Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

John Brockman, founder of the feast

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

John Brockman and Katinka Matson were in Cambridge this weekend, throwing (as usual) an enjoyable party…

..at which none of my iPhone pictures came out, but I like this one of John, seen here with just a bit of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the author of the (soon to be published) Bursts.

There was quite a bit of talk about the Edge question for 2010 (which remains secret until it gets published there January 1.) I was also very intrigued by the ongoing DNA mysteries that Ting Wu explores in her Harvard Med School lab — and by the diverse places that Katinka Matson finds the flowers for her humongous photographs. I also learned that Frank Wilczek considers evolution a very roundabout way to deliver paltry amounts of information. I am looking forward to reading Connected by Nicolas Christakis and James Fowler, especially the chapter that begins with epidemic laughter. And if I had been sitting closer to Marvin Minsky or Benoit Mandelbrot, I might have learned something novel from them as well.

And then there was the Harvest’s sticky toffee pudding! Thanks once again, John Brockman and Katinka Matson.

These boots were made for Austin

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Ada Lovelace Day has arrived!

Picking just one “woman excelling in technology” is a bit hard, because there are quite a few whom I admire, e.g.

• Linda Stone,
• Mary Hodder,
• Esther Dyson, and
• Melanie Swan, whom I just met.

But I pick tech-trepreneur Lisa Williams aka blogger Lisa Williams, and not just because I have a photo of her wearing SXSW cowboy boots.

Lisa started with major computer-geeky creds and then built up and out, to test and evangelize (6 years at least worth of) new good stuff such as RSS and Bloggercon and podcasting. She has a good eye for what will be exciting, and she puts lots of skill and energy into making good things happen.

Lisa also writes about life in the geeky-young-mom lane, e.g. annotating her desk and giving advice to panelists e.g. “Bring one story to tell” but also “The best panelists are the sharpest listeners.”

More recently, she turned her tech skills to creating H20town, a hometown online newspaper. Being Lisa, she then branched out to find others like herself and built Placeblogger, mixing high-tech with low-tech can-do in equal proportions. Now she and Susan Mernit are teaming up, so who knows what the future holds for all of us?

In conclusion, I’m wishing a Happy Ada Lovelace Day to all of you high-tech high-flyers of every gender, but especially to Lisa Williams.

What child is this?

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Snow has transformed the Nativity scene at Saint Peter’s School in Cambridge on Concord Avenue.

The man with the lantern will have to look quite a bit harder to find Baby Jesus, because now the manger is under six inches snow.

Or is that Diogenes, looking for something quite different?

MacPaint (and other) nostalgia: 1

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

‘So what is that funny hole?” I asked my kind young Mac trainer, pointing at the front of a big Mac Pro tower. Natalya, an anthropology major and certified Macintosh genius, speaks fluent customer-ese, and explained that the “hole” was a FireWire 800 port, something I’d seen before but left strictly alone.

To my chagrin (although also to my satisfaction, since I know it now) the FireWire 800 would have been almost twice as fast a way to synch my old Mac laptop* to my new Mac tower, a task that took more than 10 hours with FireWire 400. Which just goes to show that having loved Macintosh computers since 1984 is no guarantee that you can’t learn a lot more about them from somebody who was most likely born after 1984.

Here are some other things I learned in my first hour of Apple’s new One to One store training:

• What’s the top story right now on CNN? Has anything changed on my Wikipedia watchlist? You can make WebClip widgets from bits of webpages you like, then flash them up onto your desktop using the Dashboard.
• Want to move from a desktop full of writing projects to a desktop full of scrapbooking projects to a desktop covered with email resources? Leopard has a system preference called Spaces that lets you arrow-key around several different monitor screens, even if you have just one monitor.
• On a laptop, you can set preferences to “Left Click” by tapping your mousepad with two fingers.
• A new app called “QuickLook” lets you peek at graphics, Word, Excel files (etc. etc.) without having to open the big clunky program that edits them.

They say you are not old until you stop learning. Lucky for me that I still have so darn much to learn — and that Apple Store genii in Cambridgeside Galleria have so much to teach me.

* I dropped my Mac laptop last week. It still runs, but the funny noise of its fan and the very big ding in its casing suggest that it may not be running for very long into the future.

Biker chicks banner

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This morning I almost got fined $200 for packing undisclosed broccoli!

Yes, Frank and I are in transit again. Out of Boston at 8 a.m. Saturday to San Francisco (6 hour flight, 7 hour layover) to Auckland, New Zealand (13 hour flight, 4 hour layover), and soon onward to Massey University in Palmerston North.

I’m sitting typing this blogpost in Auckland Airport, where, as we picked up our baggage to go through customs, a cute little bio-contam-sniffing beagle got very excited about my carry-on bag!

I couldn’t imagine what she was sniffing–the past aroma of Frank’s lunch sandwich of lox? The beagle kept begging to look inside my mini-suitcase, and her very nice female handler had to check.

And guess what? I had packed our toothbrushes in a used plastic grocery bag that had still inside it two fragments of broccoli!!!

The beagle got several treats for finding my broccoli, and they very kindly let me off with laughter and warnings.

Travelers everywhere, do you know where your broccoli is?

A bit more “wisdom” if you should ever follow in our crazy footsteps:

1) Both BOS and SFO airports have TMobile wifi. I bought a 24-hour Tmobile pass in Logan and was able to keep using the same pass in SFO. Better yet, I was able to put my computer to sleep and then let Frank use the account to go online with his computer.

2) Among the things New Zealand wants to know about if you have them–hiking boots or other camping equipment. They worry about your bringing in dirt on the treads.

3) A 13-hour flight is much more comfortable than a 7-hour flight in some ways–you have real time to sleep, for one thing. And I love Air New Zealand!

Comcast goes out to lunch asks me to hold

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I have been waiting online two hours for a Comcast chat service person.

Fortunately, I have lots of work to do at my computer while I wait.

Higher than usual service times? I hope so. I started off as “No. 2 in the queue” and after an hour graduated to my current status as No. 1.

La la la. Still waiting.

Comcast customer service is “No. 2″ in my book!

Home for Christmas

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Oh how beautiful it was to be home in Boston, as we stood in the cold waiting for a late taxi, under big flakes of snow slowly falling down through the night air.

We got home late December 20, after many delays caused by the third day of Boston snowfall this week.

And today is the shortest day of the year. I plan to enjoy some of these long winter nights sleeping off my jetlag.

Red Sox parade on Tremont Street

Originally uploaded by sooz

Un-be-darn-lievable, isn’t it?

We won we won we won we won we won…again!!!! (Says Betsy, born in Boston, grew up in NH, lives in Cambridge, now on sabbatical in Sweden….and not in fact an actual player on any field when Red Sox play.)

Yaaaayyyyy anyway!

But, in totally unrelated news from Sweden, I was introduced today to the most delicious (and most Swedish) sandwich! Take a bunch of Swedish meatballs, cold. Mix them up with some red beet salad (a little mayonnaise, a lot of chopped-itty-bitty Harvard beets.)

Now stuff all this stuff into what we New Englanders call a torpedo roll, to make what Long Islanders call a submarine sandwich. But you’re not done yet.

Decorate the edge of the sandwich filling with tiny, flavorful, sour, gherkin pickles.

If anything could console me for missing the Red Sox parade, this sandwich would. And thank you, Sooz, for Flickring your awesome view!

We walked home yesterday…

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Go Red Sox tonight, because (according to the Boston Globe, a totally non-partisan source of news) the Heavens have SPOKEN:

“Comet Holmes, which has been orbiting quietly since its discovery in 1892, has undergone a million-fold brightness increase on October 24 — and is now visible to the naked eye (though difficult from under the lights of Fenway),” [MIT Professor of Planetary Science Richard P.] Binzel said…

Can the Red Sox’ fortunes be predicted by celestial events? Some fans may recall the lunar eclipse of Oct. 27, 2004 — the night Boston won its first World Series in 86 years. For Game 2 tonight, there may be another sign in the sky.

“There will be a full moon (but no lunar eclipse as in 2004) for tonight’s World Series game,” Binzel said.

Go, Red Sox!!! Let me add to Professor Binzel’s suggestions, and just as scientifically, that the pictured red sky in Sweden just a few days ago probably also should serve to predict your next victory!

The Boston Globe didn’t miss last night’s show but I did–this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony over at Harvard. I helped write the slide show, even from here in Sweden, but I didn’t get to stand in the thrilling darkness of Sanders Theatre, as I did last year, clicking my handiwork on and trying not to get too distracted.

The Tech went to the Igs, but I could not. I missed the bottomless bowl of soup, the sword-swallowing doctors, the crowd chanting “Eat it!” at hesitant laureates whose Toscanini ice cream had been flavored with vanillin synthesized from cow dung.

I missed the celebration of the “Gay Bomb.”

The list of 2007 winners is already online at the Ig Nobel website, whose servers are already under heavy demand. So it’s probably a good thing the webcast will be online just a bit later.

If you’re in the Cambridge area, one big and free Ig event is still to come. On Saturday (1 p.m.) at MIT in 10-250 (that’s inside the Infinite Corridor, but still quite easy to find) will be the Ig Informal Lectures. Don’t be late, even that great big room fills up pretty fast.

And Toscanini’s is giving free samples of its new “Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist” ice cream today (Friday) at 899 Main St.

I missed the show this year, but next year I surely will not!