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. If you need details, ask. Furniture (Google for pics of all these, most of them are discontinued by Ikea.) 2 x Ikea Lillberg rocking chairs (black cushions) 2 x Ikea Continue reading → 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 them by. Specifically, 18% say that the name they are using on Google+ is the one they are known by “exclusively” and 56% say that “a majority of people know Continue reading → 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. They have not yet told me that I need to do that. I’m playing dumb for now, and seeing how it plays out, because I’m interested in the review/appeal process. Continue reading → 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 last Friday, July 15th, one year after the acquisition. My reasons are described, in part, here. During the time I was at Google, Google was working on the project that Continue reading → 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 year, we came in as part of the Search team. As a community/developer relations person, Search didn’t really have a place for me, but they brought me in on a Continue reading → In re: yesterday’s post about saving Australian music from obscurity, I have now set up the saveaussiemusic mailing list so we can start discussing the project. I posted the following in my welcome message, laying out the shape and scope of the project as I see it, and I’m including them here for easy reference (and so this post is more than a paragraph long). 1. The scope of this project is “independent and hard-to-find Australian music”. (My current personal interests are in the indie/alternative/punk/post-punk/etc Continue reading → EDITED TO ADD: Please see this followup post, and subscribe to the saveaussiemusic mailing list if you’re interested in this project. So I’ve been thinking about this project for a while, and it doesn’t have a name, but I wanted to tell you about it anyway. At least I have my startup-style it’s X for Y pitch: it’s like textfiles.com for Australian indie music. Yeah, well, let me explain. For background, I’d better start by saying I was pretty terminally uncool, music-wise, in the 80s Continue reading → 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 (in GMail), a web hosting account with my websites and some other crap on it, and source code to certain coding projects (mostly open source). Thus, my backup solution has Continue reading → 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 anyone suggest a good way to read a twitter list such as this one in such a way that it includes new-style retweets? It seems like Twitter itself screws this Continue reading → 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 make the talk “positive” and offer constructive suggestions other projects could follow, rather than focusing on the problems women face in open source, so that’s what I did. But I Continue reading →