Women In Technology

I’m going to offer up a quick note about this and then I’ll simply point you to a great post that was written about women in technology.

While I do know of a handful of women that I’ve worked with since starting my tech job, a quick look around the office of any tech worker will undoubtedly tell of a male dominated profession.  I don’t think it’s changing a whole lot right now either, although I hope that we’re able to start down the path to change.  Sure there may be women who work in your tech office but, how many of them are actually coding?  That’s what I thought. I can count on one hand the number of women who were in any of my classes when I went to college for software development.  Actually I don’t think I’d even need to use my hand to count them, because quite frankly I don’t remember there being any.

There is no reason why the split shouldn’t be more even.  I’m fairly certain that given the right circumstances there would be just as many women who would love to code for a living as there are men.  But there are barriers, obvious barriers as well as subtle barriers.

As part of Google‘s ongoing commitment to encouraging women to excel in computing and technology,we are pleased to announce the Google JSConf.eu 2010 Conference Grant to encourage more female computer scientists to participate in the JSConf 2010 Conference, 25-26 September 2010, Berlin, Germany.

Good for Google!  I’m glad somebody is willing to do something, even if they are going to take some uncalled for heat about it from some.

Having worked in the field for a few years now, even I feel uncomfortable sometimes.  I’m not the stand up and proclaim how great I am kind of person, which is what a lot of coders seem to be.  I still don’t feel comfortable saying that I know what I’m doing, partly because I don’t grasp everything that I do completely, but, also partly because the way some people talk such a big game scares me into thinking that they must know so much more than I do.  Which when I sit down and really think about it, I seriously doubt that they do.  I’m just a little more humble, a little less self promoting and a little more cautious than most of the alpha-male types that seem to fill a large chunk of the software development field.  I have no interest in changing to be more like them either, this is who I am for better or worse.  I like it that way.

Anyway, this post by Nicole Sullivan says it all much better than I could.  Here you go.

Happy Blogiversary To Me!

It was 1 year ago today that I started The View From Out Here!

It has been a pretty quick year, full of ups and downs in real life as well as with trying to stay committed to blogging.  Overall it’s been a pretty good year though.  I figured I’d try to go through some of the highlights from my blog from the first year.

Here we go:

• Total views: 44,000 +
• Total comments: 92
  • 383 if we’re counting Spam
  • Surprisingly, very few of these comments are from me…….the real ones, not the spam ones…….although those aren’t from me either!
• Total posts: 85 (I’m impressed that it made it that high with all the lulls in my posting frequency)
• At least 1,500 views every month!
• At least 100 views every day for the past 2 months!
• Busiest day: July 27th with 3,300 + views!
• Top viewed post with over 30,000 views : Buy a truck, get a free AK47
  • Go figure, it’s also the top commented post as well
• My favourite post: Mass Flooding in Hamilton, ON
  • This is the closest I’ve ever come to breaking a news story.  I was driving on the Red Hill Expressway when it flooded and I had the whole scoop, complete with photos.  Which I posted as soon as I got off the road.  It was so cool to get like 3000 views in like 9 hours when the most I’d had in a day before that was about 10 since it was in my first month of blogging.
• More than 1 person subscribed, so a hearty thank you to you all!
• Number of people I helped with web development (that I’m aware of): 4
• Most of my top search terms are either to do with AK47 or Flooding but, I have a surprising number of searches for “cat deer”, “bird and fox”, as well as xkcd
• The number one thing clicked on in this blog is………the Hamilton SPCA link (the one with the cat & dog in the sidebar).  Apparently people like it, which I’m glad for.  I wish I knew if anyone ever adopted an animal after coming from here…
• Number of themes I’ve used………..1!  Shocking I know.

Okay, so year 1 went well.  I hope that the second year comes just as easily as the first did, I’ve enjoyed it all.  Thanks to everyone who reads, please, feel free to comment as well!!  Have a wonderful and uplifting day everyone!

Colours

I came across an interesting question the other day.  What it basically boiled down to was this.  What if we don’t all see in the same colors?

Allow me to elaborate.  What if some people see green as red, or red as green?  What if they didn’t know because they were taught from a young age that this is red.  As far as they knew it would be normal, nothing would seem strange to them.  Seeing it any other way would be strange.  What if you are the one who sees colours backwards…..or me?  How would we ever know.  I mean, have you ever tried to describe a colour?  Short of saying it’s the colour of something?

Apparently there is a theory or argument based off of this called Inverted Spectrum, which dates back to John Locke.  It’s an interesting proposition to say the least.

This led me to another interesting read.  Which is a study of colour from the folks at xkcd, which is absolutely hilarious comic strip if you’ve never read it.  This was a mind-boggling study on colour and how people perceive colours.

[On a side note.  Can we get a Canadian version of the WordPress spell check so I don’t keep second guessing my spelling on things like colour?  Is that so much to ask?]

Back to my point.

I’ll throw in a quick quote followed by a pic from their post and let you decide whether you want to read more of it here.  I warn you, it’s a little long but, the first half of it can be pretty hilarious.

First, a few basic discoveries:

• If you ask people to name colors long enough, they go totally crazy.
• “Puke” and “vomit” are totally real colors.
• Colorblind people are more likely than non-colorblind people to type “fuck this” (or some variant) and quit in frustration.
• Indigo was totally just added to the rainbow so it would have 7 colors and make that “ROY G. BIV” acronym work, just like you always suspected. It should really be ROY GBP, with maybe a C or T thrown in there between G and B depending on how the spectrum was converted to RGB.
• A couple dozen people embedded SQL ‘drop table’ statements in the color names. Nice try, kids.
• Nobody can spell “fuchsia”.

Here are some of the funnier answers, these are people trying to give the names of various colours.  Needless to say after answering a few hundred out of the 954 questions it might start to drive you a little batty…

Sorry for spazzing earlier, I think I had a seizure. Ummm dark red.

It’s Never Too Late To Nitpick!

Ummmmmmmmmmm, I suppose it’s possible that maybe the map looked different back then???

Google + Pac-Man = Fun!

I’ll admit that I’m easily amused, but Google always seems to have something going on and I was loving it when I went to search for something today and saw their home page.  Old School!

Today is apparently the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man so Google is celebrating.  I couldn’t resist playing a little game of Pac-Man while I was there, now that took me back.  I even got my girlfriend to play a game with me since if you click “Insert Coin” twice you get to play with both Pac-Man and Miss Pac-Man.  That’s all I’ve got for this lazy Friday, just me being amused by nothing much, haha.  Oh, and happy anniversary to Pac-Man!