Category: Geekdom

Weekend Intensive

It has been years since I have taught an intensive or series workshop. I have been very busy refining my skills at countless drop in classes. I have succumbed to the pressures of our artistic director and broke down to teach a Saturday Intensive improv comedy workshop. The hardest part of this is putting together a blurb for oneself. 

Saturday February 4th 9am. $75 paid in advance. Learn the new lingo of goal based scene work and have a blast. Sign up and payment is through Brown Paper Tickets  or Colette at info@staircase.org.

Professional Day

Dear Waterloo Public Library,

It has come to my attention that your downtown branch is closed today for a professional day. Professional days are great. May I suggest adding some basic communication skills your next professional day. 1) update your webpage hours and location to include the closure. 2) update the google of your closure. 3) put your “we are closed today” sign on the entrance door, not buried amongst 7 other identically shaped public announcements.

It was a lovely day so I decided to sit on a bench and try and get some work done on the intertubes. As I came to realize that your wireless access point was not operational today (even wifi router’s need professional days) about a dozen peeps came, tried the doors and left. Some of these folks were not that mobile. For them the simple act of switching from inside to outside drop off was a challenge. So don’t worry about grumpy old men like me. Consider improving your communications skills for the mobility challenged.

 

Yours

Me.

 

 

Let Grace Hopper Grace the Ten Spot

Dear America (United State of),

As a humble neighbour from the North I wish for you to consider placing Grace Hopper on your upcoming ten dollar bill. Your Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, has suggested that the new ten spot sport the face of a woman. Who has had more of an impact on the world than the “inventor of programming” Grace Hopper? For those of us who are not in the knowledge sphere of geekdom Grace Hopper invented the compiler. The compiler is the thing that made natural programming languages possible. She is one of the giants that all of your wonderful tech industries stand on the shoulder of. That includes Google, Apple and Facebook. It does not include Ashley Madison, which is a Canadian Company.

In a recent discussion group, comprised mostly of rich white men, many suggestions were made who should  be on the ten dollar bill. One of those rich white men suggested Margaret Thatcher. Speaking from a Canadian perspective, we have tried having a famous English woman on our currency and it has not helped us very much.

Photo Credit: Dorthea Lange
Photo Credit: Dorthea Lange

There have been lots of wonderful other suggestions for women to be put on the ten dollar bill. However there is one reason for Grace Hopper to be on the 10 dollar bill and all those other amazing women should be put on other bills. Ten is also a binary number. So Grace Hopper could be on the 10 which is 2 in binary. Nothing more apt that than putting the most influential woman programmer in history on your binary 10 dollar bill.

Yours Truly,

Me.

 

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Friendly Is Not Enough

Presently stwirling (combination of swirling and twirling) my brain around Google’s new mobile friendly web page requirements. Awhile back the multi-hued behemoth let the world know that they were making a huge change to their search engine rankings. Pages that were not mobile friendly would be bumped down the search results in place of those sites that are mobile friendly. I am an advanced WordPress applicateur. I like my ‘things’ to line up, which is the extent of my design skill. It is hard to line things up when some slightly drunken server decides where things go depending on how wide the screen is. Arrrrgh.