Games!

Wow, so Steam is having a huge sale right now.  Have a lot of poking around to do.  One that I spend a fair amount of time on is SquareLogic.  Even managed to get members of the family addicted.  The thing is, it looks like a math game, but it's really a logic game.  Most of these sorts are - people just get scared off by the numbers before realising that you could substitute shapes or letters (if the hint pop-up showed what combos you could use in shapes instead of numbers).  But looks like busy times this week, determining if anything cheap enough is something to stock up on for the next few months!

In other strange news, most of my page views are coming from Russia.  It's an incredibly small sample size, but still weird to me.

Zombies and Classic Literature

Anybody who hasn't read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is seriously missing out.  It takes a Jane Austen classic, and modifies it slightly to not only add zombie action, but to also make Lizzie a woman who today's women can relate to.  Somebody who stands up for herself and others, and is willing to fight people to the death for lack of honour.

I've read the aforementioned book several times, but just found an exciting-looking related book.  The Readers Unauthorized Guide to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  (Am I incorrect in thinking there should be an apostrophe at the end of "readers?")

Now I'm in the mood to re-read Max Brooks' World War Z:  An Oral History.

Can't blame anyone but myself when I get a week's worth of zombie dreams.  Oh well.


Updated: OMG, I just found The Zombie Survival Guide Journal.  I suppose it'd be viewed as unprofessional if I used it for work, but there are surely other uses.

And in more shallow news...

I'm finally getting around to trying to set up Power Auras to replace some of my other add-ons in World of Warcraft.  If it's done right, Power Auras should replace all timers, indicators, announce missing buffs, alert me to bad stuff, tell me when procs come up, and I know I haven't even gotten into any of the advanced functionality.  Until now, only very basic auras were set up.

I have been wondering whether WeakAuras might be worth checking out, but can't get enough of an idea of the differences from the page I looked at.  Anybody know?

"Pretty"

I really do wish that I could make everybody watch this, particularly if there's even a possibility that they might ever influence a young girl.  The last 30 seconds or so are the most powerful, but the rest is needed as the lead-up.

On the importance of language

Word choice can be very powerful.  One example is Sarah Bunting's absolutely amazing essay called A Four-Letter Word.  That four-letter word is "slut," and how it is used.  Read it, you won't regret it.

But just today, I came across a video How to Get More Women in Tech in Under a Minute (video below), by Caroline Drucker.  How in professional settings, allowing others to call us "girls," or even doing it ourselves, undermines us.  About how giving disclaimers so that we don't seem arrogant makes us look unqualified, makes us more of a "girl" than a "woman."

Really though, this doesn't apply only to tech.  Women should be called women in the workplace.  We're all adults, and need to be treated as adults.  In personal life, use what terms you will.

Ending this with one of my favourite quotes of all time.

"Girls do what their mothers tell them. Ladies do what society tells them. Women make up their own minds."
- Karen Kijewski

That was fast

Today I received the book The Internet is a Playground in the mail, written by the hilarious David Thorne.  No, I'm not getting paid to write this, and yes, he's one of the funnier people I know of.

As somebody apparently still living in the dark ages, I do not own a computer device smaller than a wide laptop, plus I love real books, so it's lovely to be able to curl up on the couch to read.  I confess, I've even been known to buy bound copies of some webcomic collections.  I'm dangerously close to buying the Dr. McNinja books, actually.


UPDATED:  I bought the Dr. McNinja books.  And they are as fantastic as I hoped and dreamed.

Hello world!

What a way to start - a reference to the first C program most people learn (or what they used to teach, at least).

For those who aren't huge Heinlein fans, my blog name is a reference to one of his books, Podkayne of Mars.

This site will surely evolve into something different (including the look), for now, I'm just getting the first terrifying post out of the way.  This place may include some math, science, humour, random musings, and zombies.  (Why yes, my avatar is a custom one from Plants vs. Zombies.)


P.S.  The font's pretty awful, isn't it?  And yet somehow I love it.  Will likely be changed in the future, but it stays for now.

UPDATED:  Changed the main body font already.  Don't know if this one is staying yet.