Don't watch this space.

I haven't been blogging.
I blame Facebook.
Friend me there: http://www.facebook.com/simone.parrish.
I'll probably still post here sometimes.
Ehren never blogs, ever.
And he isn't even on Facebook.
I'd be happy to hear your opinions on how long a blog can go without a post before it should declare itself to have joined the choir invisible.

Sightseeing

Lunch walk today was Mission: Ducklings.
Lafayette Park: Cordoned off due to a demonstration/protest of some kind. Couldn't get close enough to see what the issue was. No ducks at all.
Constitution Gardens: Many, many ducks and ducklings (including very sweet little peeping noises from the underbrush), and two herons, possibly great blues (which eat ducklings), and several geese but no goslings.
19th & Penn: Hillary Clinton crossing the street. (No ducklings in her modest entourage.)
I Street between 19th & 18th: The Giant Inflatable Rat. (No ducklings there, either.)

I ATE'NT DEAD

I just haven't been blogging much since I started playing with Facebook.
I have limited social media bandwidth.
But from the Mutant Super Power file, I was watching The Riches yesterday (on DVD), and a new character named Eamon Quinn appeared on the screen, and I thought "Huh, he looks really a lot like Richard Harris."
Eamon is played by Jared Harris.

Lantern-bearers and Ada Lovelace

I love the idea of Ada Lovelace day. I've known her name since I was maybe nine because my dad had a crush on her. I've been thinking about the women who are my technology role models, and the person who floats to the top is Jeanne Kramer Smyth.
Jeanne's not famous. She's not a household name. But in her enormous social and professional network (in which she plays a vital node-like role, gathering people and keeping them connected), she is a go-to person for technical advice. She has a voracious appetite for new ways of managing information and connecting people to each other and to the information they need. If anyone has a question about search engine optimization or RSS or piping or blog templates or visualizing information, it's Jeanne we call.
I became an IT professional by accident, and I still feel quite seat-of-the-pants a lot of the time. Jeanne's example of how far noodling around can get you has been very inspiring to me. She has traveled the paths, and her light still clings there, tracing the paths for others. She sees possibilities that would never occur to me, but seem obvious once she lays them out. I feel less lost when I'm exploring something new, because of the way she sets out exploring. She is a dear friend, but I'm not sure I've ever told her how important she is to me from this technical and professional perspective, so this post is a little tribute to her. She's my Ada Lovelace Day pick. She blogs at http://www.spellboundblog.com/.

Kindred spirits

Check it out: A jargon-checker called, beautifully, "Bullfighter".
It just gives me a warm, I'm-not-alone feeling.
I haven't tried it out yet. I'm just happy someone developed it. And it's free.

Got corks?

I was looking for shelf pins (which I've just discovered is the official name for the little pegs that hold bookshelves up), and I found this website, widgetco.com. Manufacturers and purveyors of the small and practical. Which reminded me that for a couple of years I've been meaning to buy lots of tiny bottles. With tiny corks. Whee.

The world is now better.

Noteflight is a free (well, it's free now, 'cause it's in beta; not sure if they'll charge for it later) online musical notation system that lets you share scores with other people.
OMG.

Catching up

Wow, a 6-week blogslack. I blame Facebook.

Couple of things:

Macromediocrity: This bit of sophomory goes straight to the heart of why we started this blog in the first place (remember, it was about American culture rewarding the lowest common denominator). The article I link to above is all happy about the possibilities for independent developers making a living from creating applications for the iPhone. I'm happy about that too. I'm just kind of crestfallen that, given a tool with the tremendous capacity for communication and learning that the iPhone has, people want more than anything for it to make rude noises[1].

More things in heaven and earth [2]:
- Frogs eat bugs. It's the way of the world. But did you know that there are wasps that eat tadpoles?! (Dragonflies eat tadpoles, too. But somehow I found that less surprising.)
- World's smallest chameleon! (For some reason this one is in Tokyo, even though they come from Madagascar.)
- Check out the snoutiness! It's a shrew the size of a rabbit which got discovered last year.

[1] Thanks to Will for the link.
[2] I've been watching Life in Cold Blood.