rochelle.mazar.ca

Thanks to my darling blue, a link we can all enjoy:FaT GiRL, for fat dykes and those who want them! (There’s anyone out there who doesn’t?!)

Andand…
Did I mention that I’m in Guelph?

And…
I’m crushed to tell you that I went downstairs to watch star trek this afternoon at 4pm (the appointed time) and no star trek was there to be found. Then I realized that today is Saturday.

But, aside from that galling disappointment, I managed to produce a remarkable amount of work today. I finished my superfabulous encore 3.0.1 GUI tutorial (Yes, do come see!) which takes the user step but url-illustrated step through how to function within the GUI. Jan, you need me. You really, really need me.

Once I finished it, I realized that I actually needed TWO such tutorials…a ‘new character’ one, and a guest one. Why, you ask? Well….we have guests who come on, often on their own, who need something to look at….but we also have new characters who don’t really know how to manage with the GUI. I mean, they clearly know some of the stuff, but I went through and dissected the critical buttons in the button bar as well. So I made two of them. It’s always easier to make the second.

After that, I had to deal with the fact that these HUGE verbed THINGS needed to place to sit. So I build a wing of tutorial stuff. A main room, a guest tutorial, and a new character tutorial. (Is there a better word for them? Other than 1) tutorials, and 2) characters?

And THEN….oh yes, we’re not done yet….

Well, I wanted a basic commands room. How do you easily explain some of the very basic commands in an interesting and engaging way? Not like I came up with an answer. But I did come up with an annoying room. I created an object named Rochelle. Which was my first mistake. Then I built a room filled with noises like this:

Rochelle lets out a loud yell, “Aaaaaaaaargh!!!!” (To do this, type ‘arg’)
Rochelle cringes. (To cringe, type ‘cringe’)
Rochelle tickles you relentlessly! (To tickle her back, type ‘tickle rochelle’)
Rochelle points at you. (To point back at her, type ‘point rochelle’)
Rochelle blushes. (To blush, type ‘blush’)
Rochelle shakes your hand and greets you warmly. (To do this, type ‘hsh rochelle’)
Rochelle nods. (To nod, type ‘nod’, or ‘nod rochelle’ to nod at her.)

Will people manage to not type the single quotation marks? Who knows. We’ll see. Biggest mistake was making the emotive character ME, because shortly everyone will hate me.

And it’s thundering. And you know how I feel about thunder.

Anyone need a a little repetition?
would just like to point out that I have now started THREE blog entries in a row with the phrase “I would just like to point out that.”

@edit here:learn any any any
I would just like to take the time to point out that I wrote a singularly kickass verb today, with the perennial help of salmon and Brin. It’s a tutorial verb that flashes urls at you. I’m so thrilled with it. It’s based on the prop functionality I used for the tour verb….so that the user uses the same verb over and over, and gets different results. And now I get each user to add a prop to the object, and that prop holds their own sequence, so that multiple users can use the verb at once. 🙂 Yay! Part one just dissects the GUI and tells newbies how to use it. I think the next one will be basic commands….and eventually I’ll do building and a teacher’s tutorial. I’m thrilled it worked in spite of the upgrade…

Webbies
I would just like to take this time to point out that blogger is a fabulous service. Perhaps it shouldn’t be listed under ‘personal’ site for the webby awards at all. It’s not a personal site, it’s a public service that helps us to create personal sites. And some of us use it to create things that aren’t even personal; I’m using to keep track of my comps notes, and my colleagues and I are using it to keep track of professional ideas. Ev and his crew came up with a truly great idea. I wish they had a Webby sitting on their desk. Of course, we could each sent them our own version of a webby, but I don’t think Ev has room on his desk for that.

Just got word from mom that my Uncle Juris isn’t doing so well…as in, he’s got terminal cancer and is in the hospital. Don’t really know how long he’s got…

So I guess I’m about to get pretty mobile.

Lies and platitudes about Art ; I post this attempting to make my sister giggle and nod knowingly at the same time.

Oh, man, very funny comments about that personality test onMetafilter. Kills me. Man….now, admittedly, I was starting to feel a little like a psych case today, but man, does seeing other people’s scores ever make me feel better. And I’m glad I’m not obsessive-compulsive. That just sounds like too much work.

How I love metafilter.

Actually working today; getting ready for a meeting tomorrow. I’m reading some really FUN stuff on medical history. All the good stuff. Medical history is such a great case in point for so many things that are going on in the early modern period…for me, it really helps to pinpoint some of the ‘class’ issues that are at work, and the gender issues as well. It isolates the relationship between the past and the present. I’ve had professors try to remind us that when you’re looking at this time period, you can’t assume you understand what you’re seeing. Because everything they say and do and think is so different from what we would imagine…and we have to be careful not to assume too much….looking at the history of medicine really makes that point so obvious.

First: the history of the body: they understand the body so differently. A sack of fluids, really. No concept of the circulation of blood until later in the period, a complicated sense of illness. There some push-pull between disease come from inside (imbalance) and outside (cosmic, smell, through the eyes of others, etc). The simple idea, a northern European phenomenon, that the body is KNOWN already, that all that makes it up was known by Galen and Hippocrates and Avicenna and there’s no really need to delve too deeply…delve into the BOOKS, delve into what they thought…as if knowledge is disintigrating, it’s an element of the endtimes, that their ‘modern’ brains can’t possibly work it out, and why try to reinvent the wheel, when better minds have already done so? That knowledge lies in the past, not in the present or the future…that knowledge lay in the world of these greats, and that it doesn’t exist in the world as they knew it….

Except that some people debated that. Slowly. But what’s been most interesting about the reading I’ve been doing is the way that historians are hestitant to say that it’s just a process away from medieval ideas….because it’s not. It’s kind of a flapping around, hitting all kinds of ideas and processes along the way, some of it more obviously ‘modern’ (experimentation, ‘discoveries’, questioning of the traditional texts) and some of it clearly ‘medieval’ (looking for omens, religious healing, alchemy, astrology, etc.). The history of medicine is the clearest example, really, of the rethinking of the whole concept of the early modern period. Aha. Yeah.

And I’m not doing my reading quite yet. Almost. I quit and did some prog work instead this afternoon. Terrible.

What’s your personality disorder? Not to shock anyone, but I’m histrionic and moderately dependent. I know, I know, it’s really unbelievable, but try it for yourself and see if it’s more accurate for you.

Wow….did you know that Julius Caesar keeps a weblog? Cool…those Romans were way farther ahead than we usually think…

Saturday night frolics:

Question: What did you do last night?

Brin says, “Had a coffee, went the the Riverboat and watched people bowl, then had another coffee and came home. :)”
blue says, “nuthin.”
blue says, “rented a documentary on breasts and then i went to bed around midnight.”
Jason says, “I worked until 7:30, then I had dinner with yuka at a tapas on baldwin, then walked about to get a video on queen, and watched it at home. It was O Brother where art thou.”

For the record: I went out for dinner and Hoegaarden at the red lion on jarvis with emma, and then we wandered around looking for coffee. And finally I came home at an ungodly hour and read metafilter until I collapsed. And here I was intending to do some good reading. Sheeesh.

Wicked flame on metafilter responding to a LOT of hot air explaining why a 12 year old who was raped by her father and doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand that she’s pregnant AND living in utter poverty in Mexico should be a good sport and carry the baby to term, even though her chances of survival are shockingly low. Break it down, man. Break it down.

Handcuff the teachers.
AUSTIN � It was a decision that cost him his job as a teacher, but Grady Roper says he has no regrets.

Mr. Roper was fired at Katherine Anne Porter School in the Hill Country town of Wimberley last fall after defending controversial artwork by some of his students.

The art in question was a 30-by-10-foot mural painted by his students in the main hallway of the charter high school. The colorful mural contained numerous images � but some parents and school board members objected to a 2-by-2-foot section that showed two men kissing.

The painting sparked several days of debate, including a unanimous vote of support for the mural by the school’s faculty. But teachers and students returned to class one Monday and found that the mural had been whitewashed over the weekend.

One more reason not to live in Texas.

Stockwell Day makes a fool of himself again. Day wouldn’t talk about it. He says he’s trying to teach his MPs discipline to keep such matters for internal discussion only. “That’s part of the maturity process for the Canadian Alliance that I’m trying to help them learn,” he said. Could he get any more patronizing?

Eggs fertilised without sperm
Theoretically, it also could mean that lesbian couples could give birth to a baby girl without the need for a father. Women do not carry the genetic information required to make a boy.

I knew everything would work out in my favour eventually….

A pic of Hildegarde. Priceless. Yes, this is me before my morning shower.

Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do so much to see
So what’s wrong with taking the back streets
You’ll never know if you don’t go
You’ll never shine if you don’t glow
–Smash Mouth, All Star

A pic of the new Enterprise. Woohoooo! There can never be too much star trek, oh no. Will this new show suck, or not? I’ve heard pretty much nothing about it. Someone told me that it’s supposed to be before the first trek (what kind of costumes do they get then?), and that that guy from Quantum Leap will be in it. I guess we’ll see…

Oh, Stockwell Day…. “He can’t last much longer,” said Art Hanger. “Why he wants to postpone it, I don’t know.” Stockwell Day gets more demands to step down, and offers to take a ‘leave of absence’, and of course, offers up a personally selected interim leader. The 13 dissidents say no. Is it just from the elect? Stockwell Day says he has to maintain his mandate from the grassroots. (From Grassroots for Day? Red Deer MP Bob Mills says longtime party supporters are telling him they’re losing faith. “When you start hearing that from people who’ve been with you since 1987,” Mills said, “that’s a pretty terrifying message from the grassroots.” Ah, how I love it. Preston Manning must be popping those pepo bismol tablets while lying in the sun.

I’ve been out of commission for a short time, because I’ve been in London. I’m still in London now, in fact, visiting Janine, who is currently in the fetal position on her bed wondering when/how to get rid of her guest. 🙂 It’s very hot out today, and I did some wonderful shopping. And I have no more hair left, because I got it all chopped off yesterday. Really. I have no hair. No one will recognize me. People will think I’m Jason.

[+][beam] Jason thwaps Hildegarde with a rolled up newspaper, “BAD! BAD! BAD!”
[+][beam] Jason says, “you cut your hair… you deal with it ;-)”

Yeah, yeah yeah….more later when I’m back in TO.

What on earth is going on? Two horrendous cases involving children are capturing authorities� attention across Southern Ontario. In the first, the Children�s Aid Society in Durham Region has taken two children into protective custody, after their parents were arrested for allegedly keeping their sons caged. Police say they received a tip and discovered the boys in cribs surrounded by mesh and wire that prevented them from getting out. Their father and mother are facing dozens of charges.
I mean, what the hell is that?

Just what everyone needs to know.Weblogs: a history and perspective. How I love net history.

Another attempt at a splash page. This one is a member login screen. It’s a singlet so far. You get the idea.

Listeners prefer music played on tuned instruments. Diners prefer food not laced with ground glass. Readers tend to read more when handed well-formed text. And the foreseeable future of the web � lurid broadband fantasies of Steves Case and Ballmer notwithstanding � is text.

The fading propagandists of usability, as an adjunct to detesting beauty, have always hated text.

Users don�t read
Users only scan
Users haven�t got
No attention span

Quoted from Textism

My dear friend Soshi had some serious Canada day drama. Flipped cars, careless driving, the 401….yikes, all the more reason not to drive, I say. Terrifying. I wonder if the police need witnesses to that event?

Gender
@gender female
Gender set to female.
Your pronouns: she,her,her,hers,herself,She,Her,Her,Hers,Herself
@gender male
Gender set to male.
Your pronouns: he,him,his,his,himself,He,Him,His,His,Himself
@gender neuter
Gender set to neuter.
Your pronouns: it,it,its,its,itself,It,It,Its,Its,Itself
@gender either
Gender set to either.
Your pronouns: s/he,him/her,his/her,his/hers,(him/her)self,S/He,Him/Her,His/He
r,His/Hers,(Him/Her)self
@gender spivak
Gender set to Spivak.
Your pronouns: e,em,eir,eirs,emself,E,Em,Eir,Eirs,Emself
@gender splat
Gender set to splat.
Your pronouns: *e,h*,h*,h*s,h*self,*E,H*,H*,H*s,H*self
@gender plural
Gender set to plural.
Your pronouns: they,them,their,theirs,themselves,They,Them,Their,Theirs,Themse
lves
@gender egotistical
Gender set to egotistical.
Your pronouns: I,me,my,mine,myself,I,Me,My,Mine,Myself
@gender royal
Gender set to royal.
Your pronouns: we,us,our,ours,ourselves,We,Us,Our,Ours,Ourselves
@gender 2nd
Gender set to 2nd.
Your pronouns: you,you,your,yours,yourself,You,You,Your,Yours,Yourself

Here’s the member login page, which caps off the set. So now we have guests seeing this and then this. I think I might take that table right out like the member login and just leave it with the bloggy thing beneath it. No need for anything fancy, it looks nice clean. I think. You?

Another spash page attempt. This is another guest login page. I talked with rhonna and realized that I had too much information to give and not nearly enough room to put it all on one page. So now I’m going to put actually MORE information available, but on less surface space.

My first attempt at making buttons, too. Well, second attempt, really….first attempt is here.