Updates and some fiction

1. My own website won’t recognize my login! This makes me worry. The CMS is nice in many ways, but I am starting to realize how vulnerable I am now that I rely on something beyond the hand-coded html I can make myself.

2. I’ve been using this free file-hosting service Dropbox, and I think it’s great for document management—I keep all my works in progress, as well as other stuff including teaching materials, in my Dropbox folder. That means I can access them on all my computers and on my iPhone and have changes automatically updated across all my devices. It’s good for joint writing projects for the same reason. You get 2 gigs free, [ETA: I've maxed out on free space, so I'm not asking anyone else to sign up via me any more.  I still recommend the service though]. I’ve been using the service for nearly a year, I’m highly satisfied, and I only get email from them when I’m near to filling my space. So anyone interested in trying the service/helping a girl out, I encourage you to check it out.

3. I’m also on Google Wave now, though I still don’t know what it’s for. I’m rivkat and if you want an invite or if you want to connect there, let me know!

4 etc. Realms of Fantasy has made its Feb. 2010 issue available as a free download on its website. Aside from the skeevy naked-girl art from Frank Wu, I found the stories largely entertaining; Harlan Ellison, Leah Bobet, Euan Harvey, Aliette de Bodard, and Ann Leckie are the authors represented.

( Middleman, Wild Cards, original slash, urban fantasy )

Department of apparently you could make this up

This was a Better Off Ted episode, but now HP's facial recognition cameras have been accused of being unable to detect black faces.  HP says it's a problem of low light.

(Why yes, I am working down to the wire on my Yuletide story, thanks for asking.)

Further on the social construction of technology

It turns out there's a history of considering technologies finished when they can properly display white people.  Z sent me these cites: (1) Richard Dyer, "Making 'White' People White, in The Social Shaping of Technology, eds. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman. It's an excerpt from Dyer's book, "White," in which he notes that, among other things, videotape quality was evaluated by how well they displayed a blank, pale orange signal called "skin" that was supposed to match white skin.   (2) Brian Winston, A Whole Technology of Dyeing: A Note on Ideology and the Apparatus of the Chromatic Moving Image, Daedalus, Vol. 114, No. 4, The Moving Image (Fall, 1985), pp. 105-123--discussing how, at every stage, film development was guided by how it did at showing white skin.