Six Unimportant Things About Me

Tagged by Piers Beckley.

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog.
2) Write the rules.
3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you.
4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.
5) Alert the persons that you tagged them.

And here we go.

1. I'm left-handed. This isn't all that unusual -- left-handers are over-represented amongst both writers and software engineers (software engineering being my day job). But I've always thought being a southpaw was cool. It's also a massive advantage in fencing.

2. The film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang saved me from being diagnosed with ADHD when I was a toddler. This was America in the 70s and every kid with more energy than a sloth was being put on Ritalin. But my dad knew better when I sat on his lap and watched the film all the way through.

Incidentally, my husband actually does have ADHD and why anyone ever thought it was just about having lots of energy is beyond me.

3. I'm vain about being blonde. Physical appearance -- mine and others' -- holds little importance for me. Except that I'm inordinately and irrationally proud of the accident of having blonde hair.

4. Unless I'm in Paris, I don't like coffee. I spent a weekend in Paris last year, and for about a month afterwards I would order coffee in the UK, make a series of amusing faces, and remember that unless it's really first-rate coffee (like they serve in Paris), I hate it.

5. My first TV crush was Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. I got better.

6. My second TV crush was Captain Kirk. I didn't get better.

I think I'm going to be a refusenik on tagging others. So there.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Ada Lovelace was arguably the first computer programmer, and today is all about promoting women in technology. I'm doing this by a) being a woman (I do this most days), and b) working with technology (I do this most Mondays through Fridays).

Check out this Guardian article on the subject. The author discusses not just women in technology, but female scientists in film and TV. To wit, there aren't very many of them. One of the comments suggests Agent Scully as an example, but I think that only works if you disregard the later series of The X-Files, in which said agent turns into a weepy, ineffectual moron.

Sadly, the best screen example of techy women I can think of is Star Trek: Voyager. The ship is full of 'em. That show's creators obviously thought long and hard about gender equality. Pity they didn't think very long and hard about the stories.

The Back of Beyond

Greetings from Miles from Effing Anywhere, Pennsylvania. I'm here for a few days visiting my mother, then it's back to London, where I promise never to complain of Tube overcrowding again.

Um, you can stop reading now. There's no point to this post except to complain about boredom and ugly, ill-conceived semi-rural housing developments.

Move along, nothing to see.