Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:20 PM

Recently, in the grocery store, I saw a promotion offering cookie jars shaped like Darth Vader's mask. All I could hear was James Earl Jones' voice thundering: "Luke, I am your father. I told you, not until after supper!"

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:10 AM

I know several of my readers need to see this: descriptions of LOTR bloopers. OMG, some of them are hysterical, and plenty of fodder for slashers. For a taste, here are just a few of the cleaner ones:

Gandalf was speaking to Faramir, and said "Well Boromir... (then he realised he had said the wrong name)... is dead. Your brother is dead. This is the third film, and you just have to accept it, I'm sorry."

---

Faramir politely applauding Aragorn's coronation and clearly mouthing at the camera "This is b*llsh*t" before continuing politely applauding again, then turning to Eowyn with a lascivious wink and a nod and then assuming a polite expression as he continued clapping.

You'd think the cast and crew were actually enjoying themsleves making this film.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:50 AM

"Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak."
          -- Shakespeare, As You Like It   Act III, Scene 2

Ever since Susan Estrich and Harvard President Larry Summers spoke out last month, gender issues have been bubbling beneath the surface of the blogosphere, sometimes boiling over. No, I'm not in the mood to track down and share all the links to the current conversations, though CultureCat seems to be compiling a nice collection for those of you who haven't been following along.

She's "writing a dissertation which is a feminist rhetorical analysis of gender and blogging practices..." That sounds so cool. I hope it's available for reading once she's finished.

In a similar vein, I've been seeing proposals to hold some kind of Bloghercon to focus on issues related to women and blogging.

In brief, I think it's a great idea and I hope it might be held someplace where I can attend. [Anybody from Berkman @ Harvard getting involved?]

I did notice, during audience participation portions of the first BloggerCon, a more dismissive attitude displayed towards comments made by women -- it particularly shocked me when Esther Dyson spoke up, as I thought her credentials entitled her to a little more consideration than she got. I didn't attend subsequent BloggerCons, so don't know whether they got better in this respect, but I know I wasn't the only person at the first BloggerCon to spot this going on.

There was a proposal for a "women in blogging" panel to be held at the second Bloggercon, but it never came to fruition and I don't know what killed it. I wrote a few things about blogging and gender in preparation for that, and added a few further observations last summer. So here are those links, which I've also forwarded to CultureCat:

• March 02, 2004
• March 03, 2004
• June 19, 2004

And, though it's not specifically about gender, some realizations about blog popularity and why I stopped trying for it.

I think that covers everything I have to say about being a woman blogger, make of it what you will. And with any luck, now that I've addressed it, I can avoid getting sucked further into this debate or any future iterations (because you know this will never die). And so, back to the Bard:

"I would sing my song without a burden: thou bringest me out of tune."

Added later: a limerick on the subject by Shakespeare's Sister.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:50 PM

You know, Google is a company well aware of the strengths (and risks) of being verbed. So I hope they're taking note of how "Bloggered" is becoming commonplace across the blogosphere and taking steps to rectify the problems with the Blogger website. [Actually, I think "bloggered" may be a participial adjective, but the point remains.]

For those who haven't encountered the term, people say they "are bloggered" to describe bugs on Blogger.com (owned by Google) that cause problems in posting or reading a weblog.

• Sometimes being bloggered means one can't post at all for a period of time, because Blogger.com is inaccessible or because Blogger hangs when the user submits the post. [Sometimes the entire entry is lost -- and where I come from in QA, losing customer data is a big no-no, second only to crashing the computer!]
• Sometimes being bloggered results in multiple copies of the entry being published, requiring the blogger (person) to manually delete the extras.
• And sometimes entries are posted, but the blog itself is inaccessible because Blogspot.com (owned by Blogger) is down.

Not only is Blogger's reputation in the toilet because of these problems, but the term is being genericized. Just as people use googling to describe any web search, whether or not it uses Google.com, Blogger has become so associated with bugs that people are using bloggered to describe any problems with any blog-posting software. Not a good association for your brand name.

If anybody with an in at Google or Blogger is reading this, please pass along the message: You need to get these problems fixed! Don't make any further enhancements until what you have is working reliably.

And be careful not to break anything else when you fix them. Over the past month or so, I've noticed a loss of functionality under Opera! [The gray triangles on Edit Post pages no longer work for me, and beta users of Opera v8 report further problems with previewing.] Opera may still be a small fry in the browser market for now, but the company is giving away free licenses to universities, meaning it could really take off among college users.

Blogger now has the big bucks of Google behind it, but Blogger users are feeling like Google doesn't care about them or the product. Unhappy users are bad for a company. Unhappy users with audiences who aren't shy about broadcasting their displeasure... Double-plus-ungood.

Hopefully, the company doesn't need us to point out that they've got problems. But with a track record this bad, it will take a good long time of perfect service to turn your reputation around.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:45 AM

About ten minutes ago, getting out of my car, I noticed a hawk almost directly overhead. It was just lazily circling over the parking lot, maybe about twice the height of the buildings around me (4 or 5 stories up?). Beautiful. I wish I could better identify what breed it was -- it looked like it was a fairly solid chocolate brown.

So, I stood there for several minutes, staring up at it and trying not to fall over backwards, until its circles moved further down the street.

What a marvelous start to the morning...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:55 AM

That's right, it's time for yet another sorting hat quiz:

And yet again, I am in...

RAVENCLAW! You scored 20% Slytherin, 64% Ravenclaw, 16% Gryffindor, and 24% Hufflepuff!

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, If you've a ready mind, Where those of wit and learning, Will always find their kind. Ravenclaws are known for their intelligence, ingenuity, and lifelong thirst for knowledge.

I found this one through Fernwithy, and agree with her assessment: "that was actually a fairly good test; it wasn't one of those, 'Do you like scarlet and gold or green and silver better?' types."

Which House do you sort into (by this quiz, any other, or your own personal inclinations)?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

Subtitled: I like it! I like it!!!

So, I was playing around with the new Google News feature allowing for customized news sections. Naturally, I created one for Shakespeare & Marlowe news. And what should I discover but:

Kenneth Branagh's finally going to film As You Like It!!!

I'd heard that one was in his pipeline since Love's Labour's Lost, but then got backburnered after LLL flopped at the box office.

At any rate, it sounds like plans are for Branagh to direct the film, which will star Kevin Kline, though articles don't say which role (I'm guessing Jacques, unless Branagh has claimed that role for himself -- nope, articles say Branagh "does not plan on taking a lead role this time, but may play Touchstone"). Bryce Dallas Howard plays the "female lead" -- I've never heard of her before, though IMDB says she's also starring in an upcoming film on Mary, Queen of Scots, which I suppose I'll also have to keep an eye out for.

Other actors already cast include Adrian Lester, David Oyelowo, Jimmy Yuill and Brian Blessed.

Empire Notes says "The play will be set in the late 1800s, so think top hats and bonnets." Filming starts next month.

As You Like It is one of my favorite Shakespeare comedies (as those of you who dared to read my Harry Potter fanfic might've guessed), and there really aren't any good film versions available.

I can't wait.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:48 PM

One advantage of travel is relatively uninterrupted reading time on the plane. I finished three books on my trip, two of them on my Marlowe list, which meant as of yesterday I'd read fully 50% of known recent Marlowe fiction.

Then, I did some looking and found two more titles (S.P. Somtow's Veritas and Will by Tiffany Grace) which lowered my average back down to 47.8%.

Incidentally, though I still haven't written my letter to The Nation (to inform the general readership), I have corresponded with the author of the Marlowe reviews. I guessed wrong about which other two Marlowe books he had in mind. I was certain he had to be referring to Burgess, but he told me he was speaking of the Garrett and the Nicholl (which is actually nonfiction, so didn't cross my mind).

Anyway, expect reviews of my recent reading shortly.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 AM

Did you miss us? Did we miss anything? If you saw or wrote anything you really want to read, please send me the link.

I'll tell y'all more about my trip this evening after work.