Alison Young

In 2003 Paul Graham wrote an essay as to why nerds are unpopular. Beginning as quite a detailed account of how the groups within a school function, specifically how nerds fit in and why they are victimised by the popular people before graduating into the role of modern teenagers in society. This offers some sort of explanation as to apparently why teenagers are the way they are and how it is merely the product of the ‘adult world’ and their lack of ability to engage teenagers and thus two disparate worlds are formed, the teenage and the adult.

It’s an interesting read and while I can’t overly identify with all aspects of it, I suspect that’s due to differences in the American and Australian school systems, difference in lifestyle and engagement with my parents and other adults.

I found some very interesting articles I’d like to share with you guys.

• I chat therefore I am….. an article about a conversation held between two advanced chatbots.
• Alter Egos…. an author commentary with pictures of people and their in-game avatars. Interesting because of the research that this guy has done. He’s also written and published a book about these people.

I haven’t done anything remarkable with either of my machines lately but can report my ongoing satisfaction with Ubuntu. I’ve found even when I give my laptop to somebody who’s never used linux before they are able to navigate the desktop and menus with only minimal guidance.

Honours thesis, teaching and being mildly social has left me with little time for pursuing hobbies over the last several months. I’ve now got less than a week to go before submission; drafts have been issued to my 3 proof-readers.

In more exciting news I’ve finished my Open Source Software paper and have decided I’m going to go send it in for consideration for the Research miniconf at linux.conf.au which will be in Sydney in January next year. I’m excited, this will be my first paper submission to a conference. I do plan to go whether I get accepted or not, should be fun to go to a linux conference and I know I’ll learn a lot.

I’ve recently downloaded some books from Cory Doctorow. He’s a Canadian science-fiction writer who releases all of his books under a Creative Commons licence. This means you can go to his site, download his books, and read them/copy them/give them to everybody you know without coming under fire from lawyers or anybody else; as long as you don’t make a profit from your actions.

Cory has done a number of things, most notably he’s a co-editor of BoingBoing. While not as likely to take to the streets, I do agree with some of his ideas about freedom of information and the problem with licensing which tends to punish only those trying to use products legitimately.

His writing is also very good. I urge you to check out his website and the various novels and novellas he’s authored.

I got quite a surprise today when I went to pick up my Griffith things for the WIT regional tour and came away clutching the box of a Sony Aibo as well. Apparently the RoboCup team were feeling particularly generous and decided to part with one of their clan so that I could take it on my tour of regional Queensland next week.

I’m also fairly rapt that Nostariel’s bluetooth adapter means I can easily transfer photos and clips from my phone to wherever I like. I also have a shiny new Antec Aria case for my desktop pc.