# (1) 09 Mar 2010, 03:45PM: Some Fanvids I Like:
I was just telling a pal about Archive Of Our Own, and then I was explaining why an episode of Psych mentioning "Shassie" was fanservice [0]. And Kirrily just linked to a feminist fanvid sampler. So I decided I should publicly bookmark some of my favorite fan fiction and fanvids.
First a few vids:
- "It Depends on What You Pay" by giandujakiss, the classic Dollhouse vid.
- And speaking of critiquing the source text, "...on the dance floor" by Sloane, which permanently changes how one watches the Star Trek reboot (and Flight of the Conchords).
- Did I mention critiquing the source text? "Handlebars" by Flummery.
- "Us" by lim, which makes my heart soar every time I watch it. Amazing notes.
- A fun James Bond vid by giandujakiss that has a great hit-hit-hit-bwah? repeating sequence in the middle.
- And the vid that I was just telling Elisa about: "Hourglass" by giandujakiss, which just seems fun until you read the creator's brilliant notes & metacommentary.
Fics later.
[0] "The Head, The Tail, The Whole Damn Episode" also featured a Leverage shoutout and guest appearances from Jeri Ryan (late of Star Trek: Voyager and Leverage) and Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh on Battlestar Galactica). Much as when I heard Obama had put Tufte on a panel, I'm feeling all pandered to.
# (1) 06 Mar 2010, 10:33AM: Dream Time:
Dream last night:
Other than the obligatory "why is Fog Creek having a meeting in my house?" scene, I mostly remember the time travel. I went back in time to some sort of "diamond rush" (like a gold rush, you see) and pretended to be a Russian woman who wanted her husband to take care of all this messy appraisal and trading. Nice to get some speaking practice in -- dreams count, right? I can barely believe my Russian convinced anyone, and upon waking, I had to wonder whether US residents 200 years ago would have believed a person with my skin color could be Russian. Fridge logic.
Within my dream, I read an amateurish webpage with tips for time tourists. "Read this Dave Barry piece about how annoying it is to carry a DiscMan when you're used to an iPod. Think ahead about how you'll deal with that," it advised. Right next to that, the author cautioned that you might alarm the natives by asking whether particular genocides have happened yet. "Don't ask, 'Have millions of people died recently?' or ask, 'Is such-and-so still alive? Is such-and-so still alive, too? What about such-and-so; is she still alive, too?'"
# (6) 03 Mar 2010, 10:53PM: ZaReason Response:
As I mentioned earlier, I wrote to ZaReason to ask them about their manufacturing practices and their CEO, Cathy Malmrose, wrote back. I asked her if she wouldn't mind me posting her response here, and she said "Go for it!"
Sumana,
Thanks for contacting us.
* Come without Windows pre-installed (I'm sick of paying the Windows tax)
Not only is Windows not installed, our hardware has *never* had it. Unfortunately,
some vendors will make a "Linux-only" laptop by using older prepackaged Windows
hardware, wiping it then doing an Ubuntu install. We get our components from the
individual OEMs who manufacture the individual components (wifi, HD, motherboard,
case, etc.) Since we don't have to build it to be compatible with both Windows &
Other we have the freedom to select whichever parts are absolute best for a
Linux-only system. No compromises needed.
* Most or all components ethically sourced
From what we can tell, yes, but I'm sure we could dig deeper. Generally we use MSI,
ASUS, Shuttle, etc. They are the current standard suppliers. More below.
* Manufactured/assembled someplace with real labor standards.
In Berkeley!
We're governed by State Labor Law, Federal Law (EDD), and all sorts of other
agencies. We even pay an Electronic Waste Recycling Fee. The money is funneled
through the State of CA Board of Equalization to the recyclers like ACCRC who then
follow best practices in recycling the hardware. (Although these regulations could
stand a lot of improvement.)
Labor standards: Our pay is good but not great since we are still small. It's the
going rate for a university town / Bay area. We try to compensate by giving our
employees benefits that are meaningful to them personally -- home office work for
research, flexible (very flexible) hours, etc. One of our dearest employees brings
her infant with her and it adds a sweet element to the office. We are a small shop on
Hopkins Street in Berkeley. We have 14 employees. We hire people who are good, kind,
and highly motivated to build hardware specifically for free and open purposes.
We are growing quickly and hope to open a second shop soon.
* General laptop desiderata (sturdiness, battery life, thinner is better)
All of our components are the same as those used by Dell, HP, System 76 and other
builders. The difference is:
1. We do not have to navigate around license agreements. Not only do we not use
Windows, we also do not do deals with distros. Some distros approach hardware
builders with a "Please pay us $x for every system you sell." When that happens the
focus shifts from cool hardware to dollar and numbers sold. Not good. We do not have
any strings attached other than to our office staff and our customers.
2. We are privately owned, no investors and the board members actually work in the
shop. We put our laptops through a child-test, where we let a 7 yo (here he is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9609130@N03/2929692722/ ) and a 17 yo use the laptop for
a week. They are generally able to find any weaknesses in the case.
3. We have battery life equivalent to those of other builders. The ARM is coming out
soon which could and should shoot netbook battery length up to 12-14 hrs, but it is a
low power processor.
4. Thinner is better? We agree! Our Hoverboard is about as thin as the MacAir. The
Hoverboard is approx 1/3 the price.
An acquaintance pointed me to you. I'm glad you sell laptops
preinstalled with Linux and tested here in the States! But where do you
manufacture/assemble the laptops?
We do our assembly / partial manufacturing in the US, but the base components are
made in China. There are a few component "manfacturers" that have shops in the US but
nearly all actual manufacturing is done in China. We have seen the factories in
Shenzhen where they are made and we agree that there are many, many bad labor
practices, but the OEMs we have chosen are fully compliant when we view them. (That's
not to say they are compliant when we leave!)
Can I get assurances that the people who made the laptop were paid
fairly, and that the assembly process is reasonably environmentally
friendly?
Your message became a topic of conversation with a few of the builders when it came
in. Several said, "I'll reply to that one!" saying that they would gladly reassure
anyone that they have a lot of fun and are not only treated fairly, but fully respected.
I used to live in Berkeley myself so it would please me to get to
purchase a computer from you. Please let me know -- I looked on your
site but couldn't quite find any mention of the location where ZaReason
computers are assembled.
Wow, that is an oversight. Thank you for mentioning it! We recently did a website
redesign, went live approx 12 days ago. The part listing our actual location did not
make it into the redesign... I'll chalk this up as yet another helpful comments from
the community. We also need to have a section on the site, possibly in Our Story /
About that addresses the questions you asked.
We are in a sweet little shop at 1647 Hopkins St, Berkeley, up the street from
Monterey Market and across the street from Goioa Pizza and Hopkins Bakery.
Thanks for asking,
--Cathy Malmrose, CEO ZaReason, Inc.
www.zareason.com
I really appreciate her candidness; it's refreshing to hear a CEO talk openly about what needs improving. And of course this kind of personal response is something I was never going to get from Lenovo, Dell, or HP.
# (2) 03 Mar 2010, 03:31PM: Sweatshop-Free Linux Laptop Search, Part II:
I got a few recommendations when I recently asked where to find ethically sourced laptops that come preinstalled with some flavor of Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora). My notes are below; I ended up going with ZaReason.
I'm going to note here the research I've done so others can correct me or stand on my shoulders. To repeat, I was looking for laptops with the following characteristics:
- Come without Microsoft Windows pre-installed (I'm sick of paying the Windows tax)
- Most or all components ethically sourced
- Manufactured/assembled someplace with real labor standards
- General laptop desiderata (sturdiness, battery life, thinner is better)
I don't really care about a laptop's weight or looks.
So, I'm trying to make a reasonable effort to buy a sweatshop-free/fairtrade, green/sustainable, and Windows-free laptop. All those buzzwords together cause a bit of a problem if you live in the US and want to buy from a mainstream retailer. (And when you get down to the component level, it's probably impossible, but I had to try.)
Dell offers some Ubuntu laptops (the Vostro and Latitude), and they give at least lip service to greenness, but they're all assembled in China and at least one report says their plants don't treat the workers as I'd like them treated. ("Environmental Commitment Trumps Respect for Human Rights," notes the NLC report - backhanded praise of a sort. That same report indicts IBM/Lenovo, Microsoft, and HP.)
At least one comprehensive ethical-buying guide recommends IBM products, but I worry that it's out of date, since (as far as I can tell) IBM's PC hardware is no longer made directly by IBM, but by Lenovo in China. Lenovo Thinkpads are reliable and run Linux well. Collabora provided me an x200 when I worked there, and I loved it. But again - made in China, labor practices not so hot. And, as far as I can tell, all Lenovo laptops come preloaded with Windows.
Lenovo is or was partially owned by the Chinese government via Legend Holdings, until that stake got sold to the private China Oceanwide Holdings Group (my financial research fu is not strong). I'd be unhappy about supporting bad governments with my purchases, but it's not like any large companies have only benevolent stockholders, and who knows where the manufacturers are getting components! (This comes up in Sara Bongiorni's A Year without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy; to simplify, she decides not to look too hard at Chinese-made components.)
Other buying guides were incomplete. I rather wish the National Labor Committee had a stamp of approval. The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition depends mostly on voluntary self-reporting, which isn't terribly trustworthy, although the third-party audit data might be good if it weren't at least a year out of date. The Treehugger.com guides are obsolete, greenlaptop.com seems to be an SEO site without specific & up-to-date recommendations, and Laptop Magazine's green buying guide is eight months out of date and only looks at environmental friendliness, not human rights. And of course it's rare that any of those laptops come without Windows preinstalled.
Stuart said he's had good experiences with EmperorLinux, and they do indeed sell laptops with Linux preinstalled. But they're reselling the machines that Dell, Lenovo, Fujitsu, Panasonic, and Sony manufacture. Dell and Lenovo are out as mentioned above, and I don't particularly want the Fujitsu tablets EmperorLinux has on offer. I started looking up Sony and Panasonic manufacturing locations (mostly Japan, I think?), but was discouraged to see that EmperorLinux offerings from Panasonic and Sony started at USD1750. I'm willing to pay extra for what I care about, but $1,750 was several hundred dollars more than I'd budgeted.
Then, thanks to a pointer from Leigh Honeywell, I looked up ZaReason, which seems to be the end of my search. ZaReason builds Linux laptops in Berkeley, tries to monitor its Chinese component factories/sources for fair labor practices/greenness, and is run by Cathy Malmrose ("The Un-Scary Screwdriver," GNOME Journal, November 2009). Their prices are reasonable, with laptops starting at USD599. And when I emailed them to ask where they assemble their products (Berkeley), Malmrose wrote me a long, clear, comprehensive, and thoughtful reply.
So I'll be placing an order for the Strata 2660 later this week. Thanks, Malmrose & Honeywell!
# (3) 03 Mar 2010, 12:20PM: Assortment:
I keep hearing about cool people & events in Portland, Oregon. Punk rock mathematicians, Michael Schaub, and the Open Source Bridge conference, whose call for proposals closes in two weeks. (I should just decide whether to go to that, since I can't buy my WisCon plane tickets until I know whether I'm flying back to New York or westward to Oregon when WisCon ends.) And then in July Portland hosts the Community Leadership Summit just before OSCON. Brendan, Jade, maybe I should just show up and crash on your couch for two months. (Not really.)
I responded to Julia's questions, "Where do you find music? How has it changed over time? Do you have certain people to thank for helping you develop your musical palate?" in an excessively long series of comments on her blog, should you be interested.
A gripping quote for anyone who wants to lower mental barriers to growth:
The State is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.
# (2) 02 Mar 2010, 11:45PM: Some Books:
Recently read, don't want to forget:
A Year Without "Made In China" by Sara Bongiorni: a quick read, finished in a few hours (long after receiving it as a gift, I'm embarrassed to say). The author gets caught up in edge cases and logistics, as you always do when you make a rule-based change to your lifestyle (sometimes that heightens your appreciation of the intention you're manifesting, and sometimes it fogs it). She makes it engaging, but don't look here for recommendations on finding non-Chinese-made alternatives. Much more a memoir than a how-to.
World War Z by Max Brooks: I started reading this before bed and had to finish it before going to sleep, or else zombies would haunt my dreams. Hard horror (like hard fantasy), first-class worldbuilding, grim satire, chills, thrills, relentless inevitability yet surprises and twists on every page.
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach: seems to start out a family-scale fantasy, expands into space opera, epic in scope but always personal and believable. Empires fall and rise, investigators work on eons-old mysteries, and you see bits and pieces from several perspectives. Very good. Translated from the German.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, as I mentioned a few days back.
I've also reread most of Bury the Chains and The Left Hand of Darkness. (Jo Walton's book reviews make me feel better about spending time rereading for pleasure or curiosity.)
# (2) 28 Feb 2010, 09:14PM: Sewing, Debian Packaging, DIY Electronics, And My Love Of Old Systems:
 A few weeks ago I organized a sewing lesson at Ivy's place. A few friends got together and learned some basics of machine sewing and hand sewing. (My family had bought me a sewing machine a few years prior, for which I was very thankful, but which I put away in frustration when I couldn't figure out how to get the bobbin thread to properly get caught by the needle.)
Ivy was a great teacher. Over and over, I was astonished to see the system of the thing resolve before my eyes; millions of people have worked through fiber arts issues before I ever arrived, and have developed tools and practices that make sense. Every button and lever and outcropping on the face of a sewing machine has a function. Starch spray, hot iron, water, pins, spool, bobbin, rotary trimmer, foot pedal to leave both hands free to guide the fabric, and different stitch types for different purposes (like backstitching or stabilizing initial knot) just make me feel so glad to be arriving in a well-explored problem space, in a millenia-old community of practice.
We were all women. We talked about:
- clothes and crafting
- apartments and moves
- dating and partners
- our friend and how to cheer him up
- our job histories and the in-retrospect architectures of our careers
- licorice
- university architecture and confusing hall/building design
 So, in case you're trying to pass the Bechdel test, there you have some suggested topics. I successfully hemmed some raw shirtsleeve edges!
Then the next night I went to a Debian packaging workshop that Richard and Daniel put on. Thanks for the kind and informative instruction! Again, I marveled at how many tools the community had already built to check for traps, format output nicely, and generally smooth the processes of patching and packaging. tree gives you directory listings, formatted as a tree! You can report bugs to the Debian bug tracker from the command line with reportbug! Like Mel says: "It's not that these things are hard, it's that you don't know how they're easy."
I was the only woman. Better than none.
 A few nights ago I learned to solder, thanks to Ranjit, NYC Resistor, and BugLabs. (That's me in the background!) I brought some materials and creativity and got free light-emitting diodes, wire, tools, and instruction. Half the participants were women. Everyone's lanterns were pretty.
Wires twist easier with pliers, and hold together with solder. Electrical tape hides ugly wires and prevents short-circuiting (and "circuit" as a noun and a verb makes intuitive sense when you've wired one up). Voltage math on the level of 2-volt LEDs and nine-volt batteries is easy: four 2-volt bulbs in series light up nice, soaking up the voltage appropriately, but five bulbs get pretty dim, and three or fewer bulbs get dangerously hot and might pop.
 Pliers, soldering irons, and electrical tape are manufactured to complement the human hand. These are tools we made. They, too, are instantiations of a jillion person-hours of thought and work and discovery. Every complicated system is like a city. It emerges from the work that goes on inside it. We shape it and it shapes us.
That's my awe of makers and making. Reading books, I get to hear from the dead. In crafting, I feel the touch of the vanished hand.
# (0) 28 Feb 2010, 08:38PM: Bleg:
I have a little free time, so I'm thinking of spending a day at New York City's Paley Center for Media (a.k.a. the Museum of Television and Radio) to watch old television or listen to old radio. I'm specifically charged with watching the 1985 "Scenario" episode of Benson because it's arguably the first TV show ever to mention the Internet. Leonard wants me to transcribe the relevant bits of dialogue.
It costs a schlub like me (read: someone not affiliated with an educational or research institution) USD25 for a day of access, so I'm open to suggestions for other things to check out while I'm there. For example, they have an episode of Gung Ho, an eighties sitcom about lean manufacturing that starred Scott Bakula and that doesn't seem to be available on DVD. Search their collection and tell me if the Center has some other recording that piques your geeky or obscure interest, and what mystery needs solving. I'll take notes and try to answer you here on my blog.
The Paley Center also archives old TV and radio commercials. I can't think of any old ads I've been aching to watch, but maybe you can.
# (2) 28 Feb 2010, 04:13PM: Making The Hard Look Easy, Feminism, and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms:
Mary Anne Mohanraj recently wrote about sprezzatura, the nonchalance and easy grace that make all one's accomplishments seem effortless. She mentions that she's trying to cut down on that behavior, because she thinks its deception causes harmful expectations and self-loathing in others.
Mohanraj's post instantly reminded me of an ex. He told me of a compliment he'd once received: "You seem to be gliding through life." What does it say about me that I'd think of that as an insult, not a compliment? My take was: If you aren't visibly struggling, you're not working hard enough, your life is easy, and you're probably spoiled, lazy, and uncurious. How much of that is my workaholism? How much is insecurity, or resentment of privilege, or ignorance of my own privilege? Stupid female-socialized insecurity and self-sabotage for the sake of fitting in is, as I stipulated, stupid, and harmful both to the speaker and the hearer. But there's a difference between struggling to appear effortless and batting away compliments with a stick. I'm gonna quote myself from a column I wrote a few years ago:
There are people who say there's no such thing as arrogance, who would see nothing wrong with saying they're awesome, to whom humility, embarrassment, hubris, etc., are useless concepts that get in the way of efficient markets....
There is this thing called kindness, and it includes not eating a Snickers bar in front of a hungry person, and it includes not bragging about your skills in front of people who are trying valiantly to accomplish what you attained, especially if you got there without much effort....
Am I an expert at anything now? The larger my realm of experience gets, the more insignificant my tiny efforts seem.
What do I deliberately practice? What skills have I mastered? And what did my parents give me, in nature and nurture, that let me leap ahead?
I have no perspective on my own expertise, and no expertise on gaining perspective.
When something great happens in my life, I tend to think it's because of luck and discount my own effort. I aw-shucks my own accomplishments. And then I envy successful people instead of admiring them.
Envy comes from impotent desire. Role models get admired, the admirer assuming that he can get there too.
That's the difference, too, between destructive and constructive acknowledgments of one's accomplishments. Compassion, and hope.
Related essays that sprang to mind included some notes on protection and mentorship by Bitch Ph.D. She says that her strengths include calming students' and junior academics' anxieties by telling them the profession's unspoken rules, such as "No one reads everything they cite." I might turn her paragraph below into my new anthem:
I don't believe in unwritten rules, or at least I don't believe in not telling people what they are; I don't believe in meritocratic bull****; I don't believe that making people paranoid is the way to get them to do good work; I don't believe that competition need be cruel. I'm an extrovert, I'm honest, and I don't like to lie.
(Some thinking on meritocracy, in case you take reflexive umbrage at Bitch Ph.D.'s dismissal.)
When you're perceived as successful, you can more credibly criticize the system you've mastered and the game you've won. For example, because she takes the effort to look femme and stylish, she can awaken students to how much work goes into performing femininity: they "think more critically about why they spend so much time on their appearance, and what the costs and benefits of it are." This goes back to Mohanraj's hope that she can use others' compliments as an opening to encourage them, rather than discourage.
These days, I just keep trying to expose the work under the beauty.... I cheated and used a pre-made sauce for the base -- let me show it to you. Exposing the hard labor (or the clever workarounds) that are necessary to trying to do it all, for the sake of family, of profession, of self, of community. I believe that labor offers a different kind of grace.
Speaking of labor:
On the difference between labor and work, via Dara. "What is your work now?" may go into my toolbox of party questions, as "what are you reading?" and "what are you obsessed with?" aren't surefire conversation-starters.
Mohanraj is Guest of Honor at this year's WisCon (feminist science fiction/fantasy convention, late May, Madison, Wisconsin). So I can barely segue into talking about some speculative fiction that's caught my eye.
"Sundowning" by Joanne Merriam is a little bit like "The Second Conquest of Earth" by L. J. Daly (both good, same magazine, five months previous): interesting female point-of-view character trying to outwit or outwork a terrifying antagonist.
Got an interesting fictional take on the Ramayana? An anthology is seeking submissions.
I got to go to the launch party for The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Book One of The Inheritance Trilogy) a few nights ago. And then I inhaled the entire book over the next 24 hours. To quote another reviewer, it's "full of danger, sensuality, and wonder." And it works as a self-contained book, by the way.
Reasons I wanted to read this book:
- the author's thinky posts about fantasy at The Magic District
- the author's post, "Warriors who don’t make war":
Yeine is a warrior who never makes war.
Or at least, she doesn't do it in any conventional sense. That's the point. Yeine comes from a warrior culture. In her land, serious disputes are resolved in a straightforward and efficient manner: with a knife-fight. She’s pretty good at it...
...a character who, out of habit, draws her knife in tense moments... then puts the knife away. She learns of a military threat and must deal with it diplomatically, economically, logistically, even magically -- but not militarily....
- similarly, her thoughts on Yeine as postfeminist
- the sample chapters one, two, and three
- she and Leonard used to be in the same writing group
- Her story for Haiti, "The Effluent Engine" - lesbian steampunk gun-toting spy drama in New Orleans
- all the stuff she wrote and said during WisCon last year, and around RaceFail
So it was overdetermined that I'd read the book. I'm glad to have loved it as well.
# (1) 24 Feb 2010, 12:51PM: Milestone:
Yesterday I soldered for the first time.
# (2) 21 Feb 2010, 11:50PM: Life Update That Might Very Well Do Better As A Bulleted List:
Sorry, I haven't blogged in the past week (except microblogging & linking). Since last Sunday, I:
visited the Merchant's House Museum with Beth, went to a fun storyreading and met new Dan, had a lovely talky dinner with Rupa, gossiped and saw a Jane Austen exhibit with Julia, breakfasted with her and Moss and Mirabai, submitted a conference proposal, met Elizabeth Yalkut, visited Yahoo! Labs New York to hear lightning talks by Yahoo! researchers, bought Diana Abu-Jaber's Origin, tried stout-based hot chocolate, went to McGinty's to celebrate a peer's escape from an abusive situation (and ended up talking Python & PostgreSQL with her sister & Beth), ate a jar of pickles (and drank the brine) while reading in Union Square Park, talked with Joe and Elisa and Brendan on the phone, introduced Leonard to new Dan, walked around Astoria with Pat and helped him find no-kill mousetraps and explored the Socrates Sculpture Park and brought him home to Leonard (where we all squeed), there's probably more but it's not in my calendar.
I remember reading Gordon Korman's Zoobreak and Maureen F. McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters, and a bunch of TVTropes (won't even link! admire my civic responsibility) and some Lassiter Psych fanfic. Also watched several episodes of Psych. Is there a more intertextual dramedy on the air?
Thanks for the McHugh, Julia! And for warning me about the DESPAIR NOOOO in "The Cost To Be Wise" and the BLATANT FANSERVICE in Psych: "Death Is In The Air." Although no warning is quite enough.
# (1) 14 Feb 2010, 07:20PM: A Song Lyrics Post More At Home In LiveJournal Syndication Than On My Own Site:
Other than the Mr. Belvedere theme song, the main song that's been stuck in my head recently is "Oh Lately It's So Quiet" by OK Go, because This American Life: 2010 used it to fine effect. More:
Why bother
It's gonna hurt me
It's gonna kill when you desert me
This happened to me twice before
It won't happen to me anymore
- "Why Bother?", Weezer (awesome 8-bit tribute/cover version from Weezer - The 8-bit Album). I know these lyrics sound resigned, but in the song, especially the I Fight Dragons cover, the sound feels energetic and kick-ass. I'm taking control. The next time I try this, it'll be on my terms.
Consider [the] possibility
That you've been had, but not by me
- "Just Apathy," Tally Hall. "Welcome to Tally Hall" is a more astounding song, lyrically, melodically, harmonically, but the singer sings this one line plaintively and playfully. It sticks with me.
You say they taught you how to read and write
Yeah, they taught you how to count
I say they taught you how to buy
and sell your own body by the pound
I think you like to be the simple boy
I think you love to play the clown
I think you are blind to the fact
that the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down
- "Everything to Everyone," Everclear. I've had this album for ten years? This song is arguably an argument about product differentiation in established multiline corporations. (But it's not.)
# 14 Feb 2010, 07:17PM: 23 Links:
If you live in the Bay Area, think about listening to Scott Rosenberg on Tuesday March 2nd -- he'll be talking about MediaBugs.
Remember the Yes, Minister episode called "Open Government"? The Obama Administration either doesn't, or doesn't care. Also, Indians EVERYWHERE!
James Vasile and Will Kahn-Greene talk about whether and how to turn non-contributors into contributors, and to increase the number and quality of their contributions. Teaching Open Source, "How to Destroy Your Community, and Dispatches from the revolution seem like good places for James & Will to start. And let's not forget to think about all the barriers there are to lower, the most troubling one being that people don't realize their own capacities and options.
The Koha library app is cool. When I see its featurelist mentioning OPAC, it reminds me of working on the OvidSP demo video (Chapter: Ovid Universal Search). "Even your OPAC!" I learned what "OPAC" means about eight times and each time immediately forgot.
My ex-boss seems to have decided that Fog Creek will hire people who don't have programming experience. Seems reasonable, although the company culture sure will change (if it hasn't already). (Ha, they still have at least one picture of me on their site!) Speaking of company culture, I'm interested in how Damien Katz's vision will turn out. I'm especially curious about how the anti-manager bias and the allergy to performance/productivity criteria will end up working.
Sarah Haskins's "Target Women" segments for Current's "Infomania" are no more. She's moving on to screenplays and whatnot. At least we have the archives, and she hints that another woman may take over TW.
More Sumana links in delicious.
# (1) 14 Feb 2010, 04:51PM: Happy Silly Day:
I went to high school for four years. Each of those years, I wrote for the high school newspaper. And each year, for the Valentine's Day issue, I wrote a separate, all-new anti-Valentine's Day opinion piece.
Leonard and I started dating in 2001. Somehow I'd gone through eight Februaries with Leonard without telling him about these editorials. Specifically, until yesterday, I hadn't told him that one of them was a glimpse into a utopian future in which Valentine's Day was merely a historical curiosity. Children in school were learning about this custom and found it astonishing. I'm certain I'd already read "The Fun They Had" but I can't remember whether my piece was a deliberate homage.
Yesterday we also came up with the name "Guns N. Butter" (for a girl, no?) and we realized that my ninth-grade biology teacher, Courtney Porter, could easily have doubled as Batman stenography villain "Court Reporter." Leonard's sample dialogue:
Batman: "I'm taking you down!"
Court Reporter [fingers madly clattering over keyboard]: "I'm taking everything down!"
# (2) 14 Feb 2010, 04:26PM: Lazyweb:
I'm thinking about buying a new laptop computer to aid in my volunteering and consulting. I'd run some flavor of Linux on it, probably Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora. I welcome suggestions for laptops with the following characteristics:
- Come without Windows pre-installed (I'm sick of paying the Windows tax)
- Most or all components ethically sourced
- Manufactured/assembled someplace with real labor standards
- General laptop desiderata (sturdiness, battery life, thinner is better)
I don't really care about its weight or looks. Thoughts?
Update: Ended up choosing ZaReason (reasons here).
# (2) 11 Feb 2010, 09:16AM: Sometimes Things Get Turned Around And No One's Spared:
I made it back to New York City just fine, and in time to catch our own snowfall. Leonard & I have again been using the infinite uploads of the mysterious bobtwcatlanta for entertainment.
"This theme song for Mr. Belvedere is really heavy on the slapstick."
"Yeah, it doesn't convey the sophisticated wordplay that characterized the comedy in Mr. Belvedere."
Pause. "Did it?"
"No!"
We recently switched to commercials rather than opening credits/theme music sequences. This means that twenty-year-old jingles have like dormant infections reawakened in my brain. "Bonneville!" may now replace "YEAHHH!" for me as a non sequitur suffix.
Speaking of reactions to entertainment: Danny O'Brien, if you're reading this, Brian Malow is to nerdcore comedy what They Might Be Giants is to MC Frontalot. A few minutes into Brian Malow's Wonderfest act he mentions that tic I have that I think you have too -- instead of laughing at a joke, nodding once you've parsed and compiled it and judged it sound. We're in a great tradition, you and I. Around 9:20 in this compilation is an ad for...life insurance? a real estate company? no, Benjamin Moore paints. "When something means so much, see your Benjamin Moore dealer." Instantly Leonard and I took this literally.
"Bob! I just asked her to marry me! It just meant so much!"
"Bob! My dog just got hit by a car! It means so much!"
"Bob! Ulysses! Just look at this text! It means so much!"
"Bob! Encyclopedias! All those sentences and articles! They mean so much!"
"Revised commercial: 'When something means so much and could conceivably be paint-related, see your Benjamin Moore dealer."
Tough room. TO PAINT! (Bonneville!)
# (1) 07 Feb 2010, 10:09PM: Travel Plans:
I'm setting up travel plans for the rest of the year. I'm about 95% certain I'm going to WisCon in Madison, Wisconsin in late May, although I need to find someone to room with (anyone have some spare floor at the Concourse?) and buy tickets. I submitted a talk to OSCON (Portland, Oregon, July 19-23) and I'll find out next month whether that got accepted. (OSCON is right after HOPE in NYC, which I really should check out.) I'm also thinking about going to WorldCon in Melbourne, Australia in early September, because I have a number of friends and acquaintances there, and when else will I have time plus multiple reasons to visit Melbourne? Since DebConf in early August is in New York City, I'll probably be there at least for the social bits.
And there are a metric zillion other events I'm at least somewhat interested in, from LibrePlanet to the Netbook Summit to QuahogCon to Open Source Bridge and the Community Leadership Summit. So this coming week I have to suss out what's quality, think up some strategy, and prep a bunch of talk proposals. If you want to suggest anything, please email or comment!
Right now I'm in Washington, DC, visiting my sister and enjoying the snow. Yesterday & today I accidentally visited ShmooCon because various DC-area geek women inveigled me into dinner, then some sort of "party," then oh Metro is closing early because of the snow, oh look, this person's hotel room has an empty second bed! And then breakfast and more hanging out and it's afternoon already? In more short-term travel plans, I'm hitting various promising sites to help me figure out whether I can get back to New York City tomorrow.
# (2) 05 Feb 2010, 11:48PM: Another Change:
I'm no longer working with Collabora Ltd.
In the first several months after I joined Collabora in April 2009, I served as lead project manager, got the new website up, and started putting some new project management processes into place, especially in research and development. Then I shifted to personnel management, and created and began implementing a performance assessment system. All the while I gardened the wiki, aggregated and edited weekly internal reports to keep the company on the same page, blogged about our work, and generally gave people the information and the nagging they needed to make informed decisions. (In retrospect, I played facilitator, historian, and journalist a lot, plus mentor to 50+ Collaborans.)
Collabora's a different place than it was ten months ago; I helped move them from a startup to an enterprise footing. Management structures change as needs and capabilities become apparent, so the directors and new hires (including the awesome Martin Barrett) will carry this work forward, and I offer them my best wishes. I'm happy to talk more in detail about what I did at Collabora, especially if you're interested in what I can do for your organization.
In the near future, I'm taking some time to relax and take care of existing obligations before I incur new ones. Then, starting in late February or early March, I'll be volunteering fulltime on some open source/free culture projects for several months. I haven't yet decided which ones, or in what capacity, so feel free to recruit me.
# 03 Feb 2010, 04:18PM: Change of Plans:
 Image nicked from Leo Antunes. (I thought about creating some sort of Belgian-waffle-with-a-NO-sign-on-it but this services.)
I'm not going to FOSDEM this year; change of plans. Perhaps next year.
# (2) 30 Jan 2010, 02:41PM: Insta-RSS Feeds: A Case Study In Freedom:
If you use Google Reader, now you can subscribe to any webpage as though it had a feed and thus automatically get alerted whenever it changes. When the Colbert Report free tickets page opens up new dates, or my slang dictionary adds items, you'll know.
Leonard started providing a version of this service years ago with his Syndication Automat. Now he only needs to use it to generate one feed: new publications from Dover. Sites have gotten sensical and started providing their own feeds. If you want something to run on your own server to make RSS feeds for pages that don't have them, you can use his free Scrape 'N' Feed code.
(I learned of this Google Reader feature via Matt Cutts, and his readers imply that there are paid services the change will undercut. Just another reminder that packaging up a free open source script with lovely UI can make you some cash -- for a while, until it turns up as a free feature in a popular app or OS. That's the S-curve of innovation, or temporal arbitrage.)
An RSS feed gives you data in an easy-to-mess-with format. For example, it would be easy enough to plug an RSS feed into a version control system so you could track diffs, reading the change history as easily as if it were a wiki page. Or you could use it in something like the Launchpad bug tracker's remote bug watch. You can enter a bug in Launchpad and if it's a duplicate of a bug in someone else's bugtracker, Launchpad uses that other bugtracker's API to keep an eye out, and lets you know when the remote bug's status changes. Enlarge your scope from software to something like MediaBugs (an RSS feed is basically the simplest possible RESTful API) and you can set up your system to automatically watch for particular journalists citing the same sources over and over, or calculate the proportion of an e-publisher's new releases that come un-DRM'd.
If you want to do forensic economics like Suresh Naidu, then the ability to get an RSS feed of any random webpage is especially cool. And do you remember the people who used Leonard's Beautiful Soup code to catch an international arms dealer? Quote from the lead investigator:
Anyway, the ViktorFeed is a development of basic python scripts I've been using for some time to collect data on certain aircraft movements through Sharjah and Dubai Airports. Both of these place all movements on the Web, but neither of them provide anything like an RSS feed, which is why I began scripting, in order to save checking them myself.
Whether it's deliberate or negligent, making a webpage without an RSS feed is a way of disempowering readers, and of making it slightly harder to vacuum that data into the market-flattening maw. It's like how certain archives will keep a controversial document in a room and only let people read it in that room, no cameras, no notepaper. Google plays nice with these kinds of restrictions, so site owners can opt out and then Google Reader users won't be able to make or read feeds for those pages. Not an antifeature, per se, but definitely a technical restriction on the user to enforce other people's whims. Scrape 'N' Feed has no such scruples, of course. If you don't want me to know what's on that page, don't put it on the web.
# 29 Jan 2010, 12:18PM: "Of The Other Insectoid Worlds, I Shall Say Nothing":
Just finished Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker after a year or two. I was reading it at about two pages a day. But more happens in two paragraphs of Stapledon than happens in most entire novels. Entirely ordinary example (Ch. 8, "The Beginning and the End," Section 2, "The Supreme Moment Nears"):
The supreme moment of the cosmos was not (or will not be) a moment by human standards; but by cosmical standards it was indeed a brief instant. When little more than half the total population of many million galaxies had entered fully into the cosmical community, and it was clear that no more were to be expected, there followed a period of universal meditation. The populations maintained their straitened utopian civilizations, lived their personal lives of work and social intercourse, and at the same time, upon the communal plane, refashioned the whole structure of cosmical culture. Of this phase I shall say nothing. Filed under: ComedyReading
# 28 Jan 2010, 11:06PM: Grace:
Comfort music: Tally Hall's Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, They Might Be Giants' "Thunderbird" (from Spine). There's a moment in "Thunderbird" that always snatches my heart and holds it up to the light -- Linnell's "am" in
Man oh man my throat is dry
Man are you thinking what I
am
well what about it then
Comfort TV: InfoMania, Rotten Tomatoes Show, Psych, Leverage. Eitan and I stood in toe-numbing cold for hours yesterday to get standby tickets to Colbert, and got in. You can hear me in the audience, the only one clapping when Arthur Benjamin reveals why 2520 was his childhood favorite number. I thought more people would be with me on that one.
N.K. Jemisin's third gripping sample chapter for her upcoming fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is up, my ex-boss is spreading the gospel that software testing is a neat career for nonprogramming geeks, Erin Ptah's "Castle Down" is highly entertaining magical Colbert/Stewart slash, and John Darnielle is (as always) passionate and enthusiastic about something:
Well, I stumbled across it somehow, I'm not sure how, and I watched it, and I had one of those experiences you have sometimes with a band you've never heard playing a song you don't know. One of those transformative reaffirming experiences, which you then get religious about, even if religious isn't exactly the word you'd use but trust me it's the word you actually mean: you start thinking, everything should be like this all the time, anything that's not like this is a ridiculous waste of time, I want peak experiences and only peak experiences because life is all about peak experiences and people who consent to have less than constant peaking epiphanies all the time are missing out, etc., etc., all infantile nonsense of course but as feelings go a bracing & pleasant one. The permanent reoccurring 19th summer is a nonstarter as a governing aesthetic stance, but as a tool in the kit it's not without some merits.....
...[the song] becomes a radiant source of self-regenerating power and wonder and lights start to go off in corners of the room where a guy didn't know there were actually any lights, and the guy goes, wow, this is so cool, I didn't expect to run across anything this cool today and I'm so glad I did, I'd really love to run across more things like this during my daily walk down toward the grave.
# 27 Jan 2010, 09:52AM: A Reminder:
Amanda Marcotte, thinking about the phrase "pro-life" (the rest of the post is much more controversial):
...Life, for most people, is about being in this world. It’s about enjoying food, enjoying sex, having goals, making plans, creating relationships, loving each other, developing beliefs, thinking thoughts, learning, enjoying a good night’s rest, listening to music, enjoying drama, enjoying quiet, kicking your feet up and petting the cat, diving into your work, making a difference, helping others, selfishly hiding away and doing for yourself, falling in love, grieving a loss, the thrill of winning, the sorrow of losing, the ambiguities of the human spirit, the bright light of reason, the joy of discovery, the curiosity inspired by mystery, a walk in the park, a Christmas with family, a loud concert, a good book.
# 26 Jan 2010, 06:11PM: Tacky, Metacity, Encryption, tp-qt4, and Maemo:
A few things Collabora folks have been working on recently (along with the constant stream of Telepathy-related releases):
Daf Harries released tacky, a simple python-based paste web app. Basically it's like a simpler version of pastebin, and you can install it on a private server in case you're talking about something confidential in private chat/IRC.
Thomas Thurman is looking for new contributors to mentor to help with Metacity (a window manager).
Cosimo Cecchi posted his TODO list for "a Telepathy implementation of the XTLS protocol, an end-to end-solution to crypt communication over XMPP". Cosimo and Eitan Isaacson are both working on encryption; Eitan has been plugging away at interactive certificate verification.
Andre Moreira Magalhaes is blogging to raise awareness of Telepathy-Qt4, a convenience library for people who want to use the Telepathy framework in their Qt applications.
And we've all been playing around with our N900 devices (Collabora company gifts). Tollef Fog Heen provides scripts & procedure to move SMSes and contacts from iPhone to N900, Felipe Zimmerle wrote an inclinometer, Jonny Lamb released a file transfer app and extra goodies to help you chat with people on lots of networks, and Thomas asks for testers for his new version of robotfindskitten.
Because we're hacking around, some of our apps you won't find in the default software repositories in the N900's applications manager. Here's a short guide:
Maemo Extras contains quality-controlled applications written by the community. It's installed on the device, but disabled by default.
To enable: Within App Manager, select "Catalogues" from the menu, find "maemo.org", and untick Disabled.
Maemo Extras Testing contains the applications developers are preparing to update. There are lots of applications here and all need help in testing and validating. People can vote good applications up by visiting the application list; once enough people do that, an app moves to the regular Extras repo.
Still, these are not quite ready for prime time, so be cautious! One colleague offers this tip: "if you want to just find good quality applications within Extras-Testing, review this packaging list and find those with the most QA votes."
To enable: Within App Manager, select "Catalogues" from the menu. Click "New" and add the following details:
- Catalogue Name: Maemo Extras testing
- Web Address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing
- Distribution: fremantle
- Components: free non-free
("Fremantle" means Maemo 5, the version of the Maemo operating system that the N900 runs. "free non-free" tells the manager that you want both open source and closed source applications; change this if you want.)
Maemo Extras-Devel: contains untested and wildly variant applications that might harm your system. Use this repository sparingly since the applications are unstable.
To enable: follow directions on the maemo.org wiki.
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