Archive for July 2007
Posted July 31, 2007 at 1:00 PM | Tagged as: Computing, People I Admire, Women! | Comments Off
The ACM has posted video of Fran Allen’s Turing Award lecture. Go check it out!
Delivered by Frances E. Allen, recipient of ACM’s 2006 A. M. Turing Award, the presentation calls for software systems designers to develop new tools that can improve the performance of computer software.
Allen, the first woman to win the Turing Award, issued the challenge in her Turing Award Lecture, delivered in June at the 2007 FCRC Conference in San Diego, CA.
Ms. Allen received the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for “pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution.” In her Turing Award Lecture presentation, she warns that computer software capabilities have fallen far behind the capabilities of computer hardware, and proposes several approaches to boost the performance of software in the face of the new hardware developments.
Posted July 30, 2007 at 11:40 PM | Tagged as: Commuting, Punky, Travel | Comments Off
Since I fly Northwest just about every single week, I naturally keep up with news about flight cancellations. Stories like this one cause me to check flight status early and often.
However I’ve so far been pretty lucky. Northwest canceled over 800 flights at the end of June due to pilots running out of hours to fly, thanks to all of the air traffic control problems earlier in the month. I skipped that hassle thanks to having booked a flight on July 1 (it saved me about $300, too).
The few times I’ve been stuck with no flight, while disappointing and inconvenient, haven’t worked out all that badly. Only twice have I ever been stuck in a stop-over city (Minneapolis); the first time NW got me into a hotel that had jacuzzis in all of the rooms and the second time I had about 5 hours to go shopping at the Mall of America. All other times I’ve been “at home” — meaning someplace I could get back to easily, where I had my own bed, clothes, and food — so those certainly weren’t problems.
Northwest doesn’t give super-fancy upgrades like the one that Molly got, but so long as they get me home to Punky regularly, what I’ve gotten is all I need.
Posted July 29, 2007 at 1:48 AM | Tagged as: Television | 2 Comments
And how happy fans of the show would be! Word on the street is that there could be a “Gilmore Girls” movie… apparently Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of the show and writer for 6 of the 7 seasons, said so during a press event for her new sitcom. Other juicy tidbits about the ending of the Gilmore Girls and info on her new show here.
Posted July 18, 2007 at 4:08 AM | Tagged as: Just Sayin, Meeeeeeee, Women! | Comments Off
I tore this ad out of one of my skateboarding magazines in the mid-80s, and as you can see, it’s beat to hell, having been pinned and taped to various surfaces over the years.
Growing up, messages like this one really spoke to me. Even as a kid, I didn’t want to be seen as a girl. I was a woman, strong and self-confident, capable of doing anything that any guy could do. (Though, to be honest, I wasn’t a very good skateboarder. But the important thing is that I tried!)
So what I want to know is… where are the messages like this one for kids today? Everything seems so dumbed-down, or watered-down, with a “let’s be subtle, the kids will get it” type of approach, so as not to offend or oppress stupid boys. I want aggro, in your face, straight-up shit that burgeoning young feminists can get behind, dammit!
Hmm, that gives me an idea. Check back for more on this later.
Oh, and did you notice that the ad is pink, but that it still kicks ass? I had a pink Rodney Mullen freestyle deck, too… though I really wanted it in white, but the skate shop was out of them. Anyway, pink isn’t just for girls… it’s for real women, too!
Posted July 16, 2007 at 12:24 AM | Tagged as: North Dakota, Photography | 2 Comments
For over 15 years I carried a Nikon SLR — it was my trusty sidekick through high school and college, on multiple trips to Europe, and at many, many, many concerts. Despite being a sturdy camera body, its internals suffered the stresses of use. I was able to fix some problems with duct tape, and meanwhile I entertained myself with Lomo and Polaroid cameras. Then I purchased a point-and-shoot Canon Digital Elph and went through multiple versions of that series.
I need real parts to fix my old Nikon, though, and none are available. Instead of continuing to sit around and complain about my old, dead camera, I finally remedied the situation by purchasing a new digital SLR — a Nikon D80 — last weekend. Oh what a happy girl I am! Photography hasn’t been so much fun since I first figured out how to shoot fireworks!
So that you can share in my fun, here are some photos from my first day of shooting, in North Dakota. Enjoy!
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