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As Jayme Poisson tells us in “Mothers of Invention” (Shameless, Fall 2008), Countess Ada (Née Byron) Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers. In fact, her programs, written for friend Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, pre-date the existence of the machine itself, since Babbage died before it reached completion. Both a bleeding edge technician, and the purveyor of Romantic-Era vaporware, Lovelace was a pioneering expert in the novel field of computation in the early parts of the 19th century.

This week Suw Charman-Anderson, angered by yet another set of fairly juvenile activities centred around women, geekiness and objectification, made a pledge that she would write about a woman in technology she admired on March 24th. That date strikes me as being like, the distant future, but assuming I remember, I will certainly come up with someone I can profile from the canon of my personal acquaintances.

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Restructure! — I.O.U. one post on “HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux”. And you shall have it shortly. Actually I’m shooting for as shortly as tomorrow (bonus Thursday geekery!).

But I just got home (it’s 11:12pm) and while all I want in life right now is to put on my jammies, I can’t let a Wired Wednesday go by having posted nothing (even if I’ll be right back here tomorrow).

So, until tomorrow:
* Guitar Hero onna Bike

(nope, not even sure what I’m watching, but I think I like it)

Update: Sadly, it seems that this has turned out to be something of a hoax.
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Before I get to commenting on the Women in Linux HOWTO, I think it is ten past overdue o’clock that I get up a post on free software, open-source, closed-source, and maybe just a teensy bit on why people hate Microsoft.

This could go on and on and on: the arguments and positions are complex. Each one of these subheadings could easily be a whole post, or book (and they are).

I’ve been warned that trying to skim over these topics is begging for trolls. I hope to appease the trolls by saying that this is just a taster, a teaser, a CliffsNotes version. (And that you are welcome to use the comments to add your own thoughts and links).

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Right, so a couple of weeks ago, I was all “colour-coding zomg ftw!”. But colour-coding is just step one of organizational bliss. Step two are filters. Filters much like the one that made this sweet cup of coffee I’m sipping right now (alright, I use a bodum, but still).

Same as last time, I’m going to do a quick runthrough of how I use filters. Gmail writes comprehensive helpdocs, I’m just adding a personal touch. And possibly screenshots. We’ll see…

À propos of nothing, here is a small walking crab (courtesy o’ Gmail’s new emoticon options).

Filters
Applying labels is all well and good, but why do something for yourself, when an invisible algorithm (slash elf) can do it for you?

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I haven’t forgotten about Gmail filters, but I feel I should be slightly more alert when I write about them. As my brain feels quite a bit like jello at the moment, it seems possible, nay, likely, that I’d describe a filter that dumps all your mail in the trash. Teeheehee, whoops.

And so, the elevator music equivalent of Wired Wednesday — compilation day, a Gizmodo edition!

“Creative marketing minds have developed a plan to use GPS to deliver neighborhood-specific digital advertising on the side of buses in NYC. Apparently, the ads run like TV commercials and they have begun airing on a single Manhattan route with expansion to 200 buses planned for Q1 of next year.”

(I love Gizmodo’s sample ad that’s never not true.)
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This week’s Wired Wednesday is in response to a request (oh yeah, we totally roll that way). The request was, and I quote: “do a productivity one. Like the desktop thing… little organizational things like that”.

I probably shouldn’t reward Captain Vague with doing what he asked for, but I’m a softie for requests. So here goes…

Gmail: It’s all about the colour-coding baby
I am an independent consultant. A business of one. I’m like that Street Cents segment where there’s a chick sitting at a desk in the middle of the road, and she has a sign that says “Me, Inc.”

Which is cool.

It also means that I receive and process a quantity of email that would make a person (i.e. me) weep.

Since I do not yet have a helper monkey, I have to find ways to keep back the tears.
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Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a meme.

From Webworker, some What’s on Your Desktop? for your Wednesday.

I used to be one of those people with icons covering my entire MacBook desktop, all glaring evidence of a failure to properly organize my files. These days, I try to take a desktop organizational moment every other week. Still, I’ve wondered what the things lingering on my desktop we all about. Why were they there? What might they tell someone else about me if they looked closely at them?

See the post, and their Flickr pool for examples.

As for me, my desktop consists of some image I’m loving, so long as it’s aligned left, and then files and folders I want close at hand.

Why only aligned left? Because I use image composition as a clutter detection system (and now we all know how my brain works). As I save files to my desktop, OS X adds them from right to left. Creating a creeping line of disordered “just for now” files moving slowly across the screen. If I’ve dumped enough files that they’re starting to obscure the image, it’s cleanup time.

Exhibit A:

Center align is just too much pressure.

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This is a two-fer post — Wired Wednesdays plus some Comics are for Everybody action.

Because…

Google has a browser.

It’s a Beta version, and it’s only available for Windows for now. But still -
Google has a browser.

At home I mostly use a Mac, so (besides my undying allegiance to Firefox) I can’t actually play with Chrome. Until Google releases a Mac version. Cough cough coughity cough Google. (Oh, and also a Linux one please, k thx).

But what I can do is read their launch materials, which are presented in… wait for it… comic book form! Not just a comic book, but a Creative Commons licensed comic book put together by Scott McCloud, of Understanding Comics fame.

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(Someday soon, Apple will teach us how to construct whole books out of one long amalgamated word.)

Sure, the word “etiquette” does bring to mind a world of doilies and curtsies. But that frilly frouffy word and what it represents can be the soft oreo centre between us crusty cookies.

We’re all squished up against each other on this tiny little interweb. And everybody’s got peeves (maybe the word “interweb” is one of them). What follows are some of mine. Or rather, not just a list of my peeves, but my peeves metamorphosed into a few of my personal rules for navigating this big bad abstracted world.

1. Remember the human
This phrasing is taken from elsewhere (though I forget where). And if I were going to rely on only one rule, this would be it.

The internet gives people anonymity, and people behave differently when they’re anonymous. You can’t even get anyone to come out to this lecture anymore, because we all think we know it off by heart.

And yet.

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