badgerbag

I love this so much.



Meanwhile, after getting up at 6am, hauling ass to RWC to bring Moomin his backpack ON CRUTCHES, breakfast as a treat for crappy morning at the san carlos airport cafe (DIVINE), a sort of okay, but should have eaten lunch, day at work, and walking through Grocery Outlet, and picking Moomin up, taking him to dance class (more walking... why did i do it? while i was sitting on the floor during the dance class my legs both started buzzing, the bad leg seized up and my foot spasmed or cramped or something) then hauling groceries down the ramp at low tide (helped by a kind neighbor from slip 3, owner of a tiny dog named Rudder, he could see i was having a lot of trouble, trying to hide it from Moomin at this point), helping Moomin with homework (word problems) and watching funny videos and trying to work a bit more at the least demanding backloggish thing I have to do for work, .... My leg is fucked up now. I can't walk very well! I mean really. So, I crutched aroudn the boat well enough to make Moomin some chicken nuggets and an apple and some cheese and crackers (default easiest dinner) Whimpering in pain . put moomin to bed, sang him a song, told him he can read till 9:15 then lights out and i'm not getting up.

took baclofen 10mg. considering lyrica on top of that. I can't move my foot! i just tried to put the blanket on toip of it and gasped in pain. High level of pain. It's been a while since it was like this and i'm not sure it was ever exactly like this.

stress + pushing the walking a bit too hard + long day + I think i was dumb to sit on the floor and try to use my computer... got too cocky there, i wouldnt have even thought of such a thing a year ago. wtf. worst possible thing to damage that thing in my back, there, other than trying to lift a piano or some such fuckery.

It'll either be tolerable when i wake up or I'll go into some kind of emergency mode and get someone to pick up moomin to take him to school. please let it not be low tide tomorrow at 7:15am. also, in theory he should have violin but i have no idea where the violin is and don't care.

i have plenty of food and luckily already asked to work at home tomorrow but if i hurt this much tomorrow am not going to work worth a damn on anything too complicated. could stick to triaging bugs i guess. im certainly not going near a goddamn view, panel, feature export, context, variant, pane, .tpl.php file, or page while on muscle relaxants and weird nerve drugs. is horrible work pressure right now and people will think i'm just copping out of it. am not!!! and won't! goddamn!

* Write up more stuff for geekfeminism on the conference
* Take a shower (ugh, cold)
* Grog
* Collapse
* Send Carmen B. some kind of writeup of explanations of her poems

Not necessarily in that order.

Tomorrow is She's Geeky! I'm too tired to go, but am going anyway! I might collapse by Sunday. Can I make it? When will there be rest?

So much to say! But my energy is a bit taken up at the moment

- all the rest of the conferences, quick before the new conference this weekend overlays it in my mind

- news bureaus and info desks out of corner shops, local news idea

- taxi medallion thing in sf with pics and links

- so much more. can't remember! argh!

(I missed the very beginning)

Lower the barriers to entry
Document your coding styles and conventions
Explain something more than twice ? your docs need fixing.
Log bugs for everything, no matter how small
Hosted dev en. We have 70 people on our dreamhacks.
People don't have to spend time installing, it's been done for them. show up and start working.
Clearly defined channels for coding help. IRC channels, mailing lists, contacts for projects or areas of code
Put your project through the "typo test".
Fix a typo. What do you have to do to fix it? How lng will it take a new contributor to figure out how to submit this typo patch and see the change committed and in place?




Set clear expectations:
- document, document, document.
- uphold a code of conduct or diversity statements. http://dreamwidth.org/legal/diversity
- give people goals to work towards
- create a culture where teaching is expected
- foster a sese of social reward for collaboration, not competition.

At first, Mark spent maybe 5 hours a week coding, he spent way more time teaching, getting other people going. Now that's changed and his time is freed up to code.

Denise: this shows the importance of your project culture. what is expected, what's okay and what's not okay. it's important for us to put out a social environment where collaboration is rewarded. check your ego at the door. people need a sense of approval for helping other people.


So many people liked Dreamwidth's diversity statement that it's top result on searches. It's creative commons licensed so please go ahead and use it if you like.

- Explicitly state we're interested in all sorts of contributors. Level of experience, background, stage of life, we want you, we make that clear and we want you to have the tools to contribute.

Giving people goals. Everyone wants to see things get done. (I remember this being very inspiring/exciting with the bugs that blocked launch.)

Quote from a developer "I wrote a patch! it's live on DW now!"

Keep it moving: people have short attention spans. really!
- work in steps and iterate: break tasks down.
- Manage your review queue: don't let patches rot, even if this means you get less coding time.
- Shut down bikeshed arguments quickly.
- Be as available as you possibly can

(I agree with breaking down tasks and bugs into tiny steps!)

Contributors moving through the review queue will eventually start reviewing other people's patches.

Bikeshedding. People can argue about what color to paint the bikeshed for months and years while they wouldn't necessarily argue about something more important.

Empower your community to make decisions, don't micromanage. Down the road if it turns out to be wrong or you don't like it people can change it.

Being available. We are all busy, it's hard, hard to find time to respond to bug mail every couple of days. People like to know they're being listened to. Otherwise why spend my time on it? we want to know we're being heard and feel like we matter.

"I like that everybody cooperates and it's really supportive, ... if you've had a crappy day you won't be laughed at."

Teambuilding is not a dirty word.
- everyond is allowed to make mistakes
- bug tickets are not flaws: they are chances to improve your product
- keep process open: no mysterious inner circles
- code ownership is dangerous!
- don't value big patches over little ones, place equal values on feature development, cleanup, refactoring, documentation, training

Keeping the process open. People can be senior or experienced contributors, great. but everyone should know what the decision making process is, how they can get somethnig changed, how to get a feature added. Community discussion for feature discussions then add to bug list.

Why code ownership is dangerous. we need people to understand the complicated stuff in depth. they must be stewards and not territorial. not driving people away because they like full control or they enjoy power.

About valuing patches. Yay, 3000 line patches with unit tests, documentation, code comments, and it's just what you wanted. Hurray! But little touches are very important. little interface enhancements, clarifications. They have a disproportionatly huge effect on your project! Don't ignore the little contributions, cleanup, refactoring, the less glorious parts of open source development. they also help contributors get invested in the project. scratching someone's little itch, they deal with people's particular accessiblility issues. thus your software over time becomes more accessible.

favorite moment. one moment in irc, someone submitted a much-wanted bug, there was cheering, someone said they get paid at work but no cheering squad.

THE single solitary individual exclusive lone uttermost thing to do!

RESPECT

People thrive on being in the loop
Never reject a patch without explaining
Never reject only for style reasons
Fire toxic people and moderate social channels
Never say no without a reason and an alternative
Keep asking yourself: "Is this answer bullshit?"

Denise: I learned Perl like 6, 9, months ago. with no CS background. Mark takes my patches and does a code review and fixes my quotemarks.

Toxic people. people you mention and people go "Oh, yah. THEM." you need to have a little bit of control over those people. we are social creatures. If we don't provide a social outlet on our project, they'll make one anyway.

Denise says hi to the peopel on IRC. They all say Hi!!!!!!!!!

People have really good bullshit detectors. So if you have a project culture of always being honest with people, your community will respect you because they know you're not lying when you tell them no and why you're saying no.

"I think i've found a new home. kinda cool."

three things you can start doing right now to improve the environment and process of project right now.

Freshman orientation. Appoint a welceomer and laud newcomers' first contributions. this is different from a community manager. Sophie who sets up the Dreamhack dev envs. Patient, question-answering. It's a lot of work but once you have a thriving community they will start doing it for each other. Empower this person to do stuff and fix things and answer questions and make decisions.

Ping? Pong! Stop timing out on communication when people need responses from you. IRC, bugzilla, even a short note. i got your mail, i will think about it, i'll get back to you. Get back to people within an hour or two even if you don't have a complete answer.

Problem Child. Have words with "that person" and let them know their behavior is not okay. Let them know their behavior is driving people away. the problem children and toxic people are allowed sometimes to take over the methods of communication. you as the leader can sit down with that code of conduct and ask them to tone down what they're doing just a little. If you do that, first of all it shows to the rest of your community that you are treating them with respect. Second it shows to your problem child that you are expecting them to be an element of respect in all the communications because we're all working together.

Questions are coming!

Q: what if you are there because you love the tech and not the community or people? they just want to code. what can we do to change people's idea about that?

Mark: it's a mental realignment, if your priority is make tech, okay, that's your goal. if your goal like us is to build contributor community, you have to deal with them as people. initial sacrifice of my time but personally i think it's worth it.

Denise: you don't need 100% universal buy in from your contributor base. we have people who just hack and work on the insanely complicated stuff. you need a balance of people people and tech people. let people know they dont have to be touchy feeling all the time, they just at the very least should avoid pissing people off. that's a good start.

Q: i love hearing about communities. but your slides were contradictory, they say do this do that, avoid hierarchy, but shut down the bikeshedding and kick out problem child. how do you deal with that contradiction.

Denise: every ship needs one captain. projects need a leader to make decisions and make sure things are moving along. our point with avoiding hierarchy is that you as the project leader are available to people and fostering the community, promoting people in the community up to contributors.

Mark: we want to avoid a closed community.

I will be on a plane to new zealand tomorrow as the "cyberwar" continues to unfold. The word sounds silly... But my reaction to google's announcement was similar to the emotional impact of watching a declaration of war. I don't know and can't know what's really going on or its complexities because that kind of stuff only seems to be revealed in history many years later. But it's a big thing and it could go a lot of ways.

Google's official post. "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

google threatens to leave China (Good article from China Digital Times with real translations of some of the twittering from China)

google puts its foot down

https is now the default for Gmail

blogher's news roundup earlier today - my comment there explains how to get quick, easy, though inaccurate, English translations of twitter searches.

Interesting but likely not related directly to Google and who knows if actually by the same people who messed with Twitter:

Baidu hacked by 'Iranian cyber army'

Suddenly it is becoming U.S. state dept. policy to fight censorship on the Internet and support net freedom: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce a technology policy next week to help citizens in other countries gain access to an uncensored Internet, a Clinton adviser told Reuters."

xmas eve hung out at my sister's with her and Vim and Mr. Pants, Moomin, Rook, Zond-7. We opened a bunch of presents and ate some kind of fancy beef dish with mushrooms that Vim made. My crockpot bread pudding came out AWESOME.

Crockpot bread pudding:

- most of a loaf of cream cheese bread, chopped small (or any bread, but extra fancy bread is good)
- 4 eggs
- 5 cups milk
- 5 or 6 bananas
- vanilla
- rum (about 1/2 cup)
- dried cranberries
- chocolate chips

I let it cook too long on high during dinner. It was even nicer during the tasting phase when it was slightly soggy with rum.

Moomin liked his magnets, tshirts (robot manatee, octopus with loch ness monster puppet, star trek silkscreen) and science kits and lego stuff! I got a fluffy pirate bathrobe, a lot of chocolates, a wifi card for my camera, and the best book in the world (Queen of Whale Cay).

Went over to damned_colonial's house for flaming punch and mince pies and hanging around. The flaming punch was AMAZING. met infinity and muse, who i only knew online!

xmas morning i got up and went over to the house. rook made us pancakes. more present-opening. my parents' presents for Moomin were particularly great. My mom got just the clothes i suggested for him... perfect... and some more sciencey kits including the electronics one i thought of getting him but didn't. and snap-tite star wars model kits. i took Moomin and Rook to the airport for their trip to NYC to see family and then I headed up to SF.

we decided to see sherlock holmes and ended up driving to sausalito, looking at the boats for a couple of hours, then had thai food & saw the movie. on all the boat ramps I had the silly impulse to explain to everyone passing by, "Um! ACTUALLY... I live on a boat TOO." Did not do that. gazed at boats and imagined my perfect (and more accessible) houseboat. hey, I could just hoist myself aboard with a bosun's chair, right?

I liked the Sherlock Holmes movie! Yay, bartitsu! I'm sure I could find plenty to critique but as it was I just leered at the screen a lot! Then watched the dr. who xmas special and liked that too. I htink the Time Lords are inside The Master's mind. I don't have a great explanation for wilf's non-humanness.

Since xmas I've been going through all my things and trashing a lot of them. Moved some books to zond7's house and some to the boat. The boat is much homier to my soul with books in it. My sister and zond7 helped and my sister stayed over in the boat in Moomin's bedroom. I spaced out a lot and felt variously upset but kept my head together. It was helpful to have people with me. Also, while I got super tired and am having trouble with my tonsils and a headache and my shoulder/neck thing is acting up, and my legs about to fall the fuck off, I not only walked a lot and did a lot of sorting and packing, but have not completely destroyed myself in the process. I think the slow pacing has helped. I'm still walking okay, limping more over the course of the day, needing the wheelchair if I'm going very far, but hanging in.

Meanwhile, a lot of the house is clearer. Most of the bookshelves and books are still there but it's like... less overwhelming and cluttered. I cleared out the main closet and the closet-that-is-really-a-bathroom, moving all my things to the bathroom-shower-closet and Rook's to the main closet. At this point if Rook wanted me to put my stuff in storage, I could do that with some efficiency and paid help. But it might make more sense to consolidate it or leave it on the bookshelves as I gradually reduce the volume.

All my fancy boots and shoes are going to lucidyouth along with cocktail dress and gothy ball gowns. I kept my 4 pairs of differently awesome converse, my giant furry mukluks, the red combat boots, crocs, and the 2 pairs of fluevog boots and shoes that I wear almost every day. Not surea bout the point of the converse, i just had a hard time throwing them out: black leather, dark red leather, red plaid, black with pink, plain black.

The boat is still lovely! I'm enjoying it! as soon as i'm a bit more settled in and have 2 working bathrooms instead of one, you are all invited to come stay in my houseboat. just not all at once.

What I need here is a future career as an eccentric social media consultant/ writers' retreat/ bed and breakfast proprietor but it would have to be only the sort of people who want to be at a somewhat messy bed and breakfast in a somewhat squalid marsh/wet parking lot in a boat that doesn't actually go anywhere. Still, the light in the morning on the water & the reflections of everything is spectacular! And someday soon there will be a working dinghy and a canoe. (With which to view the squalor and splendor of the marsh from right up close.)

I have an enormous nautical chart book that explains our slough and islands and port along with the entire bay area!

There's a lot to learn about boats, navigating, boat maintenance, and so on, and i was thinking in Sausalito that a boat provides a focus for a lot of different areas of knowledge and skill & the application of the knowledge results in a sort of further edge condition, ie, possible travel. Even imagining that is nice. Puttering around the slough this year... maybe in a few years exploring the bay and delta.

Simply messing about in boats. poop poop! & so on.

Reading everything nautical. boat books, exploration, hakluyt, the ship essex sunk by a whale.

There are 30 amps on the circuit. Heaters and the toaster oven, and the crappy low-wattage microwave, are the biggest power eaters and most likely to flip the circuit breakers.

Warm up the bathroom before taking a shower in very cold weather!

Don't flush any toilet paper!

Soap and shampoo and dish soap etc. must be biodegradable. (That means any other products I use should be too which means I need new lotion... I didn't think of that)

The bits of the woodwork where there is a little bit of water damage are now visible to me. Water collects there -- for example the lower corner of the windowsill in the bathroom after you take a shower or if the window is open and it's raining -- so these are good places to wipe down with a rag.

The boat is not mildewy, but I need to test out some ecologically decent anti-mildew things to wipe down a few stained or clearly vulnerable spots on the walls and in the cabinets.

If you climb down into the engine room, shine a flashlight into the holding tank, and turn out the lights, you can see how much room the tank has for toilet flushing before the next twice-a-month pumpout.

Three grocery bags crammed full of laundry is 16 pounds, which with pickup and delivery the next day, is $27.50 for wash and fold. Handy!

For people to find my boat I should think about rigging up some kind of easily identifiable flag.


I've always liked the history of the port in my town and been vaguely aware of the controversies about the houseboat neighborhoods. There is the harbor I'm at, then a much sketchier harbor (that I totally love for its funky vibe) next to the jail, then a new, upscale rather sterile-looking one I didn't know about, next to the fancy office buildings out past the deepwater port, and one which was built in 2003 after being voted down in 2001, from the IAC (evil overlords of southern CA Development) with no live-aboard docks.

My marina needs a little convenience store! If I owned the restaurant I'd run it as a nice community center, little store for food and marine supplies, warm laundromat-cafe-bookstore and brunch hangout with music venue/bar at night. As it is now, it's wasted space and I don't know how they manage to pay the property taxes.

Not one minute goes by without interruption from a kid! Wow! I have to sneak off every so often and regain my composure. Moomin and I have been reading long bits of Dr. Dolittle's Circus at bedtime. He's been playing well with Iz and Mali, and warily stays clear of L. I had a funny moment where I spelled "croissant" and Squid answered cryptically "He already had one". Leelo understood perfectly what we were talking about. That was an eye opener; some of it was context but I also suspect he saw through the spelling. The atmosphere while somewhat chaotic is punctuated by specially developed routine which I find fascinating and running through it all... Squid's quick and dry wit flashing out in the middle of her long explanations to the girls who poke at her to provoke it and then are hypnotically fascinated as they try to decipher whether they're being made fun or not and what information is encoded within (often very complex, just beyond them, which is like candy to their intelligence.) and L. who incredibly trusts her through the times when he is clearly very frustrated. I like the peaceful moment when she plays the totoro theme on a little recorder or flute to him at bedtime (which i only hear from below since the long run of stairs and then hallway after it daunt me) I think I managed not to say anything dirty or bohemian in front of Squid's mom today but it was close.

As Moomin was drifting off to sleep i said "I'd like to take your Dragonology book... I'm going to read it in the bath while eating cake. Gosh, I love being a grownup." Oh the outrage! He thought it was very funny after I explained it was a kind of cake he didn't like.

For his brochure about the human body and its various Systems I suggested several funny ideas - like illustrating it with tiny talking organs a la Cricket magazine - which he rejected until the one where it was a brochure written by aliens for other aliens on the care and health of human pets. He is very worried that Ms. F. would not like it. I swear... that school! Of course they like a creative idea. I don't usually pepper him with suggestions for such things, but hey. If he takes it and runs with it, great. Otherwise hands off! It's not my project!

This Saturday his dance class is performing in the "hometown holiday" parade which is our town's attempt to bring some holiday shopping action into downtown -- the 4th of july parade is very popular here. There's a street market, a field of snow, a parade (where we used to just join since it isn't all that formal) and incredibly great little fireworks *right next to the library*. It is hard for me to stick with the fireworks part from a wheelchair in an enormous crowd in the street but we'll figure out a spot and stick in one place off to the side. I think the spot under the giant tree by city hall should be okay. I'm going to bring Iz to the parade to give her mom a break. Keeping in mind she's working like 30 hours a week.

I worked today from Main St. (having wormed out the password) & had a very good cosy chat with M. about our lives. She's very interesting! We have some similarities that I didn't expect. When I go there I think of the role I played at my co-op as I would run a cooking crew and bring out bowls of steaming food in a motherly way. Though for me it was just dabbling in a role and for her it seems to be the history of her life and of course, her business for years.

Tomorrow I think working from my sister's house! She is sewing a million spats or something for her bazaar! and i will set up selenium and run test tests. Then haul ass back here to pick up M. and take him to dance lesson if he isn't too tired from the "Lap-a-thon". He will make $10 per lap with pledges from a bunch of us! Last year he ran 18 laps.

I feel a little more fired up to blog but am emotionally really strange and a bit messed up. Moomin steadies me though. It is very cheering to be here. if i were staying much longer I would buy that 50 foot ethernet cable and plug in my airport express so i could have internet in bed.

Walking pretty decently, especially today - I walked through a store, and stayed off my cane almost all the time in the house even though it's a huge house, with a few periods of lying down when my leg started being horrible. I think it helped that the weather was amazing. I picked Moomin up right after school so he could play on the back porch, trampoline, and explore the yard while I worked on the porch. It was nice to be here in daylight.



The view this morning as the sun came up across the bay ... spectacular. Moomin mused about the sun looking like a huge egg yolk.

But I will never like dogs.

Little house finches are coming regularly to the birdfeeder now... I looked them up in "iBird" and thought about how the pleasure of experience is enhanced by looking things up and identifying them and listening to fake birdsong. Not a new thought but it's solidified for me in that reality feels more real for me when it matches some kind of cultural product or then inspires one. We then looked up chaffinches and Zond7 claimed robins in England have a different color red than robins in North America.

Read more bits of Cervantes. I am up to the windmill chapter. The book discussion and book burning chapter was hilarious. Thought of Mark Twain. Now I want to read Twain again. When I was little I read all his novels I could find and an enormous "Twain" volume with all his short stories.

Reading The Frenzy of Renown which is completely fantastic. I kept wanting to type up bits of it, but if I had, it would have ended up being the entire Introduction copied into my journal. Here's one little bit, though, that made me think of blogging and bloggers.

The dream of fame in Western society has been inseparable from the ideal of personal freedom. As the world grows more complex, fame promises a liberation from powerless anonymity. In search of modern fame, we often enter a world of obvious fiction, in which all blemishes are smoothed and all wounds healed. It is the social version of a love that absolves the loved one of fault, restoring integrity and wholeness. Those whose fame depends least on anything specific are, in an image-conscious world, the most likely to be emulated. To be famous for yourself, for what you are without talent or premeditation, means you hve come into your rightful inheritance. To be compared to Farrah Fawcett required only hair. In the face of fragmenting social demands, fame creates its own ettiquette, allowing the famous to be themselves in a way no one else can afford to be, and to be accepted into a mystic community of other famous people, a psychic city of mutual respect for each other's individual nature.

The dedication was touching - after thanking many people Braudy says "Although I began the work when both my parents were alive and vigorous, neither has lived to see its completion. But their loss impresses on me still more the feeling that writing this book has nurtured: In the heart of aspiration is the desire for recognition by those whose approval is unconditional and therefore need never be sought, but also can never be assumed."

I am halfway through reading "The Good Divorce" which is good, but painful to read and think about. It seems very useful for adults whose parents are divorced too.

My weird skin problem cleared up with amazing swiftness. I thought it was allergic-y, like eczema or psoriasis or contact dermatitis but it turned out to be tinea versicolor

I am thinking about Moomin a lot and thinking over what to do.

Meanwhile I have helped to light a pilot light, cooked stew, gotten a most beautiful massage from hazelbroom, and read these excellent posts:

* A child abuse survivor's guide to the holidays by Grace Davis

* A fucked up Peaches concert indeed. (Triggery?)

* Patrick Stewart talks about his dad beating up his mom, and asks for people to speak out against domestic violence.

* Arcologies, Arcosanti, and hypothetical lilypad cities

* Actual attempt to breed a red heifer. OMG.

wheelchair accessible therapist obtained. with parking garage. awesome sauce.