Query results: February, 2009

(More Incred­i­ble Things About Your Host)

I don’t like:

Fax machines (a very deeply-root­ed animosity)
The word “tech­ni­cal­ly”
Typ­ing let­ters with a cell­phone keyboard
Auto­mat­ic car win­dow wipers

I like:

the tri­an­gle, a musi­cal instrument;
walk­ing out of a restaurant;
when peo­ple mix Ara­bic with French in the train;
pink in very small quan­ti­ties, with gray.

On March 14th, I will be giv­ing a talk titled The Blonde and the Scruffy Coder at the Chem­nitzer Lin­ux-Tagen in Chem­nitz, Ger­many.

The abstract sim­ply says:

No doubt the best cod­ing is done in the FLOSS com­mu­ni­ty — but where are all the women?

As a bright, open com­mu­ni­ty, we can do bet­ter than being 99% male, and it pays to care. In this talk, Olivi­er will be tack­ling a few clichés, trolls, and mis­un­der­stand­ings to clar­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion. Find out:
— why this is a problem;
— why you should care about it, and
— how well it pays to care.

Come and meet the Blonde and the Scruffy Coder in a sto­ry of love, frus­tra­tion and pas­sion — a sto­ry in which you are the hero.

How not to make a tie knot quickly

How to bat­tle for a long time until exhaust­ed, and then surrender

The beau­ti­ful dif­fer­ence between a tragedy and a sad story

How to have an extra­or­di­nary job fall on my head

And the oth­er week, as I was fin­ish­ing teach­ing the last of the six-les­son course, the heavy freight train passed very slow­ly, thump­ing behind the stu­dents. Tchao, 2008.