Day: August 26, 2005

Categories
Photography

Modern marvels

Last night, I actually had my first video call through my computer. It was a trip. I enjoyed the experience immensely.

You see, that’s the advantage of not being the first to use a technology: when something is old hat to the rest of you, it’s new and exciting for me. My mom is the same–not the first to run out and try something new. She’s never really seen a computer, except as a box on people’s desk. She’s not ’seen’ the internet. She shows people the copies of the books I send her, but hasn’t the foggiest what I’m writing about.

However, she is moving into the digital age, and asked if she could have my older Nikon 995 digital camera. “Of course,” I said. I told her I would write detailed instructions on how to use all the lenses and filters. “Be sure to also write down what kind of film I should use,” she said.

She is going to be so blown away by this camera. I wish I could be there to see her face, and hear her laugh when she reaches the moment of discovery about how marvelous this new thing is.

Categories
Diversity

Too good to miss

One last gem for Friday, Slashdot writes on a soon to be released report from Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Ulster University that, well, read for yourself. From the Independent:

Men are more likely to win Nobel prizes and achieve excellence simply because they are more intelligent than women, an outspoken male academic has claimed.

Richard Lynn, the emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, argues that men have larger brains and higher IQs than women, to such an extent that they are better suited to “tasks of high complexity”.

By the way, he’s referring to white men. Previous studies of his show that whites are also more intelligent than blacks.

We’ll see what the study shows, but if it’s based on many of the current methods of testing, when I was studying Psychology, my professors disdained these for the fact that most are biased toward the test developers…who just happen to be western, white, males.

Fancy.

Best comment, from the BBC coverage:

I scored relatively high in an IQ test when I was a child. Since then I have done many many many very very very stupid things in my life. I still wonder what that test has to do with intelligence or understanding at all.

Second best comment, from Slashdot:

Of course men are smarter. We as women have been taught all our lives that this: |———| is 7 inches.

As an FYI, I have never taken an intelligence test. I have refused to take them since I was a child. For all I know, my IQ may be that of a frog, and anything positive I have accomplished has been the result of the energy released from frustration I’ve experienced with not being able to catch a plane in the sky with my tongue.

*thwapt!*

Categories
Writing

Frolicsome reading

Fridays are a good day to indulge in the work of others that gives me so much delight. I am lucky in your gifts–too many to list all, so I’ll just have to pick out a few this time around.

Jerry has a photo of a rather intimidating looking spider and I really like the poem he wrote to accompany it. He also has started a great new site on electric cars and other fuel alternative modes of transportation.

Loren has been publishing some pretty damn amazing pictures of birds and I also like the philosophy that accompanies them. However, he doesn’t post enough cat pictures. Still, I guess the world needs variety.

Dori posted a link to a site that features the work of graphic artists who are bored. My personal favorite is the fisherman.

(Oh, the cable company came out to disconnect the video and leave the internet, but he disconnected both. I caught him before he left, he checked his order and saw in small print that I was keeping my internet but dropping the video. He didn’t have a filter, so he disconnected the video and internet on the ground floor (since the router is on the second floor), but left both cable and internet for the second floor. For the nonce, we have free cable TV upstairs, including my bedroom/office/sitting room. So tonight, Firefly, Stargate, and Battlestar Gallactica, watching I am. I wonder who will get pregnant next on Battlestar? I’m banking on the President.)

Gordon writes on a “who’s turn is it to make tea application” written in .NET. So that’s what you folk in the UK talk about on Fridays? Huh. Anyway, Gordon, I hate to break any possible myth, but I am not a foxy chick. I am a tough, old, bird. Oh, still with a puff or two of smoke in me. Maybe a faint sizzle. A zing or two. Or three.

Elaine talks quietly on loss and paths taken.

Christine is returning to school. Good on you, Christine! Because I think this is a cool thing she’s doing, I have heeded her request and turned photos back on in my syndication feeds. With a wistful hope that you all still do stop by from time to time. It’s lonely at times, me here with just the bots. Millions and millions of bots.

(A hint: I’ve been thinking about going back to school myself…let’s hear it for the League of Grey Freshmen!)

I can empathize–so much!–with Pascale. I am also to her sending my most positive thoughts and bestest of good wishes.

Here’s to Julie and Ted Leung, who are probably one of the nicest couples in weblogging. Tech, too. And gardening. Between Loren’s pictures and the Leungs’, I’ve been getting homesick for the Northwest. Maybe it’s time for a move. If I did, though, who would serve you Missouri Green?

Dorothea Salo, who has a great new job and a wonderful new location, has a black cat, a bat, and a Thing in a Box, so she’s ready for halloween.

I started playing around with the NewsGator API yesterday, and so has Danny. Oh, how much I love REST APIs over SOAP. Sigh.

Jeneane is a real mensch. Phil is still one of my bestest buddies (no, you can’t go on break, Phil — too many of my favorites are on break).

Finally, a shout out to those webloggers who write long posts they never publish, for one reason or another. You know who you are. I have three posts in my drafts–really, really good ones–that I’m holding until you publish.

I just noticed that like the speech of Yoda, my writing is becoming.

Categories
Critters

My cat, the little princess

Been a long time since I did a shaggy cat story.

You all know Zoë, my cat. My little princess. My sweet faced little adorable furball. My lovely little, silver-haired darling.

Otherwise known as “The Bitch”.

Zoë is a bird friendly cat, which means that she stays indoors at all times. We have a large, carpeted cat tree in front of the window, as well as several rubber mats that she can claw to her heart’s content. She gets quality ‘bird’ (chasing feather on string), ‘keep away’ (playing hide n’ seek throughout the house), and ‘earthquake’ (shaking the tree or chair while she’s on them, which she loves) time, not to mention the ‘under the blanket monster’, the ’stair climb’, and the Lap.

 

She gets a mix of healthy dry food, formulated for both her teeth and her advancing years, as well as a dollop of wet food in the morning and evening (and treats at noon and before bed). She’s amazingly healthy, happy, active, and I think quite a looker. She’s the most beautiful cat I’ve owned, and with a loving, curious, playful personality.

And she has claws. She has, probably, the world’s longest cat claws.

 

At the vets, they look on in horror at those claws, as they leave gouges in the hard surface of the examining table. “Oh my!”, they exclaim, as they quickly reach for the ‘huggy’ to wrap her in before doing an examination. I’ve finally figured out that the most junior person in the office is the one delegated to hold Zoe while she gets her shot. I sure as heck don’t hold her.

We also try to clip her claws, with varying degrees of success. Varying, that is, from poor to “I’m ripped to shreds, and only clipped on claw and I need a transfusion”. The roommate and I hesitate to try again as we don’t want to cut into the quick and cause Zoë to bleed.

(Loosely translated: “The roomie and I are cowards.”)

Now, it’s not unusual for an indoor cat to have long claws, and long claws don’t necessarily mean that there’s a problem (other than they can hook into carpets and get yanked out). But Zoë also has a habit of extending her claws and gently inserting them into whatever is closest. Usually us.

When I’m working in my chair, and her butt is half over my TiBook, her front paws are extended, oh so sweetly, over my leg, claws lightly sunk in. And then she’ll slightly flex them in tune to her purrs, sending tiny little pinpricks of exquisite agony into my skin. My roommate’s arms are a mass of scars from all the play time. I am luckier in that she doesn’t claw me during play time because I’m Mom; roomie is just the hairless, idiot, older brother and therefore fair game.

 

If she’s on my lap, though, and something startles her, she uses her claws to obtain traction in order to launch herself off –accompanied by my screams of anguish, which I think has the neighbor really confused about our lifestyle. (Especially if he gets a closer look at roomie’s arms.)

I have gotten fairly adept at sensing her tensed muscles and quickly grabbing her front claws in order to preserve what’s left of my legs. I am not always successful, and my knees have a series of little red dots all over them, accompanied by thinner red lines of old markings. Last week, though, was the corker. Last week, she sunk her claws in so deep, she punctured a blood vein and now I have this massive dark purple bruise on my leg, with this tiny little pinprick in the middle.

 

Zoë cleaning my blood from claws.

I am mad at her. I am so mad at her. When she isn’t snuggled up into the crook of my arm, head back against my chest, looking up at my face with absolute and unconditional love, I’m really going to be so pissed.

The little Bitch.