A few years ago, my housemate Emily and I sat down for an afternoon and created Written? Kitten!, a writing motivation tool that rewards you with pictures of kittens for every 100 words you write. Since then it’s had over a million visitors and has gained heaps of fans among writers of all kinds. Sadly,… Read more: Infotropism | Alex Skud Bayley: writing, projects, public speaking, etc.
The other day I posted a call for people who have had their accounts suspended by Google for name-related reasons to fill in this form. I’ve received over a hundred responses so far (N=119), so it’s time to start talking about the results. Firstly, 74% of respondents are using the name that most people know… Read more: Preliminary results of my survey of suspended Google+ accounts | Infotropism
Writing this in part to let off steam, and in part so I can point the next recruiter at it. Time from my leaving Google til getting the first unrelated contact from a Google recruiter: 6 days. Interest I have in going through Google’s hiring process again: zero. When Metaweb/Freebase was acquired by Google last… Read more: A note to Google recruiters (and on Google hiring practices) | Infotropism
I’ve been talking to anyone and everyone about what’s going on with Google+’s names policy, and thought it was well past time to write up my best understanding of the situation. I was going to say “I’m no expert”, but actually, I probably know more about this than just about anyone outside of Google (and… Read more: Google+ names policy, explained | Infotropism
A presentation given at the Open Source Bridge conference in Portland, Oregon, USA, in June 2014. “The Geek Feminism wiki is one of the central resources for feminist activism in geek communities ranging from open source software to science fiction fandom. Learn how the wiki started, how it’s run, and what we’ve learned about doing… Read more: Feminist Point of View: A Geek Feminism Retrospective | Infotropism
A few weeks ago I asked around for recommendations of twitter people to follow who were at the intersection of tech and music. Consider this a set of “people to follow” recommendations if you’re interested in the same thing, as well as some highlights of recent things I’ve found via them. (As an aside, can… Read more: Music links of interest | Infotropism
Went to see Girl in a Coma play the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI the other night, supported by Venus in Furs (warning: auto-playing music) and Little Red Wolf. Girl in a Coma were great — hard to describe their musical style, but if I tell you that they’re on Joan Jett’s label Black… Read more: Music: Girl in a Coma, Venus in Furs, and Sarchasm | Infotropism
I spent today offline. I wrote something. I post it here fully recognising the irony inherent in doing so. Transcript: OFFLINE. Sitting on my front step in San Francisco’s Mission District. May 19th 2011. I am taking a sick day from work, and since I don’t actually have much to do at work it’s a… Read more: Offline. | Infotropism
Look, I may as well post about it. I’ve been planning it for months, and a whole swag of people already know, but this’ll make it official. Sometime around early September, I’m planning on heading back to Melbourne, Australia, whereupon I hope to spend a few months bumming around on people’s sofas/the beach/relatives’ farms/etc, before… Read more: The Plan (NB: use ominous voice when reading post title) | Infotropism
A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing a pile of blog discussion about ebook piracy. It all started on January 12th, when Australian fan lucyham tweeted to author Sarah Rees Brennan: Apologies. Have just torrented The Demon’s Lexicon. Will buy when laggardly, pickpocketing, luddite publishers in Aus get around to allowing Australians to buy… Read more: Ebook discussions flying under the radar | Infotropism
I’ve been having this conversation a bit lately so I just wanted to put it out there. From 1998-2007 I worked full time in open source software. I considered myself a member of the open source community. Open source was kind of my “thing”. This is no longer true. I still use open source software… Read more: Why I’m not an open source person any more | Infotropism
Still backfilling, to some extent. This happened in December, but I waited a while to get a pic of it once it had healed. Compass rose tattoo, by Kim at Black and Blue Tattoo in SF It was my first tattoo, at age 35. I have no idea why I waited so long, other than… Read more: Ink | Infotropism
I used to have a Facebook account. I deleted it. Not just suspended, actually deleted. The whole system over there gave me the creeps, between the ads that oscillated wildly between knowing too much and too little about me, to the way it would send me email notifications that someone had left me a message… Read more: Warily, and with much trepidation | Infotropism
A surprising number of old friends seem to be asking me, lately, what exactly it is that I’m doing these days. I guess that after a decade of being known mostly as a Perl developer, it seems like I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent. So, to make it clear: these days, my… Read more: The Craft of Community | Infotropism
This is part of my “Craft of Community” series of blog posts; you can find more through my craft of community tag. Like I said in my last post, I’ve started and participated in a pretty wide variety of communities: large and small, technical and non-technical, open and invite-only, non-profit and corporate-sponsored, focused and general.… Read more: The community spectrum: caring to combative | Infotropism
I mentioned this at the Community Leadership Summit just before OSCON, in a session on women in technology, but I wanted to write about it in greater length. I’m trying to remove the word “offense” from my vocabulary when talking about sexism, and I think it would be good if we all did. Here’s why.… Read more: Action and reaction: on avoiding “offense” | Infotropism
If you weren’t at OSCON this morning, here is what I spoke about in my keynote, Standing Out in the Crowd. I’m including most of the key visuals, so my apologies for the image-heavy post. I’ll also be uploading to slideshare.net (with voiceover I hope) and I’m told there will be video up at the… Read more: Standing out in the crowd: my OSCON keynote | Infotropism
The video from Tuesday night’s Ignite OSCON is up! Mine is the second talk, starting around eight minutes in. It’s on the subject of Five Geeky Things You Can Do With Textiles. The five things, by the way, are: Set them on fire. Look at them really closely. Invent LOLCATS. Spread free culture. Make things.
For Ada Lovelace Day, I blogged about two ground-breaking open source projects which both have a majority of female contributors. Since then I’ve been collecting more information about both of them. The first thing I did was gather some stats about the projects: number of contributors, lines of code, and so on. You can go… Read more: Dispatches from the revolution | Infotropism
For Ada Lovelace Day, I’d like to post about two open source projects that, as far as I know, stand alone as large-scale efforts with majority female contributors. Open source software, as a field, is about 95% male. There are various statistics out there, but I’m drawing on figures from a couple of different surveys… Read more: Ada Lovelace Day: Two ground-breaking open source projects | Infotropism
I’ve had the draft of this article kicking around in WordPress for weeks now, and not posted it. I guess I thought it sounded too whiny. Well, yes, it is whiny. What’s more, having just quit my job and decided to go job-hunting overseas again, I now realise that writing this article was all part… Read more: The Tyranny of Distance: Why it sucks to be an Australian geek | Infotropism
Yesterday morning I woke up to find that one of the posts on my Geek Etiquette blog had been Dugg. Within half an hour, my site was offline. I spent a good chunk of the day dealing with my first “digg effect”, and thought it might be interesting to write up. Timeline All times are… Read more: Anatomy of a Digg | Infotropism
I’ve been updating this post as I hear anything from Google Profiles Support, most recently three days ago (Thursday 28th July). However, that post’s getting long, and I keep having people ask me what’s going on, or why I don’t do X or haven’t I considered Y, so I thought I’d post a summary/update. The… Read more: An update on my Google Plus suspension | Infotropism
In a 2007 interview with Spanish-language tech blog Todas, Richard Stallman said: Where men exclude women, women are justified in resisting the exclusion. I will try to help, if it happens in a place where I have some influence, and I see the details of how it occurs. Great! Perhaps he could start with acknowledging… Read more: Richard Stallman, feminist ally | Infotropism
1) When I get back to Australia, I am going to form an all-girl Doug Anthony All Stars tribute band. I’m Paul. If you’re a Tim or a Richard, let me know! 2) I hereby place dibs on the band name Aliens of Extraordinary Ability. (Not for the DAAS tribute band, though. The DAAS tribute… Read more: Important announcements of a musical nature | Infotropism
A couple of weeks ago I posted asking if anyone had had experience with dawn simulators or opinions of what model I should get. I went with the Philips HF3480 and this is my review. Day 0: The lamp arrived from Amazon and I plugged it in and played with it a bit. Determined that… Read more: My experience with a dawn simulator | Infotropism
Another couple of reasons why it sucks to be an Australian geek. The first article covered the high costs of bandwidth, hardware, technical books, and everything associated with domain registration and hosting. Now let’s talk geography. 4. What time is it, again? Timezones are the first problem. When I’m at work, the US tech crowd… Read more: The Tyranny of Distance: Part 2 | Infotropism
I’ve been looking for a simple, lightweight wiki application for my website since my recent redesign. Here’s what I wanted: * quick, no-nonsense install and configuration * easily restrict editing access (me, and perhaps a small handful of friends) * clean interface and pleasant markup that doesn’t make me want to scream (TWiki, I’m looking… Read more: Wiki review: DokuWiki | Infotropism
I just set up crossposting/archiving between my Infotrope blog and Dreamwidth (skud.dreamwidth.org), and this is a test to make sure it worked. (If anyone’s interested… Dreamwidth is a journalling site based on the LiveJournal codebase, but run according to more user-centric principles. It has an excellent community, a commitment to diversity and accessibility, and a… Read more: Pardon my dust… | Infotropism
Over in the comments of the Dreamwidth mirror of my previous post, Elf asked whether I could redraw the graph of the ebooks discussions after removing her linkspam from the mix. Good idea! In the end I removed several things: Elf’s linkspam (elf1) Kanata’s linkspam (kanata) The entire tech-blog cluster (oreilly1, booksprung1, and those linked… Read more: More on those ebook discussions | Infotropism
I finally got around to uploading the second set of slides from my talks at Open Source Bridge, so here they are. First up, Knitting for Programmers teaches you how to knit something more interesting than a rectangle, using geometry and common design patterns. You can also view on Speakerdeck or download the PDF. Secondly,… Read more: My talks from Open Source Bridge | Infotropism
I’ve been making linocuts. Meet Grace Hopper. She’s a complete badass. (click image for a larger view) She was 37 years old and working as a mathematics professor when Pearl Harbour happened. She joined the Navy and was set to work on the first ever general-purpose electro-mechanical computer, the Harvard Mark I. She invented the… Read more: Grace Hopper prints now available | Infotropism
By this time tomorrow I’ll be unemployed, and I’ve got no job lined up. As it happens, I’m not in a rush to find another position. I’ve got some funds and some personal projects and travel to keep me busy until I find something that appeals. But of course I’m keeping my eyes open for… Read more: How (not) to write a Perl job ad | Infotropism
I’ve seen a bunch of the same questions coming up again and again in comments on my OSCON keynote, both on my own blog and on other sites, so I thought I’d take the time to answer some of them in a central place. 1.5%? 20%? Really? Where did you get those numbers from? 1.5%… Read more: Debunking myths, answering questions | Infotropism
In Nadine Strossen’s book Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights, she demonstrates how, time and time again, attempts to block porn (supposedly because it harms women) are usually used to suppress women’s speech — often disproportionately so, as in the case of Canadian anti-pornography laws which caused shipments of books… Read more: Feminism, pornography, censorship. | Infotropism
I used to go see the odd band play when I was at university, but I never really got into the scene. There were a bunch of reasons, all minor, but taken in combination they made the whole thing kind of “meh” for me. Since then, I’ve probably gone to see a couple of live… Read more: Me and live music | Infotropism
What, Google doesn’t know Elaine’s Rule? Named for Elaine Ashton, who runs some of the vital perl.org servers and is generally an all-round worthwhile person in the Perl community: **Just fucking make it easy to install.** Or, as Adam pointed out, you can mix it up a bit: Just make it fucking easy to install.… Read more: Elaine’s Rule | Infotropism
Seems like everyone around me is either doing NaNoWriMo or is in the throes of fannish holiday exchanges. I refuse to make any writing commitments at present, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic to those that have them. And so… This afternoon, my housemate Emily and I made Written? Kitten! It’s more or less… Read more: Written? Kitten! | Infotropism
Just wanted to warn those of you in the IT industry in Australia to watch out for Mentaura recruitment. That link goes to an LJ post describing four years of unsolicited commercial email from them, inviting me to participate in a footy tipping competition — all because I was silly enough to send them a… Read more: Mentaura recruitment will spam you forever | Infotropism
The serious sysadmins of my acquaintance may wish to avert their eyes from the following, or risk being horrified by my heretofore laissez-faire attitude to backups. For the past mumble years, my backup needs have been minimal. I have had a small amount of personal data that I cared about on my Macbook, my email… Read more: Backup advice sought | Infotropism
I seem to have had this discussion a few times lately, so I’m going to save myself the trouble of repeating it and just write down all the problems I have with hackathons. (Yes, I know lots of people have previously posted about what they don’t like about hackathons; I’ve linked some of them at… Read more: Why I don’t like hackathons, by Alex Bayley aged 39 1/2 | Infotropism
Last weekend I attended WisCon, an annual feminist science fiction convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. Along with my friend Gretchen, I ran the now-annual WisCon Vid Party. We showed five hours of fan-made video, including an hour on the theme “vids with a message”, an hour of premieres and nearly new vids (released since the… Read more: WisCon Vid Party / Space Girl | Infotropism
A few years ago, my housemate Emily and I sat down for an afternoon and created Written? Kitten!, a writing motivation tool that rewards you with pictures of kittens for every 100 words you write. Since then it’s had over a million visitors and has gained heaps of fans among writers of all kinds. Sadly,… Read more: I’m looking for someone to take over Written? Kitten! | Infotropism
Things have been busy lately. I went to my first WisCon over the Memorial Day weekend, and had a blast. WisCon is a feminist science fiction convention, and I had some great conversations there with friends from online and off, and we’ve continued them since, mostly on Dreamwidth. What a great environment, and a great… Read more: What I’ve been up to lately, what I’ll be up to soon | Infotropism
I’m at South by South West (SXSW) for the next few days. Here’s my schedule — are you going to any of the same stuff? Say hi! Or tell me what I’m missing and should be going to. I’m a little bewildered, to be honest, and the fact that the first session I wanted to… Read more: Obligatory “I’m at SXSW†post | Infotropism
As you might know, I’ve been working on 3000 Acres over the last few months. My time there is almost up and they’re looking for volunteers to continue developing the site. If anyone in the Melbourne area is interested in working with me on this, and then taking it over, please get in touch! It… Read more: Seeking a volunteer for 3000 Acres (Melbourne, Australia) | Infotropism
I emerged from WisCon last weekend invigorated and inspired (and, okay, a bit sleep deprived). I have a whole lot of new things I want to work on, in addition to all the things I’m already doing, and I thought I might just take the time to write down what my current projects are, since… Read more: What I’m working on | Infotropism
Marnanel reminded me of this story with his post about Wikipedia vandalism. When I was in grade 6, age about 11, my school had 7 Apple IIe computers. The staff knew very little about them; turned out, not very surprisingly, that I and some of my peers knew more than the teachers. Now, my school… Read more: The Naughtiest Girl | Infotropism
I keep meaning to post these things as I find them, so here ya go. A fugue based on Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. The creator says, “This should show how counterpoint can be fun and up to date.” I’m not sure if it quite succeeds at that, but it is rather good. While we’re at… Read more: Youtubery | Infotropism
I recently put together this reading list on queer intersectionality for a local LGBTIQ group, as part of thinking about how we can serve a wider community of same-sex attracted and gender diverse folks. I thought it might be useful to share it more widely. For context, this is a 101 level reading list for… Read more: Queer intersectionality reading list | Infotropism
The subject of Second Life keeps coming up lately, and every time it does I think back to LambdaMOO, where I spent way too much time in the mid 90s, building fantastic worlds and learning to program in what — as it turned out — would be the first of many object oriented languages. To… Read more: The Uncanny Valley | Infotropism
Through May/June I was travelling in the US, to a number of feminist and tech events including WisCon, AdaCamp and Open Source Bridge. I gave talks, ran unconference sessions, and sat on panels at each event, as well as talking to lots of smart people doing good stuff. In between, I hung out with remote… Read more: Three realisations about community | Infotropism
Today, two weeks since I was first suspended from Google+ and just over a week since I was blackholed in their so-called customer support system, I submitted a fresh request for review via the form linked on my suspended profile page. The name I was using: Kirrily “Skud” Robert Evidence I provided: links to about… Read more: August | 2011 | Infotropism
This is probably going to be a wildly unpopular opinion and IDGAF. So many of my non-technical friends are freaking out that I feel the need to provide a bit of reassurance/reality. First, an analogy. In 2005 we learned that you can open a Kryptonite U-lock with a ballpoint pen. Everyone freaked out and changed… Read more: You don’t need to change all your passwords | Infotropism
I’ve been seeing a lot of the same things get asked/said repeatedly so I thought I’d cover a few of them here. “Why not just change your Google+ name to Kirrily Robert? That would get your account reinstated.” Honestly, if Google’s support people tell me that’s what I need to do, I will do so.… Read more: More comments on Google+ and names | Infotropism
So, just to backtrack and fill everyone in on the details: I’ve been a strong advocate of pseudonymity for a considerable time. Hacker News and pseudonymity is a good example of my writing on the subject, from June last year. The startup I worked for was acquired by Google in July 2010. I left Google… Read more: I’ve been suspended from Google+ | Infotropism
So this is the first of what will probably be many relocation logistics posts. Right now, I’m looking for people to take some furniture and other items off my hands. The following are available for pickup in San Francisco. With regard to price, just make me an offer. Anything halfway reasonable will probably be fine.… Read more: Wanna buy my shit? | Infotropism
Friday night, my friend Molly and I went to see Zoe Keating and Kaki King performing at Yoshi’s, and I wanted to take a moment to rec both of these amazing artists. Zoe Keating is an avant-garde cellist whose work I discovered when hunting for music for a Sherlock Holmes fanvid. She uses her cello,… Read more: Zoe Keating and Kaki King | Infotropism
You’ve probably heard the tech startup aphorism “do one thing well”, or a variant on it. “Don’t try to do too many things”. “Focus.” Whatever. I’m not very good at following it, as is pretty apparent from what I’m working on. Growstuff has several things it’s trying to do (crops database, garden journal, seed sharing,… Read more: gardening | Infotropism
Through May/June I was travelling in the US, to a number of feminist and tech events including WisCon, AdaCamp and Open Source Bridge. I gave talks, ran unconference sessions, and sat on panels at each event, as well as talking to lots of smart people doing good stuff. In between, I hung out with remote… Read more: sustainability | Infotropism
I gave my keynote at GUADEC today, on the subject of “From Open Source to Open Everything”, loosely based on this blog post from last year. I think it went pretty well, except that I ran badly overtime into the lunch break, for which I can only apologise and blame myself for hitting the wrong… Read more: guadec | Infotropism
Yesterday I took the train from Madrid to A Coruña, a six hour trip that caused a fair bit of consternation among the GNOME people who brought me here. I’ve been telling anyone who asks that I’m not in a hurry, I like to see the countryside, that I’d rather not have the environmental guilt… Read more: From Madrid to A Coruña | Infotropism
I’ve seen a few people, over the years, compare knitting to programming. It usually goes something like this: Wow, have you ever looked at a knitting pattern? It looks kind of like source code! Those knitters must be real geeks! And it’s often accompanied by a snippet of a set of actual knitting instructions that… Read more: Knitting as programming | Infotropism
Printfection – Looks like I’ve got a new favourite t-shirt supplier: Printfection has organic cotton Ts in fitted (“women’s”) sizes up to 54″ in 13 different colours, and at $19.99 each which isn’t too bad. They do zazzle/cafepress style fulfilment, though it looks like they’re aiming more for a pro market than a hobbyist one.… Read more: Fresh links for May 31st through June 10th | Infotropism
1) Growstuff is live. Go check it out. It’s what we’re calling a “soft launch” and we’re still building features at a cracking rate, but it’s there and it works and we want people to try it out. (What’s Growstuff? Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s a social website for vegie gardeners. It’s an open… Read more: So hey, two things: | Infotropism
This was originally posted on the new Growstuff blog, which I set up the other day. I also set up a fortnightly newsletter, to which you should subscribe if you want to keep up with what’s happening with Growstuff as we count down to our public launch, in (eep!) about 2-and-a-bit months. My background is… Read more: Why Growstuff is Open Source | Infotropism
[Contains spoilers for Anathem, if anyone cares.] I’m going through two intensely frustrating things at present: The end of my first semester of sound engineering school, and Reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem School: it’s TAFE, which means no exams worth mentioning, and they really don’t want to fail anyone if they can help it. That means… Read more: Sunk Costs Fallacy | Infotropism
I’ve recently had the misfortune of having had to sit through a series of classes on Western Music History that managed to make just about every form of music prior to 1900 seem deathly dull, irrelevant, and inaccessible. It amazes me how they can do this. I mean, it’s not hard to find some truly… Read more: A whole lotta hoot, and just a little bit of nanny | Infotropism
3) I’ve been sitting on this for a little while, but it’s been announced now, so: I’ll be keynoting Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon (USA) in June. I know a bunch of my people will be there and I can’t wait to see you all. If you have never been to Open Source Bridge… Read more: And a third thing: | Infotropism
Tomorrow I’m off to Global Shifts, a three day social enterprise conference being hosted at RMIT. I’m very glad someone happened to mention it to me last week, just in time for me to register. I’ve started describing Growstuff, in appropriate circles, as a social enterprise. Lots of people don’t know what the term means,… Read more: Global Shifts conference | Infotropism
Just a quick post to note that Growstuff (my open source project for food gardeners) was selected as one of the winners of Pinboard’s satirical startup incubator program. I get $37 in funding, woohoo! While the $37 won’t pay for much of anything — that’s the point, after all — I’m looking forward to Maciej’s… Read more: Hurrah, I’m $37 richer! | Infotropism
I’ve recently been interviewed by a couple of different blogs, and thought I should link them here: The Ada Initiative blog interviewed me about Growstuff, pair programming, and social justice. They’re having a fundraising campaign to support their work with women in open technology and culture, by the way, and if you care about those… Read more: A couple of interviews | Infotropism
You’ve probably heard the tech startup aphorism “do one thing well”, or a variant on it. “Don’t try to do too many things”. “Focus.” Whatever. I’m not very good at following it, as is pretty apparent from what I’m working on. Growstuff has several things it’s trying to do (crops database, garden journal, seed sharing,… Read more: The problem with doing one thing well | Infotropism
A few times on the Growstuff mailing list or IRC channel, someone’s excitedly suggested that we should import data from another CC-licensed data set. Each time, I say, “Trust me, that’s pretty complicated,” but I’ve never actually sat down and explained the full gory details of why. The following is something I wrote up for… Read more: growstuff | Infotropism | Page 2
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I just discovered they have an affiliate program and, well, that’s an excuse to mention it again. I’ve been using Clicky for web analytics for Growstuff, and I’m delighted with them. They are basically a drop-in replacement for Google analytics, but run by a company who care more… Read more: Clicky web analytics: highly recommended | Infotropism
Via Chris Blow (@unthinkingly) and his tweet on the subject, I found out that the US Democrat party has released a voter registration app via github. Wired’s all over it, calling it — as the app’s README does — an open source app. Only it’s not. The LICENSE file contains the following text: This permission… Read more: Democrats’ voter reg app is not open source. | Infotropism
Somehow I missed this back in March (see also: not being very functional online lately), but it seems like Apple is ditching Google Maps in favour of OpenStreetMap. They’ve already started using it in iPhoto and word is it’ll replace GMaps throughout iOS in the not-too-distant future. Official announcement, more commentary and analysis from searchenginewatch.… Read more: Huh! OSM on iOS | Infotropism
Further to the post on my mostly-mobile digital workflow a couple of weeks ago. It’s had a little while to shake down, and I’ve come up with two real problems so far: First, the exercise of replying to comments is tricky on mobile. Quite apart from the typing-on-my-phone issue is the problem that I can’t… Read more: Further thoughts on workflow | Infotropism
TL;DR version: please go to http://is.gd/adaseed100 and donate $512 (or more) to fund vital work supporting women in open technology and culture. Longer version: In May 2009 I was invited to keynote the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) speaking about two open source projects that had large numbers of female contributors. I was asked to… Read more: Please donate to the Ada Initiative’s “Seed 100” campaign | Infotropism
More backlog from 2010… Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes was released around Christmas 2009, and I saw it on Boxing Day, and another three times before it left the theatres. Needless to say, I loved it, and it was the focus of my fannish attention for the early part of 2010. I made two fanvids for… Read more: Two Sherlock Holmes fanvids | Infotropism
I gave my keynote at GUADEC today, on the subject of “From Open Source to Open Everything”, loosely based on this blog post from last year. I think it went pretty well, except that I ran badly overtime into the lunch break, for which I can only apologise and blame myself for hitting the wrong… Read more: GUADEC talk: done! And a new project. | Infotropism
I’m overdue posting about my New Year’s resolution, but better late than never I suppose. (Good thing I didn’t resolve to blog regularly, I guess.) I’ve had good luck in recent years with vague resolutions that attempt to adjust my attitude. I think it was 2007 or 2008 when I said “never turn down an… Read more: Go to the show (a resolution) | Infotropism
Today, two weeks since I was first suspended from Google+ and just over a week since I was blackholed in their so-called customer support system, I submitted a fresh request for review via the form linked on my suspended profile page. The name I was using: Kirrily “Skud” Robert Evidence I provided: links to about… Read more: Skud vs. Google+, round two | Infotropism
So this is the first of what will probably be many relocation logistics posts. Right now, I’m looking for people to take some furniture and other items off my hands. The following are available for pickup in San Francisco. With regard to price, just make me an offer. Anything halfway reasonable will probably be fine.… Read more: Attic | Infotropism | Page 2
Just spamming this to a few places, apologies if you see it multiple times in your feeds. I’ve landed in Melbourne and I’m staying with a friend and starting to settle in. There’s lots of paperwork to re-establish myself (phone, bank, other bank, Medicare… ugh, so much.) And then there’s been the beginning of househunting… Read more: Status update | Infotropism
Today was my first day of school: the Certificate IV in Sound Production, leading (next year) to the Advanced Diploma in same, at NMIT. It’s the next step on a journey that started in January last year, when Google decided I wasn’t their kind of nerd, and it started to become clear what their plans… Read more: Rock ‘n’ roll makes you horny | Infotropism
Went to see Girl in a Coma play the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI the other night, supported by Venus in Furs (warning: auto-playing music) and Little Red Wolf. Girl in a Coma were great — hard to describe their musical style, but if I tell you that they’re on Joan Jett’s label Black… Read more: Attic | Infotropism | Page 3
I just can’t stop. 1. Induction materials We’ve got one wiki page called “NewDeveloperInduction”, and on the day a new hire starts, they quickly learn that that page contains — or links to — all the basic information they’re going to need to know in their first week or two. We also have a policy… Read more: Attic | Infotropism | Page 16
A while ago I wrote about my shifting attitude to live music and how I’ve totally changed my live-music-going ways of late. It’s not that I didn’t used to like live music, but there was so much related crap that bugged me, that I very seldom ended up going to shows. I missed one important… Read more: Working sound | Infotropism
I know I have a lot of historian and/or textile-inclined friends, so I was wondering if anyone has ever heard the word “stitch” used to mean “stitched textile goods”, in contexts like, “The importance of stitch during World War II…”? I ask because it keeps being used that way in the book I’m reading: “Stitching… Read more: You keep using this word. | Infotropism
Me, elsewhere: this is a crosspost of something I wrote for the Australian feminist blog Hoyden About Town. If you’re interested in comments, you should check there as well as here. About a week ago, the ABC aired Utopia Girls: How Women Won the Vote, a documentary about women’s suffrage in Australia. I’d seen a… Read more: “Utopia Girls”: I’m disappointed | Infotropism
Don’t listen to what they tell you about Medieval music in school. We’re talking about an era that gave you St Vitus’ Dance, an uncontrollable urge to dance all over the place as if possessed by the devil. You think they did that to Gregorian chant? Of course not!
Cities and Citizenship: Anti-Graffiti, Part 1: Aesthetics – An interesting take on the aesthetics of the anti-graffiti movement, and how it often co-opts graffiti to its own ends. Lots of interesting example pics from Sydney. Revising The Revisionists – Excellent article about the 1898 armed coup and massacre of black residents of Wilmington, North Carolina.… Read more: Fresh links for June 20th through July 11th | Infotropism
How Headphones Changed the World – “A short philosophical history of personal music”, at The Atlantic Amanda Palmer And Steve Albini On ‘Piracy’: It Only Helps Musicians – Surprise! (NB: not actually surprising) Steve Albini “rejects the term piracy” and thinks sharing music for free helps musicians, especially those who tour and play lots of… Read more: Fresh links for May 24th through May 31st | Infotropism
Not many people will be as excited about this as I am, but I just found out that the local Unitarian Universalist Church has a lecture about “Muscular Christianity and the English boarding school system” on Sunday July 14th. I am so there.
Plan a Trip Through History With ORBIS, a Google Maps for Ancient Rome – How come it took three weeks for me to hear about this mapping hack to help you understand travel routes and expenses in Ancient Rome? Maps, history, digital humanities — what’s not to love? I only wish this existed for other… Read more: Fresh links for May 18th through May 24th | Infotropism
I’m terrible at New Year’s resolutions, year-in-review posts, “theme word for the year”, or anything along those lines. My best resolution of all time, back in 2002 or 2003, was “eat better quality cheese”, and I’ll never hope to match it again. Still, things are a mess for me at present and something needs to… Read more: planning | Infotropism
I’m terrible at New Year’s resolutions, year-in-review posts, “theme word for the year”, or anything along those lines. My best resolution of all time, back in 2002 or 2003, was “eat better quality cheese”, and I’ll never hope to match it again. Still, things are a mess for me at present and something needs to… Read more: new year | Infotropism