backinblakk

Re-posted, author J Wallace: "When the boxes get smaller, fewer people fit inside"

2011-10-30T13:12:00.000-04:00

(Written by J Wallace, re-posted with permission)

Periodically, I get asked if there are more gender independent/ gender non-conforming/gender imaginative/ gender creative/gender variant/ transgender/ trans children and youth because there is more awareness of transpeople and trans-identities in society.

The answer is always no.

More awareness may mean more legal protections, and it may mean that there are more caring adults willing to support children and youth, but knowledge of transpeople does not make children up and decide that their own gender or sex needs to be changed. Even if it did (which it does not) I'd like to suggest that there is very little cultural material for children about transpeople. Carly, She's still My Daddy is just not showing up in many kindergarten libraries. And while there are children who read 10,000 Dresses and think "I'm just like the main character" it's not like the image it paints is so alluring that other children are going to think "hey, that's not me but I wish it was". The images of trans people that young children are exposed to are few, hard to find, and seldom positive. I dream of the day that resources like Reflection Press' Gender Now Coloring Book are more widely available, and even when they are, more awareness is not going to create more trans children.

The claim that there are more gender independent/ gender non-conforming/gender imaginative/ gender creative/gender variant/ transgender/ trans children and youth because here is more awareness of transpeople and trans-identities in society, is the polite way of saying "we recruit" and it's a slander that plays into the primal fear that "we are out to get your children". The myth that faeries would steal unbaptized children persists, and I remember being told that if I was bad, the gypsies would come take me away. The culture that I am a part of has a long history of claiming that those it wants to other will 'steal the children'. The antisemitic belief that Jews steal children to make Passover matza is a gross and disturbing example, but the idea that "we are out to get the children" has been proven over and over again as a successful way to villianize whole people. We the othered then have to spend time defending ourselves, and proving that we are not out to get your children. Often we are told that the way to do this is to act as much like the majority culture as possible and to be quiet. Talk about silencing marginalized voices.

The idea that there are more (and younger) trans people because of greater awareness of trans people also serves to distracts us from what is actually going on. Peggy Orenstein in Cinderella Ate My Daughter, documents a huge cultural shift towards an increasingly rigid gendering of childhood and children. She discusses at some length the marketing brilliance of clearly defining "boys toys" and "girls toys" and how doing so means that fewer older siblings are sharing their toys with differently gendered younger siblings and thus more toys are being sold. I frequently remind teachers that childhood now is more gendered than it was when we were children. I was born in the mid seventies and grew-up with Free to Be You and Me. While the message was that "every boy in this land grows to be his own man, every girl in this land grows to be her own women" and not "everyone gets to figure out who they are and then live that way" there was more room in the categories of "girl" and "boy". I could refuse to wear dresses, mostly play with boys, try-out and play on boys sports teams, and my behaviour was seen as "feminist" or that of a "tomboy", and inside the category of girl.

The other thing that has been happening at the same time, has been happening in the DSM. The DSM III first introduced a childhood diagnosis, Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood in 1980, and at the time it required:

Table 1 DSM-III diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood
     For females
     A. Strongly and persistently stated desire to be a boy, or insistence that she is a boy (not merely a desire for any perceived
     cultural advantages from being a boy)
     B. Persistent repudiation of female anatomic structures, as manifested by at least one of the following repeated assertions
     (1) that she will grow up to become a man (not merely in role)
     (2) that she is biologically unable to become pregnant
     (3) that she will not develop breasts
     (4) that she has no vagina
     (5) that she has, or will grow, a penis
     C. Onset of the disturbance before puberty ...

     For males
     A. Strongly and persistently stated desire to be a girl, or insistence that he is a girl.
     B. Either (1) or (2)
     (1) persistent repudiation of male anatomic structures, as manifested by at least one of the following repeated assertions
       (a) that he will grow up to become a woman (not merely in role)
       (b) that his penis and testes are disgusting or will disappear
       (c) that it would be better not to have a penis or testes
     (2) preoccupation with female stereotypical activities as manifested by a preference for either cross-dressing or simulating female
     attire, or by a compelling desire to participate in the games and pastimes of girls.
     C. Onset of the disturbance before puberty. ...

The DSM IV broadened the diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity Disorder in children, with the result that children no longer had to state a clear interest in or belief that they are the other sex. Instead it said:

In children, the disturbance is manifested by four (or more) of the following:
1. repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence that he or she is, the other sex
2. in boys, preference for cross-dressing or simulating female
  attire; in girls, insistence on wearing only stereotypical masculine
  clothing
3. strong and persistent preferences for cross-sex roles in make-believe play or persistent fantasies of being the other sex
4. intense desire to participate in the stereotypical games and pastimes of the other sex
5. strong preferences for playmates of the other sex
In children, the disturbance is manifested by any of the following:
- in boys, assertion that his penis or testes are disgusting or will disappear
  or assertion that it would be better not to have a penis,
  or aversion toward rough-and-tumble play
  and rejection of male stereotypical toys, games and activities;
- in girls, rejection of urinating in a sitting position,
  assertion that she has or will grow a penis,
  or assertion that she does not want to grow breasts or menstruate,
  or marked aversion toward normative feminine clothing.
The disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition.
The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or
impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

When in boys, an "aversion toward rough-and-tumble play and rejection of male stereotypical toys, games and activities", and in girls a "marked aversion toward normative feminine clothing." is considered a "manifestation of the disturbance" many more children can be pathologized, many more children can be considered insufficiently feminine or insufficiently masculine. It also teaches parents that their children's behaviour is wrong and not something that normal children do. I ask you, gentle readers, who's coming for the children? I

So, what "makes" gender independent/ gender non-conforming/gender imaginative/ gender creative/gender variant/ transgender/ trans children and youth? I have several answers, but I believe that key among them is the simultaneous narrowing of the cultural understandings of what it means to be a boy or girl and the broadening of the definition of Gender Identity Disorder for children. Simply put, when there are fewer ways to be a girl or boy, and more ways to be identified as having GID, more children will find that they simply can not fit into what is expected of them, and instead find themselves being pathologized.

June in Paris - 2011

2011-06-15T04:32:00.002-04:00

June in Paris - 2011, a set on Flickr.

So here's the most recent set of images from our last week in Paris. We've been settling in, and while there have been some low points where things seemed too overwhelming here we're really having a great time getting into a little routine here and finding fun things to do at night when I'm done working.

The pics have some stories and descriptions but let's see what else I can tell you.

We're adjusting to our tiny apartment which I have been lovingly calling "our bathroom". People laugh and think it's cute that we're so shocked by the tiny apartments but I really don't think anyone grasps how our rental is not an apartment at all - I'd be fine with a tiny apartment and understand the limits of space in Paris and the high price of real estate. We are in a bathroom however with the cheapest curtain in front of the toilet, and everything else furnishing the place is also the cheapest possible stuff from IKEA. The person who rents this 12 sq m room has basically done the bare minimum to make it rentable. I'm not going to spend a whole blog post complaining about the rental though - we're making it work. Also, my co-worker William lent us his place last weekend and will again in another week so we've had a respite and have enjoyed some space and some more comfortable living on occasion.

Let's talk about food, one of my favourite subjects. The food here is generally pretty good if you don't care much about salad. In the past few years I have started to care much more about eating greens and vegetables so it's been a challenge to basically eat bread/meat/cheese/sugar all day, every day, without any salads in there. There are salads but they are often either a) tiny and covered in mayonaise or b) topped with potatoes/meat/cheese (and maybe some mayonaise too!). So I'm definitely missing fresh fruits & vegetables in my diet. However, last night we went to a place William recommended called "Entre les Vignes" (Between the Vines). It's a cute little bistro near Gare de Lyon and it had the most delicious steak tartare ever. We will definitely go back for another round of that before leaving town. I have had a very fresh and tasty crepe on the street, a ham & cheese one so I still need to do the sweet kind at some point. I've had some South-West cooking at a place called Chez Papa which involved the above-mentioned "salad with meat and potatoes on it" as well as escargots in cream sauce with tomatoes and mushrooms and also a lamb cassoulet. I love cassoulet and want to go home and make some of my own. We also cooked at home a few times and just did some simple pasta dinners to accompany wine & reading.

Life in Paris was hard the first week because of technical difficulties. The internet in our room is incredibly slow and unreliable and Jenny relies on my laptop sharing internet so that her iPad (which does not have an ethernet port) can get connected. This means her internet window when not at school (French classes) is about 15 minutes before I go to work in the mornings. This means she has to know ahead of time everything she might want to do so she can map it out. Our cell phones here required some intensive signing up procedures including sending copies of our passports to some email address, and then getting them refilled is a whole other pain in the butt. Also, the Vélib rentable bike system wouldn't accept our credit cards at the stations so we learned the hard way that we need to buy them online ahead of time. We're starting to laugh at how often we'll try to do something only to find (regardless of the level of planning we put in ahead of time) that things are closed, we're too late (or on the wrong night), or things are sold out. Metro stations, restaurants, concerts, canal boat rides. The internet has both made it easier to make this kind trip and also removed the ability for spontaneity in travel.

We have gone to see two movies: Tomboy and X Men First Class. Tomboy was all in French and Jenny was able to follow along pretty well. I loved that movie and highly recommend it. It will probably do the rounds of the queer film festivals this summer. X Men was lots of fun for me, Jenny had a nice nap. I love the X Men mythology so much and spend a lot of time trying to decide which mutation would be the best fit for me. After last night I'm mostly leaning towards the telepathy cause it seems appropriate for a slightly controlling personality who wants to help lots of people.

Tonight we'll go see some art at Georges Pompidou where a modern art gallery lives. Also we just found out about this Claude Cahun retrospective from Onya - yay! This weekend we might go to Versailles and try again to do the canal boat ride that takes you under the city in these cool tunnels.

That's it for now. Gotta get to work! Which reminds me. The Paris office has been great to me and so awesome to work out of. I really do want to see if, over time, I can work out of every Mozilla office at least once so that I can get a feel for all the different customs and office atmospheres in our very dispersed company.

Arm Tattoo

2011-06-08T03:57:00.002-04:00

Arm Tatoo, a photo by Ludovic Hirlimann on Flickr.

Just found out about this photo on Flickr cause it's gotten a lot of views in the past few days. Such a great shot of the Hopey hound, makes me miss her more than I already do.

Summer Travel Log 1 - California->Canada->Paris

2011-06-04T17:03:00.009-04:00

Last Saturday started with a little last-minute cleaning of the apartment for our summer Airbnb renters before we hit the road and headed North. In the past week I have been in 3 States (CA, OR, WA), 3 Provinces (BC, AB, ON), and am now in Paris, France in the heart of the city on Isle St-Louis.

It took us two days to drive to Victoria, and we lengthened the travel time a bit by taking hwy 101 for half of it so as to view the amazing redwood trees along the coast. On Jenny's camera there are pictures of us driving through a huge tree - which is what you do when you take hwy 101 through the redwoods.

We spent a nice quiet week in the woods of Victoria, getting Hopey settled in and sleeping a lot. Finally on Friday the time came to start the 16 hour trip to Paris. I'd like to say that I love flying Air Canada. It's been a while, and living in the States means often flying Delta, US Airways, Southwest, or United. Air Canada's planes are so nice and clean and big. Unlike every flight I've taken in the last year, this flight had NO issues with people's carry on baggage fitting into the upper storage areas. Also, the seats are a little wider and I couldn't measure but I think I had more leg room too. Airline promo done, let's arrive in Paris!

Our rental is in an old industrial building with a huge door that opens into an open-air courtyard, and then 4 flights of stairs up is our 'apartment'. It's quite small, but it's quiet and we're in such a great location for the next 3 weeks. Apparently it's going to rain off and on all week, but today was a hot and sunny 28 degrees, so after a nap Jenny and I went out to explore the neighbourhood. Here's what I've observed from our initial, jet-lagged wanderings:

Getting keys made is something done at the cobbler's, not at hardware stores (we visited 2)
At 5 or 6 pm, there is nothing slightly resembling dinner available in the local cafés and the restaurants are not open yet. We will need to adjust to this.
There's some great fashion here and then, in contrast, some people who seem to actively hate fashion :)
I love having opportunities to speak French! Most importantly, everyone is speaking French back to me which is a pleasant surprise.
Everything here is REALLY EXPENSIVE! It makes me kind of nervous. Will need to get out of this neighbourhood and see what it's like in less touristy areas. We plan to get Velib bikes to explore the city tomorrow if it's not raining.
I bought a SIM card at the airport for 19 euros and it gives you 5 euros credit which I've already gone through by using data, however there's nothing in their rate sheet about data costs. SO there's some lack of communication here.
Also this:

That, my dear readers, is the DISCO TOILET in the Creperie where we ended up eating dinner. The tiny toilet booth is a totally different experience than the rest of the restaurant. So you're eating your crepes and it's all normal (top 40 UK dance hits quietly playing in the background) but if you get up to go to the washroom, watch out! The music is loud, the little green lights are dancing, and then...you just can't help yourself...you're dancing in a toilet :)

This bridge is covered in locks put up by people, looks like mostly to commemorate their love with someone else, and I'm excited to put one up there for Jenny and I at some point during our visit. It's so beautiful here. The stone streets, the tiny cars, even this very touristy area has a nice mix of locals going about their business and visitors walking about. There's a lot of people riding bikes around and it looks pretty safe to do that here. I don't have a helmet with me because our rentals in Prague will include them. I'm trying to decided if I should pick up one of these helmets while I'm here or wait until I'm back in SF.

There's a huge thunderstorm rolling in as I write this and I wish I had the right kind of camera to capture the lightning. Time to try and get to sleep at a 'normal' hour so that I can get the most out of Paris, Day 2.

Plaid Pants

2010-12-16T10:50:00.001-05:00

Last month I went to see Rufus Wainwright perform with the San Francisco symphony. The performance itself was mediocre due to being a very new piece and, I suspect, affected by the recent loss of his aunt. I still enjoyed the evening and also saw some amazing outfits during intermission. There was a group of gay men in the lobby who were all wearing fabulously fitting plaid dress pants along with other snazzy accessories like vests and suspenders. The group of 5 men stood out to me in the crowd and I couldn't take my eyes off them. I think one of them noticed...

Anyway, since that night I've been planning to find myself a pair of well-made plaid pants and today, thanks to a Techcrunch article about Bonobos, I did. Now the pants were $195 and I'm sure they are amazing pants but I've learned that you can pretty much always find a coupon for online purchases so I did a quick search and found a link that gave me 50% off my first order of over $100 at Bonobos.com. The link worked like a charm and after making my purchase I was given my own link to spread around so that other people can get 50% off too. In turn, I get a $50 store credit which means - MORE PANTS!

If you use the link below you will get to save 50% on your first order over $100 guaranteed. It will take you to a page where you create an account, then you shop, and when you check out the form will populate the discount code field with a unique code just for you. Then you save money and also get a link of your own when you're done. Happy shopping!

Go Get 50% off at Bonobos.com

Remembering

2010-12-06T18:49:00.000-05:00

Today is the anniversary of the December 6th massacre in Montréal. When this happened I was 14 years old, growing up in Ottawa which is only a couple of hours from Montréal. This hate crime had a devastating impact on the feminist community, and on young women considering studying in technical fields.

This morning I was listening to a Spark (CBC Radio) podcast about females in startup culture and it brought up the topic of the decline in women enrolling in STEM and as I got to the office and remembered what today is I thought: "Here are 14 fewer role models, and STEM women".

In the early 90's I lived in Montréal and was part of direct action to commemorate this day. One year we blocked traffic in a very busy intersection near Concordia for 15 minutes, as a woman read out each name, allowed one minute of silence before proceeding to the next. We passed out flyers to passers by and to those stuck waiting in their cars. What impressed me at the time was how so many people were aware of the significance of this date, of this heinous crime, and that any anger quickly dissipated and was replaced by respectful silence.

Today I'm taking 14 minutes to remember Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. I'm not putting it out there in anyone's face in the same way that we used to but I'm glad to see some people tweeting, blogging, and otherwise continuing to bring it to people's attention so that they do not forget how this was a crime that can never be mistaken for anything but a hate crime against women, and feminists specifically.

In the Geek Feminist post the author points out how today we should also be remembering other groups who are targeted and killed such as Aboriginal women and Trans women. I want to suggest we remember that every day, and then on December 6th we can take an extra 14 minutes to remember that a guy walked into a room and specifically shot women, calling them a "bunch of fucking feminists" while doing so. He didn't know if they were feminists. He equated them being in a non-traditional field with being feminist. Today when a woman shies away from labeling herself a feminist I have to wonder if it's events like this that shaped her idea of why using the F word doesn't seem like a good idea.

Something I am thinking about with regards to this event is that the gunman told the men to leave the room, and they did. They left their cohorts in the room with an armed lunatic instead of protesting, uniting, or otherwise trying to help. Similar to the use the Bechdel test to check for quality content in media - I wonder how this scene would play out today in a CS classroom. Would it pass a Polytechnique test? Would today's male students still walk out and leave the women behind to be murdered?

Today in my neighbourhood:

2010-06-14T15:49:00.000-04:00

BP's attempt ($50 million ad campaign: http://bit.ly/9teR0o) to pass the blame.

Reminds me of Eddie Izzard's gun joke:

Consumers standing there shouting "I need OIL!" doesn't cause oil spills, being the oil drilling company with faulty equipment and no safety plan does.

Breathe On It

2010-06-09T21:11:00.002-04:00

Play this song while you read this - it's what I was listening to this morning while thinking about this post.

One of my favourite things about being part of a queer community is participating in the way we perform for each other as both performer and audience. Camp, drag, drama, dance, and even the occasional spoken word piece move me and make me so proud of our colourful, creative, and freaky selves. Often our main stage celebrities are shameless and will do anything for attention but there is also room for the shy wallflowers to take the stage every so often and get in the spotlight where they will do something completely hilarious and beautiful, imprinting a lasting image of their courage on our minds.

Yesterday I posted the following as a Facebook status update:

It's NOT a coincidence so many cities are making alternatives to the OFFICIAL "family" Pride parties which rely on corporate sponsorship. Pride went from a march to show we existed to a bloated tourist attraction that requires millions of dollars to survive. Let's stop doing the SAME thing EVERY year, it's lazy. Get freaky on your block, love each other up in the streets, throw parties any day you want. Fuck Pride.

This morning I showed someone clips from some performances at GayBiGayGay back in March. Yesterday I saw this clip from QueerBomb. This weekend I was at NoLose watching a variety of performances by very talented queers. My community in Toronto (and a bunch of us who don't live there anymore) just recently lost the amazing community organizer Will Munro who used to bring us a monthly night of queer expression called Vaseline/Vazaleen. That's where I first saw The Hidden Cameras back in 2001. That where I saw homos go-go dancing in briefs with sock masks on their faces, drag queens boxing, Kembra Pfahler in blue body paint walking with bowling balls strapped to her feet with electrical tape and so. much. more. Even I got to be on that stage a few times participating in contests like bob-for-dildos on Halloween (Vasoween) night.

At the music festival I worked at for many years we wove performance into our daily tasks. Dressing up and impromptu dancing were staples but every once in a while we would get to do full-on theatrics for each other and for the larger community. Whether it was a parody of a revival tent, a perpetual new year's eve party where the clock struck midnight every 5 minutes, or a silent film being acted out by monochromatic-outfitted villains and heroines, we acted out for each other intensely and with so much appreciation from the audience.

I love us.

We say that often. Right after someone dazzles us with an unexpected serenade or a spontaneous choreographed dance. We say that when as a large group we raise the energy level in the room above that of the day-to-day getting by. Queers do this a lot. Throw parties, freak out, rally, shout, dress up, go out and play. We don't need Pride™and their big budget, booked entertainers, corporate floats, designated parade routes, or "no you can't bring your own water in here" beer gardens.

Just perform for me and I'll do the same for you and we can do that whenever we want.

Family Car Decals - My latest obsession.

2010-06-04T18:46:00.001-04:00

After moving to the United States just over six months ago I started driving a car again. Spending a lot of time commuting has given me a whole new view of car culture - California car culture to be precise. Highway 280 running from SF to the Silicon Valley has shown me a whole new world where most cars only contain one person (including my own), are often hybrid or at least manufactured by Toyota, and are generally free of decals. That's probably why I started to notice this phenomenon of family car decals.

I first noticed them in December, often in the form of varying sizes of flip flop shoes in a row on the back window of a vehicle. But lately I've seen more stick figure representations along with the occasional skull version (the goth/rocker family?).

A quick google search turns up an incredible amount of pictures so I'll stop taking pictures of them on my phone now. I've been so curious to know why this is such a contagious sticker trend. I can't help but think that esp. in the recent years of debate over marriage and family caused by gay marriage activism that we are going to see an incredible backlash in the form of "family pride" by people with traditional hetero family units. 99% of the stickers i see depict nuclear families. Some add on a dog after the stick people. This could be because a divorced family and thus spread out family might not have one car to put all its stick figures on...or just that only families who fit a two parent/many kid mold think it's cute to get a sticker version of themselves made.

I'd almost put my obsession with the trend aside when I saw this:

Stick baby has two mommies. Now my fears of gay assimilation through weddings and wedding culture have been trumped by a fear of hetero-sticker-schlock mimicry.

The debate over what makes a family is now to be discussed over the $5 vinyl cling on your gas-guzzling minivan, just like your activism now consists of clicking a "Like" button to send your outrage over a news story back to your Facebook feed.

My new apartment

2010-05-26T21:40:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post - more to come. I am moving into a studio at Duboce & Church this weekend. I've basically been calling it "the heart of the gay". Already, as I walked home from picking up the keys, I was thrilled to see the gay boys on every corner. This is one of those romantic visions I moved to SF for.

My new place is small but it's really bright and the kitchen has a full-sized gas stove, a bigger fridge than I've had for the last 6 months, and built-in shelves. There's room for my table & chairs, plus room for a nice chopping board island that I've been coveting. Though it's technically a studio and I will have to put my bed and couch in the same room there is a HUGE closet. It's about 19 feet long, walk-in, 3.5 feet wide, and the back wall (all 19 feet of it) is covered in built-in shelves. Plus the ceilings are close to 10 feet high and I can put a second level of storage up at about 7.5 feet.

Pics to come as I work on moving myself in and taking advantage of all that space. I love vertical space.

To-Do list #1

2010-05-17T20:19:00.001-04:00

Now that I'm not on Facebook anymore, I've been noticing when I get the urge to share information. Thoughts that pop into my head, interesting things I find on the internet, blog posts I want to write are starting to pile up and I don't currently have a lot of time to pump those out. So I'll start small. Better to start small than not start at all.

Sidenote: When I first started videoblogging, there were several great clients for subscribing to people's vlogs and I used to start/end my day catching up on a select roster of people's posts. I wonder if I will go back to a model like that eventually or if I will come up with entirely new ways to get daily content. Currently I get links and interesting tidbits of information (like Dio's death) from Twitter and IRC conversations with co-workers.

Back to the first to-do list. I'm sure there will be many but this is the stuff I think I need to start with:

1) Re-do my website in order to host all my blogs in one place and get off of the .blogspot namespace. This will also have the added benefit of cleaning up my web portfolio and having a better showcase of what I've learned and done with Wordpress in the past year or so. I originally set this up in my last semester of school as a requirement for a class because we needed an online presence. Funnily enough I now help lots of people have online content and yet completely ignore my own.
2) Set up a feed reader - either Google reader or some similar option - and subscribe to my favourite blogs and online magazine content
3) Move away from Go Daddy hosting - I need to get my own server up and running and learn how to manage it instead of using the McDonald's of web hosting.
4) Keep a list of blog post topics that I want to cover and make a habit of writing at least one of those posts per week.
5) Vlog more, vlog often.
6) Build a dog house. I'm putting this here because I've read that you never do the last thing on your to-do lists, and I'm okay if this one doesn't happen.

Leaving Facebook

2010-05-12T12:51:00.000-04:00

My friend mhoye covered everything I would say about why I'm choosing to leave Facebook (and then some, he gathers all the privacy stuff well!).

I'm really hoping that by leaving Facebook I will be reclaiming some time and creative energy to revitalize this blog, make more vlog posts, re-do my website so that it's up to date, and generally enjoy intentional communication over the deluge of lazy input that Facebook provides in spades.

There was a time when it seemed that in order to learn what was going on around town you had to have a Facebook account but now that feature has been drowned out by so much publicity that I don't even look to the events anymore. I expect my friends to tell me when there's something awesome going on. I will look to the local papers if I'm desperately seeking an interesting night out.

Living without Facebook will be hard at first because I'll probably fear that I'm missing something. I will most miss the casual posting of media that my friends are so good at doing - the links, photos, videos. I'll be encouraging people to blog, to email me, to post on flickr or other content sharing sites. I'm also going to trust that when I see the people I love in person they will whip out the baby/trip/food photos.

I'm doing this in a conscious effort to become a creator again. I've been sitting back and consuming too much.

Having been a part of Facebook since the "early days" when you had to have a university email address to join, I've enjoyed watching it grow. At one point, I applauded Facebook for being a great teaching tool on privacy because I believed that it was teaching average internet users more about granularity and control over access. Now they have gone too far. I was originally planning to stick around to bear witness to whatever the next violation of privacy would be, the one after that, and the one after that. Instead I'm going to lead by example. I will have a full and media-rich life on the internet without Facebook, and I will happily discuss the awesomeness of this with anyone. I will actively encourage people to try it out for themselves, just as I love to encourage people to quit smoking, eat more salad, and learn to run.

See you 'round here more often. Don't be a stranger.

I am Hammy Hamster...

2010-02-22T21:43:00.000-05:00

Ran on a treadmill tonight for the 4th time in 5 days. I miss running outside where the air is fresh. Living in a hotel for 9 days in a city I don't know is not the best idea and I have learned my lesson. However, the conference I'm at has been amazing and I'm meeting lots of great people. In the down times I have been thinking a lot and here is one of my observations from today:

I'm a "middler". I need to make my peace with that. I am not exceptional at any one thing, I am not going to be the one who invents some fabulous programming language or does something else super tech-fabulous that geeks will fawn over and I am okay with that. I have to remember that I am ok with that because sometimes when I get around a group of people who care about those things I start to care too - but really I don't. So back to being a "middler". I find myself often in the middle of things. In fact, I put myself in the middle of things on purpose. I'm in the middle of my gender spectrum (being butch -> ftm and I'm not saying that's every butch's or ftm's spectrum, it's just mine). I'm in the middle of art and technology, big corporations and grassroots non-profits, open source and queer communities, feminism and free software activism. I can find lots and lots of middles to be in. I must like being in the middle. So every once in a while when I feel worried that I am "not good enough". I have to remember I am good at this. Being in the middle. On purpose.

FOSDEM 2010 - Women in Open Source and Free Software

2010-02-12T17:54:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

A quick 'n dirty vlog featuring some of the women attending this year's FOSDEM conference.

Sisters of Festival Indulgence

2009-08-18T18:34:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

This is the third time that Tracy and I have done this bit. This time we used an iPod to facilitate our acapella styles. I love how everyone started to sing along, what a great choir!

Last 4 Months (in no particular order)

2009-07-24T22:53:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

Just a quick smash-up of the pics I've taken since the end of March. Lots of fun was had including Easter egg hunting, cottaging, drag shows, graduation and much much more.

Mozilla Service Week - making a difference in your community

2009-06-16T19:42:00.000-04:00

Mozilla just announced Mozilla Service Week which will be held September 14 - 21, 2009. This week is a push to connect people who can help make the web work better for someone in the community with people and organization who need that help.

Coming from the non-profit arts sector prior to my job at Mozilla, I will be spreading the word with many arts organizations in Toronto who would be wise to sign up for help from such a talented pool of volunteers. Of course I will also donate my time that week even though it's the kind of work I do all the time already. I can't even count the amount of time I've spent setting up routers and networks for less technical folks in my life, or helping them set up their new computers and teaching them basic skills (all teaching sessions include installing and setting up the latest Firefox of course).

The best part of this week, in my opinion, is that it's an opportunity to get hands-on with local users in the community. The library is a great place to start. It wasn't that long ago (around 2003) when I was using the library computers as my primary access to the internet. I'd love to go in now and make sure that their computers are up to date, and write up how-to manuals and helpful hints for beginners. Even better, get some folks to translate those manuals or tip sheets. At my local library I'm certain that there are many folks who would appreciate localized information sheets.

Two areas that are of particular interest to me with regards to the organizations I know in Toronto:

Bring their websites over to an open-source CMS like Drupal. Many of the sites are hand-coded php (or god forbid Dreamweaver-created sites) with no administrative back-end and keeping the site's information up to date is a difficult/dangerous task for non-technical staff.

Take their FileMaker Pro databases over to MySQL or PostgreSQL so that they are no longer locked in to expensive, proprietary database software that requires additional hosting costs. Three organizations I have worked with are on three different versions of FMP and none of them the latest. Upgrading is painful for them and their hosting costs are ridiculous (especially the ones who are on older versions).

If you're technically inclined, go to the site and sign up. If you've got an organization in mind, tell them to sign up. Let's make this event a success so it will inspire more weeks like this in the future.

The last 6 months...

2009-03-29T22:19:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

A speedy slideshow of my last 6 months. I really miss vlogging regularily, so this recipe is the best I can do between homework and assignments,

Music to watch snow melt to...

2009-03-18T18:44:00.000-04:00

Momentarily there will be a new spring mix up here:

http://avnerd.tv/sharedFiles/Music/springMix.zip

Download it (110MB) and enjoy. This time I created an .m3u file which if you open that with iTunes instead of importing all the songs, should put them in order of how I set up the playlist. That order, in case you do not for some reason use the m3u file (or if it doesn't work, or you don't use iTunes) is:

aForest.mp3
parentheses.mp3
satanSaidDance.mp3
letMyShoesLeadMeForward.mp3
parisIsBurning.mp3
raiseMeUp.mp3
youCantGetItBack.m4a
fatalistPalmistry.mp3
explode.mp3
goldenCage.mp3
myNightWithTheProstituteFromMarseille.mp3
walkingOnADream.mp3
sixteenthStage.mp3
lucifersJigsaw.mp3
untouched.mp3
sexyBitch.m4a
mindsEye.mp3

A Letter to Mama Chaiken From FTM

2009-03-09T22:13:00.002-04:00

Just want to give a shout out and some fresh eyes to this AMAZING letter written by Riese over at automatic straddle. I happened upon this from the L Word Online site and boy am I glad I did! I've been spitting mad about the Max character for years now and finally someone put all my rants into a nice, legible letter.

I hope this gets back to Ilene Chaiken and that she recognizes what a terrible disservice she has done to all the gender outlaws.

Cupcake Camp Toronto

2009-01-25T21:00:00.014-05:00

Today from 2-5pm in the East end, there was a cupcake bake-off where dozens of bakers brought cupcakes to show off and more than 350 people turned up to chow down.

It was a Mad. House.

Things started to go awry when I realized that I was not going to get to have a nice, polite sampling of every kind of crazy cupcake the bakers had dreamed up (I saw one with HAM on it!). Cupcakes were being served whole, from two tables in the long, open, studio space and it seemed that at most each style was represented by no more than 2 dozen individual pieces, often less.

My suggestion for next time? Put tables around the edges of the space where each cupcake baker can have a spot to set up at and let the people walk through in one direction only. Start at the door, end at the door, and get to try a section of a cupcake from each table along the way as your taste buds are tempted by the offerings. We should go to the cupcakes, we can not be trusted to have them brought to us.

Back to what happened - the organizers would bring a baker to the microphone and we would hear a description of what was about to be set on the table (aka fed to the wolves). Often before the tray could even hit the table, the cupcakes on it were snatched away by the throng.

I watched cupcakes go in milliseconds as I parried for a better position. Finally I got right up to the table's edge and then waited patiently, muscles twitching for my chance.

After I was once again cakeblocked by the hordes when the lemon meringue homage landed, I realized that my plate and napkin were a red herring and that I must have both hands free if I was to score any cupcakery for myself and my partner in crime.

The opportunity came 15 minutes later, this time for cupcake gold - the cafe latte - which was a cupcake perched in a sugar icing creation that resembled a coffee mug. The cupcake icing was the steamy milk top. Pictures are attached. The second set was a Rolo-inspired cupcake with mini Rolos on top of the butter-icing dome and a caramel center in the moist cakey part.

Pleased with my cupcake providing, my partner in crime and I pulled back from the table to let others get their just deserts (sorry, I couldn't help myself) which is something I wish more people had done. I watched several people stay close to the table's edge even though they had already eaten cupcakes, and that just lacks the kind of goodwill you hope to see at an event like this. Our treasure was tasty and well enjoyed, worry not.

Walking back down Pape St. with the sugar starting to rush to my head, I found myself saying "That was like something that would happen in New York City", and "There were lots of artists there obviously, but a totally different crowd than in the West End. Who were those people?".

For me, it was an excellent (food) adventure that took me outside the usual Queen West/Parkdale style events, and for that I applaud the organizers. A final note, I would like to also express my appreciation for the tech-savvyness of the operation. I heard about it through a friend who knew one of the entrants, then found the Facebook event and while at the event learned of the Twitter feed...not many events in Toronto have their sh*t this networked yet that I have seen. So extra applause for using the great tools that exist to your advantage and for making this event so multi-dimensional.

Welcome to the new FatPlanet

2009-01-23T20:45:00.001-05:00

This is the first post to test the new FatPlanet set up that I am now running from my home server. If all goes well, this will be up in about 30 minutes and then I can start making the page look prettier and adding more feeds.

Hussysnaxxx @ Underworld - Montreal 1997 - Clip 2 - Tonka Truck

2009-01-17T23:40:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

This is the complete song of Tonka Truck from that show.

Hussysnaxxx @ Underworld - Montreal 1997 - Clip 1

2009-01-17T23:22:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

Today's been a flashback kind of day...digging through old photo albums and finding little gems to put up on the internet for posterity. Here is one such clip of my old band Hussysnaxxx (I always hated that name but now it's kind of funny). There's another one coming with our hit song "Tonka Truck". Stay tuned.

Polar Dip 2009 - Ocean Beach, CA

2009-01-02T01:58:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

It's that time of year again. After missing last year due to illness, Joey and I (with a bunch of fellow daredevils) jump in the Pacific this year, in San Francisco. I thought it was warmer than our jumps in the Atlantic from years past. The waves were amazing, and there were surfers all over. Great way to kick off "Closer to Fine, 2009".

5 Exams then a plane ride to the homeland...

2008-12-07T22:57:00.004-05:00

Hi. It's been a while, and no video this time either. I swear I still call myself a videoblogger, and I still think like one...just not getting any videos up to the internets.

In the meantime, a quick update because I am inspired by the fact that my entire family is now blogging...which is amazing!

You can read for yourself here:

Moms (via Muheza, now Victoria)

My sister Rachel (in Korea)

Ambrose & Leah

Griffin

Simon

Now I'm trying out Google reader so that I am made aware of their updates. It's been a while since I've followed blogs that aren't aggregated by a planet. Time to push myself to get out there more and break away from my school-induced tunnel vision.

In my corner of the world, I moved into a new apartment and have done some basic things to make it a comfortable homework-hovel.

The Living Room (aka homework cage):

Well-Adjusted Hound who will follow me anywhere so long as the bed is there too:

The Kitchen

My first home cooked meal: fishcakes, sauteéd turnip green, red pepper aioli

Finally, I've been listening to lots of great music lately. Been going to quite a few more live shows that usual. Recently I've had the pleasure of seeing Santogold, Sunset Rubdown, Rae Spoon and this coming Friday I will be seeing The Dears and Metric because my sister Lisa is playing bass for The Dears now.

If you want to check out some of the music I've been listening to, download this playlist ( file size: 117MB) and enjoy.

Radio Silence is broken...

2008-10-09T15:04:00.002-04:00

So I left California and the blog got all quiet...sorry.

A lot has been happening - returning to school, working part time for Mozilla, going to the nolose conference and meeting lots of amazing activists.

One of the ideas that came to me while at the conference was to start a FatPlanet. Mozilla and OpenSource at Seneca both use planet to aggregate feeds, so why not a FatPlanet?

Well - it's here. I got FatPlanet.net and got the ball rolling.

Now I just need feeds to add to it - so send you feed information to: admin@fatplanet.net and get your blog feed into the planet stream.

Ubuntu - not just an operating system...

2008-08-25T23:19:00.008-04:00

Last night I had the pleasure of eating at Ubuntu, not to be confused with Ubuntu. Apparently this relatively new restaurant is getting high praise for its vegetarian menu, which is really quite diverse and also features a fair amount of items from it's nearby bio-dynamic garden.

The following pictures are only a couple of the dishes I got to try, not pictured is the amazing corn pudding with roasted peach. I've been having a good time with corn this summer, at the Front Porch I fell in love with grits, and I intend to learn how to make them when I get home. After reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's dilemma, I got a bit corn-phobic for a while but now that revulsion has mellowed into a "if it's organic, it's okay in small quantities" take on the issue. Three food related goals for myself based on this summer's reading:

Eat sitting down. This may seem obvious, but I think that I do sometimes tend to eat while doing other things and just stopping to make eating its own task will go a long way towards slowing down my eating and making me appreciate what I'm eating more.

Avoid high fructose corn syrup. Sad but true: Orangina contains HFCS, as do a lot of other beverages. It's a small thing I can do, even if I am not great at cutting out all sugars, I can do this one.

Avoid meat from CAFOs. I will continue to eat meat (for now) but when I do it will be better quality, and supporting a local meat economy.

And now for some food-porn...(photos courtesy of Naomi)

cauliflower in a cast iron pot with our vadouvan roast-puree-raw-“couscous”, brown butter toast amuse bouche:

our carta da musica with truffled pecorino fresh-picked GREENS, lemon, ROSEMARY, trumpet chips:

and finally deep-fried egg with tartar sauce & black garlic smoked potato salad, grain mustard, roast cippolini onions:

Can't wait until I get an iPhone so I can blog about the food I'm having, while I'm having it!.

Stay tuned for my wine tasting notes, I will try to transcribe them when I am back in Canada next week.

Week 7, 8, 9, 10 update...

2008-07-15T02:45:00.002-04:00

Um, Hi!

So I got a little busy...

Let's see - Andréa came to visit, so did my Mom. I've been working a ton and taking on lots of new responsibilities - with great responsibility comes longer hours and more tiredness.

Also there was Frameline - Allyson, Christina and Amy were here from Toronto. We saw some movies, I met some new people including some of the staff of Frameline who are super nice. Attended some interesting Q&A periods, went to a filmmaker's brunch, spent many hours in Dolores park.

I've been swimming a lot, running a little, biking around. My mom was here and we biked across the Golden Gate bridge which you may notice in the pictures is a little fogged out. It was an exhilarating ride because there was a combination of elite cyclists trying to cross quickly and shouting at people to move over alongside tourist with rented tandem bikes who weaved around and almost crashed many times in front of me.

Since it's been a while, I can really only remember this past weekend. I was supposed to go to LA for Outfest. I had a plane ticket and a place to stay arranged. It was making me anxious though - and I kept wanting to cancel. In the end I did cancel, and stayed here to go to Joey's goodbye party at the Lexington where I stayed way past closing and had tamales from the Tamale Lady SF, and chatted with one of the bartenders for several hours. One of those nights where you just aren't tired...oh and maybe you've had a few whiskeys.

Then on Saturday I went out to Oakland in the daytime so I really got to see it for the first time. It was so pretty and felt much more neighbourhoody than anything I've been in so far. Stormy was having a birthday bbq in a back yard with lots of great folks and I made a few new friends, visited with old ones and played with the pictured baby english bulldog named Tug. I NEED one of those!

Sunday I woke up early and went with Naomi and Sam to Green Gulch which is a Zen Buddhist center. We did a "sit" for about 40 mins, then had a break and then listened to a speaker - this was followed by an exceptionally tasty lunch. There's so much that was great about the experience that I don't even know what to highlight. Sitting was interesting. I haven't done anything like this since I was pretty young. I'm not that keen on organized religions, but this was very relaxing and since there's no overt god-ness about it, I didn't really have trouble with it.

The speaker was pretty funny and made lots of wise comments that still ring with me. I'm curious to learn more about Buddhism - I always knew that I liked the ideas behind it but it's much more tangible here since more people in close proximity to me are practicing. There's even a group called Dharma Punx that meets here and I've downloaded some of their podcasts to check out.

What's amazing about being in California, working, is that I have way more spare time that when I am in school and working. The school part makes sure that you never really feel like you're done. There's always something to be working on. So all this free time is really giving me opportunities to do so much more, and to experiment with new pastimes. I've been hiking and being outdoors more. Biking around SF is easy and practical with the price of gas around here. And now I'm checking out meditation. I'd say that California is agreeing with me.

At work things are great too. The stuff I'm working on is in the spotlight a little bit right now and so that's keeping a fire under me. The summit in Whistler is coming up and I'm going to be meeting people from the community all over the world to talk about the future of the organization. Also, it's a possibility that I could keep working on my team as a part-timer throughout the school year. My fingers are crossed that this happens because it would be a perfect scenario. Not only to keep working on a project that I'm enthusiastic about, but also it would be the best fit with my hectic school schedule. This fall I'll have 6 courses again and it looks like 3 out of 4 days will be 9 am - 5pm up at York. Having work that I can do in the gaps between classes will be key.

Okay - that's my big update. I must say that now I have crossed the halfway point. It's closer to the time I will be going home, and that is feeling good to me. I've started to miss home, miss my people, my home, family. Hope everyone there is having a good summer.

California Internship weeks 5 & 6

2008-06-14T22:55:00.002-04:00

Well, I missed last weekend's update because I was out having a lot of fun with a little boxer dog named Ruby. You'll see her in the slide show. Please do not tell my dog that I was out hiking with another dog - we didn't really chat about opening up our relationship while I am away.

This week I got to take in some of the National Queer Arts Festival going to the Hogwart's Express Harry Potter Musical, Kirk Read's "This is the Thing" and next week I'll be at the Deep Lez Potluck and Performance Night and Home-Made Super Hero. Also starting next week is Frameline - whoo-hoo! I'm going to get huge doses of gay and art...two things I love.

After the broken bike fiasco of two weeks ago, my friend Armen located a better bike and this morning we went on a 23 mile trip, this time bringing along Dan who was riding a cruiser bike rented from Stanford. I was a bit ambitious in choosing this ride and I hope they will forgive me and come on a ride again next Saturday. The coaster bike was awfully hard for Dan to ride, and it turns out that 20 miles is about 32 km...I had been thinking in kms when I estimated it would take us an hour and a half to ride it. It took 2 hours and 20 minutes. Oops.

At one point in the ride Armen pointed out some fruit-bearing tree and exclaimed how fruit were "like apricot" but better. So later in the ride, when there was another of these trees right in front of me, I stopped at it, intending to see if Armen wanted to pick some. Unfortunately, the two guys behind me did not notice that I had come to a complete stop. Dan swerved by me, Armen crashed into me. I now have a permanent slo-mo visual memory of Armen coming straight for me at full speed and me crying out "Oh my god - Armen!" CRASH!

Thus, the bleeding elbow you will see in the slideshow. I also have some bruises and a scrapped up knee. It's my own fault so don't cry for me. I must learn the hard way to use my hand signals for more than just turning.

Interesting things happening at work - Firefox 3 is coming out on Tuesday (you can play with the sneak peek, it's basically the same thing). I encourage everyone who can to download it and try it out, especially since by downloading it on Tuesday you will be part of setting a Guinness record for the most downloads of a software package in a 24 hour period. Firefox 3 is really amazing, and instead of trying to explain it to you - I can point you to this: "A Field Guide to Firefox 3" by Deb Richardson which is the ultimate guide as far as I am concerned. I look forward to hearing what you think of it.

On Tuesday there will be parties all over the world in celebration of Firefox 3. Here in Mountain View we will have a BBQ with a rock climbing wall, Wii tournament, music, movies, and lots of other festivities. I'm personally looking forward to trying the rock wall cause I'd like to see if I can do it. There will be plenty of documentation from that event, I assure you.

Well, here's some of the best pics from the last couple of weeks. Some of them are from the Fremont Older Preserve where I took the boxer dog Ruby on a 9 mile hike last Saturday. It was a significant hike for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it but it has also prompted me to invest in real hiking boots since my running shoes are not actually that comfortable for hiking. Anyway, at the Fremont Preserve, there was a reservoir along the way where tons of people sat out in the sun fishing. I was amused by this as there was also a sign on the path shouting loudly to "NOT EAT THE FISH". Some people's idea of a fun way to spend a Sunday is very different than mine.

What's new in Firefox 3? Check out this demo!

2008-06-06T19:00:00.000-04:00

A quick (< 4 minutes) overview of some of the new features in the soon-to-be-released Firefox 3. Check it out, then head over to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord/ and sign up to be notified when the new version comes out!

read more | digg story

32 Mile Ride

2008-06-01T21:45:00.003-04:00

This morning Armen and I took the Caltrain from Mountain View to Bayshore with our bikes and then proceeded to ride them back to our apartments.

When we got to the Caltrain stop and purchased our tickets, I put in $11.50 for the both of us to ride one way through 3 Zones. We were rushing and worried we would miss the train so I just grabbed the first thing that popped out of the machine and we booted it over to the platform. A moment later I looked at the piece of paper and saw that it only claimed to be one ticket for $5.75. Armen ran back to the machine (very fast!) and there was nothing else in the dispensing area. Because we had in fact paid the correct amount, we still got on the train and I secretly hoped that we would not be asked to provide proof of payment. Two stops before our final destination a guy came through asking to see tickets. When he got to us, he did not believe the story about the machine and in my nervousness I blurted out that this was our first time on Caltrain and that we were Canadian. Well! That changes everything because it turns out that he is also Canadian (from Winnipeg) and that he has family in Cobourg. Phew! He let us off the hook and was very nice from then on.

Armen had purchased his bike from Target for $89 yesterday. At the time I had suggested to him that he reconsider this idea because any bike for $89 is probably not mechanically sound and it's also politically dubious. About 1.5 miles from the apartments, after having strange rear wheel issues for about 6 miles, the bike finally crapped out. We inspected the bike to try and figure out why turning the pedals was not turning the rear wheel. The gears seemed to be loose from the hub of the back tire so we took it off and when I tried to inspect the gears, a ton of bearings poured out onto the sidewalk. That pretty much cinched the deal and I left Armen at a gas station to go home and get the car.

Needless to say we returned the bike and now Armen is going to look into either renting from Stanford for the summer or purchasing a better road bike so that we can do more rides.

For anyone interested, here is the map of our ride:

BikeToMountainView
Find more Bike Rides in Mountain View, California

California Internship - Week 4

2008-05-31T03:56:00.005-04:00

4 weeks in, 13 left. Wow. Feels like any day now it will be halfway to done. This is where it's at right now:

I'm watching "Alice in Wonderland" out of the corner of my eye, the laptop is so hot that I have to prop it up on a pillow and tomorrow morning I will be going for pancakes with some of the interns. This week was different than the last three because now there are about 20 interns. The big batch (9 from Carnegie Mellon) landed last weekend, including my roommates. So things have been hectic.

I spent all of last weekend away from the apartment. On Saturday I drove down to Santa Cruz to go wine tasting with Hannah. We hit about 6 different wineries and I got to taste a lot of wines and even experienced a futures barrel tasting at Soquel.

My favourite winery was Bonny Doon mostly because of their really beautiful labels and artistic leanings. Other wineries really couldn't compete in that area - they tend to have one template for all their labels and only change the text as needed. You can see an example of a Bonny Doon label in my slideshow, but also I would encourage people to look at their website, it's pretty awesome. I bought a few packs of their leftover labels to stick all over my computer.

After the wineries, Hannah took my past the Santa Cruz surf museum where there is also a rock covered in seals. Mesmerizing....as I adored the seals, Hannah told me a little story about when she lived across the street:

With a couple of bottles of wine in the trunk, I headed up to San Francisco to meet Joey post-work. We had an easy night of watching movies and eating the most intense pizza I have ever had. It was 3 inches of melted cheese on what seemed to be a deep-fried crust, if such a thing is possible. Um, I shouldn't know that this kind of take-out exists, it's dangerous to a melted cheese lover such as myself. You can see a picture of it (a small!) in the slideshow:

On Sunday morning we picked up Sam and Anna Joy to drive up into Marin and go to Bass Lake. There is a nice little 3 mile hike which takes you to the lake. Since it's inland a bit, there's not too much of a crowd, and certainly nothing resembling a public beach. Watching out for poison oak, we wandered in to the furthest depths where there's supposed to be a rope swing. Just as we arrived, a park ranger was talking to some guys about a recent death in the lake and he proceeded to cut the rope off right in front of us!

Next time we go there, we'll bring a new rope. It wasn't conclusive that the rope swing was involved in the death, the park ranger was just being a keener and taking out anything that could be dangerous.

Still game to swim, Joey went down the steep slope first and got herself psyched up to jump in. I've discovered what makes Joey take action if she hesitates:

Monday was all about card playing and teaching Kim, Naomi and Hillie how to euchre. I'm always happy with hours spent playing cards. A perfect long weekend all around.

This weekend I hope to do some quieter, at-home stuff like reading and then also on Sunday taking the Caltrain to SF and then biking back here. It's about 36 miles, and will take about 3 hours. That will be good practice for the triathlon I'm planning to do in August.

Time for bed.

California Internship - Week 3

2008-05-24T03:00:00.006-04:00

It's been another fun filled week in sunny California. Seriously sunny - we had a little heat wave where the temp was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and that's almost 40 degrees Celsius!

In the past week I've finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" which I did quite enjoy even though I found her to be a little judgy sometimes, and way too flowery often. However, she's patient and observes little things that I never do and I enjoyed seeing gardening from her perspective. As someone who kills plants whenever they are near, it's a form of escapism to go into her world - and it's a beautiful, appealing world. Furthers my notions of packing up when school is done and finding somewhere I can be a computer geek and also raise chickens, goats, sheep and learn to make cheese.

Inspired by the book, and all the other food related literature I've been devouring as of late, I went to the Mountain View farmers market two Sundays ago, and this past Sunday I met Naomi at the Alemany Farmers Market to pick up some fresh produce to bring to Kim and Hillie's house. I had this plan to make them some snacks entirely from what was available. As well as produce, there was a great one woman band:

Boy was I not disappointed! There were pink mushrooms, orange cauliflower, fresh organic fennel, blue potatoes (which I love), can you see that I'm going for colour?! Also I picked up some sage goat cheese, knowing that Kim was mostly on a goat/sheep diet right now. These items resulted in the dishes you see below...oh yeah, there was some asparagus too.

After our pretty simple fare, Kim and Hillie proceeded to ignore me and play with their iPhones...naw - not really - but they sure did make me jealous.

I really kinda want an iPhone...and no, it won't make me any more likely to answer a phone. It will just make me more likely to Geocache.

The next day was "Bay to Breakers" - a regular event in the city that draws out the weirdness in a predominantly young, heterosexual population. It was a sight to behold. On top of snapping pictures of costumes that interest me, I also enjoyed taking in the scenery as we walked from one side of SF (the bay) to the end of Golden Gate Park (the breakers) a total of 12Km during which we walked for 3 hours and 15 mins. The slide show below contains some of my favourite pictures from the event including salmon who walked "upstream", Elvis impersonators doing a mass pee break, and Spiderman. Something that I find both amazing and confusing is the "Yes on A" campaign. Maybe if I was living here I would pick up on what the intricacies of that proposition were, but since I don't, I think it's funny to be pushing such a simple phrase that suggests nothing of what it's about. "Yes on A!" ... sure, why not?

A few choice moments were seeing the sun break through the clouds at 7am by Embarcadero, meeting an adorable little beagle, and seeing the building with all the furniture stuck on the outside:

The icing on the cake, in Golden Gate park after walking for 3 hours - Surf Rabbanim and Thing 1 through 8 (from Dr. Seuss):

On Wednesday night I got to attend a birthday party for Kim who looked so healthy and happy, it doesn't seem at all like she just got that kidney 2 weeks ago...

Finally, this week at work the Mozilla Store needed some new pictures in preparation for the release of Firefox 3 and so a few of the interns participated. Here you see my friend Armen showing his love to the Fox...and the Fox hanging around. That costume is getting around...recently the Firefox completed a Triathlon.

Okay, that's this week's update. It's a long weekend and I'm going to spend much of it outside and in the city, so there will be plenty more photos next week.

California Internship - Week 2

2008-05-17T01:49:00.001-04:00

Happy Friday.

Last weekend, and most of this week actually, feels so long ago already. Tonight I went to see the Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian with some fellow interns and assorted co-workers. I'm a little underwhelmed. The theatre itself was a little low-budget and the ceiling lights remained aglow throughout the film, and the movie was kind of predictable and awkward in its pacing. I really need to find time to read the entire series though because I'm very interested in the ideas of the stories. Plus I want to know how it ends. It's hard to watch the movie and not know what happens unlike Harry Potter chapters.

Okay, so the week in review. Well - first off was my hiking day in Big Sur last weekend with Naomi. She picked me up in the morning and we took off down highway 1 (again!) this time a bit further south to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park where we did the Ewoldsen hike.

I'm totally in love with the forests of Big Sur. Also, this blue jay was very insistent that I take his picture and kept coming closer and closer as I snapped away. This is with hardly any zoom - little blue show-off:

There are amazingly large trees, beautifully maintained paths and views like this:

Here is Naomi explaining why there were so many burned and charred trees:

Then there was the Waterfall. While it was close enough to the parking lot to be kind of over populated with tourists - it was still a sight to behold. I was mesmerized by the waterfall and the waves smashing against the rocks. It reminded me of a set from the movie version of Lord of th Flies. Funny thing is, there were all these signs:

These were posted every few feet - as though the view was so pretty that people were going to throw themselves down the cliff. Well, then I looked over and saw two people trying to do it - even with the signs! Fortunately they gave up after scrambling down a couple of meters of crumbly cliff side. The woman was wearing Uggs! Those are not hiking boots, and certainly won't help with what was essentially rock climbing. As they pointed out, and we had noticed, there were distinctly human footprints on the beach below - I imagine that there's a little sea creature down there with a foot on a stick making footprints to try and lure the tasty humans...

Here's a small video of the view in motion:

Final notes for the week - some office dog shenanigans and Bike to Work Day.

Julie has been bringing the dog she's caring for to work and it plays with Karen's dog Samantha until it's so tired that it must throw itself upon on of the many bean bag chairs and cushions in the downstairs common lounge. At that point the two dogs just play with their heads, determined pups they are.

Here they are when still able to stand on all four feet:

Zuri (the whippet) is incredibly fast as you can see by her dash:

Maybe next time I will get a picture of her when she's not moving.

On Bike to Work week about 14 or so Mozillans took on the challenge. I've been biking to work every day and it's only 10 minutes each way for me...no big deal. Several people biked in from San Francisco on Thursday which takes about 3 hours! Here they are in their Firefox jerseys. I hope to have one someday but that will require that bike jerseys are made by a company that doesn't predispose itself to the physiques of slim europeans. Too bad, cause they sure are pretty shirts:

California Internship - Week 1

2008-05-08T23:52:00.011-04:00

So its been a while. Hi! I've got lots of little documentation of my first week here in Mountain View, California.

The intro: I'm doing an internship with Mozilla this summer and will be living in Mountain View for 4 months - until Aug 29. So hopefully I will not only work hard and have an amazing summer of development but I will also get to see and experience a bunch of what California has to offer.

First experience: the Pacific Ocean.

Joey picked me up in a PT Cruiser convertible and took me down Route 1 to Santa Cruz. On the way we saw surfers and we stopped in at Swanton's Berry Farm for a strawberry shortcake that was amazing.

Once we arrived in Santa Cruz we wandered around downtown with Maryasha. These caught my eye since I'm always a fan of fancy carving of fruits and vegetables.

We also tried to go to the "secret cookie" place which was sadly closed. It's apparently really good, cheap cookies that only the locals know about. Don't worry secret cookie place, I'll come back!

Afterwards, we went to the Boardwalk and rode the Giant Dipper - a super old wooden roller coaster. The Boardwalk is featured in one of my favourite childhood movies - The Lost Boys.

I love the palm trees in California, it's so L Word!

This first week was all about setting up my computer, and getting up to speed on what kind of work I'll be doing this summer. Here's a nice shot of my office (with my welcome gift) and my office mate - fellow intern Armen.

A funny aside - I've been referring to this summer as "My Own Private Gattaca (such an under-appreciated film) and this is what's on a fellow co-worker's cubicle...

And then, as I've been going on about - there's the snacks. We are well provided for, there is often lunch brought in and the other night we had a Cinco de Mayo party with margueritas, beer, and of course we are also playing lots of Mario Kart on the Wii (not pictured). I'm going to be pretty good at MK by the time I come home. I love that it's very similar to the Super Nintendo version that we used to play oh, about 15 years ago! Crazy.

Finally, saving the best for last - if you've gotten this far you are in for a little treat. There is a couple staying at the Oakwood Apartments where we live and they are moving here from Spain to work for Stanford. It just so happens that my pal Armen is from Spain and he befriended them and introduced me. They're very nice folks and in their apartment they have the cutest cat I have ever seen. This cat is a little shy and wasn't too good at posing for pictures so his owner broke out the catsnacks - watch the video:

Click to play

I want a smooshy faced cat!

/Dispatch

Moz Dev Demo - 0.5 Release of Source Server for Windows Builds

2008-02-01T16:31:00.002-05:00

Click to Play

This is a video demo of the status of my current bugfixing on the bug I filed regarding the adding of Source Server to windows debugging of mozilla code.

Happy Halloween

2007-11-01T11:17:00.000-04:00

Hi people who still check in on my blog. You're probably sick of me appologizing for not posting video as regularly as I used to. I can see that some people have gone off to other things - the subscriptions to this site have taken a drastic plunge from 70 to 39. I'm hoping to get back in the habit of posting regularly. Honestly, one thing that will help make this happen is a MacBook. I've recently applied for a scholarship that, if I am awarded it, will allow me to purchase a MacBook and become more portable with my video stuff. I'm sure if I had time I could do what I like to do on this brick of a pc laptop but I just don't have the time to invest in learning new editing software. So cross your fingers for me that I get this award and thus, a MacBook which I will immediately load up with FCP and get to work.

Thanks for the good thoughts peeps.

Hound Dog Serenade

2007-09-29T19:49:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

I could go into a list of excuses for why I've fallen off the vlogging wagon - or I could just post something... When you've been writing code and trying to figure out IIS servers for way too many hours, it's nice to take a break. My lady love made oatmeal cookies, I helped for a bit and then decided to serenade her, Hopey helped.

Catch-Up Vlog

2007-08-03T15:21:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

Oh man...since May!

2007-07-14T11:15:00.000-04:00

Wow - people, if you still watch this blog, I am so sorry to have lapsed for so long in posting. Soon, I promise - there will be more vlogs and posts. Short update - my lady and I moved in together on July 1st and we are still surrounded by boxes and lacking in internet. I should be up and running by the 20th.

Can't wait to get back to the vlogging.

Lukas

2007-05-28T23:16:00.001-04:00

Click To Play

A Cowtown Minute #1

2007-05-28T21:55:00.001-04:00

Click To Play

Indigo Girls Butch Drag to introduce Lesbians on Ecstasy - Toronto

2007-05-10T09:21:00.004-04:00

Click To Play

Lex Vaughn does an excellent 70's butch/hippy drag act to warm up the crowd at Lee's Palace in Toronto for the Lesbians on Ecstasy CD launch. I HIGHLY recommend this album:

Girl with Ukelelee sings Chapter 4 of Bottle Rocket Hearts - a novel by Zoe Whittall

2007-05-10T09:21:00.003-04:00

Click To Play

This is something I helped Zoe edit for her book launch. It's short and sweet and probably the funniest idea for a video I've seen in a long time. Zoe's so smart. You can pick up her book through amazon.ca

Chelsey I'm so sorry, I taped the gap and not the story...

2007-05-10T09:21:00.001-04:00

Click To Play

This doesn't happen often, but when it does - boy do I feel dumb. Chelsey gave a nice long rant at the Fat Femme Mafia's clothing swap last week in order to send a "So What?" to Tyra Banks' show and I apparently recorded NOTHING! Except this... 10 seconds. Sorry Chelsey.

Trailer for Inside Out

2007-05-05T11:07:00.000-04:00

Click To Play

I made this for this year's festival. This will be on Showcase soon...crazy! Go to insideout.ca for program info - see you at the movies!

Trailer for Bottle Rocket Hearts - The Novel

2007-05-05T11:06:00.000-04:00

Click To Play

This weekend I got back into the editing game and helped my long time pal Zoe put together a DVD for her launch. It was a lot of fun to sit and chat with her and work on her media. I hope you enjoy the trailer and buy the book too - she's an amazing writer.

Note to self - Blogger URLs for Blip.tv Cross-Posting

2007-05-03T22:48:00.000-04:00

Trying to set up my cross-posting on blip.tv was such a headache - no more!

API: http://www2.blogger.com/api
Endpoint: http://www.blogger.com/api/RPC2

I can't help it, I'm white and nerdy too...

2007-04-07T21:28:00.001-04:00

Ina Unt Ina

2007-03-26T21:35:00.001-04:00

Making Pasta

2007-02-14T20:08:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

This is my first time making pasta from scratch - it went so well that I think this might become my new "thing". Next time: Ravioli.

Polar Dip 2007 - Gals go to Coney Island

2007-01-10T00:54:00.000-05:00

backinblakk

Re-posted, author J Wallace: "When the boxes get smaller, fewer people fit inside"

June in Paris - 2011

Arm Tattoo

Summer Travel Log 1 - California->Canada->Paris

Plaid Pants

Remembering

Today in my neighbourhood:

Breathe On It

Family Car Decals - My latest obsession.

My new apartment

To-Do list #1

Leaving Facebook

I am Hammy Hamster...

FOSDEM 2010 - Women in Open Source and Free Software

Sisters of Festival Indulgence

Last 4 Months (in no particular order)

Mozilla Service Week - making a difference in your community

The last 6 months...

Music to watch snow melt to...

A Letter to Mama Chaiken From FTM

Cupcake Camp Toronto

Welcome to the new FatPlanet

Hussysnaxxx @ Underworld - Montreal 1997 - Clip 2 - Tonka Truck

Hussysnaxxx @ Underworld - Montreal 1997 - Clip 1

Polar Dip 2009 - Ocean Beach, CA

5 Exams then a plane ride to the homeland...

Radio Silence is broken...

Ubuntu - not just an operating system...

Week 7, 8, 9, 10 update...

California Internship weeks 5 & 6

What's new in Firefox 3? Check out this demo!

32 Mile Ride

California Internship - Week 4

California Internship - Week 3

California Internship - Week 2

California Internship - Week 1

Moz Dev Demo - 0.5 Release of Source Server for Windows Builds

Happy Halloween

Hound Dog Serenade

Catch-Up Vlog

Oh man...since May!

A Cowtown Minute #1

Indigo Girls Butch Drag to introduce Lesbians on Ecstasy - Toronto

Girl with Ukelelee sings Chapter 4 of Bottle Rocket Hearts - a novel by Zoe Whittall

Chelsey I'm so sorry, I taped the gap and not the story...

Trailer for Inside Out

Trailer for Bottle Rocket Hearts - The Novel

Note to self - Blogger URLs for Blip.tv Cross-Posting

I can't help it, I'm white and nerdy too...

Ina Unt Ina

Making Pasta

Polar Dip 2007 - Gals go to Coney Island

Things I want but cannot have...

Item posted from mobile device

Anniversary

Coming soon...

The Marshmallow Eating Contest - Michfest 2006

The Gatorade? Commercial - Michfest 2006

Not Touching...

5 things Feminism has done for me...

Matching Tattoos - Post-Mich 2006

Little Dog Park - 2

Little Dog Park - 1

Phoebe comes for a visit...

Racoon in a Garbage Bin - Michfest 2006

Dancing in the Kitchen - MIch 2006

Borat opening night at TIFF

This Strange Relationship

Marilyn in Toronto - Starring Joey Stevenson

Fat Femme Mafia - Toronto Pride 2006

Sketch - Do Something with a Blundstone Fundraiser

Dirty Dancing Split Screen

Selling out so soon? You just got here.

The Last Shot

The future of videoblogging for cash...

How Kaleb Turned 30...

Toshi Reagon in Toronto

Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner

Stumbling Onto the Preparations...