Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:05 PM

I just came up with a nigh-perfect sentence while in the shower, but despite attempts to burn it into my memory by reciting it like a mantra, by the time I had rinsed and dried off, I had lost that essential nuance.

You know what would be handy?

Shower walls that were compatible with dry-erase markers (or, more likely, easy-to-erase markers that could write on shower walls without losing legibility to steam or splash).

Because common cliche suggests that lots of people have ideas in the shower -- so why not give them some way of recording them as they happen?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:20 PM

There were six candies in the box. Ian and I were brave enough to eat two.

For your edification, here's a quick photo of the rest before we finish them off:

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:59 PM

Seen at the dollar store:

I'm just looking for Joe Quesada's addendum:

“I'm stuck on you...
     ...until I make a deal with the Devil to forget this relationship ever existed.”

For those who don't follow comic books, Marvel Comics just retconned Peter Parker's twenty-year marriage to Mary Jane out of existence in a recent storyline titled One More Day.

So a box of chocolates offering a message related to Spidey's... fidelity... seems rather inappropriate this season.

Although, calling the contents of this package "chocolates" may be overstating matters.

Hm. According to the label, these are "Foiled masks: rich creamy peanut butter in a crisp chocolaty shell" (emphasis mine) But at least I can find cocoa in the ingredient-list.

Last summer, as part of Henry Jenkins' series on Gender and Fan Studies, Abigail Derecho wrote:

[P]rime time has co-opted the technique of seriality which daytime dramas spent decades developing and enriching - all reality shows are soaps, most prime-time dramas are soaps or have some serial elements, and many prime-time sitcoms (Friends, Seinfeld, How I Met Your Mother) have multi-episode, sometimes multi-season story arcs. Millions of women fans spent years and years contributing to writers' knowledge of how to make seriality work. Their input and feedback, manifested in a multitude of activities from their mere viewership to their fannish activities, helped to build up that store of knowledge, helped to program those data banks. Not only do those fans get zero credit, but the soap-y shows that women now watch on prime-time - Prison Break, 24 - are much more geared towards male audiences and male interests than towards women audiences and women interests.

Quesada, the Marvel editor who midwived this Faustian bargain, has been repeatedly quoted describing Peter Parker's marriage as limiting writers' abilities to tell interesting stories.

Instead of turning the clock back and regressing the characters so they can return to a vision of bachelorhood which will appeal to the boys, comics should take a lesson or two from women-oriented media like soap operas. Some soaps have longer runs than that of the webbed wall-crawler and are still going strong.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:09 PM

I still haven't seen season one of Torchwood, but I just read Alan Sepinwall's preview of the new season.

Spoilers about a guest star in the season premiere (hopefully) hidden behind the monochromatic:

In the season two premiere, the prey and the object of affection are one and the same: Jack's ex-partner - in every sense of the word - John Hart. Hart is played by James Marsters, a scifi fanboy (and fangirl) icon for his stints on "Buffy" and "Angel" as vampire antihero Spike, and he brings some of the "Buffy" sensibility and sense of humor with him.
After Hart lethally dispatches a mugger, he declares, "Thirsty now" (a very Sarah Michelle Gellar kind of line), and sends a holographic message to Jack saying, "Help me, Obi-Wan! You're my only hope!" The two meet in a bar and spend half their time kissing, the other half fighting, until the rest of the Torchwood gang shows up so Hart can mock their choice of team name. ("Not Excalibur? Blizzard? Bikini Cops?")

Sounds like many friends' slash fantasies...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:45 PM

Never bothered to blog about it, but last month marked my three-year anniversary working for my current employer.

This week, my manager surprised me with an envelope.

A congratulatory note from higher-ups and a Maglite Solitaire (embossed with the company logo).

Congratulations on achieving your three-year anniversary at [Company]. This achievement reflects dedication and loyalty on your part, and we want to recognize this significant milestone in your career with [Company].

Please accept this as a small token of our deep appreciation for your dedication and loyalty. We wish you the very best and continued success in your career.

Sure, it's a form-letter, but I can still appreciate the sentiment.

And it was a total shocker -- I didn't expect anything like this until I was with the company some multiple of five years.

[Okay, Lotus gave its employees a paid sabbatical after six years, and for ten years, I got a crystal paperweight and (more valuable) four weeks of vacation per year. But over time the former was discontinued and the I never got to enjoy the latter because they laid me off shortly afterwards. I've still got the paperweight, though.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:08 PM

Between the Shakespeare Theatre's Edward II and PBS rebroadcast of The Lost Prince, I decided to pick up Philip Ziegler's biography of Edward VIII

I got as far as page 85, and this description of Prince Edward's love letters to an early paramour:

These letters strike the notes which would become familiar to anyone who studied the correspondence in full: genuine and passionate devotion marred by a strident self-pity that bores and sometimes repels. In almost every letter he bemoans his uniquely unhappy lot: the miseries of being Prince of Wales, trapped in a routine that was wearisome and futile...

Familiar notes, indeed.

WWI was a constant complaint about how the prince wasn't allowed to do anything interesting and his unworthiness compared to those who took a more active role in the fighting.

Needless to say, I abandoned that book unfinished, and also returned Plato and a platypus walk into a bar: understanding philosophy through jokes to the library barely halfway thru.

My head just doesn't seem in the right place to appreciate the social sciences.

Instead, I just finished Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in code: two dozen programmers, three years, 4,732 bugs, and one quest for transcendent software -- an up-close narrative of Mitch Kapor's Chandler project.

Several years back, while conducting where-are-they-now searches for fellow ex-Loti, I found a several Organizer coworkers on the Chandler wiki. I've vaguely followed the project ever since, and it caught my eye again when Cory Doctorow blogged about it last week.

So, to better understand the program, I decided it was time to pick up the book.

The author's note explains the premise:

The shelves of the world are full of how-to books for software developers. This is not one of them. [... This book] poses a question and tells a tale. Why is good software so hard to make? Since no one seems to have a definitive answer even now, at the start of the twenty-first century, fifty years deep into the computer area, I offer, by way of exploration, the tale of the making of one piece of software

And so, we get an up-close and personal look in the offices of OSAF as the team worked on the Chandler project.

And Rosenberg uses that framework to provide perspective -- a chapter on methodology trends over time, or on various metaphors of art and science used to describe programming, or the origins of the term "software engineering."

As I tried to describe the book to Ian, the story is at times fascinating and depressing, boring and familiar.

[Ian noticed the contradictions in that statement: "Fascinating and boring? Is it also exhilarating as well as depressing?"

After a moment's thought I replied, "Pleasure that I'm not working on this project."]

Or, as the author recognized halfway through the book:

By now, I know, any software developer reading this volume has likely thrown it across the room in despair, thinking, "Stop the madness!"

For a less-painful example, an early paragraph that caught my attention:

Returning to the field's favorite analogy, the one between software making and bridge building, the 1995 report [CHAOS, by the Standish Group] argued that the problem with software wasn't just a matter of too many midstream course corrections and late design changes that would never be tolerated by the builders of bridges; it was also a problem of failing to learn from mistakes: "When a bridge falls down, it is investigated and a report is written on the cause of the failure. This is not so in the computer industry where failures are covered up, ignored and/or rationalized. As a result, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again."

And sure enough, the book provides quotes from the 1950s and 60s which sound like they could be describing... well, every software project I've ever seen.

I will confess a certain disappointment that the book never once mentions Lotus Organizer.

Quick history lesson: Lotus' original PIM product was Agenda -- Mitch Kapor's baby which had a devoted following and provided the genesis for Chandler. After difficulties in porting the DOS product to Windows, Lotus bought Organizer from a British company named Threadz. I was part of the project team for four years and many releases. Damn fine piece of software, if I do say so myself.

One of the reasons this omission feels so glaring is that many of Chandler's stated goals and/or obstacles were solved-problems in Organizer.

Want a repeating appointment on an irregular schedule (even to the extreme of Jewish holidays on a Gregorian calendar)? Organizer can do that. Want to take one copy of your data home, leave one at work and synchronize them? Organizer can do that. Share a calendar or addresses read-only with a team or enable an assistant to manage a supervisor's schedule? Organizer can do that -- and even allow the manager to keep certain calendar items private.

A paragraph on the enormity of Microsoft Exchange architecture concludes with the comment, "There had to be a better way. ... Why did you have to invite Microsoft to the party? Why couldn't the calendar on your computer talk directly to the one on your coworker's machine?"

Lotus Organizer wasn't peer-to-peer, but could use any email system for scheduling. Busy time could be made visible to all, sections could be shared over a standard LAN.

But Organizer, like Agenda, is abandonware. IBM may still be selling it, but they're no longer updating it, much less adding enhancements to keep it up-to-date.

At any rate, as I neared the end of the book, I've been trying to decide whether to recommend this book to my manager and a couple other higher-ups in my department. On the one hand, I'm finding the perspective and context extremely valuable. But they might consider it a waste of their time. While it very clearly lays out many of the hazards inherent in software design and development, unlike more typical business books, it doesn't provide much in the way of suggestions or solutions.

The situation is what it is, and it's been that way for a long time.

Meanwhile, I've also started reading Will the vampire people please leave the lobby?: true adventures in Internet geekdom. Though the author's background and focus are in media fandom, most of its observations relate to my own experiences with fandom and online communities. I like the writing style (I hadn't heard the term "Munchausen by Internet" but it makes such perfect sense that I'll probably use it from now on) and find it a lot of fun.

I'll try to post back once I've finished, but it looks like it could be useful in explaining the fannish lifestyle to mundanes. Obviously, read it yourself first, to gauge appropriateness, but so far I'm liking it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:20 PM

With further fodder for my number-geekery, get a load of this:

In Doctor Who: Revolutionary Or Tool Of The Man?, Annalee Newitz charted how often Doctor Who overthrew the status quo (governmental or societal) over time -- and then compared that to current events when the episodes aired.

On the blog, this entry was tagged InfoPorn, a label I rather like.

Also from IO9, evolutionary psychology explains the appeal of lolcats.

[Initial link via Henry Jenkins]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:45 PM

At Henry V two weeks ago, I bought an item of ASP swag: a Titus Andronicus baseball cap (presumably a leftover from last season, when they staged it).

I've seen five stage productions of the play in thirteen months. And those have inspired me to (what's the verb for dramaturg?) start crafting my own ideal interpretation.

I think I've earned it.

Speaking of inspiration, after a previous viewing of the play, Ian quipped "If you're so Goth, where's my pie?"

I liked the comment so much, that I created a CafePress store of t-shirts with that slogan, and the relevant quote from Act V, Scene 2:

Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust
And with your blood and it I'll make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear
And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.

Even if I don't sell a single one, it amuses me.

Finally, out of curiousity, does anyone know whether Shakespeare & Co. has ever staged Titus with their main cast?

Although it would require a different tack than the version I'm imagining*, I would love to see Tina Packer as Tamora, Queen of the Goths. Particularly after seeing her as Cleopatra last summer.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:44 PM

Art Show items that caught my eye:

• Nerdette in Hell by E.J. Barnes
• The Mouseopolitan Museum of Art by Alan F. Beck
• Charlene Taylor D'Alessio painted Doctor Who-mster (several incarnations) and Parrots of the Caribbean
• I forgot to record the artist of "No surprise," an eye-catching rendition of Little Red Riding Hood
• Prospect Hill Forge, a blacksmithing school, had a nifty forged iron rose
• And Donna M. Dubé may have found a new line with some nifty beaded badge-holders.

Purchases:

• Fiction:
  • In the garden of Iden by Kage Baker
  • The Heart of valor by Tanya Huff
  • The Secret files of the Diogenes Club by Mister Kim Newman
  • The Prestige by Christopher Priest
• NonFiction:
  • Will the vampire people please leave the lobby?: true adventures in Internet geekdom by Allyson Beatrice
  • Serenity found: more unauthorized essays on Joss Whedon's Firefly universe edited by Jane Espenson
  • Sephardic flavors: Jewish cooking of the Mediterranean by Joyce Goldstein
  • A Sip Through Time: A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes by Cindy Renfrow
• RPG:
  • GURPS High-Tech (4th edition)
• Non-Book:
  • A magnetic necklace/bracelet by Materialis
  • A new sew-in cloak clasp by Honeck Sculptures
  • Hair sticks and instructions in their use from Elan Jane Litt
  • A TARDIS cell-phone charm which lights up to indicate incoming messages (and at other random times)

Random miscellany:

• Burlesque Exposition in Boston, March 21 - 23
• BarFleet and the UBS Shameless
   
• At a party Friday night, I discovered that more than half the room's occupants had attended Brandeis. I know scads of fellow Brandesians whom I only run into at Arisia.
  And that gave me an idea for a closed party -- a Brandeis party, limited to people who attended the school (and their chosen families). I stopped attending college reunions, because my circle of friends was circumscribed by shared interests, rather than a shared graduation year.
  If you're one of my fannish classmates from out-of-town, would you be interested in coming to Arisia if I threw this kind of event?
   
• Saturday morning, Ian and I began an instafilk on the 5-2-1 rule. Probably want to put a little more work into it before posting.
   
• Also heard a rumor that in parts of the West Coast, this is known as the 6-2-1 rule. Wimps.

Topics I want to blog in more detail:

• Panel: LiveJournal and the Nature of Community

  LJ has risen above all of the other blogging site to become the site of choice. Why? Community - a sense of community that was built into LJ, that the other sites don't have the programming to accommodate. And as LJ grew, the community has grown as well, with thousands of mini-communities. How is LJ *your* community?

• Panel: What's Cooking With Food Geekery?

  From Alton Brown's "Good Eats" to new roleplaying games entirely based on cooking, this panel explores the fannish fascination with matters gastronomical.

• Comments, ideas and suggestions derived from Arisia, many of which suitable for SF conventions in general.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 AM

In the early 1970's, a geographer named Roger Hart did a study of exactly where it is that children go during the daytime. For two years, he followed 86 children -- all the children in a small town in Vermont, during the hours when parents were away at work.

I first heard about it on a 2000 episode of This American Life and referenced it in an essay on working motherhood.

Flipping thru the Sunday Glob in the Con Suite, I noticed an interview with Professor Hart, who returned to the same town two years ago, and "is working on a film and a book about his research, tentatively titled Childhood Revisited."

Fascinating look at how parenting has changed.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:00 AM

If so, are you more often the dog or the sloth?

Sunday's Mother Goose and Grimm seemed incredibly appropriate several days into a con.

And now, I'm back to the grind. Yesterday I created about twenty pages of requirements -- and many of those are still empty table cells waiting to be filled...

I do intend to post some kind of Arisia wrapup, but am unsure exactly when that will happen.