Thursday, February 26, 2009
I need a Teach Yourself CSS CD
You know those Teach Yourself (insert language here) CDs that teach you how to say, "Which way is the train station?" and "How much is this newspaper?" and all that? I need one for CSS, plzkthx. I learned HTML a long time ago, and it's taken over the programming language portion of my brain. There is no room for CSS. My brain is getting old. *trudges off in search of CSS sites*
Blogger is a lonely place...
Maybe I just haven't quite figured it out yet, but I find Blogger to be a very lonely place. It doesn't feel like there's as much of a sense of networking. I feel a little isolated.
I'm finding that I prefer LiveJournal a lot more for blogging and getting a sense of interaction with other people. I've had this blog for about a month and no one's commented on it yet. With LiveJournal, I'd have been a member of at least a few communities by now, there'd be people on my friends list, and I'd comment and receive comments. Blogger feels like much more of a jumble of separate blogs without many real connections.
For instance, if someone links to my blog, I have no idea that they have. In LiveJournal, they'd likely be on my friends list, and I'd be able to see their entry just by checking my friends list. With this, if I want to see if someone's linked to my blog, I have to check the entire internet. DO NOT WANT.
/rant
I'm finding that I prefer LiveJournal a lot more for blogging and getting a sense of interaction with other people. I've had this blog for about a month and no one's commented on it yet. With LiveJournal, I'd have been a member of at least a few communities by now, there'd be people on my friends list, and I'd comment and receive comments. Blogger feels like much more of a jumble of separate blogs without many real connections.
For instance, if someone links to my blog, I have no idea that they have. In LiveJournal, they'd likely be on my friends list, and I'd be able to see their entry just by checking my friends list. With this, if I want to see if someone's linked to my blog, I have to check the entire internet. DO NOT WANT.
/rant
Monday, February 23, 2009
Naming Defines Us
I was thinking about the post that I made last week, about searching for myself on Google, and that got me to thinking about names and their power.
Recently, I wrote a critique of the movie Boys Don't Cry for the Women and Gender Studies class that I'm taking. The movie is about the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgendered girl (born Teena Brandon), who was murdered in small-town Nebraska in the early 1990's when his friends found out he was biologically female. In my critique, I discussed the power of names on one's identity. Here's a little excerpt from my critique:
"Brandon is born Teena Brandon, and assumes several fake names through the course of the film. He introduces himself to a girl at the beginning of the film as Billy. His fake ID, shown later in the film, has his name as Charles Brayman. Throughout most of the film, he identifies himself as Brandon Teena. Brandon was already in the habit of lying, telling Candace that he had a child of his own, and that his sister was a model in Hollywood, so assuming fake names was probably not difficult for him. It made me wonder, though, how much someone’s name can affect their personality. When Brandon is addressed as Brandon, his personality is proud, eager to please, and a little reckless. When he is addressed as Teena, he becomes meek, not like the outgoing person he is when everyone sees him as Brandon. He even refuses to acknowledge Teena as himself, saying to a police officer when confronted of a photo of himself as a woman, 'This Teena chick seems pretty messed up.' So how much does a person’s name affect how they appear towards others? When Teena assumes the identity of Brandon, he becomes that person."
Writing that critique, combined with all of my recent posts about identity, got me to thinking about what significance a person's name - or sometimes in the case of online identity, a person's screen name - really has on that person's identity.
Over the years, I've had several different blogs and most of them haven't been associated with my real name. Still, screen names have the ability to create a new identity. While your given name may not reflect very much on your personality, a name you choose may have more symbolic significance. These are names that you cerate for yourself, and because of that, you have the ability to reflect certain aspects of yourself in the name you choose. Hobbies, fandoms, favorite films or songs. A screen name has the ability to immediately give insight to what sorts of things you're interested in.
Because of the separation between identities online, you also have the ability to create several different personas for yourself. Who you are on a message board may differ from who you are as a blog writer, and blogging itself can be as personal as a journal read only by friends and family, or as public as a commentary on entertainment, society, politics, or anything else.
Recently, I wrote a critique of the movie Boys Don't Cry for the Women and Gender Studies class that I'm taking. The movie is about the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgendered girl (born Teena Brandon), who was murdered in small-town Nebraska in the early 1990's when his friends found out he was biologically female. In my critique, I discussed the power of names on one's identity. Here's a little excerpt from my critique:
"Brandon is born Teena Brandon, and assumes several fake names through the course of the film. He introduces himself to a girl at the beginning of the film as Billy. His fake ID, shown later in the film, has his name as Charles Brayman. Throughout most of the film, he identifies himself as Brandon Teena. Brandon was already in the habit of lying, telling Candace that he had a child of his own, and that his sister was a model in Hollywood, so assuming fake names was probably not difficult for him. It made me wonder, though, how much someone’s name can affect their personality. When Brandon is addressed as Brandon, his personality is proud, eager to please, and a little reckless. When he is addressed as Teena, he becomes meek, not like the outgoing person he is when everyone sees him as Brandon. He even refuses to acknowledge Teena as himself, saying to a police officer when confronted of a photo of himself as a woman, 'This Teena chick seems pretty messed up.' So how much does a person’s name affect how they appear towards others? When Teena assumes the identity of Brandon, he becomes that person."
Writing that critique, combined with all of my recent posts about identity, got me to thinking about what significance a person's name - or sometimes in the case of online identity, a person's screen name - really has on that person's identity.
Over the years, I've had several different blogs and most of them haven't been associated with my real name. Still, screen names have the ability to create a new identity. While your given name may not reflect very much on your personality, a name you choose may have more symbolic significance. These are names that you cerate for yourself, and because of that, you have the ability to reflect certain aspects of yourself in the name you choose. Hobbies, fandoms, favorite films or songs. A screen name has the ability to immediately give insight to what sorts of things you're interested in.
Because of the separation between identities online, you also have the ability to create several different personas for yourself. Who you are on a message board may differ from who you are as a blog writer, and blogging itself can be as personal as a journal read only by friends and family, or as public as a commentary on entertainment, society, politics, or anything else.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Autism: The Musical
Now, before you go thinking this is a completely random post, let me explain. Last year, I wrote a short story called Coping Mechanisms, and one of the main characters in the story is autistic. As I was writing the story, I did a lot of research and I've kind of developed an interest in reading about autism.
So, recently, I heard about this documentary, Autism: The Musical, and immediately Netflixed it to watch. It's about The Miracle Project, founded by Elaine Hall, and it's a drama program specifically for developmentally disabled kids. The documentary is about the six months before the first show, filmed in 2005 and 2006. The documentary focuses on five kids - Neal, Henry, Wyatt, Lexi, and Adam - all with varying degrees of autism and Asperger's syndrome.
What I like about this documentary is its immediacy, its realness. It shows these kids and their families as families, dealing with having an autistic child, but also just dealing with real life in general. While it certainly doesn't cover all of the positives and negatives of raising autistic children, it doesn't shy away from showing the problems along with the successes.
By the end of the movie, you are rooting for these kids to succeed, and you've had a look into their lives and see them not just as autistic, but as kids, too. The same crazy senses of humor, same anxieties, same desires.
I'd definitely recommend this movie to anyone, not just people who are involved in the autism community.
So, recently, I heard about this documentary, Autism: The Musical, and immediately Netflixed it to watch. It's about The Miracle Project, founded by Elaine Hall, and it's a drama program specifically for developmentally disabled kids. The documentary is about the six months before the first show, filmed in 2005 and 2006. The documentary focuses on five kids - Neal, Henry, Wyatt, Lexi, and Adam - all with varying degrees of autism and Asperger's syndrome.
What I like about this documentary is its immediacy, its realness. It shows these kids and their families as families, dealing with having an autistic child, but also just dealing with real life in general. While it certainly doesn't cover all of the positives and negatives of raising autistic children, it doesn't shy away from showing the problems along with the successes.
By the end of the movie, you are rooting for these kids to succeed, and you've had a look into their lives and see them not just as autistic, but as kids, too. The same crazy senses of humor, same anxieties, same desires.
I'd definitely recommend this movie to anyone, not just people who are involved in the autism community.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Where Am I?
Or more specifically, where am I online?
When I googled my full name in quotation marks, I got about 58 results. Most of them were for my website, my blog and other students' blogs from a class I took last semester, and a few were from the NaNoWriMo donations list. Interestingly enough, I got a link to this blog, but with the url that I had before I changed it about a week ago. I suppose the Google search bots haven't quite caught up to that change yet.
Now, if I google my name without any quotations, I get 5,190 results. Some of them are for CSI websites, because one of the main guys behind the show (writer? creator?) is Anthony Zuiker, who's distantly related to me. Apparently there's also a zuiker.com, though I don't think there's much -- if anything -- about my immediate family on there. The site was having issues, so I couldn't really see very much of what was on it.
Of course, there's a lot more of me online, but my real name isn't connected to any of it, so it doesn't show up. It's interesting to see what kinds of personas you project online, and how much of it really reflects who you are. For example, with me, most of the stuff online that has my full name attached is academic work. On the other hand, none of my hobby or fandom-related stuff has my name on it.
When I googled my full name in quotation marks, I got about 58 results. Most of them were for my website, my blog and other students' blogs from a class I took last semester, and a few were from the NaNoWriMo donations list. Interestingly enough, I got a link to this blog, but with the url that I had before I changed it about a week ago. I suppose the Google search bots haven't quite caught up to that change yet.
Now, if I google my name without any quotations, I get 5,190 results. Some of them are for CSI websites, because one of the main guys behind the show (writer? creator?) is Anthony Zuiker, who's distantly related to me. Apparently there's also a zuiker.com, though I don't think there's much -- if anything -- about my immediate family on there. The site was having issues, so I couldn't really see very much of what was on it.
Of course, there's a lot more of me online, but my real name isn't connected to any of it, so it doesn't show up. It's interesting to see what kinds of personas you project online, and how much of it really reflects who you are. For example, with me, most of the stuff online that has my full name attached is academic work. On the other hand, none of my hobby or fandom-related stuff has my name on it.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
For writer types
I just recently found a wonderful little blog called Black Cover. Although updated sporadically, it's a great resources for writers like me, who are constantly on the search for the perfect journal. Their tagline is "The Search for the Perfect Little Black Notebook", and that's exactly what they do. They write reviews of notebooks, for the most part pocket-sized and black. It's a search for an alternative to the ever-popular but oh-so-expensive Moleskine.
...I myself recommend Piccadilly notebooks, but who knows? Maybe I'll find something better thanks to the folks at Black Cover.
...I myself recommend Piccadilly notebooks, but who knows? Maybe I'll find something better thanks to the folks at Black Cover.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
I am he as you are he as you are me
...and we are all together.
That's me remembering "I Am The Walrus" by the Beatles. But really, I want to talk about identity and the internet. Coincidentally, after I made the last post about online identity, I read a chapter in my Women's Studies textbook about gender. One of the sections in the chapter was about gender swapping online.
So I did a little looking around for more articles and I found this. This study was done mainly with participants in MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, so it's not representative of the whole internet population. In the study, though, over half of all of the male participants reported swapping genders at some point through a gaming avatar, while about two thirds of all female participants reported swapping genders.
Participants were asked about why they swapped genders when establishing an avatar, and there were many different reasons cited, a few of which I'll quote here:
"Extract 22: I just felt like it, really. Mostly my characters
are female, but I think I made my male character
because I was tired of creepy guys hitting on
my female characters. It’s utterly ridiculous, very
annoying, and not the reason why I play the game.
(P39, female, age 32)"
"Extract 23: Because if you make your character a
woman, men tend to treat you FAR better. (P49,
male, age 23)"
"Extract 25: If you play a chick and know what the
usual nerd wants to read, you will get free items . . .
which in turn I pass them to my other male characters
. . . very simple. Nerd + Boob = Loot. (P65,
male, age 20)"
"Extract 26: I mostly play female characters, but
sometimes I make a male character and don’t let
anyone know I’m female in real life. It’s interesting
how different people treat you when they think you
are male. Kind of like a window into their strange
man universe. (P117, female, age 23)"
It's interesting to note that the female participants who played as male characters said that they played as males in order not to be hit on, or to be respected more in the game. On the other hand, the male participants said that if they played as females, men treated them better and gave them more items within the game simply because they were male characters. Obviously, the viewpoints vary on the difference between friendly interaction and sexual advances.
This study is just one example of one area of online communication in which a person's actual gender may not be consistent with their online gender.
That's me remembering "I Am The Walrus" by the Beatles. But really, I want to talk about identity and the internet. Coincidentally, after I made the last post about online identity, I read a chapter in my Women's Studies textbook about gender. One of the sections in the chapter was about gender swapping online.
So I did a little looking around for more articles and I found this. This study was done mainly with participants in MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, so it's not representative of the whole internet population. In the study, though, over half of all of the male participants reported swapping genders at some point through a gaming avatar, while about two thirds of all female participants reported swapping genders.
Participants were asked about why they swapped genders when establishing an avatar, and there were many different reasons cited, a few of which I'll quote here:
"Extract 22: I just felt like it, really. Mostly my characters
are female, but I think I made my male character
because I was tired of creepy guys hitting on
my female characters. It’s utterly ridiculous, very
annoying, and not the reason why I play the game.
(P39, female, age 32)"
"Extract 23: Because if you make your character a
woman, men tend to treat you FAR better. (P49,
male, age 23)"
"Extract 25: If you play a chick and know what the
usual nerd wants to read, you will get free items . . .
which in turn I pass them to my other male characters
. . . very simple. Nerd + Boob = Loot. (P65,
male, age 20)"
"Extract 26: I mostly play female characters, but
sometimes I make a male character and don’t let
anyone know I’m female in real life. It’s interesting
how different people treat you when they think you
are male. Kind of like a window into their strange
man universe. (P117, female, age 23)"
It's interesting to note that the female participants who played as male characters said that they played as males in order not to be hit on, or to be respected more in the game. On the other hand, the male participants said that if they played as females, men treated them better and gave them more items within the game simply because they were male characters. Obviously, the viewpoints vary on the difference between friendly interaction and sexual advances.
This study is just one example of one area of online communication in which a person's actual gender may not be consistent with their online gender.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Just who are you, really?
As soon as you enter the online world, you are no longer yourself. Your identity as a human being is stripped from you and reformed through your interactions with everyone else online. So who do you become? Are you the same person that you are in real life? Or do you change, do you become someone new?
The question of identity online is a fascinating one. If I want to, I can be a thirteen-year-old boy in Nebraska, or a sixty-year-old woman in Tokyo, or a blind girl in Australia. It doesn't matter who I actually am, what matters is who I want to be.
So how much of our identity is constructed by the way we look and the way we speak and what we do, and how much of it is an unchangeable part of our personalities? How much stays with us even when we exist only in ones and zeros and pixels?
I'm asking a lot of questions and giving very few answers.
Here's a few:
Answer: For a long time, I thought one of my favorite fanfiction writers was a girl, only to find out much later that he wasn't. I just assumed, because I didn't know anything about the person and most of my other fanfic-writing friends were girls.
Answer: I can know the intimate details of a person's life and know nothing about them at the same time. Through reading someone's blog, I can learn where they live, what they do, what their favorite color is or how many kids they have or when their birthday is. And at the same time, I really do not know that person. And they may not know me.
Answer: 42.
Answer: A lot of people online thought I was a guy, simply because of a username that I was using. After all, you have no idea what I look like. It's up to you to figure out who I am.
In this world, gender and age and ability and appearance disappear. Fantastic, innit?
The question of identity online is a fascinating one. If I want to, I can be a thirteen-year-old boy in Nebraska, or a sixty-year-old woman in Tokyo, or a blind girl in Australia. It doesn't matter who I actually am, what matters is who I want to be.
So how much of our identity is constructed by the way we look and the way we speak and what we do, and how much of it is an unchangeable part of our personalities? How much stays with us even when we exist only in ones and zeros and pixels?
I'm asking a lot of questions and giving very few answers.
Here's a few:
Answer: For a long time, I thought one of my favorite fanfiction writers was a girl, only to find out much later that he wasn't. I just assumed, because I didn't know anything about the person and most of my other fanfic-writing friends were girls.
Answer: I can know the intimate details of a person's life and know nothing about them at the same time. Through reading someone's blog, I can learn where they live, what they do, what their favorite color is or how many kids they have or when their birthday is. And at the same time, I really do not know that person. And they may not know me.
Answer: 42.
Answer: A lot of people online thought I was a guy, simply because of a username that I was using. After all, you have no idea what I look like. It's up to you to figure out who I am.
In this world, gender and age and ability and appearance disappear. Fantastic, innit?
Map of the Internet
That is just really cool...
And that's only a general map of the major internet networks, apparently. I've been wondering about this lately. What does the internet really look like? Can there be internet countries? Will people be citizens of online countries in addition to being citizens of physical locations someday?
And that's only a general map of the major internet networks, apparently. I've been wondering about this lately. What does the internet really look like? Can there be internet countries? Will people be citizens of online countries in addition to being citizens of physical locations someday?
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