For those of you who like to keep up, the last post was 69 days ago. Har.
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Fri: Jun 13 2008
"redesign needed, walking into walls" A sort of update and some personal thoughts regarding the blog. I have over a month left in the UK and my exams were over last week, which means I will spend this last month balancing leaving arrangements and doing as much slacking and bumming as I have longed to do when spending those afternoons and evenings struggling with revision. I am also quite keen on a website revamp, not just in terms of aesthetics (I have improved ever so slowly over the years in this respect) but in fulfilling its identity as a blog. I know, I know. Irregular updates. An extremely weak ‘blogroll’. A lazy, dismissive attitude towards the blogosphere. That’s me. Such are the conditions of maintaining a blog. I don’t have to follow the rules. But part of me kinda wants to. There’s also all the other stuff I want to clean up. Links, tags and categories, navigation. It’s terrible and is in great need of organisation. On the topic of website prettiness, I have had an idea of a layout for a couple of months, but now that I’ve had time to sit down and look over my drafts, I find I don’t like it at all. Cue some surfing over at Smashing Magazine for inspiration, and a look over my private archive of past layouts and drafts. I’m not feeling it. This may take a while. The other side of the coin is the type of posts I write, the ‘genre’ of blog I aim to create. Little direction here as well. I have certainly been attracted - which may have been evident for the past year - to the idea of writing themed articles rather than personal blog posts, but I don’t really feel I have the flair for that. And anyway, I am so narcissistic that references to my personal life creep in anyway. I rant, I link, I try to write properly once in a while, and then more linking, more ranting, and then I link some more. In the end, this is a blog I’m writing, not a magazine, and I have never had a coherent ‘theme’ to be able to classify the kind of posts I write anyway. I write about books and games, but have also wandered to feminism, photo posts, AIDS, and gloves. It sounds like the inside of my head. And maybe I should stick to that label. I’ve been doing it for years, after all. So can I only ask of ye readers, and you may drop me a line personally if you want (email/Facebook), what exactly do you come here for?1 I have a suspicion that most of ya’s are personal acquaintances just keeping up with me. Oh and thank you for visiting. If you’re lucky, the next time you visit, this will not be the post you see at the top of the page. * 1 - History repeats itself. This is not the first time I’ve requested this of my readers. |
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Tue: May 20 2008
"wanted: software junkie to fix computer" Afterthought to title: Request not fulfilled by me. Today is one of those days where I am caught between revision and inevitable procrastination. [Rant] Computer Graphics and Artificial Intelligence are fine subjects of study, except when you get tired of all the geometry and clustering algorithms. Thankfully, they do not compare at all to my torturous Compiler Design module, the exam of which I spent 2.5 hours struggling with yesterday. So, a few months away from leaving the academic world, I was interested to come across a list of ‘dirty little secrets’ in IT (TechRepublic), seeing that it happens to be a likely career path for me. And guess what. One of the list items already applies to me:
Strange how, after maybe 7 years of having somewhat diverse (if simplified) academic skills at school, even at the final rung of A Levels before finding yourself climbing a new ladder called ‘higher education’, you spend 3 years doing a degree focused on one field and suddenly you are expected to be an expert in it, and to know little else. I’m sure everyone has felt irked at being shoved into a jar with a single label slapped on. For me this was not so much an annoyance as it was a confirmation of my incompetence: friends and acquantainces asking me for help with viruses, reformatting, wireless routers, laptop recommendations, PC crashes, Windows XP tweaks, slow performance, hacking. Dear friends, if you have asked me for one of the above and I helplessly shook my head and referred you to the uni’s IT Services, it is not because I found myself doing a Computer Science degree completely by mistake - it is because they don’t teach us this stuff, and my interests in computers do not necessarily cover these things. I have several non-IT guy friends (somehow, not girl friends) who can tell you more than I can about good figures to look for in a leaflet of the latest laptops. I learnt from them about what Alt-F4 and Shift-Del does. I am stuck in Windows XP, even though I may dream of Macs or someday getting a dual-boot Win/Linux system on my laptop. I cannot hack, build a computer, code in C (bombed that module) or even frickin’ create a Firefox plugin. What can I do, you ask? I can create websites (to some dubious level). I can tell you the significance of 1890 to the US Census Bureau. I can sort of write regular expressions. And I can explain why 1 + 1 = 10. * * * Anyway, that’s another post of slacking and low self-esteem under my belt. So anyway, the last two weeks I have become a software junkie, spending much time on DonationCoder.com and Wakoopa. Everytime I get vaguely interested by some handy little application or powerful piece of software (tending towards freeware though), I must go check it out. My Firefox bookmarks have been padded up significantly lately with such items. Some premature (as in newly downloaded, and not comprehensively tested) recommendations for those of you like-minded freeware enthusiasts
And some that I’ve been using for about two weeks:
Disclaimer: I recommend these only because I have enjoyed or had a good experience using them myself personally. For the task that each burdens itself with, there are certainly alternatives (free or not) out there, probably better ones too (depending on your criteria). Yay, I get no blame now if you experience bad things with the above apps. I will feel a little bad though. Oh and I can’t help it. A couple more recommendations:
And now back to the world of applying memorized definitions and practised formulae to paper in proving my intelligence. Good luck to all of you doing the same thing. |
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Sat: Apr 19 2008
"I rarely write book reviews, but…" Afterthought: Partial review, as I have only just started the book… more like book discussion. I picked up “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters” (Jessica Valenti) on my occasional (ahem) online book-buying spree. The last book on feminism I read was… well, I haven’t finished it. The past few months I’ve been reading “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women” (Naomi Wolf) on and off. The latter book is very… intense in its content. I never had to read books that contain reference lists until coming to university, and even then that was only in my third year, in my History of Computing course.[1] So, when diving into the pages of The Beauty Myth, I really had no idea what I was in for. I was swayed[2] by the theories, claims and conclusions. This is a well-known book, and I admire it, though according to its current Wiki entry it seems that perhaps The Beauty Myth could be both a “sloppily researched” but “vivid and impassioned” polemic. Whatever the accuracy of the facts in this book, the two things I got from it were: (1) many, many theories regarding women’s obsession with ‘beauty’, and (2) an awareness that there was a lot of literature out there about feminism and gender studies. Call me naive, but my world opened up. So, after having experienced the epiphanic (maybe) whirlwind of The Beauty Myth, I thought I should perhaps start over and get a grip on what feminism is - and who, where, why and how. The Beauty Myth made me feel like there was lots of stuff out there I should be reading - it really does cover a lot of ground, and is almost saturated with information, but in a good way. And so, somehow, I came across Full Frontal Feminism. Which is a lie. It had actually been on my wishlist for months before I started reading The Beauty Myth. But really, looking at the Amazon.co.uk reviews during my aforementioned shopping spree, I thought, ‘Why not?’. An average rating of 4.5 stars from 4 reviews, and perhaps the re-introduction I was looking for. Here’s a lesson: don’t depend on one website for reviews, even if it just means going to the Amazon.com counterpart. That should have been obvious, and I would have thought twice about buying - there are 45 reviews and an average rating of 4 stars, but there are also two interesting 1-star reviews (currently - by them and her) on the main product page. For my part, I was initially put down by certain aspects of the book, but after recognising such weaknesses, the book became easier to read. I think from the outset I was put off by what has been described in some reviews as “accessible” language. It strikes me more as condescending. If an argument is well thought-out, I don’t need slang or swear words to be convinced by it. You don’t need to write as if you’re actually speaking to me:
I wasn’t expecting an academic book, but I do want to be treated as a reader - someone with a natural curiosity for things, who likes to look things up and find out more. So when you tell me something that may be a common myth or urban legend:
… or inform me that, actually, you may shy away from being called a ‘feminist’ but may be one of many women who believe in ‘feminist’ values:
… then appreciate the fact that your throwaway sentences might have some interest or value to me - especially when I have not heard about them. Burning bras never happened? Wow, that’s new to me, give me a reference. Some recent study reveals a new aspect about women? That’s interesting, tell me who did the study. I want to know. This book has been described as obviously targeted for younger women who haven’t read much feminist literature. Assume they also believe in popular myths and stereotypes, assume that they might be suspicious about feminist propaganda. Shouldn’t such a book make sure to put such readers at ease? This is the first chapter, and, as one reviewer put it, I found myself “longing for something a little meatier”. That was yesterday, and now knowing such faults of this book (reading any of the one-star or more balanced Amazon reviews will also point to other faults, that I don’t feel at a position to judge, such as “brattiness”, “shock value”, or not being in-depth enough), I find the book a little less annoying, although I still wish that, in some places, the writing did not give off such damned “I’m down with you, let’s talk” vibes. Its very premise is noble: a lot of young women nowadays do not identify as ‘feminists’, even though they might well be feminists, due to stereotypes surrounding feminism (“I’m not a feminist, but…”), or because of a lack of knowledge in current issues surrounding women. Hence this book seeks to ‘convert’ them. I’ve gotten past the first chapter, and because I’m not reading up on this stuff everyday, it’s nice to be reminded of why I call myself a feminist and why I should be interested in feminist issues. Also, a flip through the book tells me that, unless I read through all the feministing.com archives, unless I educate myself through the always-questionable Wikipedia, unless someone hands me a better-written introduction to feminism right now, I have no other handy read-it-on-the-bus-or-on-the-toilet book that would enlighten me on past and current feminist issues (as long as I keep an open mind). I would be missing out if I gave away this book today. Until I read enough of the book to make a better judgement on its quality, the book stays. So for those of you who hesitate to call yourselves feminists, Jessica Valenti points out that the “frigging” dictionary definition doesn’t cover man-hating, and to dispel the stereotypes:
(I would like to think that only younger women would need something like that to persuade them, but The Beauty Myth tells me that women of all ages are affected by superficiality. Sigh.) One of my pet peeves with young women nowadays is how they themselves promote the double standards surrounding ’sluts’ and ‘players’. If I may suggest another book - “Promiscuities: A Secret History of Female Desire”, another Naomi Wolf work - less-celebrated than The Beauty Myth and, I seem to remember, criticised for being more memoir than academic, but with a chapter called “Sluts” that stayed with me. What makes someone a slut? What makes someone not a slut? Also, not all types of feminists promote sex or ‘promiscuity’. Valenti is not one of them, so if you are, the feminism you embrace may not be the same as that advocated by this book. But to readers in general, it is good to remember that feminism, like many religions or idealogies, are split into different schools of thought. So I’m going to agree with Valenti here, taken slightly out of context:
The book ‘review’ was officially over a couple of paragraphs ago, but I couldn’t resist imparting to you the above quotes. To anyone considering getting this book - think about what you’re expecting from it, then read reviews, remembering to read in between the lines. Though if you’re like me, and once in a while splurges on something they’re not that sure about, I would forgive you for making the same mistake. My last message to anyone who might be a feminist and wants a little push - get reading (not this book necessarily, just information and news in general), and join us. To the established feminists in the audience, forgive my foolishness in my choice of reading, and please enlighten me to the better stuff out there. * 1 - Computer scientists don’t often have such books in their reading lists, it seems. |
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Sun: Jan 20 2008
"’tis orange i taste" Seems almost a sin for me to write so soon after my last post, and I wasn’t even sure this was blog-worthy (…not that everything else I’ve ever blogged about is) - but in the end, rereading this bit below, taken from this blog, made me log in to WordPress with indignation:
Just Googling ‘orange smarties’ will get you lots of forum/discussion links where people debate the existence of a different flavour in the orange Smartie. Guess what: An archived Nestlé[1] page says yes, there is, it’s orange-flavoured. A page on Nestlé UK affirms it. The reason for my indignation is obviously because I am one of those aforementioned crackpots. I have for some time argued[2] that the orange Smartie tasted different from (and nicer than) the others, which was why I always sought it first when encountering one of ‘em tubes. I would wonder if it was just all in my head. But now the Internet has eased my anxieties again - I am not alone. Nor was I wrong, ha! * 1 - This is not the first time I have mentioned the brand. It appears briefly in the post I wrote on an AIDS talk. |
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Fri: Jan 18 2008
"lonely gloves" I was in London last December on two separate occasions, and both times managed to lose one half of a pair of gloves. (No, they were not 2 halves of the same pair. Somehow that feels that like a sillier thing to do than to lose one glove each from two different pairs…) I lost one glove at the very busy London Eye (I was with my family, and funnily enough, was not the only one to have lost a glove here), while the other I didn’t even realize was missing until a few days after arriving back in Coventry. I probably lost it at the Victoria Coach Station.
I would now still be stung by the losses - one of the pairs, particularly, had only been bought a week before (typical) - if I hadn’t predictably gone off and bought new pairs of gloves, WAHAH. That said, I feel sorry for the ones that had been abandoned by their partners. The picture over there show my sad gloves. Then I thought it would be a pretty interesting thing to Google. Lost gloves of the world, you have not been entirely abandoned. If anything, you have quite a following:
… Oh, the tragic allure of the single lost glove! |
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[The App] And now for a few days I’ve been impressed with FreeCommander, with its awesome little tricks accessible via buttons and toolbars. 
