Part 1:

Part 2:

From the creator:

A 12 minute short depicting the origin of “The Bat-Man” and introducing his amazing skills and abilities… Bob Kane and Bill Finger drew on a lot of silent films to create Batman, and I’ve always wanted to give the story a try using silent film techniques. What with that whole copyright/waste of time thing, you’ll have to settle for this collage. Here are the original influences re-arranged to tell Bruce Wayne’s story and his crusade against crime. A bit of fun not intended for sale or commercial exploitation… what with the huge commercial value of silent films and everything.

Sources used:
THE BAT (1926)
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928)
THE CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI (1920)
Edison’s FRANKENSTEIN (1910)
THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ (1910)

Via Neatorama

I realized recently that I have absolutely no idea how many people read this blog. I’m curious, however, so I’m going to try out Feedburner for a while, just to see if it tells me anything useful or interesting. Ok. If you have any problems with my feeds for whatever reason, please let me know. I don’t want to break anything.

About a month ago I was looking for a good article which summarises the differences between the various Perl MVCs. I asked a few people who'd know about such things better than I, and they told me with certainty that it doesn't exist. I asked Google, and it didn't seem to know either.

So anyway, since I figured I had to find out this information anyway; I decided I'd learn both of them and put together a conference paper and talk on the topic as well. Still I have my concerns about being able to to learn both of them well enough to do them justice before September 15th. So I'm asking the experts as well...

If you are a regular user of either of these systems; have experience with both; or would just like to air your opinion regardless; please feel free to comment! If you want to comment about CGI::App, Maypole, Gantry or any of the other similar options as well your opinions are also welcome.

Thanks.

• 13:24 Late-night drinking with clergy, diplomats and other old SCMers from four continents... priceless. #

Controversial ...absolutely!! The name LinuxChix evokes mixed feelings amongst women on our m.lists and one can be sure to be asked (usually by men) "Isnt it derogatory". Not really. In India, English is not the lingua-franca used to harass women...rather the local languages are more colorful, if you must. I have heard atleast a hundred such "indian language words" commonly used to de-humanise women in daily life, which can turn anyone beet red in embarassment. Its something any woman would encounter on Indian streets across any Indian city and its hard to escape it and here context matters a lot, but I digress.

IIRC, the "chix" terminology is all about taking a term with negative connotations and giving it a spin, psychological empowering if you must. It is also a p(h)un twist on UnIX. But most of all, I love the attitude, the zing and pizzaz that the women (and men) bring to the LinuxChix lists, beyond the work they do locally. I just like the aspect of LinuxChix being for women who use, support Gnu/Linux and men who want to support women in computing. Its that simple.

For the most part, we as women get and give respect in the technology space via the work we do. That power is within us, via our actions. It definitely does not come from having the appropriate cultural name or a perfect name. The latter does not exist and IMHO "culture" is a vague and arbitrary term (mis)used in India to control people in the absence of rationality and logical argument.

Having seen Christian "bubulle" Perrier wearing a Debian Women tee, I was curious. He said that was his way of showing support and I thought 'hah, most men would wear a man's tee even if it had the logo of a women's group'. To my surprise NO, Debian-Women had NOT printed men's tee's, so Christian was wearing a women's Tee, albeit one his size. That stuck in my head for a long time and he even posed for snaps with the DW tee. C00L :-). I had given him some IndiChix tee's last year and he wanted to know if we printed men's T's and when I replied in the negative he nodded happily and promised to wear them as is.

At mukt.in, not a single female student questioned the name, the only questions were from men. That says a lot to me. So I had a precondition for giving away tee's to the men - Wear it right now. Nope, its not a present for your girlfriend/wife/friend. If you support women, show it off!! Proudly presenting an IndiChix0r (guy in the grey tee : Ajay Kumar).

Talking of Indichix, the situation is peculiar, we have volunteers for the Indichix Labs in cities where we need sponsors (Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Mangalore, etc.. and no volunteers  where we have sponsors (Mumbai and Pune).  Strange...I always thought space would be a premium in Mumbai. My talk/presentation slides on "women in Libre software communities" is available here.

I started this entry last thursday, before leaving for HYD to attend mukt.in from Aug1-3 but as is wont, had things to update the draft with. Last week at this time, I was travelling with Hemanth to talk about "women in Libre software communities" at mukt.in, an (un)conference which had talks, demos and sessions on Libre software.

Pavi picked us up and I met another main organiser of mukt.in, Srikrishna Das ; then it was off to OU for the event where I met all the Chennai LUG members. For some reason a lot of people thought i was coming from Chennai. I wonder if it has anything to do with the whois <evil grin>.  Attended a talk on Sahana by Ajay a gsoc student, met sudharshan - gsoc for openmoko (yeah I still owe you a chocolate), Shakthi, Narendra and so many folks. In the evening we visited Hussain Sagar lake, got caught in a heavy rain shower. I was more worried about the laptop getting soaked than myself. Instead of T-shirts a nice laptop raincoat would be more useful in India. Ofcourse, getting drenched in the rain was the perfect aggravator for my sinus and i was sniffling through out. Walking on Hyderabad streets at midnight felt safe because I had 10 guys to protect me and we returned with difficulty. I still had to prepare change the slides for my talk on Saturday....doh!!

Not having slept all night didnt make me drowsy and my presentation went well. After seeing Randy's Last lecture I was inspired to follow that style. However speaking to some girls on friday made me realise why it would not work... most people expect slides with information, resource, links, etc... and may not feel like googling for every thing you spoke about. After my talk, we had a BOF on entrepreneurship and post lunch I took off for the museum with Cyberorg (Jigish Gohil). I had hardly finished seeing a few artifacts when they kicked us all out at 5pm sharp. Gee, I wish we Indians followed punctuality elsewhere too. For me a whole day in the museum would not have been enough. The ivory carvings, belgian cut glass, silks, swords and 11th century artifacts were soooo beautiful, with a lots more that I missed when I could not stand and stare, admire and dream about. Next time maybe!! Later Ajay, Hemanth, Warren and me had some chow and returned to base with my nemesis "rain" to keep us company and aggravate my sinus.

On Aug03, the last day, I awoke with a splitting headache with the sinus problem aggravating it. Eating the Chole Krish's mom made (with due credit to A :)), which was just YUMMY and tasted exactly like D makes it, alleviated the headache somewhat. I managed to walk in (albeit late) to a talk on "how to lead an open source project" by Sebastiaan Deckers and also heard Antano Solar talking about getting involved in the libre software community. He had interesting snippets on how to start contributing, following the learning methods with curiosity, isolating concepts and keeping it simple. I love the example of the child he used to illustrate his point and the best part about his presentation was he allowed people from the audience to come on stage and share the limelight with him. That is something few speakers do and definitely worth emulating imho.

A special word of thanks to all the OU volunteers and the mukt.in team. They did a fantastic job of pulling it together. Minus the rains, things would have been perfect. I had tons of masti with people who were absolute strangers till then, just loved the rapport and spirit each person brought, not to mention all the laughs we shared. FUNtastic, will-do-it-again !!

For those who like visuals, here are some pictures :

http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album49

http://picasaweb.google.com/sudhasiva2006/MuktIn2008?authkey=4IrfOLkuDMs

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/hhemanth/MuktIn02

By agreement the Australians and New Zealanders who hang out on
LinuxChix IRC are merging into a new IRC channel, since we were often hanging out in each other's channels anyway.

Our new channel is #aunzichix on irc.linuxchix.org, for Australians, New Zealanders and Islanders.

All former regulars of #aussiechix and #nzchix are invited to join us in our new channel.

*** Note: AussieChix and LinuxChix NZ are remaining separate chapters with their own websites, mailing lists, etc. We're just hanging out in the same IRC channel now. Come say hi. ***

By agreement the Australians and New Zealand Chix who hang out on LinuxChix IRC are merging into a new IRC channel, since we were often hanging out in each other's channels anyway.

Our new channel is #aunzichix on irc.linuxchix.org, for Australians, New Zealanders and Islanders. If you would like to join but haven't used IRC before see our IRC guide.

All former regulars of #aussiechix and #nzchix are invited to join us in our new channel.

Note: AussieChix and LinuxChix NZ are remaining separate chapters with their own websites, mailing lists, etc.

The lead organisers for 2009 are Robyn Willison and Sarah Stokely. If you want to help out, head on over to http://conf.au.linuxchix.org/ and also join the wlca list.

I've just upgraded http://au.linuxchix.org/ and http://conf.au.linuxchix.org/ to Drupal 6. The benefits are, unfortunately, mostly behind the scenes. Some small changes:

• you can now use OpenID to log in to your account once you've created it, go to "My account" and "OpenID Identities" to configure it
• mailing list management is now fancier because it talks directly to Mailman through its web interface

I also hope that the persistant problem we've had with the site making people reset their passwords all the time is fixed by the upgrade.

Unfortunately our beloved katspice theme (the one in desert colours) is not compatible with Drupal 6, so I have TEMPORARILY disabled it. If someone else has time to update it let me know, otherwise I'll get to it in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, we're blue-blue-blue.

Not organised by AussieChix, although lots of us go. RSVPs essential.

Yes, it's that time! Time for another swanky Sydney Girl Geek Dinner with tech talks, sparkly wine, sparkly t-shirts and geek girls.

Where: ThoughtWorks Sydney Offices @ Level 8, 51 Pitt Street
When: Thursday the 14th of August at 7pm

More details and RSVP at the GGD Sydney blog.

I spend a whole lot of time on my computer since it lives right in the center of both work and play for me. I also tend to spend quite a bit of time messing around with new software, always keeping an eye out for applications that will make my life easier, more productive, or just more fun. Recently I’ve started using a bunch of new stuff that’s all pretty good.

TweetDeck

At first I didn’t like TweetDeck at all, but they seem to be fixing the bugs and working to make it feel a little less alien. The first version I tried didn’t even have a proper titlebar, so it just felt completely wrong. It’s still pretty odd and takes some getting used to, but it is by far the best Twitter client I’ve tried yet.

Together

Together is sort of a digital scrapbook application. I use it to gather and track stories to be included in the about:mozilla weblog and newsletter, for the most part, but also use it to hang on to files and webpages I want to read later, compile sources for another project I’m working on, and so forth. It’s a nice, handy, unobtrusive utility that’s easy to use and works quite well.

MarsEdit 2

A growing part of my job involves writing posts for a number of weblogs. MarsEdit is a very straightforward blogging tool that lets me manage posts for multiple blogs in a simple UI that never gets in my way. It has all the features I need and nothing extraneous or distracting. It’s hard to ask for more in writing tool you use every day.

Adobe Lightroom 2

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with the original Lightroom, so I’m not really sure what’s new or changed in LR2, but I’ve been playing with it for a few days and really like it. Lightroom simplifies and streamlines the work that goes into processing digital photos from RAW into a final version for web or print. It doesn’t do everything Photoshop does, of course, but for me it covers about 95% of anything I want to do to my images before publishing or printing. I’m still just learning how to use the software, but I can already process pictures 3-4x faster than I could in Photoshop, and I expect that will only get better as I become more familiar with the software and some of it’s automation features.

The pricetag on Lightroom 2 is a wince-inducing $300 USD, but I think it’s worth it, and I’ll be buying this one as soon as my 30 day demo is up. If you’d like to see some of the pictures I’ve processed with it, I have a set up on Flickr.

Things

Things is basically a fancified To-Do List manager. It has the features you need if you want to go all GTD, but also lets you use a more simple system if you want. I use a semi-GTD system in that I have a list of projects in Things, and have those projects broken down into the various actions needed to get them to completion. For those projects that repeat (ie: the about:mozilla newsletter), I have a set of scheduled tasks I have to do every week or month or whatever.

Each morning I go through the full list, flag the items I want to get done today (there’s a handy “Today” star, which I think most GTD systems lack but I can’t live without) and then I just go ahead and do those things. Ta dah.

There’s also a Things for the iPhone/iPod Touch which I will eventually buy when it will sync with my desktop Things. Until then, it’s really not useful to me since there’s no way I’m going to manually manage two lists. They’re working on it, it’s just not ready yet.

Is there other Mac software out there you think I’d like? Leave a note in the comments.

One thing that consistently amazes me is the sheer number of inventive ways frugal bloggers reduce their expenditures. From making your own laundry detergent to sneaking candy into a movie theater, there are many options for those who want to make every dollar stretch farther.

What I haven’t seen, though, is a detailed breakdown of whether some of these activities are worth it for those of us who are not on a salary.

When you have a salaried job (assuming you are not running a side business), every hour that you do not work at your job is valued at $0. Therefore, practically anything you do to save money will be an effective use of your time — assuming it does not cost you more in resources (e.g. driving 10 miles to another grocery store to save less than a dollar.)

When you start a business, however, that equation changes considerably. Now, every hour you work may bring you more income, so frugality matters less. The question is: how much less does it matter?

I break down frugality into two key components: personal frugality and business frugality. To be expertly frugal in your business, there’s really only one skill you need: negotiation. By becoming an expert negotiator, you will save more money in an hour than you can save in a year doing menial tasks.

Personal frugality is more hairy. There are two scales I use to determine the worthiness of a personal frugality project:

1. What is this project’s hourly rate?
2. How much do I enjoy this project?

Keep in mind that you must calculate your baseline hourly rate as an entrepreneur before the hourly rate scale works.

Let’s use one of the two examples above. Putting a bottle of water into my purse and taking it into a movie costs me about 1 minute in time and saves me $4.00. Its hourly rate, then, is $240.00. I’ve set my baseline hourly rate at $50, so it passes my frugality test.

Washing my own car (an example I tried after reading about it on frugality blogs) costs me 30 minutes of time and saves me about $10. I am also not as effective as the high-pressure wash. Its hourly rate is $18 (optimistically, since I will need to wash my car more often this way since a hose does not get off all the grime.) It does not pass my frugality test.

What about enjoyment? Sometimes, the enjoyment of a project is worth more than its cost. J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly, for instance, recently planted a garden. He is meticulously tracking how much money and time he has spent on it.

Due to his excellent tracking, you can quickly see that the garden is a loss for him. He has spent 39 hours and $318.43 on supplies, and only harvested $174.51 of produce. However, it’s also clear that he and his wife greatly enjoy tending the garden.

There’s nothing wrong with these sorts of activities. However, be careful of labeling them “frugal”. They are simply hobbies — not unlike any other recreational activity. In this case, the true frugal choice would be going to a local farmer’s market and buying the food.

Once you have set your baseline hourly rate, consider outsourcing both personal and business tasks that you do not enjoy that fall below that rate. This is where many business owners — including me, for many years — fall short. Even after hiring an office manager at Simpli, I still did not have anyone to help me out with the tasks I hated doing at home. I would come home after a long day to a dirty house, filled with dishes and laundry, and I would feel even more exhausted.

Your business will grow faster, and you will be much less susceptible to burnout, if you use frugality sensibly: cut down on material expenses. With the money you save, hire someone to do the tasks you don’t enjoy doing. Then, invest your new free time into growing your business.

Having hired an assistant who helps me 8 hours a week with anything from my personal laundry/dishes to email to letters to forms, and having understood how much time this frees up in my life… I would “trade down” my living situation in every way to keep having an assistant. I would trade in my beloved LIL ZOOM. I would move to a tiny apartment. I would move to a cheaper part of the country.

Why? Because I value my time, and my sanity, more than any material object.

I want to hear from you! How has frugality helped or hurt your business? How do you balance your time vs. your money? Please leave a comment below.

A great podcast interview on Wikipedia Weekly with WMF executive director Sue Gardner.

About a month ago, Oscar spilled a glass of water on my phone. It acted really weird for a few days but then started working just fine (minus a couple occasions when the only keys that would work were 1, 3, 5, and 9). Well, last Friday, it stopped charging. Now it says ‘unable to charge’ when I plug it into the charger. I also sometimes can’t call out, and I’m not really sure of the status of receiving calls, since it’s dead most of the time, unless I happen to be in my car or in bed (where my two chargers are).

So, until I find some money to get a new phone or it decides to start working (which it could, it did decide to charge for like an hour over the weekend and then stopped again), if you need me you can: email me, send me a message via Facebook, call my business phone (I’ll put the # on my Facebook profile), or call Ben’s phone.

• 03:53 17º in Melbourne -- that sounds nice. Montréal is fun, though. #