The Jam is Over.
Today was data entry day. After a trip to Olin to drop off checks (I need to get over my fear of handling sums over $100; in some respects it's a lot of money, but it's just money. That's all.) SJ and I went back to the OLPC office and I typed up the surveys from yesterday's Game Jam tests. The results left me wondering how children find 3-5 hours a day to play video games. Probably the same way the average American finds over 4 hours a day to watch TV.
As a side note, the OLPC office is not unlike Gill's lab; open tables, people grabbing space to work... it's a little cleaner and doesn't have snakes or a Wii, and the age distribution of the people present is much broader than 18-22, but the atmosphere feels similar. I like it. I need to find another OLPC project to work on, because...
...the Jam is beginning to reach done-ness. It is slowly moving off my shelf to be replaced as alpha project by my research proposal - beta project is now my financial infrastructure, which I really need a Crunch Day for, with company. Something about moving thousands of dollars between accounts makes me much more nervous than it should, so I've been doing research and research and putting it off. I need company to help motivate/compete/guilt me into getting my finances set up already, slacker! If you're in the Boston area and want to do this, email me.
The hunt for the replacement of my Dell continues. Omar had a lovely, lovely IBM tablet at the Jam this weekend. SJ as a shiny IBM X60. They are both expensive... but not as expensive as EmpororLinux's Raven tablet (over $3k). That's right, folks; they got the handwriting rec and the fingerprint scanner working. They are shiny, tiny, and I would greatly like one. However, I still have no reliable source of income, so until then, I hope my Dell doesn't fall apart.
Finally, Gloria wrote a beautiful article on women in technical communities. If you are interested in technology or gender equity, please give it a read; I'm curious to hear what folks think and also whether similar behaviors are exhibited within other minorities-in-technology or minorities-in-<field> groups (as in, is this a "women in tech" thing, a "women in X" thing, a "minorities in tech" thing?)
One of the smaller sections at the end describes the practice of writing under a male pseudonym. I actually don't go by Mel because it's a male pseudonym. It was a nickname I chose for myself when I was 7 ("Mallory" was too long, "Mal" meant "bad," and "Mol/Mil/Mul" just sounded weird) without knowing it was a male/unisex name. That having been said, it's rather convenient. I don't hide the fact that I'm female, but people online will usually assume I'm a guy (giving me more "credibility") unless I've been introduced to them through someone else (which gives me "credibility" too). However, I'm also moderately blunt, less apologetic, and in speech/interests/manner more "stereotypically male-like" than most females I know. So there's a particular little experiment I have in mind to run sometime, just to see what happens.