Saturday, December 16, 2006
An ill wind, a fine line, or no such thing as total loss?
Just when I thought Borat had no fear, some of his fellow countryfolk raise the stakes. This carries the concept of ludic responses to the War on Terror to a new level.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Finally
Not quite my luck yet -- maybe in a few more days -- but finally today Michele received copies of the new edition of our New Literacies book. We have been looking forward to this one coming out, and are hoping that it will be as well received as the first edition.
It's a very different book from the first edition -- more than 90% new content. It is also about 10% longer.
We think it is rather better than the first edition, but whether that view is shared by others remains to be seen. Meanwhile, both editions seem to be selling in tandem. Given that books can be produced one at a time to demand these days we are wondering whether first editions actually go out of 'print' any more.
Meanwhile, the New Literacies Sampler we have edited has gone to press and should be out by March or April. We are looking forward to that because the contributors are among our very favourite people. And that is pretty special.
The Screen Goddess IT Calendar
Today I received my order of the Screen Goddess IT Calendar for 2007. This is a super smart not-for-profit production. It features women who work in the Australian Information Technology industry posing in movie theme contexts (apart from the cover pic which portrays Christmas hues in an American Beauty Rose kind of way).
The back cover blurb tells us that:
"The theme 'Screen Goddesses of IT' capitalises on our admiration for movie stars, showing real 'goddesses' of the computer screen -- a diverse selection of real women working in a wide variety of roles within the Information Technology industry. Much has been debated and written about the declining interest of women in taking up technology studies and careers. This calendar aims to dispel the 'geeky' image of IT and the perception that IT is not a desirable career for women by providing an exposé of real women with unreal careers -- all living and loving IT. Profits from the sale of this calendar will go to a variety of programs to encourage young women to consider careers in IT, science and technology".
It makes a great gift and it has the quality every calendar most needs -- the capacity to catch the eye.
Check it out.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Transferring large files
Every so often we find ourselves needing to share very large files. We've tried numerous ways of doing this--setting up storage acounts on university servers (plagued with clunky access interfaces and firewalls), bit torrent files (never can seem to get it to work properly), uploading into the background of our various Yahoo websites (space is really not enough).
I've just come across these web services that might be just the thing we're looking for--off to check them out now:
