All posts written by Catherine Hayday

Page 2 of 10

• • Wired Wednesdays

  Requisition me a beat

  October 8, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  This week’s Wired Wednesday is in response to a request (oh yeah, we totally roll that way). The request was, and I quote: “do a productivity one. Like the desktop thing… little organizational things like that”.

  I probably shouldn’t reward Captain Vague with doing what he asked for, but I’m a softie for requests. So here goes…

  Gmail: It’s all about the colour-coding baby
  I am an independent consultant. A business of one. I’m like that Street Cents segment where there’s a chick sitting at a desk in the middle of the road, and she has a sign that says “Me, Inc.”

  Which is cool.

  It also means that I receive and process a quantity of email that would make a person (i.e. me) weep.

  Since I do not yet have a helper monkey, I have to find ways to keep back the tears.
  (more inside…)

• • Wired Wednesdays

  What’s on your desktop?

  September 24, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a meme.

  From Webworker, some What’s on Your Desktop? for your Wednesday.

  I used to be one of those people with icons covering my entire MacBook desktop, all glaring evidence of a failure to properly organize my files. These days, I try to take a desktop organizational moment every other week. Still, I’ve wondered what the things lingering on my desktop we all about. Why were they there? What might they tell someone else about me if they looked closely at them?

  See the post, and their Flickr pool for examples.

  As for me, my desktop consists of some image I’m loving, so long as it’s aligned left, and then files and folders I want close at hand.

  Why only aligned left? Because I use image composition as a clutter detection system (and now we all know how my brain works). As I save files to my desktop, OS X adds them from right to left. Creating a creeping line of disordered “just for now” files moving slowly across the screen. If I’ve dumped enough files that they’re starting to obscure the image, it’s cleanup time.

  Exhibit A:
  

  

  Center align is just too much pressure.

  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report

  Activist Burnout

  September 22, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  While I was making brunch yesterday, I was lucky enough to catch a documentary on activism burnout that aired on CBC’s The Sunday Edition:

  Our documentary in Hour Two this morning describes what happens when political activists have had too much. Too much marching, too much anger, too many grueling hours of organizational meetings. Some flame out and hit rock bottom. The life of an activist is hardly stress- free. Producer Frank Faulk wanted to find out why this happens so he talked to the activists themselves. His report in our Middle Hour, Burning Bright.

  There is a player embedded in the page with the latest broadcast. Let it load and skip to 1:01:43 for the beginning of Burning Bright.

  I’m impressed with the perspectives in this documentary. The participants eloquently discuss aspects of being an activist that can be unpleasant, and that we don’t often talk about. The unrealistic goals we set ourselves, and the personal fallout when we don’t achieve them. The infighting. The anger (doled out at the world and at each other). The depression.

  One of the interviewees, Anaheed, with whom I strongly identified, talks about how she used to behave as an activist. Strong-willed and passionate, always having the answer, and considering herself right 99% of the time. But now she feels like that time was characterized by a lack of patience, humility, and compassion.

  (more inside…)

• • Body Politics

  The Cone

  September 19, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  I love Come As You Are. For my money they’re one of the best sex shops out there. (Also a nod to Good For Her of course — in part because of their fabulous name.)

  It’s at the Come As You Are website (sometimes abstinence-only posters just make you want to shop for sex toys) that I came across this:

  

  “Whassat” you say? Well, I’m glad you asked. That, friends, is The Cone. It’s a vibrator. And “unlike most other toys, it’s not based on a man’s bits.”

  I have nothing against a man’s bits (not right now anyways *badum-ching!*), but you have to admit that The Cone doesn’t look like all the other sex toys on the shelf. Sex toys have a(n unnecessary) tendency to look like more of the same — an occasionally unsettling combination of glittering purple peni replica with rabbits/dolphins/muskrats attached…

  (more inside…)

• • Geek Chic
  • Laugh Track

  Jam!

  September 12, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  Because it’s Friday, and because I have a big old crush on Eddie Izzard, here’s some YouTube therapy for when your relationship with technology gets that ‘not so fresh’ feeling:

• • Body Politics

  Unpretty.

  September 11, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  Because when you switch to ‘shuffle’ mode, songs from 1999 pop into your playlist.

  Unpretty by TLC

• • Wired Wednesdays

  Google Chrome (‘n’Comics)

  September 10, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  This is a two-fer post — Wired Wednesdays plus some Comics are for Everybody action.

  Because…

  Google has a browser.

  It’s a Beta version, and it’s only available for Windows for now. But still -
  Google has a browser.

  At home I mostly use a Mac, so (besides my undying allegiance to Firefox) I can’t actually play with Chrome. Until Google releases a Mac version. Cough cough coughity cough Google. (Oh, and also a Linux one please, k thx).

  But what I can do is read their launch materials, which are presented in… wait for it… comic book form! Not just a comic book, but a Creative Commons licensed comic book put together by Scott McCloud, of Understanding Comics fame.

  (more inside…)

• • Media Savvy

  A splash of green

  September 9, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  I really should change the radio station on my alarm, because waking up to the news just makes me start my day angry.

  Half-awake, I drift in and out of how the Green Party is (once again) not being included in the leaders’ debates.

  Why? Because the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP threw “if she’s there I’m not going” hissy fits.

  Elizabeth May fronts a party that received nearly 5% of the votes in the last election, when they received the votes of 664,068 Canadians. Canadian taxpayers finance the Green Party (political parties with more than 2% of the popular vote receive federal funding). They even had a member sitting in parliament (since BC independent Blair Wilson joined the party in 2008). A criteria that a 2006 CBC ombudsman report declared “indisputable” for inclusion in the national debate.

  There’s a good rundown presented by the Green Party here. Which includes some “fun” facts on the arbitrariness of inclusion in these debates. Like how Preston Manning was included in the 1993 debate, based on Reform winning one seat in 1989. Or the Bloc getting a podium, which they’ve had since before they had a member in parliament, and before they had official party status.

  If this bothers you, this is the petition set up the last time an “editorial decision” excluded the Green Party.

  “Tell the network executives who control the leaders’ debates that Four Men in Dark Suits is last year’s show. The new season demands a vivid splash of Green.”

• • Geek Chic

  Math is fun!

  September 9, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  Or it would be if I was doing it on a Curta Mechanical Calculator.
  (Damned newfangled electronic calculators have no personality.)

  

  Summary description of the Curta from Dark Roasted Blend:

  * Entirely mechanical, no electricity or batteries involved.
  * Designed by Curt Herzstark in 1938 and perfected inside a concentration camp.
  * Considered to be the most efficient portable calculator (until electronic calculators came in the 70s)
  * Simply a thing of beauty, stunning piece of engineering art.

  Click the link for more backstory, or watch the Curta do its thing (brace yourself for enthusiastic voiceover action):
  

  I want it I want it I want it. The end.

• • Body Politics

  Sex Spam Goes GGG

  September 5, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  Before I hit “delete all spam messages now”, I usually quickly scan the folder for any real emails.

  Today I noticed something. When did sex spam become so much more… egalitarian?

  A sample of actual subject lines:
  * “Give your lady the very best”
  * “Give her the best loving every night”
  * “Your lady deserves only the best”
  * “Only for your lover”
  * “Making her come”
  * “How to take time for relationships”

  Sort of warms your heart doesn’t it?

  Happy Friday!

Contents copyright © 2004-2012 Shameless Magazine.
Questions? Comments? Contact us.