Home Page for Kellogg Booth
Photo of me on a good day
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Kellogg S. Booth
Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science
a.k.a. the Rev. Prof. Dr. Dr. Kellogg S. Booth
BS (mathematics), Caltech (1968)
MA (computer science), UC Berkeley (1970)
DMph (metaphysics)1, Universal Life Church
(1974)
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PhD (computer science), UC Berkeley (1975)
CONTENTS
Contact Information
Biographical Information
Teaching Activities
Read
this
before contacting me about the CPSC 491 UBC/MDM Practicum
course.
Research Activities
Read
this
before contacting me about undergraduate internships
Read
this
before contacting me about admission to a graduate program
Read
this
before contacting me about postdoctoral positions
Pick Hits
Errata for my research publications.
FEATURED QUOTE
A number of people have gotten mad at me
for coining the term "cybercrud," which I define
as "putting things over on people using computers." But as long as it goes on we'll need the word. At every corner of our society, people are issuing pronouncements and making other people do things and saying it's because of the computer. The function of cybercrud is thus to confuse, intimidate or pressure. We have all got to get wise to
this if it is going to be curtailed.
-- Ted Nelson in his must-read book from 1974, Computer Lib (page 8).
more favorite quotes...
MAILING ADDRESS
Department of Computer Science
201-2366 Main Mall
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 CANADA
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UBC OFFICE
Room X461
ICICS/CS Building
2366 Main Mall
(directions)
604-822-3061 (reception)
604-822-5485 (fax)
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ELECTRONIC
e-mail:
ksbooth@cs.ubc.ca
Web:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~ksbooth
(you are here now)
Web:
https://www.cs.ubc.ca/people/kellogg-booth
ERDÖS NUMBER
2 (the same as my Knuth number).
I do not have a Bacon number,
so my Erdös-Bacon number is not defined.
Contact me with a cash offer to co-author a paper with you
if you desire an Erdös number of 3.
RÉSUMÉ
CV (pdf)
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Google Scholar
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ACM DL (free access to my ACM papers)
ORCID
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Pedigree (my oldest known academic ancestor is Nathaniel Bowditch)
The cornerstone of UBC's faculty retention plan is its CV format. -- Dinesh Pai
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Official diploma attesting to my first doctoral degree, from the
Universal Life Church
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Hitting the spot! -- photo taken Summer of 1948 near Aliso Creek in Laguna Beach, CA
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69 years and counting -- photo taken Summer of 2015 at Seton Lake, BC
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Kellogg S. Booth is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at The University of
British Columbia and a former Adjunct Faculty Member at the
Centre for Digital Media.
He is the former Director (1990-2002) of
MAGIC, the
Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre at the University of
British Columbia, and the former Scientific Director (2009-2015) of
GRAND, the Graphics, Animation and New Media
NCE,
a former Canada-wide network of centres of excellence in digital media.
He served as a Board Member and Secretary for the
Computer Science Canada / Informatique Canada from 2017-2019.
He has worked in the fields of computer graphics and
human-computer interaction since 1968.
Prior to UBC, he was a faculty member in the Department of Computer
Science at the University of Waterloo (1977-1990), and before that a staff
member at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1968-1976).
Research interests include
human-computer interaction,
user interface design,
collaboration technology, visualization, computer graphics,
and analysis of algorithms.
He has been involved in a number of interdisciplinary research projects at
UBC and elsewhere over the past five decades.
(Alternate biographical information is available
here.)
I am retired, so I do not have regular
undergraduate or graduate teaching duties.
Thirty years ago my thoughts on being a university professor teaching computer
graphics were included in the ACM SIGGRAPH Career Handbook (pages 58-60).
Almost all of my recent research has been in the field of
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) including the following:
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Collaboration technology
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Educational technology
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Structured annotation techniques for co-authored documents
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Selected areas of interactive computer graphics and virtual and augmented
reality
A list of
previous dissertation/thesis topics
that I have supervised in the past will give a snapshot of the range
of my interests.
I am not currently starting any new reseaerch initiatives or projects.
My research is limited to finishing existing projects for which I have funding.
(I am retired!)
Selected research initiatives in which I have been involved include the
following2:
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Much of my recent research has been related to
GRAND (2010-2015),
the former Graphics, Animation and New Media
network of centres of excellence. GRAND promoted highly cross-disciplinary
digital media reserach and knowledge mobilization
across Canada.
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The IDEASS (2011-2015),
is part of a multi-year collaboration looking at various aspects of the
built environment that focuses on how digital media technology can enhance
our ability to plan, construct, and manage the urban landscape.
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NECTAR (2004-2009)
was a research network
funded by NSERC that focused on collaborative technology.
Much of my research over the past five years was
centred on NECTAR projects and most of the graduate students I
supervised were affiliated with NECTAR. I am still actively
working on a number of projects related to collaboration technology,
especially tools for supporting collaboration on large, wall-sized
displays and tabletop displays. Students interested in
research opportunities in this area should contact me.
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The Enhanced Virtual Hand Laboratory (1995-2003)
was a multi-year interdisciplinary research project at
Simon Fraser University that examined a number of aspects of
augments and virtual reality, as well as hand-based interaction
techniques. I still have on-going interest in applying the results
of that research, and more recent work in the field, to analyze and
extend current interaction techniques,
especially for table top and wall-mounted displays for collaborative
systems where augmented reality techniques are employed to integrate
physical objects with virtual objects.
A fairly complete list of my publications
and summary of research activity is contained in my
CV.
There is also a list of some of my publications that are available (for free)
in the ACM DL.
This list is updated periodically. For a more complete list, you can look at
my ACM DL home page.
These are some links2
that I have found interesting or fun, but
some (such as the first three) have serious content.
Stuff I think every computer scientist should read
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I. D. Hill
(1972).
Wouldn't it be nice if we could write computer programs in English
-- or would it?
Honeywell Computer Journal 6(2):76-83.
This is a marvelous paper, but it doesn't seem to be available on-line
anywhwere (contact me if you want to find a copy). It was originally published in the Computer Bulletin
16(6):306-312 in June, 1972. It was re-printed by Honeywell.
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Richard A. De Millo, Richard J. Lipton, and Alan J. Perlis (1979).
Social processes and proofs of theorems and programs.
Commun. ACM, 22(5):271-280 (May).
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Roy Levin and David D. Redell (1983).
How
to write a systems paper.
ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, 17(3):35-40 (July).
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Software bloat is
real, and coming to a neighborhood near you.
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Normally I am not a big fan of claims made by the AI community, but this new
anti-theft system
looks like it might really work!
(Link currently broken, perhaps because of embarrassment.)
Stuff about digital media (graphics, visualization, HCI, etc.)
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If you don't think
this teapot demo
is funny, you are not old enough to appreciate the history of computer
graphics.
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If you are not sure whether you want to buy a new display monitor,
you may want to just update your current monitor to full color by
downloading the
Squant plug-in instead.
Less serious stuff
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Do you ever get tired of those meaningless management-speak terms?
Here is an
Action Item comic strip (circa 2000'ish) that has it all!
This has been in my list for years, but only in 2020 did I follow the
link at the bottom of the comic to see Neil McAllister's more serious web pages,
including writers' tips.
There is a more recent ‘unpacking’ of management-speak in the
The Atlantic
that ‘drills down’ in an ‘impactful’ way.
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On the World Wide Web there are all kinds of situations in which an Error 404
can occur, such as
this.
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Pick a
card, any card!
(Thanks to Ron Rensink for showing me this.)
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This is the best
T-shirt I've seen so far.
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Here's the real truth behind all of that bizarre
spam e-mail
you get with the weird characters inserted into normal words and seemingly
meaningless literary text embedded in what appear to be advertisements.
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Although many people thought that Dan Savage's favorite
anti-shrimp website
was just a joke, recent events in the Gulf of Mexico have proven this to be
hardly a laughing matter.
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There are powerful
Demotivators (R) you will enjoy,
including some new topical T-shirts related to the recent Gulf of Mexico
crisis.
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When all else fails, call the
Internet Help Desk for a good time.
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Lest we forget how blessed we are to live in Canada, think about how simple our
food security problem is compared to the rest of North America.
Really serious stuff
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The
Oxford comma
and the
apostrophe
are two things you need to beware of.
There can be serious consequencs of comma or apostrophe
misuse.
Check out the
Guidelines
related to academic writing
on my web page for students who are interested in working with me, and
more about commas if you aren't convinced they are important.
This paper is reasonably well written, and you would think the
authors would know how to spell "Fitts' law", given that they used
this paradigm for evaluating their work. The term is spelt
"Fitts's Law"
several times in the paper.
-- comment by R43 (expert) in a review of a paper that my co-authors and I submitted to UIST 2015
(see previous link about the apostrophe)
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
-- Plutarch
In Academia, the “haves” argue over space, the “have-nots” over
curriculum.
--
Anonymous
If your experiment needs statistics,
you ought to have done a better experiment.
--
Lord
Rutherford
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my
telephone.
--
Bjarne
Stroustrup
Any problem in computing can be solved by adding another level of indirection.
-- David Wheeler, according to Roger Needham, according to
Butler
Lampson et al.
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
-- Leon Bambrick, according to
Tim Bray who credits my former Caltech classmate Phil Karlton for the original two-item list.
On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.
-- Tom Lehrer
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
-- Tom Lehrer
(more
and
more)
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you
smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The
Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then
they get elected and prove it.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President;
I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow
Age and guile beat youth, innocence, and a bad haircut.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of
society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't
test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance,
greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.
-- Lawrence Peter Berra
Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
-- Lawrence Peter Berra
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
-- Lawrence Peter Berra
Surely if God had meant us to do yoga, he would have put our heads behind our knees.
-- Rod Stewart
Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house.
-- Rod Stewart
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
-- Frank Zappa
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark.
Professionals built the Titanic.
-- unattributed
You know in many countries like North Korea or Iran a citizen does not
have access to information like this.
-- Country Joe McDonald commenting
on his secret FBI file that he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act
request.
This is my absolute go to stuffing recipe! It is just like my grandmother's
and is an absolute classic! Just to preface I do not eat organ meat but
I have used the giblets that come with the turkey (yes heart, liver,
etc.) to flavor the turkey stock and it has been a BIG hit with my very
large family who has been eating gran's stuffing for decades! I dice
the giblets, sauté in olive oil to brown, salt, add the turkey stock,
simmer for 10 minutes and strain everything out.
-- In a comment on a recipe for turkey stuffing
Prions are very hearty proteins. They can be frozen for extended periods
of time and still remain infectious. To destroy a prion it must be
denatured to the point that it can no longer cause normal proteins to
misfold. Sustained heat for several hours at extremely high temperatures
(900°F and above) will reliably destroy a prion.
-- In an article about prion diseases
Fifty-eight years ago these
photographs were part of a study for "The problem we all live with"
that appeared in
Look
magazine, January 14, 1964.
--
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978).
More about Rockwell and this image appears in a 2020 Vox article that includes a passing reference to
“Officer Obie”
and here is more or less the original image.
A trivia tidbit about how some Border Patrol and Bureau of Prison officers were deputized by RFK
to serve as federal marshals protecting civil rights activists during the 1960s appears in a 2020 Politico article.
In the run-up to American Thanksgiving 2021, the Washington Post had more to say about Rockwell and this painting.
The dust cover art for Kurt Vonnegut's Jailbird shows Vonnegut sitting on a bed wearing a toque with the poster in the background on the wall.
1
Comedian Steve Martin said that he once read that earning your second million
dollars was a lot easier than earning your first million dollars, so he decided
he would earn his second million first and then maybe not bother with the first
million if it was going to be harder. I figured that probably applied to
doctorates as well, so I got my second doctorate in Metaphysics first, from the Universal
Life Church, by sending them $20. It didn't make my first doctorate that I got second, from Berkeley, any easier.
(A nice summary of computer science at Berkeley was writting by me doctoral advisor, Richard Karp.)
2
Links go stale over time, so there is no guarantee that all of the links
on this page still work. If you see any that are
broken,
please let me know and I will try to fix them.
3
Papers submitted to conferences or journals usually are sent to multiple
experts in the field, each of whom writes an anonymous review. Often the
reviewers are referred to by the editor as R1, R2, R3, etc.
It often seems that the best reviews come first
and then the more negative reviews follow.
This video is a
parody of many authors' experiences of getting positive
reviews from R1 and R2 but then seeing a very negative review from R3.
Why the Pepsi logos on this web page, you ask? Good question!
Source file:
index.shtml
Last modified:
Wednesday, 01-Feb-2023 21:55:40 PST
More information:
ksbooth@cs.ubc.ca
Disclaimer: No
animals
were abused or mistreated during the production of this Web page.
May contain traces of peanuts.
Your mileage will vary.
Taxes and shipping not included.
Void where prohibited by law.
Passports,
driver's licenses, and birth certificates not accepted for voting;
gun owner permits OK.
Apology: My disclaimer pales in comparison to
Doug Dyment's disclaimer.
