New Mac User's Blog is Up

You can find it here: Unseemly Raptor

What do you think? Is the tone or content too patronizing so far? I'm struggling with my voice in this genera, since I don't have much experience writing this sort of thing...

Blogging for Mac Novices?

I'm thinking of starting a separate blog that focuses on teaching not-necessarily-tech-experts how to use their Macs to the fullest.

I know things like this already exist, as do a lot of Apple tutorials that are great. However, I want to start getting some practice in "tech journalism", and thought it would be a good idea to start with what I know best. :)

While the tutorials exist on the Apple website, a lot of users don't know what to go looking for (seriously, would you go out looking for things like space-bar scrolling or the Expose features if someone hadn't told you about them?). And heck, there's still a lot of stuff I don't know how to do, or have been putting off learning - if I were writing about it, I'd have an excuse to teach myself more things too.

If I started a blog like this, would you read it?

I'd want to focus more on every-day home user things rather than specific applications. For example, I can examine things you can do using the operating system, and I could look into some iLife things because those are standard applications, but I'm not really in the position go out and get a copy of QuickBooks and learn about finance. ;) What kinds of things would you like to learn more about?

CNET, you make my heart bleed...

Yesterday, CNET published a list of the "Top 10 Girl Geeks." Why are cartoon characters and Paris Hilton on this list?

Seems the Slashdot community is confused too, as they question the list and suggest some awesome paragons of girl geekness in their comments about the article.

I'm shaking my head over this one. Who could possibly have thought this was a great idea?

A great week for geeks

The apartment moving is still going well, but it gets awfully boring to talk about boxes all the time. In lieu of saying "We still have a lot of boxes to unpack, but the moving is going well" (oops, I guess I just said it), I'm going to talk about several exciting tech things that I learned about this week.

First, Facebook is a website geared toward social networking of college students. You can create a profile, and add people to your list of friends. It's a great way to keep track of people over the years, and I've used it to get in touch with a lot of people whom I haven't seen in awhile.



The exciting tech thing here is that this week, Facebook released a programmer's API. This is a lot of information about how the site works so that geeks like me can program their own software to interact with Facebook. I can't wait to play around with that a bit.

Next, Blogger themselves came out with a new version of their blogging software. Being what one might call an "early adopter" (or, "easily excitable"), I've already switched this blog over to the new beta software. There are a ton of new features that I'm looking forward to tinkering with. Suffice it to say, if things look a little wonky around here, it's not you...it's me playing with the site.

Finally, I got an email about Google's upcoming Code Jam. This is an opportunity for programmers everywhere to go head to head in a competition to solve a handful of coding logic problems and eventually compete for prestige and cash. I'm seriously considering registering for the first round just because it sounds fun.

This post is pretty vacuous

Mark appears to know me better than one might have thought. For the benefit of anyone who hasn't been following the saga, Mark is on a seemingly endless business trip (going into month 3...). Sometimes they are kind and let him come home on weekends.

This past weekend was one of those weekends, and he came back bearing gifts. In particular, a copy of the just-released Tetris for my Nintendo DS. It took me years, but I had managed to break my Tetris addiction once and for all at around the time my old black and white gameboy became little more than a paperweight. Alas, all of that hard work is gone now that Tetris comes in a colored version with more kinds of gameplay, and WiFi connection.


Yes, the DS comes complete with WiFi capabilities, and Tetris is one of the early games to take advantage of this. Being WiFi enabled means that any time I have my DS near a wireless network (these days, that could be as close as your nearest McDonald's, Starbucks or bookstore if you choose carefully), I can connect to the network and play Tetris against randomly selected opponents from around the globe. I have yet to decide whether this makes the new era of gaming more or less social. You're given the opportunity to play against people from all over the world, but you can do so while lounging on the couch in your pajamas if you feel like it.

Either way, I have been very pleased to be in possession of one of my favorite childhood games again. It makes it so much better that I don't have to beg people to play anymore; I can just log on and play to my heart's content!

(If this post makes no sense to you, Tetris is a handheld computer puzzle game. You can read all about it here!)

Intel Inside?

I could hardly call myself a mac enthusiast or self respecting blogger without at least giving a nod to the MacWorld convention that is happening this week, or Apple's traditional parade of new products.

The most ground breaking "revolution" Apple has made this year would probably have to be the switch to Intel processors. Now, I'm not going to pretend that I'm very hardware savvy OR that I remember Apple "back in the day," but I at least knew enough to realize this was a big deal when it was announced last year. Me, I'm just happy as long as my Macs stay reliable and I get the clean powerful operating system that Apple geeks have come to know and love.

With that said, this machine is still an amazing feat:

It may LOOK a lot like mine on the outside, but the fact of the matter is: this is an entirely different machine. That small dot at the top of the frame is a video camera, built into the computer so that you can have real-time video conferencing with people all over the globe. Under the hood, so to speak, lies hardware that puts my sleek PowerBook to shame. If I'm reading the numbers right and doing the math correctly, the new "MacBook" as Apple is calling it, is 10 to 12 times as fast as my PowerBook.

Apple made several other updates today that I feel will be somewhat dwarfed by these new "super" computers. One of my favorite new updates includes new features that have been added to iLife '06. I'm pleased to see that you can now order cards and calendars with your photos on them from iPhoto, and adding podcasting to GarageBand is a nice touch. My favorite new thing is the software, iWeb, which was added to the package today. It will allow people to easily create webpages, which is a feature that has long been missing from the repoirtoir available to Mac addicts. Gone are the days of mid-90's GeoCities websites, because people can now easily create polished looking websites from their Mac without having to learn a lot of code. Even more than faster computers or new greeting cards featuring your cat, I think that this was a gap in Apple's multimedia software that truly needed addressing.

Welcome to 2006.

I wear many hats

Today, I am a composer.

As you might know, I am taking an electronic music composition class. In order to graduate, I had to take a creative arts class at some point, and Brandeis doesn't offer things I'm used to taking (like photography). So, I had to bite the bullet and take painting or music or something. I chose "Electro-Acoustic Music Composition" or "Laptopping" for short.

During the course of the semester, we learned about many different kinds of electronic music, and a lot about the history. We participated in a recreation of an electronic music concert from the 60's that involved a whole lot of old tape decks, and our class walking around the art museum changing out tape loops.

We did a lot of composing and working in the digital studio, and somewhere along the way I gained some respect for composers and electronic music. I have spent more hours in the studio banging my head on the desk while I wonder why the computer isn't working than I really care to think about. It's been awhile since I sat at a computer and had NO IDEA what it was doing or why. Or why sound wouldn't play out of the studio speakers. Or why my saved file turned out to be empty.

As the semester draws to a close, we as students are innundated with final projects and exams. As our final project for my music composition class, each of us was to compose a piece for a concert that we held this evening. Ten of us debuted new pieces, and it was truly an experience to behold. Most of us played pre-recorded pieces, but one student played a live piece for electronic music and harmonica. One student took samples from a play he is involved with, and made a piece that is part surreal electronic music and part radio drama. Everyone had different techniques they had come up with, and every piece was individual and interesting...if not the kind of music you would sit down of an evening to relax with.

First, let me tell you a little bit about my piece. I took the data I am using for my thesis, simulated activity of lobster neurons, and wrote a program to turn it into what is called a midi file. If you're not sure what that means, it's not very important to the story: suffice it to say that I made big files of numbers into something you could listen to. Then I took them into a program that reminds me of PhotoShop for sound, and edited and played with the files. Finally, I put them together in the piece that I composed for the concert.

So it is related to my neuron data, but it is not "what a neuron sounds like." I have altered a lot of the sounds, and arranged them into a composition that I think is interesting, if not Mozart. All in all, I was glad to have taken this class. It allowed me a chance to see a side of Brandeis I would never have dreamed of, and to gain a new understanding for artists, musical or otherwise.

If you would like to hear the piece I composed, I have added it to this journal entry. If you've gotten this far, it's probably loaded by now! You will want to turn the volume on your computer up, because I recorded it rather quietly (don't forget to turn them back down when you're done!). When you are ready, hit the play (triangle pointing to the right) button on the small console below. Thanks for listening!

Neuronal Melody

Why I Do What I Do...

Read this first: National Center for Women & Information Technology Statistics on Women in Computer Science (will open a PDF)

I've never thought much about women in the sciences, particularly women in computer science. However, it's come up a lot of times in the past couple weeks, and it's becoming and issue that is more and more on my radar.

My thesis advisor just came back from a diversity in computing conference, and talked about how the percentages of female computer science students have been declining since the 1980's. Declining?! Yep. If you look at the PDF I linked above, it seems that percentage of women in computer science degree programs have dropped an alarming 35% since 1986. Folks, there weren't that many women in the field in 1986!

Another professor mentioned, when I asked him for advice on choosing grad schools, that I might want to look for departments with women faculty that I could use as mentors during the next 4-6 years. Wow. The idea hadn't even occurred to me, but the more I look the more obsessed I get.

I spent several hours the other night looking at research departments at schools I am thinking about applying to. One side effect of this was that I got so excited about all of the potential research I could be working on in the near future that I stayed up WELL past when I had meant to go to bed, and had trouble going to sleep once I got there. Oops...

I also realized that finding women in this field is MUCH harder than I expected. While looking through the 15 or 20 schools that I was considering, I kept an eye out for female faculty. There are some. Some. Here and there, I saw women in Computer Science departments. But then I started looking out for women in Computer Science fields studying Artificial Intelligence. There were...a few. And of those, I think one or two did NOT study Natural Language Processing (a part of the field I find less than thrilling). Female grad students are possibly even rarer. Some schools I looked at had only one or two female PhD candidates amongst an army of men.

I understand that this is probably a phenomenon of percentages. A small percent of computer scientists are female, and logically speaking if you look at a smaller portion of the field, you'll find less women than you would in the whole. But wow. No wonder people are making such a big deal of finding a department where I would have women to use as resources.

I know I need female mentors to look to. I've never been able to socialize well with women, regardless of how smart I know they are. Someday I'm going to want to balance work and family, and it would be great to be able to watch people do it in practice before I have to do it myself. What's it really like to work in a department where you may not have any female peers? What drove a woman a few years ago to ask that a leading science publication only publish her paper with her initials because she didn't want people to know she was a woman? Is it really a problem to get people to take you seriously because your female, and if so, how do you deal with it? None of these are really things that men could answer for me.

I have been saying for years that I want to do independent research rather than working at a university because teaching is really something I would rather not do. But I'm beginning to wonder if I don't have a responsibility to stick around in the academic sector to help future women like myself navigate academia. Sure, in the private sector I could talk to any women who came through, but they would have to GET there first. And it seems like the hard part is getting from college to where you want to end up.

I might still elect for a private sector research job someday. After all, it's not impossible to mentor and be an example for women from a research job outside of academia. However, I'm certainly not as opposed to teaching as I once was. It's not about assignments and grades, it's about helping people find their goals and how to get where they want to be. In the meantime, I'm doing my part to fight statistics. I very nearly dropped the computer science major two years ago because it was "too hard." A single conversation with a couple grad students convinced me to give it a little more time. Boy am I glad I did. The more I learn, the more I want to know. I can't imagine a better place for me.

Blogging on the Road

Reporting from the campus center via wireless network today. My laptop goes everywhere these days, and it's always nice to find a handy wireless network. Recently I've been seeing more news articles related to how dropping computer prices and new technologies like high speed wireless could be used to give developing countries a boost.

The gap between developing and developed countries is ever widening as developed countries pull ahead faster and faster with new technologies. How would populations who have never seen computers be able to catch up in the global marketplace these days? There are a few exciting solutions I have read about.

One of them is an initiative to put wireless networks into place in cities and towns who have never had internet access to begin with. SInce there isn't a wired infrastructure in place, it's not a matter of converting from old standard to new standards, and physical networks would be costly to implement. However, wireless networks could be just the thing. Companies are interested in working with small towns in developing countries to work on prototypes for some of the first city-wide wireless networks. Instead of being the last people to get these new technologies, research programs like this would bring rural communities into the new age of technology practically overnight (relatively speaking).

Another exciting program I read about this morning is an initiative to produce a $100 laptop that could be supplied to children in developing countries. Even cooler is that it will be open source...giving developing countries a chance to be on the forefront of what I anticipate will be the new era of computing. You can read about it here.

Brandeis Briefs, version 2.0

Welcome to the newest incarnation of Brandeis Briefs. I hope that this format will make keeping in touch easier so that I can do it more often! With this format, I will no longer clutter your inbox with emails, but any time you want to read about my Brandeis exploits you can visit this page to re-read old entries or see the most recent things I have written.

If you're not familiar with this format, it's kind of like a public journal. Formally called a blog, which is short for web log, they have been growing in popularity for several years. You may have seen stories of hurricane survivors in Louisiana or soldiers in Iraq "blogging" about their experiences. This site is private, meaning that it will not show up on web searches, making it harder for people to just stumble into it. However, anyone you or I give the link to will be able to read it.

I hope that you do not feel that this is a less intimate form of communication. I will still make an effort to send personal emails to people as time permits, and I will try to answer any emails I receive in a timely manner! I thought this would be a good way to easily post photos and frequently updated stories about what I am up to these days, and let people check in as they want to.

A few notes about viewing and using the blog:
If you bookmark this page, you can always come back here to read the most recent entry. All old entries will be archived so that you can go back and read those as well. You can use the buttons below each entry to interact with the blog and its viewers. The "comments" button will take you to a page where you can read the entry you are viewing and any comments other viewers have made. The envelope icon will let you email the entry you are reading to anyone you like. The pencil icon will allow you to make a public comment that other users can also view. If you'd like to email me privately, you can click the "Email Me!" link in the menu on the right side of the page at any time.

This format is a little bit different than the old email briefs, but I hope that you will stick around for the stories!