X-World 08: Not as porny as it sounds. :(

So I’m off to an Apple Conference called ‘X-World’. I wish that it was the porn conference it sounds like, but no, its not.
To be frank the whole thing sounds rather boring, and given the amount going on in my life at the moment, I would prefer to just stay here.

I have a pile of work to do on Campus, probably explained by me spending the week up til I got my t shot sitting at my desk sulking instead of actually doing work. I also have to find homes for my cats, and pack my stuff and clean the Cottage and sell my excess furniture and GAH!

ANYWAY, given there is meant to be free internet at the conference, I may actually finish some of those blog posts that have been simmering in my drafts folder.

Anyone around in Sydney that would care to hang out? I don’t plan on spending any more time than absolutely necessary in the company of my colleagues.

Why couldn’t the conference have been in Melbourne? All the cool kids live in Melbourne. *sigh*

MONSTER GENDER WORDLE!

This is a fairly pointless post, but so cool! Such awesomeness!

I pasted this post on Monster Trans stuff into the generator, and got this prettiness!

And then I made this from another post about beautiful monsters!

Who am I? Wordle’s Interpretation

Clearly, it is not Spam!

I am angry. I attempted to send an email to Jacky earlier, which contained an attachment, and some brief text. It bounced back twice, and I was really confused until I got an auto-generated email from Google.

Apparently my email had been flagged as spam. Apparently, even though it was only sent to one person, it was flagged as spam.

I am not free to express myself in an email to one friend, because sexual content is censored as SPAM.

(By sexual content, I mean the sentence “and now I have a semi-permanent boner”)

I am not happy about this. I don’t mind that Google protects people from bulk mail outs. They provide instructions for how to ensure you can still send bulk mail.
However, I should be able to write whatever I want in an email to one person. What right has google to censor my emails?

I brought this up with my colleagues, and they seem to think that I should avoid sending emails with inappropriate content. The thing is though, it wasn’t inappropriate. The sender, the reciever, and the context means that it was perfectly acceptable to send that email.

Who is GOOGLE to decide?

MORE TRANS PRIDE!

OK! I am starting a new meme!
You know how the feminists run that “Whats your most attractive feature, and you aren’t allowed to say ‘my X, but OMG this other body part is really ugly?’” Meme?

Well, I want to start a Gender Pride Meme along similar lines. I want to know what people’s favourite thing about being gender diverse is. You aren’t allowed to worry about sounding arrogant, and you aren’t allowed to talk about any negative aspects of gender diversity (after all, we talk those things to death, imo). You don’t have to be trans… this is open to people that are queer, or in any way transgress gender norms.

I’ll start, and it took me ages to think of something other than ‘I meet such interesting people!’ cos that doesn’t count, since cissexual people meet interesting people all the time too.

My favourite thing about gender diversity is probably the ‘outside the box’ experience. I don’t fit into any of societies ticky boxes, and so I feel like I have a different perspective, and that is a valuable thing. People can learn from me, and my experiences. I can challenge people to think about how they see themselves, and other people, and how they read gender.
Just by existing, I can inspire people to think about things that they may not have ever thought of before. Just by being open about who I am, I can change society for the better.

I also value how much personal strength I have developed over the years. Sometimes I feel so strong that I think I must be bullet proof; until someone gets me with one of those silver bullets, and then I remember that even werewolves are vulnerable… and that is a good thing too.

Repost this on your blog!!!

Books Books Books!

My current addiction is aNobii!

It is essentially a social library tracking website. I type in the ISBN of the book I’ve just bought, and it gets added to my bookshelf. I’ve already added 44 of my favourite books. Its really brought home the gap in my reading. When I was a child and young teen I read books in such vast quantities that I had a reputation for being a ‘book snob’ as my mother would put it.
I slowed down in 2002-2003, and then during 2004 and 2005, read hardly anything at all. In 2006 I read a few books, and in 2007 more still. This year though, I have already read more than the last two years combined.

My passion is children’s and young adult fiction. I remember in high school my mother complained about me continuing to read children’s fiction, although my teachers constantly urged me to read more ‘advanced’ books. I was capable of it, of course. I am still capable of reading an ‘adult’ book. However, I don’t see the point. I don’t read to impress other people, I read because I enjoy the written word.
And there is NOTHING wrong with childrens books, even if they are picture books. If they aren’t good enough for an adult to read, then there is probably something wrong with the book, not the reader.

There can be an obsession with ‘high brow’ vs ‘lowbrow’ in some circles. I think that CS Lewis was spot on when he suggested that we shouldn’t be assessing the way a book is written, but the way it is read. Who cares if it is ‘literature’ if its as dull and boring, and dry as last weeks toast?
Is a book that people enjoy less valuable? Of course not, even Stephenie Meyer’s hideous vampire books (which I will review later) have value. They make an attempt at being ‘literary’, but succeed in being light reads, that appeal to the mass consciousness. They are best sellers because they appeal to a particular fantasy, not because they drop lines out of Shakespeare and Wuthering Heights.

Some Guys are Never Going to Get Laid

9:41:55 PM RhianWren: I plan on partitioning Vaishnavi to have an Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon install

9:43:11 PM rustywusty: noooooooooooooo if your gunna go linux go in style

9:43:18 PM rustywusty: Gentoo Linux 2007.2

9:43:25 PM rustywusty: Intel Edition

9:43:30 PM rustywusty: or if your cheap

9:43:32 PM rustywusty: PPC edition

9:43:36 PM RhianWren: Nah, nah

9:43:40 PM RhianWren: I like Ubuntu

9:43:48 PM rustywusty: Ubuntu is for girls

You know what? I like Ubuntu, cos its user friendly. I still use a Mac in spite of my ideological attachment to the open source movement because they are easy to use. I am not a technical ditz… My new job is as a tech after all. Just cos I *can* use painful software doesn’t mean I WANT to.

NaNoWriMo Update

So its the first day of November for only a few more minutes. I have written 854 words of my novel. Only 49,146 words to go.
You can check out an excerpt, and track my progress here over on my user profile at NaNoWriMo.

So yeah, I ditched my old story and came up with something completely new. It kinda pounced on me and demanded to be written, so I guess that is what I will do.

This blog probably ain’t going to be updated much over the next month though. I have some hardcore writing to do.

National Novel Writing Month

So I have a recently implemented policy of doing new things. For example, singing Karaoke at the gay club, which was meant to happen last Thursday, but didn’t, so instead I made a public announcement from a pillar in the Canberra Centre. (Same sort of thing, yeah, public speaking, kind of).

It’s part of my plan for personal development. Defeating my fears, etc. So anyway, on the list for the near future are such things as coding an F/OSS application, and riding a bicycle around Lake Burley Griffin, (I am terrified of riding bicycles to the point of having panic attacks, so this one will be in the company of a trusted friend, me thinks).

SO ANYWAY, my mind has been littered with unfinished stories and novels since I was in primary school. SO I have signed up for NaNoWriMo.
They sent me an instructive email, instruction 3 is:

Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

So here it is. Awesome new book will be available for reading at the end of November.
I will probably spend the better part of December editing it, so Awesome, Edited new book will be available in January.
I’m using a story I came up with when I was a teenager, and never finished, and subsequently lost in a HDD failure. It will be a teen fantasy novel cos thats what I mostly read.
It will no doubt be waaaaaaaaaaaay less heteronormative than the original though. That love affair between the two chicks that I replaced by making one of them a boy is coming BACK. MWHA HA HA

Woman After My Own Heart…

Comic-type amusement after the jump!