I read a review copy of this (it comes out August 25), so the text isn’t necessarily final. Still, I’m quite confident that I can recommend it: it’s a good overview of basic privacy principles and techniques. It pays special attention to the ways in which girls and women are targeted online. There’s a useful […]
Category: Tech stuff
Blinky gloves
I’m experimenting with wearable computing as a way to get back into programming. It’s fun because it involves more than just pixels on a screen; you get to mess with real-world stuff like LEDs and circuits and sensors and whatnot. And it’s low-risk because it’s hard to shock yourself badly or make stuff blow up […]
Choose Privacy Week
(h/t to BoingBoing) Lovely video from the American Library Association about privacy, what it means to people, why we should worry about it, various (mostly American) legal issues, and why librarians are your friends. If you don’t have 20+ minutes to watch, start watching at about 19:30 for a good summary of pros, cons, the […]
Facebook and information control
In the past week or so there’s been much fuss about several privacy-reducing changes to Facebook and how they are causing people to lose control of their information. The changes (which I’ll detail below, with my recommendations on how to respond to them) do open up how people’s information can be used. Remember Facebook is […]
The Annual Food Groups Collage
Starting in Senior Kindergarten, it seems to be traditional to send kids home with a badly-photocopied Canada Food Guide and some badly-photocopied grocery store sale flyers and assign a Food Groups Collage as homework. For SK, fine, this is more-or-less appropriate: you’re five years old. You can practice reading and cutting and sticking and since […]
I suppose 21st-century technology is good for *something*
(xkcd)
Where is my jetpack, part 4835
(Surviving the World)
Quotation of the Day for December 3
Quotation of the Day for December 3, 2009 “She wondered why someone would bother to write that; but then, ‘Why bother’ was never a question you could ask about more or less anything on the Internet, otherwise the whole bunch of them shriveled to a cotton-candy nothing.” – Nick Hornby, in his novel Juliet, Naked.
True.
Yesterday my database developer called me a geek. Twice, in fact. I have to admit I like the pretty pretty lights.
Wisdom
Today I have been playing with my new toy, which is a birthday present from D & M: one of the teeny-weeny little iPod Shuffles. It is perfect for solving a First-World Problem I was having, which is that my usual iPod Classic is kind of heavy to carry about while exercising and also (if […]
Happy 1234567890 Day
How glad I am that we don’t normally have to think in Unix time. Still, any excuse for a celebration…
Low, but funny
(xkcd, of course)
Best wear goggles too
Xkcd’s vision becomes reality
Wired points out that YouTube itself has installed a button to do exactly this: The placement of the button is interesting. It’s exactly where the post message button used to be, meaning quick commenters will discover it only when they accidentally click the new button. Hopefully they’ll do this with their speakers up at work. […]
Yessssss!
It’s a jetpack! The Martin jet pack can, in theory, fly an average-sized pilot about 30 miles in 30 minutes on a full 5-gallon (19-litre) tank of petrol. (BBC) A mighty dorky-looking and range-limited jetpack, but hey. The 21st century owes us jetpacks, and it’s a start.
This is not a drill
Ow, my brain
Antimatter: does it fall up or down? Fascinating to think about, and now they’ve designed an experiment (download the PDF) which will, with luck, provide an answer. But reading the paper made something in my brain seize up, I think. (h/t to Slashdot)
I love the Internet, pt. 7 billion and 2
GraphJam: pop culture in graph form = much geeky happiness.
Death by spoon
29* things to be happy about
If Mark Morford can come up with 29 things to be happy about, I imagine I can too. Central heating and a non-leaky roof. I’ve spent enough time living in tents that I really grok the utter luxury that is the concept of Inside. Get wet? No problem; you can go inside where it’s warm […]