May 5, 2006

They haven't moved since last wednesdays trip out to buy more spaghetti sauce and meusli.

I just found a pear inside a gym bag that had been sitting there for *two weeks*. Totally gross, I have fruit flies in my sports bra. I also haven't been to the gym long enough for one bosc pear to turn into jelly. Double gross.

I used to leave stuff like that in the locker at school or in the fridge at work. I guess when you work from home you have to devise other strategies.

April 5, 2006

Thanks to an old friend I have my answer to the aca-licious question.

http://www.citeulike.org/

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

Same person different message he tipped me off to this

Welcome to SWITCH SWITCH is still in BETA! It is a Do It Yourself show where we create fun and fashionable items with electronics.

Random Question

Could the phrase "A talking picture frame" be used to poetically describe systems for dynamic self-presentation like myspace or friendster?

February 13, 2006

Attention all girl tech geeks...

esp. you Barb and Oana as if she reads this, I will have to mail the link to her.

Tomboy: simple note taking powerful ideas

The graphic of Tin-Tin is pretty freaking sexy. Almost makes me wanna stop growing my hair (Although it's moved into a Paul McCartney phase now.. and I am desperate to know what soft rock icon from th 80's I will look like come April)

via Join the dots

February 3, 2006

Okay is it just me or is this Anina B'shit a little intense.

She is at LIFT06 with my adorable friend - have you guys run into each other yet??

January 31, 2006

ENERGIE SOLAIRE, MOBILITE ET AUTONOMIE
by: Oumarou Savdogo (francais)

SAM. 4 fevrier 2006, 13h / 25$

Les projets en arts mediatiques necessitent de plus en plus des sources d'energie mobiles. Dans un souci d'economie, d'autonomie et d'ecologie, plusieurs artistes s'interessent a la lumiere solaire comme source d'energie inepuisable. Mais s'agit-il d'une forme d'energie vraiment accessible? Ce seminaire presente par un specialiste en la matiere vise a demystifier l'energie photovoltaique (transformation de la lumiere en energie electrique) et la physique des semi-conducteurs. Une periode de question permettra au professeur Savadogo de developper sur les applications possibles dans le domaine des arts mediatiques.

Oumarou Savadogo est professeur titulaire au departement de genie chimique a l'Ecole Polytechnique. Il est responsable du Laboratoire d'electrochimie et de materiaux energetiques. Les piles, piles a combustible, accumulateurs, piles solaires et couches minces de semi-conducteurs figurent parmi ses champs de recherche.

January 30, 2006

I have spent the last 4 months doing-up my first drupal site. Today I was trolling the forums looking for help on translation and stumbled on this really interesting debate about whether translation should be included as a core component.

It's a shining example of how identity/politics can impact the design of an application.

the summary of the argument is this;

dev1:

"I am pretty certain that no modifications of the standard Drupal database scheme will get into core for i18n, simply because only very few sites will need it. I am afraid that your solution will generally have too much impact on core and will be rejected for this reason. Hear my warning.."

dev2 :

"Probably you mispelled the sentence. Those modifications make more sense to me:

* no modifications of the standard Drupal database scheme will get into core for i18n, simply because only very few core-Drupal-maintainers will need it
* no modifications of the standard Drupal database scheme will get into core for i18n, simply because only very few sites that currently run Drupal will need it

Nobody can claim that 'very few sites will need it' without showing some data that confirm that possibility. I mean: how do you know that? Any proofs, statistics? Any poll I am not aware of, previous studies? Any passage of Nostradamus works I have not read?
"

dev3

"I live in the UK in an area with a multiracial multicultural community. There are two projects I have been asked to help with in the past month. One, a web site for a project providing the community translators/interpreters for about 20 languages, and the other a Chinese school. I18n is essential for both of these, and apart from the difficulties of using multiple languages with Drupal, it would also be ideal. There must be many more potential uses of an i18n Drupal."

dev4, dev5, dev6
"ibid dev3 with variations"

dev7

"Why fuss about wondering whether or not there is a demand from Drupal users (not just developers) for i18n in core? Why not have a poll? Question could be just: how important is true multi-lingual Drupal to you? Would die without it / Very / So-So / Bof! / Really don't care..."

dev1
"I am afraid software development isn't really democratic. ;->>"

There you go... the truth will have out. And here I thought it was all just poor documentation ; )

December 2, 2005

I've been writing these short silly posts lately, and I know that's doing my gentle readers a terrible disservice.

So it's friday evening, I can't face another page integration - it will be the death of me, and I have a great little anecdote for all y'all, a story that is all the title implies and more..

Okay part one:

I am a hairy lady, okay not so hairy but my peeps hail from the ukraine and are among the sons of esau and not the sons of jacob so I have a little bit of extra fuzz on places where girls should not have extra fuzz. On my chin to be specific.

I mean, I know no-one can see it really. Whenever I complain to my friends they give me that look you get when you are being incredibly obsessive about some thing that just isn't that big a deal at all.

What I really hate about my beardlet is that when I have a deep thought and I stroke my chin in that dramatic pensive way, I feel the little hairs poking my fingertips.. sheesh who wants a reminder of their very mortality at such times, not me.

Okay that's a lie, but still on nights when the world seems hell-bent on not giving me my due I lie in bed and stroke the tiny stubble and think what else do you deserve - you can't even have a face like a normal person.

After about 6 months I finally decided to go and pay out the big bucks for lazer hair treatment. Apparently it's the only thing that works, and is permanent, and painless and will involve the bare minimum of effort on my part.

Okay what are some problems; the obvious "but hair is a feminist issue" or something. This is probably true, and probably the people who really think that do not have beards so they can shut-up. Or better yet, I am a feminist and the only hair I really love and treasure is the stuff on my head the stuff on my bush and the stuff in my arm-pits, (don't ask me why, I love arm-pit hair - its the best !) anything else is just retrograde evolution.

So once the politics is dealt with there's the personal. "Don't you secretly hate yourself, if you don't love yourself the way you are?" Well, I didn't know how to read when I was born, and luckily someone taught me. Point being, the greatest gift we have as people, is the possibility to modify our basic hardware and software. Part of self-love is the ability to make improvements. Go laser-hair removal. Once that's done I am getting my drivers license and then I will take long road trips in convertibles so the wind can rush over my naked chin.

I talked to my neighbour who has a friend who is transitioning M2F and we are both having our facial hair destroyed.. Makes me think that if having facial hair is a political issue so is the decision not to have it. We are both making sacrifices (of $$ only in my case) in order to be "better girls".

Part 2:

So the decision is made and I try to find a place that's gonna do it for cheap and where the people sound reasonable and normal. I find such a place, and go in for a consultation. From the get go it's weird. For one thing, it's in Snowden so I am surrounded by Jewish stuff. There's a freakin' Chanukiah in the waiting room, and the Jewish guide to Montreal which is like the yellow pages of Kosher restaurants.

November 21, 2005

When I was six years old I had this problem whereby I still sucked my thumb.

So my parents decided the best way to cure me of the habit was by painting my thumb with iodine every night so that if the digit found its way between my lips I'd be wide awake in tears after about oh, a nonosecond.

Today I tried to modify my dreamweaver config so that I could work on .tmpl files in the dreamweaver interface.

Did I back up the conf files. - nah.

Does dreamweaver crash all the time now - yeah.

Did I also manage to pooch the win partition on my laptop - yeah. (I have no idea how that one happened it's all windows fault).

Am I about to template an entire drupal site using exclusively open source software - uh yeah, I guess so.

Hello thumb covered in iodine...because you know what, as much as I sing the praises of Open Source, Dreamweaver really was my friend.

BTW - because nvu is weird. Check out ; cssedit, so nifty.

November 15, 2005

THIS IS ACTUALLY A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS AND I AM TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM JUST SO DAMN EXCITED!!

hello there Oana Barb, MK, Alison Maya, Freida, Mel and if I am forgetting you I apologize. This is for alls y'alls

She's Such a Geek!

An Anthology by and for Women Obsessed with Computers, Science, Comic
Books,Gaming, Spaceships, and Revolution
Slated for Fall 2006

Geeks are taking over the world. They make the most popular movies and games, pioneer new ways to communicate using technology, and create new ideas that will change the future. But the stereotype is that only men can be geeks. So when are we going to hear from the triumphant female nerds whose stories of outer space battles will inspire generations, and whose inventions will change the future?

Right now. Female geeks are busting out of the labs and into the spotlight. They have the skills and knowledge that can inspire social progress, scientific breakthroughs, and change the world for the better, and they're making their voices heard, some for the first time, in Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders'book She's Such a Geek.

This anthology will celebrate women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. We're looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren't afraid to match wits with men or computers.

The essays in She's Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics, and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well as what it mean's to be female.

More than anything, She's Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it's a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, write epics, and run the government. We want introspective essays that explain what being a geek has meant to you.

Describe how you've fought stereotypes to be accepted among nerds. Explore why you are obsessed with topics and ideas that are supposed to be "for boys only." Tell us how you felt the day you realized that you would be devoting the rest of your life to discovering algorithms or collecting comicbooks.

We want strong, personal writing that is also smart and critical. We don't mind if you use the word "fuck," and we don't mind if you use the word "telomerase."

Be celebratory, polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky.
Possible topics include:
* what turned you into a geek * your career in science, technology, or engineering * growing up geeky * being a geek in high school today * battling geek stereotypes (i.e racial stereotypes and geekdom * cultural analysis of geek chic and the truth about nerds * the idea that women have to choose between being sexually desirable and smart * stereotypes about geek professions such as computer programmers) * sex and dating among geeks * science fiction fandom· role-playing game or comic-book subcultures * the joys of math * blogging or videogames * female geek bonding * geek role models for women * feminist commentary on geek culture * women's involvement in DiY science and technology groups * Stories from women involved in geek pop and underground cultures. These might include comic book writers, science fiction writers, electronic music musicians, and women interested in the gaming world * women's web networks and web zine grrrl culture * Issues of sexism in any or all of the above themes.

Editors: Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are geeky women writers.
Annalee is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and writes the
syndicated column Techsploitation. Charlie is the author of Choir Boy (Soft Skull
Press) and publisher of other magazine.

Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group,
publishes groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.

Deadline: January 15, 2006

Length: 3,000-6,000 words

Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page.Essays will not be returned.

Submitting: Send essay electronically as a Document or Rich Text Format file to Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders at sheissuchageek@gmail.com.

Payment: $100 plus two books Reply: Please allow until February 15 for a response. If you haven't received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected.

It is not possible to reply to every submission personally.

YAH !

wahoo what should I write about;

comic books or;
learning linux or;
romancing the geek or;
blogging or;
web design or;
my first computer (apple power pc 5500) or;
my first graphic pshop contract (drawing pictures of a gold course) or;
the pink digi-ghetto: working for for feminist technologists;
gender issues and geekiness or;
bikes and geekiness or;
my love/hate relationship with the writing of neil stephenson..
Queer SF or;

..The mind reels it's gonna be stiff comp I don't even think I am that geeky compared to other girls. I am not a furry. I don't role-play and failed to get a job at the comic book store because I didn't know what magic cards were.

I have one good friend who I hope will write about having a tee-shirt with glenn goulds portrait on it - made for her special...

October 26, 2005

Yippeee.. all this random talk of her, "working on her blog" and finally when I had almost given up hope I find much less info.

#1 what the hell is up with those uber realistic tissue papers dude? How did you do that? I almost went to brush my screen off. I am picturing you scanning tiny pieces of kleenex and then feathering the edges for hours to make it just right. C'est incroyable.

PS: for all of you who know her, her blogging sounds just like her talking , she even writes "such that" ....

sigh. I love technology.

PS: in the interests of not cluttering up your cyberspace my dear - I tried to keep this post under 500 mots but I think I failed.

June 10, 2005

AAHHH.. it's so hot. I am so cranky. I just biked arond this montreal-imitating-calcutta-before-the-monsoons hell-hole, I am due to call MKs "leash" shortly, but first, instead of eating, it's too hot for that, I am going to write a blog. It's like feeding the soul.

#1/ Laurens mom says funny things about computers; "Oh!Oh! *mouser* over to that banner ad I want to win an ipod!" - That's right people, mouser - the verb. Usage example; I was mousering around the internet today and I found an awesome post on rabbitblog about being an honest person. Why don't y'all mouser on over there and check it out yo.

#2/ I spent a bunch of hours with Norbert of XTlabs and a tech from the IT dept. trying to set up an LTSP lab that would run on top of the windows on Concordias standard IBM laptop.

Okay I didn't really do anything except bitch about the time, argue with the tech about whether Smartboard technologies would be better if multiple people could input on the boards from various devices at once (better better! Think corporate win lose or draw but you can attack/alter you clients and colleagues drawing as they are doing them. I digress)

Anyways, hours and hours and eventually I was like, "Dudes it's not going to work lets use knoppix and just set up a dhcp server for the internet connection."Okay maybe not the dudes part and maybe without such careful use of technical language - maybe I said, "let's not make this too fancy I want to go home before 7." Talk about dedicated to technological advancement, I just wanted to mouser on over to a cold beer okay.

So we do that, and then I boot up the laptop and suddenly it's working and getting a linux network boot and no windows to be seen anywhere. So we have functional laptop LTSP set- up for thurdays workshop yippee. Of course there is really no way of saying what tiny peice of the puzzle fell into place. I think it was a DNS problem and Norbert disagrees and maybe I think I am just magic with computers.

So I go and get google up and Norbert says; "Be careful, it might be cached go search for something." So then I am dithering over what search to term to use and the tech says; " look up your boyfriend" and I say " he doesn't exist" and tech says: "Well, if he's out there google will find him for you." (as if)

I think I should refer to google as my primary partner. Its the only thing I can count on to see every day - ooh I am so cranky.

May 17, 2005

Too many posts.. you must wonder how I am getting anything done.. I am not.
the ratio of work to surfing in the past 2 days has been 20:80 in favor of surfing.

But look, mama bear went out into the forest and found some nice juicy blog for us to read.

Introducing Opinionnated Lesbian writing about the
Anti-Booth Babes "Movement"

a quote;

The video game maker Agetec Inc. is launching its Anti-Booth Babe Movement campaign today at some Los Angeles Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3): "E3 used to be all about the new titles for the year, but now it seems like a competition between which company employs the hottest booth babes," sez this press release. "Sure, we all love beautiful models, but we thought it was time to remember that E3 is about the games, and applaud real people, real games and serious fun!"

I dunno, I think this means a shift in something.. we're not sure what yet.. Maybe gamers now have girlfriends who sit next to them in darkened rooms breathelessly waiting for the next edition of (help...) of Half Life to come out, and maybe also visit the big conventions... who knows, maybe booth babes are just passe?

Pretty sweet.

47 days

May 16, 2005

Booked and B&E

A ticket out of this town, because in the words of Final Fantasy;

"Montreal might eat its young but Montreal won't break us down."

So in 48 days I will be outta here - I just had this really strange and peculiar paranoia basically, "don't tell people when you are leaving cuz you will get robbed. and really that would suck."

Message to any would-be housebreakers: I mostly own houseplants, and this computer which is old enough now to qualify as one of the computers Reboot would happily refurbish and give to a community group.

I broke my own stereo months ago and have no television. Plus I have a vicious lesbian guard cat who will tear your eyes out and shed white fur all over your black cat burgler outfits.

To assess the roots of that little outburst and to piss my dad off I will tell a little story;

I recently borrowed a chunk of money from my dad; and when I was ready to pay it back I called and left a message saying can you email me or leave me a message with your account info please..

Dad responded by email and the subject header was "bank info"

He wrote;

"hello dear,
I am going to give you my bank information but in order to confuse any hackers or sneaks I will hide it in the body of this message."

What follows are a bunch of paragraphs that make no sense. Until I realize that he has written a phonetic code with his bank number buried in it somewhere.

So I write back and say;

"Thanks dad... I'll figure that out and then deposit your money...you nut."

he writes back;

"Well... I guess it is a little silly, the subject header did say 'Bank Info' after all.."

That's right the family all come by it honestly we also talk to houseplants and believe in fairies, what's the opposite of machivellian? naillevacham that's what we are, naive and also a little transparent I guess.

I hope this doesn't offend you dad, I find it's one of the nicest qualities in the world to be born with.

So there housebreakers, I dare you, steal my old shit, I don't even have any cds you want. They're all esoteric indierock.

...On hanging out by the virtual south doors smoking a cig and pretending I don't care

Somehow the above story makes me think of all this technorati hullabaloo going on about the top 100 bloggers, I always kind of thought the blogosphere was 50% open publishing phenom and 50% a popularity contest .. I guess it was only a matter of time before there needed to be a list posted in a bathroom somewhere.

Remember those lists in high school;

hottest chick,
easiest lay
gives best head

What else was there...Luckily my life has been too rich and full to remember the torturous vocabulary of high school popularity contests. All I remember was that one year I was number 10 in the hot-chick list, except that was the year I went to a "progressive alternative school" so there were only about 30 girls to choose from, and many had baseball bats (handily called bitchbats) which they would have used to clock said listmakers if they had heard they were listed. I had no bat, hence I was number 10.

So there, fuck lists. Give me a bat.

Perhaps it is human nature to give a rank to each other, part of a darwinian impulse which also explains why some of my houseplants fare better than others and why a pine forest will always be full of pine trees and no birches.

I prefer to think of it as a bad habit like smoking or failing to say thank you. Ranking makes it easier to focus ones vision on what appears to be most important, without allowing for a diversity of views.

But wait, you say, what about rewarding excellence. Good point, and I am sure that Amber Greenspan (northern secondary hot chick for three years running) never forgot the admiring glances she received while traipsing the halls of my alma mater.

I don't think the problem is the recognition, its the numbers and the titling. What if technocracy just asked for shout-outs of people/ blogs who seemed important for vague and sometimes completely arbitrary reasons. What if we could all submit headings and not just use theirs? what if, what if: All I am trying to say is that it is how rankings are framed that create the hierarchy of values.

Okay it's true I have always been a fan of the overlooked and the unpopular, have always been a member of that elect group too.. But come on people, self-publishing is not supposed to be about being popular, it's about being true to yourself.

Or have I just commit one of those naive blunders my family is famous for...

The focus thus far has been what voices are being left out of the list, which reminds me of second generation feminist art historical critiques, in which women painters who had been left out of the white-male (and western) pantheon were "re-discovered" by feminist scholars.

The third generation began unpacking the privelage of the of the art-historical as a rational for arts value, and questioned the hidden values (genius-myth, avante-garde, market-value) of the standard being used to proclaim something a "a work of art". By the the third wave scholars and artists started actually looking at the cultural production of women, and questioning the worth of the dominant narrative, rather than trying to fit women into it.

It is disturbing to see that the categories chosen by technorati also seem to use the same rational and western approach as those traditionally used to determine the market value of a creative enterprise in a capitalist economy. What is avante-garde? What will sell well? and who did it first?

A reification of standards in a domain which previously had less obvious throttling techniques is a big problem. I don't want to see a really creative terrain (the blogosphere) reduced to a set of principles or worse yet "rules" about what represents quality. And I don't want to see a top 100 established by any group, regardless of how open and accessible they are trying to be.

Wow that really turned into a bit of a rant. I should go get a coffee and chill out.

May 12, 2005

Finally have a version of this project I have been working on *forever* on-line and looking pretty snappy (IMHO).

It's all Textpattern all the time. Version RC3 is out now, and though some things are buggy (ie breadcrumbs and commenting for photoalbums), overall working with TXP is about 85% responsible for alleviating my little tech related existential crisis. which I won't get into here, only quote my dad; "Who has a personality crisis about the internet?!"

I love Textpattern - honestly I would wear a t-shirt that said that.

Oh yeah, here's the site ;

Digital Girls - Girlhood>>Play>> Technology

thanks to Jen and Brandi for their help.

April 20, 2005

Boy no-one said the 9 to 5 was such a piledriver to the soul socket. I really like my manager and my co-worker is my best friend. But I get home after the gym, and it's game over.

Today I flat-flyed 15 pounds (one in each hand actually makes 30). Say that 5X times fast. Okay it's really not that much - but I feel like a frickin he-man. There are these two funny guys who come in together and do all sorts of macho exercises like chin -ups with a dumbell pinched between their shins ( I dunno..), after I did my repsI really felt qualified to join their grunt festival. This is what the sound "RAAAWR" was made for.. Although I would still do it quiet, maybe I would go "rawwrr" and then look around to make sure no-one else heard me.

The important News

I mentioned earlier, there's this conference coming up Blogher that it is my *mission* to attend. Well part of the mission involved asking for a thing called a bloghership.

A bloghership is a registration scholarship from the blogher organizers. The recipient has an obligation to live-blog from a conference session or two. The good news is: I got one!!. The better news is that I was asked to coordinate the rest of the submissions. Which is going to add some to my schedule I imagine, but I am certain will be worth the effort. I am loking forward to receieving lots of great blogs to read, and working with a really exciting group of people.

So... if you are reading this, and are interested in receiving a volunteer bloghership, please email me at the address listed at the bottom of the site. There will be a wiki up soon on the blogher site and I will update my post when it is established, but for now, email me.

There were all sorts of other small bits that flew through my head this week but they have scattered due to overwork/excitement/that weird ennui thing that hapened for a few days there. (which i will not talk about because someone commented and said I was "really, really bitter" - a sentiment I would hate to encourage by talking about how sad/bitter I was feeling for parts of this week)

April 19, 2005

Things to be happy about;

- getting an email from a girls tech group that says "...we are setting up a public wiki" awesome... ladiezzz lets' use that new fangled technology to work together.

- listening to le tigres "peace now" and hearing a woman screaming, "It isn't to talk about peace, one must believe in it, and it isn't enough to beleive in it, one must work at it." and, "We will not sell out we will not back down we will not compromise"

- just when I thought I was on the part of the roller coaster where my stomach drops and I feel queasy two things in five minutes can bring it all back in a really good way.

March 15, 2005

Battle for the Belle of Amherst

From wired magazine.

Extract:

"In this era of first-person shooters, successful video games seem to require lots of shooting, explosions and other assaults on the senses. But who says you can't write a game about the poetry of Emily Dickinson?"

Another one;

Wright, the speaker most people in the room had come to see, riffed on Dickinson's reputation as a recluse.
"If she were alive today, she'd be an internet addict," Wright deadpanned, "and she'd probably have a really amazing blog."

At first, he said, he'd thought he would mix Dickinson's poetry into a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas environment. But in the end, he was inspired to create a kind of combination of Tamagotchi and Microsoft's universally hated paperclip helper, Clippy.

Then came the idea to put the player in the role of Dickinson's therapist. The game, he said, would be stored on a USB flash drive.

"As you interact with her, you start with a cordial relationship," he said. "She (either) becomes romantically obsessed with you, or goes into a suicidal depression, and at the end, she can delete herself from the memory stick."

I don't know what to say..

I think it would be pretty funny if we all had flash memory therapists that functioned like clippy the paper clip.

Scenario: I am sitting at school and I have set myself the goal of writing 10 pages of a paper, and I am not leaving the campus until this is finished. Except now I am actually blogging with a guilty conscious and my clippy therapist, (What would the icon be? I guess there would have to be an assortment of therapeutic avaters: a moustache and a pipe, a cup of tea, a pair of birkenstocks, a notebook, a teddy bear, a glass of milk, a jade plant?? ) would pop-up and say;

"nu miriam, how are we feeling today?"

and I would type into the therapy modules response box;

"Angry tense, I hate school."

and the therapy avater would respond;

"Vell, you can select from one of the sefven vollowing options how is it you vant to proceed; you can; -....etc"

I remember when I was 9 and visited the Onatrio Science Centre religiously with my Dad, they had a computer psychiatrist. It would allow you to type responses to its questions, such as "How did that make you feel?" My friends and I used to (very creatively I am sure..), type lots and lots of swear words into the text bar and then the robot pyschiatrist would say; "Well that's not a very nice thing to say is it;"

Hopefully game design at this point has advanced to the stage where Ms Dickinson is allowed to swear at her therapist. Well, actually, since the player is the therapist it's actually up to them how they respond.

I am weirded out by the fact that instead of focusing on her brilliant poetry the game designers chose to deal with MS dickinson as a ravinig shut-in looney. I am not sure what that means. It makes me sad.

I wonder if the challenge had been to make a game about the poetry of Walt Whitman if the designers would have focused on his latent homosexuality or if they would have actually read the poetry and made up something creative and compelling for people to play rather than an extended joke about a closet case.

Maybe if it had been macho poet a Robert Bly type thing they could have just worked some of the texts into a plot about being a mighty hunter.

Did I mention angry and tense... nu miriam, go write your paper, and stop all this looking for trouble..

January 7, 2005

I wanted to add a new category called shameless self promotion...

You know why? My friend Jeff (to whom I really don't give close to enough props) listed me as an Honorable Mention in his article My Top Ten Toronto Blogs.

Which originally appeared in Now Magazine, a free toronto weekly much like the Montreal Mirror only interesting.

The quote (if I may Jeff) is:

I'm also a big fan of The Flink (http://www.flinknet.com/theflink/) from ex-Torontonian Miriam Verburg (now living in Montreal)

I am shivering with happines.

And not at all on topic, well maybe on the topic of self-promotion a little, I have joined the gym and am about to make my third trip!

The real call to action came when I vertically* ripped the ass of my favorite jeans the other day. Mike called it the Ass Liberation Front and didn't seem all that concerned. But I decided to take drastic action and supress the bootie uprising.( at least add some muscle to that mass)

Now I am late.. oops.

*vertical as opposed to horizontal implies a change in ass size versus the natural wear and tear of fabric. Also the pants weren't really that old.

December 22, 2004

because the only blog I read is this one;

Results of New Intel Survey on Women and Tech

Misbehaving talking about Intels new survey on women and tech..It's high time someone did another one of those.

Misbehaving quotes Genvieve Bell:

"Not often recognized as early adopters, women in the survey are revealed as leading the way with wireless Internet access, as more women than men believe this is one of the most important features for a laptop to have (39 percent women versus 29 percent men). While men (51 percent) and women (48 percent) agree that the airport tops the list of the most useful locations to have wireless Internet access, women (38 percent) are more likely than men (30 percent) to desire a connection in a doctor's office as well."

Here's a quote from business wire

"Introducing "Tif" - the Technology Involved Female
A new, tech-savvy woman has emerged and Intel calls her "Tif," short for Technology Involved Female. She spans generations and backgrounds, from the young women who have grown up with technology, to women who have been exposed to technology at work, to motivated self-learners. Tif is closing the technology gender gap, with women at the youngest end of the spectrum actually surpassing men in their intent to purchase a laptop. Half of young women say their next computer will be a laptop as compared to 43 percent of men their same age.(2) "

I am a tif..... tif tif tif .. it just rolls off the tongue. I wish I could have made that MT- RSSFEED plugin work yesterday than maybe I would feel a little more tif-ish than I presently do.

I also wish they could have come up with a sexier name. I mean Geek-chic, that's sexy. TIF is a file format (as only a tif would know). I want to be a laptop lesbian or something.

Okay also FTR I let the oil run out in my furnace and it is sOOO cooolld. That was my fingers shivering while I type. so cold.

September 7, 2004

I keep writing at the most inappropriate times ( like late at night when I should be taking a bath)

But anyways,check out this post on Misbehaving.net. About a BBC mini-series that is examining some of the more pressing global issues over the next 20 years. One such issue is apparently the real possibility that women may take over the world.

The entry at misbehaving is super-interesting, it sums up the social, biological and technological reasons why women are increasingly in a position of autonomy na dpower, as contrasted with centuries previous. That increase over 20 years could well result in a paradigm shift that places the ladies and not the lads at the top of of the pile for the first time in thousands of years.

Of course at the end there is the obligatory caution about how men feeling left out of the paradigm shift might increase their violence towards women..

I am currently reading a book by one of the experts (Steve Jones: the Decent of Men) interviewed for the tv show, and have been having a bit of a struggle to finish it because to be frank I don't get excited by discussions of difference as much as finding out how genders overlap.

And I guess that's what bothers me about the BBC idea. (which I will be honest here, I did throw my fist in the air and yell woot! immediately after reading the title of the post.)

May 27, 2004

hey wouldn't that make a good category...

probably more useful than books, I read I swear I do.

So I just installed phpwebsite in my never ending search for CMS that doesn't make me gnash my teeth.

...and of course the themes for these things are always painful, so I went to see if I could find some smart kid whos made some themes and wants me to have them for free.. and I found;

phpGirl.com - Girls Code it Better

Yay!! this is the week of finding people like me on-line..

Which means 2 things;

1/ I need to get that link list generator someway somehow.

2/ I need to start a sub-category of tech called something like girls/geeks and give up on the notion that I will ever write a book review.

a''ight I am off to try to befriend phpgirl