The Twilight Report

Fairytales

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:13:00 GMT

I just wasted an evening installing software (Gentoo Linux… not worth it). I’ve come to the realization that software is never going to be exactly “right” for me, and the alternative of writing my own for every task in life is a loosing proposition. Everything is either too big or doesn’t have enough features. Nothing is, as Goldilocks would say, “just right.” There was this brief period in my life when I was completely happy spending my time taking photographs and pretending that I wasn’t a programmer anymore. I miss those days.

Speaking of Goldilocks, clichés and fairytales, mum was complaining the other day about someone at Sydney Uni who was using fairytales to justify his male chauvinism (it’s sad if you are a grown man and are using fairytales to try and understand how the world works). Her analysis was that she would be less likely to have to put up with such attitudes back in the states.

This was all happening at about the same time when I was reading a thread on slashdot (ug… which I am embarrassed to say that I have become addicted to) about crossing the gender barrier in an IT work environment. The question was asked: “How do you make it easier for a woman to enter in or interact well with gender cliques in an IT environment?” IT is of course (sadly) dominated by men, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that the /. crowed would be likewise dominated but I was shocked that the primary response to the question was: “I’d like to say ‘hi’ to women new hires, but if I did then I might get sued for sexual harassment and get fired, so instead I avert my eyes and walk the other way when I see them in the hallway.”

Does that actually happen? I mean in the numbers that would justify that kind of response? I suspect the number of men who have been unfairly dismissed from their jobs due to alleged sexual harassment is negligible. I think “some” people think they are victims because they are required to watch a one-hour instructional video once a year on stuff that should be obvious. Get over it.

應龍

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:54:00 GMT

Work has been keeping me pretty busy, and while I still find the regime in control of the network at Company 2 to be on the oppressive side, I am enjoying playing with foreign language input methods. I have been tasked with making software tools usable by native Chinese speakers. I have always been interested in how people interact with computers and technology, and when you take away all of the assumptions (which I have always lived with) which come along with English, things become a little more interesting.

(中文 stuff)

My knowledge of Chinese is itty-bitty, but just the fact that I can sort of distinguish different forms of Chinese from each other and from other Asian languages excites me. Maybe someday I will find the time to properly study Chinese. I think it would be a fun and useful thing to know. I almost picked up a Chinese language Sydney paper at the newsagent last night just to study the characters.

Last night I went back to Sydney Uni for "Trivia Night." It was pretty fun, we had pizza and answered trivial questions. The one question I got "wrong" was something that I really should have gotten right. The correct answer was either SGML or HTML, but I was pretty sure that HTML didn't exist in the 1980s (as specified in the question), where as I knew that SGML (on which HTML is based) had been around since the 80s. I just checked on Wikipedia, and sure enough the first specification documents for HTML date back to 1993. The reason I should have known that the "right" answer was HTML is because non-IT people with whom I was playing would be more likely to recognize the term HTML than SGML. I mean, SGML - what's that?

Climbing trees in Canberra

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 03:39:00 GMT

Today I climbed a tree in order to rescue Tristan's frisbee. It was a lot of fun, and felt like quite an accomplishment. It reminded me of two people I know who like to climb trees: Amber and Brad. It's fun to act young.

(more random thoughts that have collected over the easter weekend)

more pictures here

(and some more)