Thursday, April 12, 2012

Great success! deleting blogger posts from google reader cache

So I accidentally this blog post here instead of on my private blog, and I immediately remembered being perplexed by how to delete test posts from google reader's cache a few years ago. It turns out you can't delete posts, but you can overwrite their content. Except I already "deleted" the post from the blogger.com frontend, so how the heck do I edit the content of the post? @__@

Now that superuser exists, it's superuser.com to the rescue!

I found this tutorial:
http://crsouza.blogspot.com/2010/03/partial-least-squares-analysis-and.html

Sort of linked from here:
http://superuser.com/questions/56908/remove-deleted-posts-from-central-google-reader-cache
Except the superuser link is to a ruby script, and it was much more useful to just do it by hand when I just had my most recent post to "unblog" instead of bothering with trying to install ruby / run it on windows *shudders*

I just changed the "post options" timestamp to 10 minutes later,  refreshed google reader, and voila my private content is gone and instead you see... this post :)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

evaluations, sexism, startup cofounders

what are?

In 21w.789 I was talking to a classmate about her project and asked her, "how was the localization implemented?" She said, "I like interaction design, so once the backend is done, I'd like to work on the GUI. I know, playing into gender stereotypes..."

Hi guys. This is the universe we live in, that we cannot simply feel secure in who we are and what we like, in who we are as individuals, but instead feel compelled to be Women who are going against stereotype or following the stereotype -- but either way, the stereotype exists and defines our choices.

I learned the interesting fact yesterday that every semester in one of my course 2 classes, accusations of sexism or hitting on people come up in anonymous evaluations. (I was surprised -- I've never thought of TAs or UAs being sexist, I've always seen them as human beings and possible role models, perhaps fulfilling or not fulfilling gender stereotypes). I don't have any data on any other classes, but it's fascinating that this issue is on top of other people's minds as well, false accusations or not. It's that process sitting there chugging along eating along 5% of my brain cycles all the time, self-conscious, analyzing. (Yea, I'm pretty narcissistic like that, I never really get around to analyzing if people I know are sexist, but I sure do get around to wondering if I can blame all my failings on gender stereotyping :P)

how to not?

I feel that this is a societal level thing. Yes, it's good for you guys to open your eyes and ears and listen more and try to understand. It's good for you to stop and think: when you take charge of the coding portion of a project and do lots of work, you might be putting your friends in a tough spot where they may greatly appreciate you getting the work done but feel put off by your not giving them a chance to be "counter-stereotype". But there is no need to obsess about how not to be sexist on an individual level, I feel, since life is a grand experiment and trying and failing is acceptable.

startups

Yea, I think about gender stereotypes when looking for a cofounder and reacting to people's suggestions as well. I have a somewhat irrational determination that I will not work as a cofounder with a guy (possibly even a girl) who won't shoulder at least half of the "nontechnical" work in a startup. I would rather go it alone than risk the possibility of confirming gender stereotypes (yes, again, my choices are dictated by these stereotypes floating around in society. I don't think I am confident enough to try being an individual instead of a Woman).

from an email i sent recently:
okay, so my knee-jerk reaction to this statement [...] i will explain that it's because i'm not confident enough about my own technical skills to make me willing to shoulder the businessy work, as inevitably it will then take priority over technical work. in addition, i am paranoid about any possibility of contributing to the stereotype that girls are more suitable for nontechnical work. exceptions being made if the target is what I consider underserved markets, then i care enough about the end goal to put my own fears and doubts aside to contributing to making something happen
since i have a decent internship i feel slightly more confident about my technical skills, i am willing to help out with the business-y stuff if you want, but prolly not enough to make me willing to be a cofounder or work long-term this way -- also why i will only ever cofound a startup with someone who is willing to at least equally share the business work, possible small concession on >= 50% share of business work being made if cofounder is female.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

tools for scientific posters, braindump

[Edit 16 May 2012: Please see my other post for a writeup and example, with svg source file, about an Inkscape template I found online by arlich]

[updated 3 May 2012]
We had to create an A0 template for Android HASS class . Since this is a common problem I searched online for templates to use.

"scientific poster a0 scribus template"
Latek template: http://www.myoutsourcedbrain.com/2008/12/latex-poster-template.htmlhttp://andreas.welcomes-you.com/projects/a0poster/ (A0)

scribus tutorial: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/undergraduate/biology-computer-resource-center/documentation/making-a-poster-with-scribus

scribus example outputs: http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2007-December/026787.html

inkscape: http://inkscape-forum.andreas-s.net/topic/146897

moar general tips


http://www.ii.uib.no/~anya/design/ Some oss (gimp, inkscape, scribus) results


2005 http://web.pdx.edu/~clarksk/poster.html (good links list / overview different software tools, some dead links, tips)

2.671

Shamelessly ripped from 2.671 materials, because I care more about there being fewer crappy posters in the world:
https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/2DOT671/Posters

Monday, April 2, 2012

MIT/cambridge-related startups&webapps, web 2.0

I keep losing track of these links in the infernal mess of my inbox, so here: