Massive list of songs in odd time signatures

I thought this was a nice touch -- for musicians and music nerds alike.

Non-binary in Tech

Geek Feminism  posted this essay from Forister on their experiences -- and sometimes the privileges -- of being a  non-binary person in the male-centered tech world:

Just because it is easier doesn’t mean it is easy. So much of my effort has gone to things that have nothing to do with tech. I choose my company for culture and the possibility of being promoted as a woman, even one who looks like a man, instead of for the technical problems that I would like to solve. I don’t move around as much because I would have to establish myself all over again. I’ve wasted countless hours to men who find it easier to ask questions of me than my colleagues, though I value the opportunities to mentor as well. At meetings I’m distracted from the topic at hand when the only other woman is ignored. “What was that?” I ask, interrupting the interrupter, but in the same moment I’ve lost the technical thread in a rush of adrenaline. At technical conferences men ask me what I think about women in tech, or guiltily admit their discomfort with our culture, instead of inquiring about my work. I’ve given up on Hacker News after yet another vicious round of misogyny and had abandoned Slashdot years before, and so my coworkers talk about things I have no energy to seek out for myself. I limit my conferences to ones where I will not be an oddity. (In the rest of the world my masculinity makes me an oddity. Here it is the vestiges of womanhood.)

Google Reader is about to go dark

In less than a week, Google Reader will power down. A lot of you probably already know this, and those of you who don't are asking "what's a reader?" For those of us who have to weed through a lot of feeds, Google Reader is a lifesaver. For the past six years, I've practically lived out of mine.

My go-to replacement so far is Bloglovin, but I'm anxious to try Digg's new reader. (I didn't get an invite -- boo.) I prefer something basic that I can use online, and so far Bloglovin provides that, but I miss the search function that allowed me to search just the feeds I subscribed to. And it's kind of annoying that everything now requires a Facebook (or Twitter) log-in, but I'm old.

Embracing new technology isn't always a reality for everyone

I did something Saturday afternoon that's become as antiquated these days as the rotary phone: I spent time browsing in a brick-and-mortar record store.

I'm not an early adopter -- not even close. Part of it's age, part of it's money (if it's free I'm your beta tester), but I generally don't hop on the newest, hippest thing like my life is dependent on it. Funny analogy, as one's individual livelihood is today fundamentally dependent on various facets of technology. That being said, I just stopped buying CDs a few years ago. I only buy them now used, and if the price beats Amazon's and iTune's for a full album.

I'm reading All Song's Considered's Bob Boilen's article about abandoning a hard drive-based library in favor of Apple's cloud service, something I feel a little uneasy about doing, though I suspect I will have to eventually. About the change, he says:

"Abandoning the way I've come to listen to music over the last decade feels like a big experiment, but in some ways, the decision was a long time coming. I've been close to maxing out the hard drive space on my laptop for a while, and in a single day this week, I reclaimed nearly 200 gigabytes. [...] I'll miss the physical, the tangible, but that's been feeling like a thing of the past anyway ... I still miss liner notes, still wish digital would have more information to read while I'm listening and not sure why we haven't all kicked up a bigger fuss about that. Streaming my collection or curating a playlist or a few dozen playlists and having knowing they'll be there when you go to listen is an issue of trust. Right now, I feel like trusting."

I like having the actual artifact, whether it's a physical CD, or my own hard drive, but I have a wall of stuff I never bothered to rip because I simply don't have the space. I'm not ready to delete an entire library of music -- a lot of which I don't listen to online in the first place -- but resistance is usually futile when it comes to technology. The bigger issue I have is accessibility: there are still people in the Us without a speedy internet connection, or can't afford to upgrade to newer, better computers. Granted, this symptomatic of a larger problem, but the "all or nothing" approach to embracing the latest new thing doesn't work for everyone.

Technical Difficulties

Blogger's been a bear for me lately. I've uninstalled most of the third-party apps and defaulted back to the old-school dashboard and it seems to be moving along a little faster, but please tell me if you have a problem commenting or anything else is amiss.

Until this gets straightened out (Google is providing few answers) I'll be at Tumblr and Twitter.

So...

I'm on YouTube now. Yes, welcome me to 2006.

I have no desire upload anything (unless anyone wants to see a grainy cell phone clip of my cat attempting to drink water from the sink), but I need somewhere to house all the videos I've linked to here, and maybe create a playlist or two. It's barebones right now, but in the next few days everything should be in place.

Who benefits from a "real names" policy? Surprisingly few.

"Let me tell you this: you are going to be called a cunt. Or, like I was, you are going to be invited to kill yourself because you are a waste of humanity. You are going to be threatened with rape. Your photos, if you happen to be a public figure, are going to be distributed as further proof of your ugliness and in a baffling case of transitive relation, this supposed ugliness is going to be used as proof that your opinion is invalid. If you are queer, your sexuality will be pointed out as a flaw. If you are trans, you will be dehumanized to the point of not being seen as a subject, but as a set of characteristics that third parties are entitled to discuss and speculate about. If you are single, your singledom will be nothing but an affirmation of your character deficiencies. If you are a mother, single or not, you are, of course, nothing but a self serving breeder who should not have public opinions about anything because both you, and your child, are a nuisance. If you are a minority (i.e. not White), your ethnicity will be generalized and used as a stereotype to qualify your opinion. And you will always be a slut and a bitch. Because online, we are all hypersexualized bitches who should just know their places and shut up". -- Flavia Dzodan from Tiger Beatdown

I've been pretty lucky. In the decade-plus I've been online, as a blogger and as a community member, I've experienced very little animosity. I've never been called a cunt (at least not publicly), I've never never been told to kill myself, I've never been stalked. A lot of this I credit to pseudonyms and the relative anonymity that, up until now, the internet provides.

Although I'm fairly traceable -- and have said enough controversial stuff that I probably couldn't run for office and conceivably win --  aside from  my own personal site, and a few others, I use gender-neutral user names. I'm usually thought to be a man, not because I have a "male" style of writing , but because, unfortunately, at a lot of mainstream sites, especially political ones, male is the "default." (Along with straight, cis, white, middle-class -- ya' know, all the things that generally mean your voice will be heard.) The more agency I feel I have, the more comfortable I am in using my own name, but in larger community blogs where the comment moderation is, um, less than draconian, I'd rather not risk my safety.

Geek Feminism put together a wiki  of all the groups who are harmed by a "real names" policy like the ones at Google+. Not surprisingly, it hurts far more people than it benefits.: women, the LGBT community --50% of whom have experienced online bullying, transgender people whose chosen name doesn't match their legal one, survivors of domestic abuse, and so many others. It's a lengthy list, but well worth reading.

I'm all for accountability, but until I see some hard data that requiring users to comment under their "real names" reduces online bullying, I'm can't see a reason to sacrifice one's safety.

Photography, Hauntology and Faux-Vintage

Most damming for Hipstamatic and Instagram is that these apps tend to make everyone’s photos look similar. In an attempt to make oneself look distinct and special through the application of vintage-producing filters, we are trending towards photos that look the same. The Hipstamatic photo was new and interesting, is currently a fad, and it will come to (or, already has?) look too posed, too obvious, and trying too hard (especially if the parents of the current users start to post faux-vintage photos themselves). -- Nathan Jurgenson for The Society Pages

I like vintage photography -- I mean actual, vintage film photography -- but hate the "faux vintage" look that Hipstamatic and Instagram offer. If that makes me luddite, so bet it.

an actual Kodak Instamatic shot

The entire multi-part article is worth a read. I'm not entirely averse to Photoshop: I use PS myself, and have played with the levels, temperature and contrast of photos to give them a different look, but it's the downloadable apps that simulate the look of different stock films with a click that really bothers me, particularly when they're paired with thoroughly modern photography. Who is this supposed to be fooling?

This is a real Polaroid

Simon Reynold's says hauntology (a concept originally conceived by French philosopher, Jacques Derrida ) is "all about memory's power (to linger, pop up unbidden, prey on your mind), and memory's fragility (destined to become distorted, to fade, to functionally disappear.)"  It's easy to mourn this as the loss of traditional photography -- and I do a lot of that -- but as these effects become commonplace, even expected, they become divorced from their original source and less a part of our collective memory.

Link & Bits: 9/2/11

Terri from Geek Feminism Blog talks about the rise of attacks and hate crimes against female tech bloggers.  (TW for violence)

Not straight? Not Gay? The Pursuit of Harpyness discusses the myriad ways one defines (or chooses not to define) their sexuality.

Dorothy Snarker posts a plethora of pictures of famous ladies doing drag.

Via Feministing, K-Y Intense will launch a commercial with a lesbian couple. 

More People Are Dropping Traditional Blogs For Facebook and Twitter

And no one is really shocked by this.

(Via PopMatters)

According to Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere Survey" more "hobbyist" bloggers are shunning traditional blogging platforms in favor of microblogging: Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook updates. (Forbes) Just over half say they update their blogs somewhat or a lot less than they did in years past.

As someone who's been blogging in some capacity for the last half-decade, this doesn't surprise me one bit. Blogging is often thankless work. For every Dooce out there are hundreds of, well, me. I'm giving up blogging yet, but, yeah, it's much easier tweeting 140 character aphorisms than writing a "proper" post. Duh.