Februray 25: Anita says I should write moreBut first I had to play with AJAX. (Click different categories.) (And don't look at the code behind it this is proof-of-concept, get some understanding stuff.) Anyhow, we're all sick, and I probably have an ear infection, so I'm taking an Agatha (Christie) to bed. February 21: FIRST WOMAN TO RECEIVE ACM TURING AWARDWe don't care what she did, as long as she had breasts. (That's not the Digg head, that's the ACM press release head.) If you want to know why women don't go into male dominated fields, it's because they don't like being treated as a pair of breasts. We all clear on this now? That Frances Allen is the first woman to win belongs in the last graf, because it is notable that in 40 years, the ACM didn't think any other woman's work was worthy. I just need Jorj to take a photohttp://www.inklingmagazine.com/articles/comments/shes-such-a-geek-photo-contest/ February 20: ESR wants it both waysESR — Open Source advocate Eric S. Raymond and author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar — wants both giant, anarchistic development projects, and relief from the dependency nightmare that is Linux. He publically dumped Red Hat Fedora, for, among other reasons: "Chronic governance problems. Persistent failure to maintain key repositories in a sane, consistent state from which upgrades might actually be possible." These problems aren't new; half the Mac switchers I know left Linux for the Mac, at least one for just this reason (and no driver for his wireless card). These are the problems that come with not having a leader; with not having a chief architect and a plan. The problem with so many open source projects is that no one is in charge. It's a great, libertarian, geeks with guns hive of activity! It's a fantastic bazaar with thousands of vendors! All competing and sometimes subverting each other! All you want is one not-too-uncommon but apparently impossible to find item because no one knows who's doing what! Every project needs an enforcer, just as every household needs a parent. Otherwise you get crayon on the walls, mice in the kitchen, and standard search functions that can't decide if the haystack (search in) argument is first, or if the needle (search for) argument is first. Documentation is poor to non-existent, the boring stuff is never coded, so projects languish at version 0.3.1b for years, interfaces suck because usability research is 1) boring 2) involves "lusers" and 3) might cost money. Of the successful open source projects, all have either had a strong leader (Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall) or a strong plan (copy Photoshop). Commercial software also has problems with obviously competing goals (backwards compatibility and innovation, anyone?) but commercial software has someone to make the decisions (Steve Jobs cut OS9 from later versions of MacOS X) and force the team to do the grunt work. ESR might still be stuck in his Lazarus Long/geeks with guns phase, but at least he's admitting software shouldn't be. I don't write about work because I know my co-workers, ex-co-workers, and potentail future co-workers read this, but, damn, PHP succeeds despite itself. PHP succeeds only because there is no other good alternative. ColdFusion? $$$ ASP? MS-only. mod-perl? Jorj says it's a bugger. So, somehow, a computer "language" without variable declarations is one of the best choices for template-driven web applications. (As far as I'm concerned, until it requires variable declaration, it's not a real language.) February 11: My present to my mother for Jake's second birthday
Yes, I considered asking Jorj to ask the barber to leave the tail (made of the last of his hair that he was born with), but then thought better of it. I baked my little heart out for his birthday (three cakes for the family party and two dozen cupcakes for school). He had a great time. The baking has been great -- new recipes and old favorites. I also baked an engagement cake for Shawn and Steve and will do their wedding cake (WITH Star Wars characters this time) when they pick a year. I'm rooting for 2008. Jorj found my XSLT 2.0 book, and once I get Saxon installed, I'll be good to go. February 1: Molly Ivins has diedDamn. She was funny and honest. January 25: Finally!(Photos actually from the 18th)
January 17: NotesFileMaker is a hideous, hideous mess. It's a bumbling butler, tripping over himself and you as he rushes to open a door, just as you've put your hand on the knob. It always serves tea (mornings) and gin and tonics (evenings), because it can't figure out the coffee maker, hasn't bought a bartending guide since 1956, but is so PROUD of what it can do. "Hymn of a Fat Woman" Cecily asked if I still got to call myself a fat woman, which I found to be an interesting question, because there is a solidarity among overweight women. Losing the fifty pounds felt like I'd rejected that. Also, the way I lost weight -- get pregnant, get gestational diabetes, breastfeed -- didn't seem like the arduous self-denial that dieting usually is. Of course, now I'm working on the seven pounds I've gained since the fall, before it turns into fifteen pounds. What I really liked about the poem was the joylessness of the saints that the author saw. As a priest, Luther would mortify himself frequently. After founding his own Christianity, he married. Some might joke that marriage is a moritification of the soul, but I think it's an acceptance of grace through other people, and an acknowledgement that happiness is not a sin. January 11: Too funnyIraq policy as the Dead Parrot Sketch January 10: Stretch, Grow, RelaxFirst: ex-Harvard President Larry Summers is an idiot. From that bastion of radical feminsim, The Wall Street Journal:
Simply because the presenter was a different gender, at least one audience member thought the work was better. Not that Dr. Barres's research as a man was better, because all the research was done while he was a woman. It's easier for me to evaluate work without knowing the gender or race of the person behind it. My own prejudice is that women working in the web sphere are into the pretty or touchy-feely aspects: design, learnability. The cutting edge comes from white men — under-30 at that. It's a stupid idea, I know, but knowing the gender or race of the author an article really influences my opinion of the article (or web site, book, artwork, etc.). For Summers to state, as he did last summer, that institutional prejudice is not keeping women out of the top ranks of academia shows an amazing lack of self-awareness on his part.
Which leads nicely to my New Year's resolution: Stretch, grow, relax. Often I feel I'm slacking. Looking at other websites, I think, why aren't I doing that? Why aren't I testing more recipes, tweaking my design, pounding on XSLT more (the book's in the shed, that's why), biking longer, playing with AJAX? Maybe once I stop making assumptions about my own abilities, I'll stop making assumptions about other people's too. The relax is from Jorj, who feels I'm a mite tense. Nahh. MetaFilter has a roundup of compelling research showing gender bias. After I mass-mailed everyone the MeFi link, Anita sent me She's Such a Geek January 9: Starting the new year off with a cold
iPhone. Wow. That is really, really, really lucious, in that special Apple way. But Cingular? Ew. Dropped them when they tried to charge me to include voice-mail on my bottom-priced phone. And do they work in Europe? I'm hoping Apple is a big enough stick to beat the other carriers into having some common standards. |
What I'm reading
What I'm listening to
What I'm excited about
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Because,
honestly, I hate it. My baby is gone. I don't think he even looks like
himself.
![[The joy of Nate]](images/joyOfNate.jpg)