way into Manhattan. It will take about an hour.

If you want to spend a bit more money to save time, you can also take the Long Island Rail Road from Jamaica to Penn Station in Manhattan, which takes 30 minutes. If it’s the weekend, buy a CityTicket for the LIRR, which only costs $3.75 (a regular ticket is $8.75, off-peak $6.25). You can buy LIRR tickets at the ticket machines before the fare gates at Jamaica.

Enjoy your trip!

In my previous blog post, I noted my surprise and distaste for the term “Pasteboard” over “Clipboard” in Mac OS X. It seemed like an unnecessary change in terminology. However, a friend and long-time Mac user later pointed out to me that OS X still calls it a Clipboard, for example, Edit→Show Clipboard in the Finder. In fact, he had never heard of a Pasteboard until reading my blog.

This encouraged me to dig a little deeper. The term “Pasteboard” was inherited from Mac OS X’s ancestor, NeXTSTEP, which used it in its user interface (see The Complete Guide to the NEXTSTEP User Environment for an example). “Pasteboard” is still used in Apple’s documentation for programmers. However, while NeXTSTEP may form the technical foundation for OS X, the classic Mac OS, which always used the term “Clipboard,” is the basis for Mac OS X’s user interface, so “Clipboard” has mostly won out.

So why does the X11 application use the term “Pasteboard”? I can only speculate that the X11’s developers wanted to the distinction between X11’s CLIPBOARD and OS X’s Clipboard as clear as possible, and that computer geeks, who are likely the only ones who would use X11 in the first place, would be familiar with the term.

Last night, I worked on an SVG file that Caitlin Kelleher had created with Inkscape (for the cover of the proceedings of VL/HCC 2011). I also used Inkscape, but it took a few tricks on my Mac to get it to work properly.

• I wanted to use Helvetica Neue for all of the text, but it wasn’t included in Inkscape’s Fonts drop-down list. I had to copy the font from /System/Library/Fonts to /Users/my_username/Library/Fonts for Inkscape to load it. None of the other fonts in the system folder had problems loading.
• I also could not use Helvetica. Whenever I chose it, Inkscape kept switching me to Sans. I never figured out what was wrong.
• I tried to copy some objects from one Inkscape window to another, but the pasted objects were converted into a bitmap. This is because X11 synchronizes its CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY buffers with Mac OS X’s Pasteboard* as much as possible, and something got lost in translation. I turned off the synchronizing by going to X11 → Preferences… → Pasteboard tab and turned off Enable Syncing.
• I wanted to import an EPS file which contained vector graphics, but Inkscape can’t import EPS files directly. Instead, I opened the file in Preview and then saved it as a PDF. Inkscape then imported the PDF perfectly.

Hopes this helps others using Inkscape on a Mac!

* The clipboard on Mac OS X is called a pasteboard? Bleh!

Just one day after his keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs made an appearance last night at the Cupertino City Council to present the company’s plans for a new campus in Cupertino, on the old Hewlett-Packard site. It essentially consists of one giant building shaped like a doughnut that will hold 12,000 people. It will be surrounded by open space, and the parking will be mostly underground.

While the plans certainly make a statement, I’m more an urbanist and not usually fond of buildings surrounded by lots of parking lots or open space, since they don’t tend to be very energetic spaces. So I’m actually lukewarm on what I’ve seen so far. I’m also left with a lot of questions:

• How accessible will the open space be to the public?
• In the slides that Jobs presented, Pruneridge Avenue disappears. Where does it go? Is it eliminated? Does it go underground? Does it become a private street, serving only the underground parking garage?
• What are the plans for the existing redwood grove and the historic Glendenning Barn?

I’m sure that the final result will be pretty close to what was presented — I can’t imagine Cupertino giving Apple a really hard time. And even though it would still be a corporate office park instead of a more urban neighborhood, it would be a really nice office park, better than what is there now. By the way, I grew up in Cupertino and I still live nearby, so I know the area very well.

And I echo Mayor Gilbert Wong’s desire to open an Apple Store in Cupertino. Too bad the city’s Vallco Mall is such a basket case.

• Buxton: Jobs revived Apple with people already employed there, such as Jonathan Ives. The culture needed changing, not the people.
• Gerken et al present method called Concept Maps to elicit developer’s mental model of API. A related resource: apiusability.org
• Missed Wrangler (creating data transformation scripts interactively), but saw Jeff Heer’s BayCHI talk on it. Good stuff!
• Substance introduces data-oriented paradigm: data is tree of nodes, facets are behavior that can migrate from node-node
• Shared Substance is a framework on top of Substance for multi-display apps, supports service-oriented and shared state.
• For lunch: Japanese-style hot dog (Kurobuta pork, mayo, teriyaki, seaweed) and shio ramen. Made possible by not eating breakfast.

Ethan Zimmerman’s closing plenary: Desperately Seeking Serendipity

• People move to cities partly because it’s less boring and there’s more choice
• Cities seem to provide more chances for serendipity, but people tend to stick to others similar to them (homophily)
• Media consumption also very local. >90% read media in their own country. Leads to Tunisia revolution not well covered.
• For serendipity, people must be prepared to take advantage of chances, and structures should be in place to create them.
• What lessons about serendipity can we learn from cities and apply virtually?
• Worth reading the “extended dance mix” of Ethan Zimmerman’s keynote. Only problem: you can’t hear him deliver it.

And finally:

• Nirmal Patel: “Updated online CHI program so each paper has a link to the ACM DL page.”

• Saw and enjoyed last 3 papers of Photo Sharing session, especially Jones and O’Neill on relationship of photo metadata and sharing
• Will definitely discuss web credibility papers back at work. Need to read other 2 papers in that session.
• Not tweeting much during CHI 2011 itself: the wi-fi is totally overloaded so I can’t connect
• Larry Tesler’s talk was great. I knew he’s hugely important in HCI; I didn’t know he essentially invented cut/paste.
• Kumar et al’s Bricolage (applying existing website’s design to other sites) normalizes DOM. Can see this work applied to lots of other areas
• HyperSource by Bjoern Hartmann et al annotates lines of source code with related web browsing history. #want
• Wondering how HyperSource can scale up, e.g., web page on design pattern affects many lines of code
• Great to see utility of HCI work by Michael Toomim presented at CHI 2011. Eager to see how this work goes from here. +1 for soothing music.
• Bakke et al adds data types, arrays, references to spreadsheets, allowing them to natively model 1-to-many, many-to-many relationships

• Freed looks like an interesting system for creating multiple views of a collection of digital objects (Mendels et al)
• Odom et al: great discussion on the relationship of physical and virtual possessions, including metadata and perceived value

• Enjoyed talk by Leah Findlater on non-parametric factorial analysis techniques. Just the right depth for a CHI talk.
• Didn’t go to many talks today at CHI 2011, a lot of schmoozing instead. Also, I must be getting old, greasy food getting to me.

Here are my Twitter posts on the first day of my trip to CHI 2011, which was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

• At SFO Terminal 3. Longest security line I’ve seen in years. I better make my flight, which leaves in 1 hour.
• @tsatracker SFO Terminal 3 economy security: 24 minute wait
• At YVR curbside, waiting for my cousin to pick me up. The smokers are ignoring the designated smoking area, yuck.
• Eating lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant with my cousin in Richmond. Traffic here is horrible. SkyTrain would have been faster.
• Visited Granville Island, a great public space filled with art studios, shops, and a food market. Couldn’t resist buying maple caramels.
• Had more Taiwanese food for dinner to go along with lunch. Pork hock: sounds so odd, tastes so good.
• CHI 2011 iPhone app requires iOS 4.2. No way I’m using 4.2 on my iPhone 3G. Should have brought my Nexus One.

• James Landay: “Nice profile of Scott Klemmer’s work in Technology Review: Tools for Better Web Design”
• Watch President Obama announce the death of Osama bin Laden: MSNBC
• [May 1] Osama’s death have prompted huge crowds to gather at World Trade Ctr. (Wall Street Journal) Hard to believe I was there <36 hrs ago.
• Sadat Shami: “Interactive map of emotional reactions and the perceived significance on the war on terror after Bin Laden’s death” (New York Times)
• Overrrated Outcast: “We still haven’t seen Sarah Palin’s high school diploma.”
• Keir Clarke: “Washington Post Map of the American Civil War. I can’t believe how much work has gone into this animated time-line map.”
• New York Times: Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building Upward. James Landay adds: “This will be more important than people say.”
• “Henry Kissinger”: “I asked Palin for her thoughts on secularism in Turkey. She said she only eats poultry from ‘God-fearing farmers’. #GiveMeStrength”
• Overthinking It: The economics of Death Star planet destruction (via Daring Fireball)
• Why is c the symbol for the speed of light? (Physics FAQ)
• Google at CHI 2011 (via Ed Chi )
• Another sweet stop-motion video: 2000 photos of Paris
• A reminder to all Americans going to CHI 2011: Canada is a foreign country. Don’t forget your passport.