Adam Lindsay

Quote: Andy Ihnatko on the iPad and Scots

Heather Anne Campbell is a twisted, brilliant talent

The video, "How Can We Have Sex" made the rounds recently, and I looked into the writer/actress, Heather Anne Campbell. Turns out, she's done a lot of funny/extreme videos, like
Il Gatto:

I'm a Transformer Too (NSFW):

and How Can We Have Sex:

(originally via jwz)

Poking around further, seems like she has profiles on YouTube, MySpace, Funny or Die, Twitter, Flickr, as well as her own web site. She's a videogame journalist as well. Nifty. I hadn't intended to turn into a stalker here—I just wanted to show some funny videos. But why do things by half-measures, eh?

Naming Apple's Tablet device

Apple's forthcoming slate computer has been the subject of limitless speculation lately. One area where people have thrown their hands up, declining even to guess, is the name. That's silly, because there's one name for the product that clearly has an Apple-esque ring to it, and stands apart from all the rest.

The "i" prefix is well-accepted. It's sure to be a consumer-class device, and not a Mac, so we should stick with it. What follows is the important bit. "Tablet" and "Slate" have shown themselves to be a crowded namespace. What else is handheld, conveys a sense of solidity, of endless knowledge at your fingertips, of being visually rich and yet instantly familiar?

Think about it…

a book.

That's it:

iBook.

It works: Apple iBook. It even has a sense of familiarity about it.

What do you think? Will Apple ever release an iBook?

Cross-country dancing (awesome idea from 4-year-old daughter)

Driving home today, my daughter said she wanted to do "cross-country dancing."

Naturally, my reactions were mixed between "what in the world is she talking about," and "that is teh AWESOME!"
The ever-so-clever four-year-old maintained it was a real thing, and that her teacher told her about it.

When I got home, I was surprised to find a few promising results on Google. The first was the Cross Country Dancing Championships from the Fred Astaire dance studios. Sadly, the photographs reveal it to be an indoor event, and therefore not awesome.

YouTube turned up something a little more promising, being outdoor and at a cross-country running event, but sadly it's far too static to be awesome.

Me, I instantly had images of one of the best music videos of all time dancing through my head. Why can't people do that competitively?

Christmas Light Hero

Recommended (origins)

NIN & Gary Numan: Cars

Pumpkin Carving Succeed

Yahoo! Taiwan's Hack Girls

Simon Willison has written about the latest viral outrage: the appearance of a "Hack Girls" dancing troupe at a Yahoo! Hack Day Taiwan. I've been trying to take into account the views of women who think this is no big deal as well as those who are saying it's in keeping with local culture. I personally found the event in poor taste and extremely ill-advised.

I came up with a couple questions that are my personal acid test for this situation. What we're being asked to accept is whether girls doing a lap dance  for a male geek-oriented audience is an acceptable "bit of fun."

The insensitivity question boils down to: When does "a bit of fun" within a social norm cross the line into being alienating to those outside that norm?

And I formulated the exclusion question as: When does a "social norm" itself cause offense and alienation and therefore need to be re-evaluated?

In other words, would seeing straight male geeks receive a lap dance on stage at an inclusive, corporate event cause some offense to those who are present that aren't straight male geeks? And how normal is it to assume that the audience of geeks are straight males (who naturally need to be brought out of their shells with this enforced fun)?

To a world audience, presumably those whom Yahoo! wants to impress with their openness of their Hack Days, those answers would probably be, "Yes, some offense," and "No, not really normal." To the local audience, I can't presume to know for them, but I suspect that it (ahem) straddled a line. The Hack Girls apparently made an appearance at the event a year ago, but all evidence I've seen suggests it was tamer, and clearly it wasn't called into question at a corporate level.

I get the sense that people with thicker skin or thought there was no big deal locally have been applying the first question. It's not personally offensive to them, and is unlikely to have been obviously insensitive in Taiwan, so where's the problem?

I suspect what has bothered people about the event is the second question, on exclusion. Regardless of whether or not it's a form of valid local entertainment, it throws light on the questions: "Should we assume that hackers are horny males? Do we want to propagate that idea and force others outside that group to adjust for that community?"

I say no.

(download)

Update: Just after I posted this, I noted that Yahoo! tweeted an apology. This post was much more about the different way people saw the event and treated it as a case of sexist/cultural insensitivity vs political correctness run amok.

Update 2: Now a post on the YDN blog.

Get analytics on your bit.ly links with Tweetie 2

This is fundamentally a reiteration of what can be found in Tweetie and bit.ly developer docs, but some folks might find it helpful to use bit.ly's analytics with the new Tweetie 2 release.

1. Register for a bit.ly/j.mp account.
2. Copy this lengthy URL (click and hold on the link on the iPhone): http://api.j.mp/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl=%@&login=MYUSERNAME&apiKey=R_MYAPIKEY&history=1
3. Open Tweetie 2, and navigate to Accounts > Settings > URL Shortening > Custom…
4. Paste the above template URL into the custom field.
5. Go to your bit.ly account page and copy the API Key from the text box on the left-hand column. A double-tap on the iPhone will likely only capture the part of the API key after the standard-ish "R_" prefix. The template URL I gave you accounts for that.
6. Return to the Tweetie custom URL Shortening settings, and replace the MYAPIKEY portion with the api key you just copied.
7. Save and try to shorten a URL yourself (click on the character count button to expose that control) when composing a tweet.
8. Return to your bit.ly account to see that URL.

I hope that's helpful to some.

Update: corrected typo that almost surely prevented it from working. Sorry!