The PyCon Incident, Lizard Brains, and Bad Jokes

+Peter Senna Tschudin asked (about the Pycon incident):  “What I can’t understand, and I would like help to understand, is how talking about big dongles to a friend in a conference can become a real problem to a women who is listening. Why did she felt uncomfortable about that? Did she felt threatened? How the dongle size talking could turn into something against her? Can the content of the two guys talking be considered a lack of respect? What are the limits to what can be considered offensive?”

I’m going to take you at face value, and assume you really do want to understand how making simple jokes can cause issues for women in tech.  I’m making this a post, because I think lots of my male friends are worried about cracking jokes right now.

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A New Years Update

*tap tap* Is this thing on?

Choose your excuse:

I haven’t posted in about six months, because

a. I bought a house,

b. I acquired two cute kittens (Derek and Elisa),

c. The acquired house needed a ton of work, including taking down a 30 foot “hedge” in the backyard,

d. I’ve been experimenting with all kinds of cooking,

e. I’m lazy.

What’s next for me?

I’m presenting about Linux USB 3.0 support at Linux Conf AU 2010. If you’re going to LCA next week, you can check out my talk at Friday at 10:30am in the Ilott Theatre. I’ll have a USB 3.0 demo for the brave souls that make it to morning talks. ^_^ If you miss it due to being hung over or not being able to attend LCA, I believe they’ll be video taping it.

LCA is being held in Wellington, New Zealand, this year. Jamey and I are going bike camping for two weeks afterwards. As Martin Short put it, “I planned a spontaneous adventure.” Let’s hope Captain Ron doesn’t screw it up. 😉

Any suggestions of cool things to see on the North Island? We’re probably going to National Park, Te Kuite, Auckland, and the Coromandel Peninsula. Anything else in that general area?

Advanced Git Tutorial

Back in November, I gave an advanced Git tutorial for Portland’s Code ‘n Splode group. I posted the slides in my public_html dir without any announcement, but Mario (who is featured in the title page picture) managed to find it anyway. If you’re interested in some advanced Git revision control features beyond `”git clone”` and `”git commit”`, you should check it out.

Feedback is welcome. I might present it again at the Open Source Bridge, a new Portland Open Source convention designed to fill the gap that OSCON left when they packed up for San Jose.