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How to learn from a tragedy – 10yo girl suicides over bullying

And here is an endless grief story where nobody wins.

This poor little girl, suffering until driven to desperation.

Her traumatised family, asking themselves why they didn’t react sooner, why…

Little girls who, (like big ones), can be so cruel – but often don’t intend to be so cruel, they are just fitting in themselves, trying to work out the mores and ways of the culture they are in, a pecking order that all socialised creatures have. They will carry (except potentially in a few, sociopathic type cases) a dreadful guilt, learning too harsh a lesson.

If anything that we hope they would be, her teachers and prinicipal, wishing they had intervened earlier, not dismissed as ‘just kids’ scenario.

And all of us parents, the sad majority of which wince at recollections at how intensely felt the bullying was when we were recipients, (and shame if participants at the giving end), how we want to protect our kids, wondering how to do that without knee jerking into overprotectiveness so that our children are wrapped even further in paranoia and cotton wool, learning nothing but fear…

We need to ask if this is a big picture we are missing, or single incident? Media is of little help in this, the pedophile around every corner has gotten us terrified tolet our kids out to play, restricting their capacity to socialise independently with their peers in a way few groups have historically known.

And in the meantime, if you will excuse me, I am going to hug my 10yo daughter and 8yo son (and think about my other more grown daughters), and hope I know enough to have given them what they need to not face an abyss that this sad little girl could not get beyond.

Parents in a small town in Illinois suspect their young daughter took her own life after enduring years of bullying

via A 10-year-old’s ‘gut-wrenching’ suicide: Is bullying to blame? – The Week.

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Google – can it compete with Facebook? Or anyone besides search engines?

Google

Image via Wikipedia

Farhad Manjoo has this article running atm : Google+ had a chance to compete with Facebook. Not anymore. – Slate Magazine.

It got me thinking. Look, i love Google+. It is the same rush of intense gratitude for a service I had when first using Facebook, before it becoame so big and monstrous (all things to all people works for some, not me, and that’s ok). Google+ combines that with the integration of its other services. Wonderful. And blessed shock, for once, the interface is good. Not great, but good. Damning with faint praise.

I have written often on how, from a developer pov (and a user who wants so much to embrace their products), their UI is woeful, and they could benefit hugely from feedback from both developers and users there. I have an iPhone4. My husband has the Samsung Galaxy 2. I look at it, and admire it, but I wouldn’t swap for the world, and he is NOT enjoying Android – but I can see how much the iOS would suit him. I have tried living in Android world, I have had Android handsets, and always gone back to iOS. And I WANT to live in a Googleverse. But Apple UI beats them hands down – and I know of others working in Android who regretfully feel the same way. (Often they are people who care about UI and the user experience too).

But being a developer in Android, I know how hard it is to get Google to take feedback. By hard, I mean damn impossible. They are like a black box – feedback goes in, their own ideas come out. And we at the Serval Project want to work with them – they have teams working on similar ideas to us in mesh networking.It has been interesting at the IEEE 802 PLenary how many people say the same thing about Google being hard to connect to, to work with. And that is a pity. Because we get technical genius that misses the need – Wave, Buzz. They brush it off as learning, and integrate useful bits. But that is expensive, and alienates users. The more they do that, the more cynical people are about their products, and the further behind they are.

So in reading Farhad’s article, I so want to disagree with him, I really do. But he is probably right, because Google hasn’t learned that lesson yet.

But if you ever are Google – let’s talk.

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Fooey, Facebook, Farewell.

I know, I tried once before. I didn’t manage it. But tbh, the last few months have seen me avoid Facebook, except to update The Serval Project Page. I now have an identity to do that, and find I am merely annoyed and overwhelmed by Facebook. I have so much happening in life, that I avoid responding. It is making me rude. I don’t like being that. And I guess the story today of cookies from Facebook tracking you even when logged out was the final straw. Also see this ridiculous Facebook Timeline (Facebook Invaded My Privacy, And All I Got Was This Lousy Timeline). Enough already.

I find am actually interested in engaging people now the dread of it Facebook had instilled in me is gone. But why the dread?

I think the simple answer is, many people do a lot on Facebook, and I just became overwhelmed. Guiltily, the unanswered messages piled up.  Facebook, like me when the kids rooms are beyond my acceptability limit, turned into a screaming +10 monster of nagginess. Actually, I am much more mellow…I just remove tech from their reach until fixed – or unleash Daddy (the Gary Larson cartoon featuring a small boy in front a whiteboard with formulae, and a professorish man with a pointer standing next to it, with caption ‘eventually Billy came to dread his father’s lectures as a form of punishment’ is terribly apt here:) ).  Anyway, Facebook is starting to feel like the Internet‘s version of the beginnings of an abusive relationship. Questioning me endlessly about what I am doing, who I am seeing. Tracking me endlessly. Demanding endlessly. That is a lot of endlessly:) Yes, hyperbole, but I honestly came to dread Facebook emails.

I do participate more on Google+, I have found. That might be temporary, but I am more comfortable there. Twitter I don’t mind dipping in and out of, but have never found the right tool to wade through the flood of information. I would love to, so recommendations, please!

So, henceforth, all will centre back with my blog, Google Plus, (this is me) and sometimes, Twitter (me there too). My blog updates Twitter. I update Google+, until APIs from Google allow me to blog-> + the same way,with a nifty plugin. Posterous occasionally will be kept in mix to update log, Tumblr,(which just mirrors this blog, so nbd), and Twitter all at once, in lazy fashion.

So if you want to actually interact, Google Plus, or here on blog:)

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Death as a social experience

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

I sent this to a group of uni friends who keep in touch:

I am fascinated by social media and lifestreaming, though i have removed myself from a rather large amount of it.

I was surprised at the loss so many otherwise non geek type people felt when i left Facebook, quite odd reaction – how much they missed connecting with me. Erm, the phone? email? my blog?

Some of the best conversations i have had online have been since leaving, with people who would just follow my updates – who had no need to ask, to discuss, they KNEW already what was happening in my life.

We have reduced our lives to 140 characters or so in many cases, a series of updates and photos and location updates and…noone needs to find out the backgrounds, the feelings, life is a fast paced series of vignettes and snapshots. fake, junk food like equivalency. filling without nourishing or satisfying, yet we crave more.

Anyway, we have had twitter births, weddings – this was probably inevitable.

Now we have death. Death in the form of an execution. Government sanctioned death, tweeted by the official who confirmed the order.
Tweetage Wasteland : I Just Checked In To A Firing Squad.

Is it viscerally disturbing because it was an official? Because we don’t do death penalty here? Or was it the calmness, the almost indifference associated with tweeting? Just another piece of info, litter dumped in the stream, it has bobbed to the surface, but will
disappear again soon, just another piece of flotsam and jetsam that is human life online.

We are bytes of information.

I’m not sure if i am scared or optimistic. I value the connections i have made online, some really deep and valuable friendships that have lasted years. now, with a disability, i appreciate the ability to travel the world, as it were, even more.

It is terribly easy to think of it as fully living though. it isn’t. my kids keep me grounded, their sweet solid reality is a wondrous thing. The internet is people, yes, in that it is information and communication and entertainment –  all people derived. Yet if we lose
touch with people here, around us, if we lose our humanity in being online, what then?

Noone bats an eyelid at births online anymore, they just shrug and say well, that funny old internet. Now death is headed the same way. But murder – execution. Wow. Still trying to understand how i could become indifferent to that.

I guess the same way we can face the evening news without flinching, the violent dvds. They have all been leading to this. The more you see, the less you flinch.

Maybe. If the day comes when i could not flinch at this stuff, i am
trading in my humanity card – i am not fit to be part of the species.

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This could be me writing this…

world wide web
Image by alles-schlumpf via Flickr

The Internet – when did it take oer our lives? When did it take over mine? I asked that question when Facebook scared the hell out of me. Online networks became more important than catching up irl. The acronym we use for in real life. We have reduced life to an acronym, almost dismissively.

I stared into the abyss, and saw the monster too long. I decided to not stop – i do enough drugs (legal medicatinss, thank you) due to my disability to know cold turkey is – well, worse than it is described. Also, i don’t want or need to quit. I need to control, be IN control. So, i took drastic steps.

The odd thing has been how many of my friends have grumbled, gently, mildly, about misisng me on Facebook, mising that flow of information. People who i never thought of as technophiles. Actually, it is the geeks who complain least. They connect with me by other means – sure, mainly via the Internet, but they find me. I am easy to find. Just not conveniently in the flow. Not one of the main social group. Funny. About them – not me – i tend to adopt early, leave first anyway. I am intrigued by new technologies, not by a need to share so much of myself.  Been there, done that, found it unnecessary for me.

I have been the monster though. I have tasted my own drug that i was pushing. So have others.

Say Hello to My Little Friend.

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Bits of me

It has been a week. One would expect that. Ok, not entirely a week in date terms, if one is to be fussy, its just feels that way. Much other people’s stuff and comings and goings and thinkings and wantings and not wantings and loving but not in the way they wanted and loving is just enough kind of ways and oh my. I love where i probably shouldn’t, and that is my own business and a pattern i see no reason to change now (the shouldn’t i mean, never been good at shoulds), don’t love where it is probably wanted (at least how it is wanted), but love is what love wills itself into being.

A wilful child, love, best thing is just to get on with it, like life, and see where it does or doesn’t go. However, the constant touchstone of my life, i always love my beloved family, my dearest friends, and my children – well, they are my literal raison d’etre. My wayward heart does its own thing beyond those absolutes.

Eb (Evil Back) is my most faithful companion, and all efforts to persuade him to be otherwise are to no avail. This is discouraging but am attempting further ways to persuade him that he is not what i want in a devoted lover, thank you. Attempting hydrotherapy, physiotherapy, and accupuncture in upcoming weeks, may keep you posted, or not as i do or don’t think of it. I don’t tend to do much of that here, why would that interest you? It doesn’t do much for me either!

However, for Facebook refugees bemoaning that i no longer am there, and somehow failing to be able to live in a  world where simple hi how are you works into increasingly busy lives, i made rash promises to the effect of updating here occasionally. Consider it an occasion.

I try to post things of interest. I have too many interests, and too much that is demanding of my time. I have taken to the step of rebelling against that strange sense of obligation to finish reading all my feeds (like unwanted vegetables to children at dinner), even if Feedly makes it so nice an experience, and to post to social networks regularly, (i remain a solitary monster who reaches out in bits and pieces. Mostly pieces, though some are quite pretty held up in the light). Finiding posting time is hard enough, and takes a combination of Zemanta, Shareaholic, WordPress tools, and Evernote. Oh, and strange feeling that this looks interesting finds that seem to call a theme together enough to make me post.

I am addicted to podcasts, but also gleefully decide this week they will be marked as watched despite not having been. Oh the anarchy. I tend not to miss Boxcutters ever, and they mentioned me very nicely this week, and i got a warm chocolate fudge gooey kind of aww moment from that – thanks guys.

Trying to squeeze in half an hour a day for guitar practice is a battle i do not always win but i do try so hard, for i love Fergus the wonder guitar. I am fascinating by the strange numb blistery feeling on my left hand fingers, where i hold the strings for chords. Having played the violin, i think i have finally persuaded my wrist to settle down and just let my fingers decide placement, don’t be so damn rigid. Feels still a tad anarchic. I use a few really good apps, such as Guitar Toolkit and Chords on the iPhone.

Being a book addict, audiobooks (thanks Audible.com ) are a constant companion, i try for two a week. Used to read a book a day, still do if i decide i am allowing myself a hide form the world (despite it knocking urgently at my door and emailing and ringing and messaging) day when the kids are not around. This is increasingly hard to find.

I have made two gift quilts for baby and toddler, and have two play mat/snuggle rugs for small ones, and two baby ones to make as gifts. I have made an intensely bright tye died rainbow fleece winter coat that just needs lining and buttons, and hurts your eyes like sunshine on a bright day, and is very warm,therefore perfect. I started my quilt (design below), and am starting to make pet beds with the So So Sisters, (my partners in crime and dear sisters of the heart and material), as local pet shelters are in need for these colder days.Also two double, one queen to king sized quilts of various bizarre designs for three eldest daughters, five or six knitting projects, made fleecy pjs for two smallest, and and am hand stitching in bed (i do spend a large amount of time stuck here or in a wheelchair with EB after all), a hex pieced bag for me to carry my iPad (love it still)  and iPhone (love it too!) and other general stuff around in. Must be mad. I keep promising to resurrect the photos of collected works we had up on Facebook, i will get there. Maybe on weekend if someone reminds me. I am using my IPad a lot oddly in quilting, and Dropbox, and running EQ7 (via Parallels) on my Macbook Pro, so technology seems to be my thing no matter what I do.

timelady quilt

Timelady Quilt

Also working on several webdev projects for work, and one for a not for profit i shall be talking a lot about very soon, as soon as i get the content finished for the site – i have written in my todo list by weekend, so it must be done by then. It is amazing, and has huge potential to save AND enhance lives, so am very very excited to be a part of it.

I have had one thing mostly distracting my thoughts the last few months, i am hoping i have reached a resolution, a place of rest and peace and a point to start growing and evolving with it, rather than struggling with it, but time will tell, it always does. It is still background noise, but hopefully the playlist has hit more of an upbeat but ambient vibe, suitable for joy and acceptance and potential, less for worry and fear and pain.

In short, like all of us, i have a lot on the surface, and far more brewing underneath. The brave face is necessary to function. I am not that good at it in my writing, hence these updates are irregular. I am too honest in my writing, and have found it hard enough to not be more detailed and open. However, tis is not a bare my soul blog. It is whatever it feels like it is at the time. It feels like i have said enough:)

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Creativity and creation…

Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World

I love the blog written by a  verypurpleperson – and this is reviewing a book with a subject dear to my heart. I haven’t blogged hugely about my quiltingknitting, sewing etc because- well, i haven’t. That may change, my blog is about what is happening when i am in front of the computer right NOW – and often when i am creating, as i was today, i am not necessarily computing. Ok, this varies, as i use mockup tools, and design software like EQuilter 6 (7 on way yay!). Suspect beloved iPad will change things too;)

Yet they are important to me, and Facebook admittedly had a gallery of the collective efforts of my beloved sisters of making, and i. This may – WILL – have to have a new page and life here. The quilts i made for my two youngest, myself (the very first, now the guest quilt here), my father, my beloved ex (no, not that one;) ), the ones i make for friends, the six or seven i have on the go at any point for other offspring, for my new bedroom, for friends – the objects i make as gifts, such as the bags i make, or the things i make from the scraps, the various bits and pieces made –  from clothes to small fripperies, keep me sane. It is a giving of oneself on a deep level, of the thing we all seem poorest of, time. I often recycle material, either as patches, or as .5″ strips for knitting (with or without wool, amazingly lovely possibilities). I LOVE it when people ask me for help in fixing something, or if i could make something. As a collective, three of us have bought much material – but are using every last scrap, all the way down now to the merest strips to fill pet beds to donate to Animal Welfare. One project i love the sound of is memory quilts, when someone dies, clothing and special fabrics of that person’s life are made into a keepsake. I will do that, (but hopefully not for a while, not needed at least) when asked:)

Here is a small project, made collectively over a day, for a magic butterfly girl born a year ago….a play snuggle rug, a small gesture of love in a hurry, as she was…

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Facebook updates – Zuckerberg realises the oops but not the magnitude

Facebook privacy update simplify for users, hurts business model Does Facebook Have a Fatal Cultural Problem? … How To Find Out If Your Facebook Account Has Been Hacked Mark Zuckerberg: We Don’t Know What We’re Doing with Location Yet Facebook Acquires Private Content-Sharing Startup Sharegrove A Guide To Facebook’s New, Simpler Privacy Controls | Lifehacker Australia … Continue reading »

Facebook CEO finally gets that people are a tad annoyed…

In other words,unless you know enough to make yourself more private (which Facebook has claimed it will be easier to do, at least), then i am afraid you are still at risk. … Sorry when people are angry and leaving, btw, is not much of a sincere mea culpa, it is more of a sign of business concern. … Continue reading »

Feeling pretty dreadful – but oh! Had to post this gem….

New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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