Seth (who, as Steve and I have remarked, would be an excellent weblogger but instead sends weblog-worthy email to his logging friends) sent me a link to the Stumper’s List. It’s “an email-based resource where reference librarians can help each other find the answers to difficult questions.” Very cool!! They have searchable archives, an informative FAQ, and, amusingly, a guide to why wombats have special meaning to the list. Wombats are the subversively unofficial mascot for my alma mater (yes, Go Wellesley Wombats!) so I enjoyed that part. (Seth found this on Computists Weekly.)

I was thinking about the space shuttle mapping the earth from orbit, the NEAR images of the asteriod, and the beautiful pictures we’ve gotten from the Hubble. All of this perspective on our planet and its place in the vast universe made me wonder about my own microcosm and its relation to the greater world and other people. I’d love to have an (invisible) camera recording my life from a third person perspective. I only have what I see from inside me. Wouldn’t it be fun and educational to play back portions of my life from an external perspective? I’m sure some of it would make me uncomfortable, but it’s good to get comfortable with how other people see me. I have such a skewed view of how I must appear to other people — I’m sure we all do.

Mary Flanagan, assistant professor of media studies at SUNY Buffalo, is creating a web-based adventure game for girls ages 9-11. Her hope is that the game will make science and math learning fun for girls as they navigate the various scenes. In testing, she found that “girls would jump to narrative sections and linger there, while the boys would race to the end for a prize.” Yup. No surprise there. The National Science Foundation is helping to fund her efforts. My hope is that more corporations will fund efforts to create girl-empowering and gender-neutral software. Progress has been made in this area, but, as with most endeavors to create “best-sellers” and “hits”, the bottom line always gets in the way and incorrect compromises are made, dulling or lessening the effect. If I learned anything from my time at Purple Moon (now property of the evil pink empire), it’s that, even with the best of intentions, running a business is still, well, running a business. And it’s hard to alter the perceptions of the guys holding the purse strings.

This one’s for my ex-officemate Eric: Build your own stormtrooper armor. (via /usr/bin/girl)

I’m now the owner of a fountain pen, my first ever. It is a blue Waterman Carene with an 18 karat gold fine nib (here’s a photo of it without the cap so you can see the gorgeous top finial). No more drooling over Levenger catalogs (OK, I’ll probably still drool over them anyway), wondering if I should join the ranks of the pen elite. I was never really sure if I wanted one; I love roller balls (Uniball Vision is my one of my faves) and consider them to be a major improvement over fountain pens. My only “real” pens until now were a blue Cross Classic Century Ladies’ ballpoint that I use for writing checks, a beautiful, squishy grip Venetian Blue Sensa which takes Fisher Space Pen refills (I got black, blue, purple, and gold) that I use for journaling and other personal writing, and a brilliantly metallic purple rollerball pen with my name engraved on it which I got when I worked at Brio (of course it has the company name on it too). A good fountain pen is so pricey, considering I’m perfectly content with a $2 roller ball. But there’s something tremendously appealing about the beauty of a quality fountain pen. I’ve been using mine for all sorts of innocuous things at work all week: drawing class diagrams, sketching potential design patterns for web-based UIs, editing requirements documents, underlining key phrases in technical articles, and, of course, doodling during meetings. I suppose I should sit down with it and try some serious writing. But, wait, don’t I do that on the computer now? ;-)

I was hit with a deep and profound thought this morning: Altoids tins have replaced Sucrets tins in American culture. Will Altoids tins be phased out in the future, prompting collectors to bid for them on eBay? I have twelve of them. Any takers?

Wonderful followup article in Wired about the Norman Nie study I (and I’m sure tons of other people) mentioned yesterday. It replaces “dogs” for “Internet” with very amusing results. “Americans who have dogs spend the time with their dogs instead of said time watching TV, visiting with friends, sleeping, going to movies, surfing the Internet, and doing nothing.” And the ending point which had me on the floor laughing: “and a full 92 percent (of dog owners) go on the Internet specifically to interact with other dog owners.” Oh no! The horror. The horror.

From the John Markoff in the New York Times: Portrait of a Newer, Lonelier Crowd Is Captured in an Internet Survey. Norman Nie, a political scientist at Stanford University, states “the more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real human beings”. He asserts that “the Internet is creating a new wave of social isolation in the United States, raising the specter of an atomized world without human contact or emotion.” I completely disagree. What about the fact that the Internet brings people together from the far reaches of the world and bridges the gaps of distance and between cultures? Sure there are people who should spend more time away from the computer screen and out in the sun, communing with people in the flesh, but in general, the Internet has broadened our capacity for reaching out to others, not lessened our social interactions. Hmph.

Big letdown. As instructed, I checked back with @Home last night to hear the results of the Sunnyvale rollout and “it didn’t happen”. They have no idea when they will try again. And the guy didn’t have as good of a sense of humor as the guy I spoke to last time, so he didn’t seem to be amused by my mock crying. Ah well. I guess I should set a deadline for latching onto DSL.

Yay! AT&T; @Home, the cable modem service, is being rolled out in Sunnyvale, CA starting today. I confess that I have phoned @Home almost every month for the past three years to ask if they were servicing my area yet. I don’t know why I got so attached to the idea of having the Internet delivered over my cable wiring, but ever since a friend of mine got their service as a beta tester years ago, I have been enamored of the idea. I’ve heard it’s not terribly secure (with neighbors showing up on your Network Neighborhood) and that speeds decrease with more people on the same wire, but there’s just something about it that feels really cool. Maybe it’s the idea of retrofitting something on top of a TV delivery mechanism (uh, wouldn’t that be “a kluge“?). Maybe it’s the horror stories friends tell about getting DSL, losing their regular phone service, and having terrible transfer speeds. Maybe it’s a glamourized notion that AT&T;’s customer service (even if it did used to be TCI) has got to be more responsive than PacBell’s. At any rate, I’m planning to sign up. I can always cancel it if I don’t like it. I’d rather my cable TV stopped working than my phone. (I’d get more things done!)