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iPad and coding
To add my own voice to a Daring Fireball piece
Cory Doctorow wrote
The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better.
Alex Payne wrote
if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today.
My first ( Read more... ) -
Hugo nominations
Congrats to all on their Hugo nominations, but especially to Helen Merrick for The Secret Feminist Cabal.
(and a shout out to fishlifters too) -
Swancon restructure
There is a proposal for a major restructuring of WASFF that will be moved at the WASFF Business Meeting at Swancon ( Read more... ) -
(Untitled)
Mr Magoo was originally intended as a mean-spirited reactionary with some similaritites to Joe McCarthy, but this aspect was removed from his character in development. -
(Untitled)
Alex Chilton died, only 59. He was one of those artists who you think hardly anyone has heard of (outside those who, like me, were full on hard core alternative music posers in the 80s), but then you discover actually heaps of people love. We played Big Stars "When My Baby's Beside Me" at our wedding. I've got all the Big Star albums, and some Alex ( Read more... ) -
Nairobi additions
I actually meant 'Karma Chamelon', not 'Do you Really Want to Hurt Me'. I think the love of 80s pop point is only reinforced ( Read more... ) -
random impressions of Kenya
Some random impressions of Nairobi/Kenya, based on far too little -- I've been here exactly a week, but spent almost all of it at ICANN, seeing very little except the conference centre and hotels ( Read more... ) -
Louis Nowra on Germaine Greer
I'm a bit pissed off that on (more or less) International Womens Day, I am reading about Louis Nowra's attack on Germaine Greer in The Monthly. ( apparently, pissed off enough to write a lengthy diatribe ) -
movies I saw on the plane.
Cold Souls was good, the sort of film I wish they made more of, and I wish got nominated for the Hugos more -- one solid science fictional idea (that souls can be extracted and traded), and then expressing that idea through script and acting, rather than effects.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans was so hilariously silly it had to be ( Read more... ) -
safe space
When the issue of 'safe spaces' has come up, in discussion at Swancon and elsewhere (I certainly have other contexts in which I need to think about it), I've tended to harp on about the issue of perceived safety vs actual safety. There are a few incidents that have made me worry that when a safe is perceived as safe, but isn't, it can lead to it ( Read more... )