Smart Girls, Good Friends, and Pretty Dresses

Given my interest in girls in STEM, it made sense that I took notice the first time I saw an ad for the Project MC² fashion dolls. The way the ads were structured, they appeared to be girls with interests across science, technology, and the arts, and I loved that. Then, I learned there was a series, and binge watched that while I was sick last month. As expected, the girls work together, each coming from her own STEM interests, to solve problems. And each girl is absolutely crazy about her own interests, and in exploring where her own interests intersect with the other girls’ interests. And this is all from girls wearing cute clothes and learning how to navigate the interpersonal skills appropriate to girls of their age. The series has a lot to offer.

I’ve since learned the dolls each come with experiments appropriate to the girl represented by the doll, along with tips for how to continue those experiments at home.

While I was sick, I also gave Liv and Maddie a shot. I’d heard an explanation of how the show was filmed (that involved splitting scenes oddly) that seemed so backwards for current technology. Having now watched the entire series (because I couldn’t stop myself), the show does not support that explanation. (It turns out they actually opted to use a technique from an older show with a single actress playing two roles.) But that’s not why I stuck it out. I watched the entire series because I was fascinated by Liv, the twin I assumed I wouldn’t like at first because she initially came across as stereotypical and flaky.

Except that seems to have been the point. Liv is an actress who has spent more time away from school than in it (beyond what would be required on set). She is into fashion and helping her friends get the boy. But she tends to make personal choices that support her friends and family. And no matter what she may think of someone, she tries to always have a kind word and not assume the worst of someone unless she has a reason.

She’s also been working on a science-heavy show, and has a great skill for recognizing where something she’s learned from the show can be applied to a situation she’s currently in. She helps out her nerdy brother by building the winning Rube Goldberg device in a competition. Taking construction skills she’s learned from her inventor best friend, she leads the other girls in her cast to build their own woodblock car and win a derby against the boys in the cast, changing the storyline in her show in the process. When she needs to quickly learn basketball for an audition, her athletic twin realizes she can use Liv’s ability to see connections and apply skills to use shopping to turn Liv into a passable player for the audition.

Both shows are great examples of interesting girls who are smart, while being good friends and people, while being totally girly. And girls need more opportunities to see that.

A Lifelong Geek Girl Tries to Process Today

Even though I think we all sort of knew it was coming (certainly, a number of news outlets and geek blogs were expecting it, for how quickly they got their articles published), Carrie Fisher’s passing earlier today has left all of us stunned, sad, and trying to decide how we each want to process it. Many are reflecting on her body of work both as an actress and as a writer. Many are reflecting on the way she moved through the world, warts and all. Many women are reflecting on how much Fisher’s iconic role Princess Leia has impacted their lives.

That’s pretty much where I’m sitting. I wasn’t quite two when Star Wars was released, so I really never knew a world where there wasn’t this sassy princess helping to smuggle information, unafraid to take up whatever was necessary (be it words, arms, or chains) to protect herself and those dear to her, and walking that line between being assertive and compassionate at the same time. And then The Force Awakens happened, and those of us who met Leia as children were suddenly gifted with this beautiful example of how to age gracefully (and thank Fisher for fighting for that).

No matter how you look at it, Leia was a badass. So was Fisher.

Because this is the last week of a year that hasn’t played nice with anyone on any level, a lot of us are looking at this afternoon’s grim announcement through a lens of, “How can I be that level of badass in my own life? My own communities? My own work?”

And it’s not like we were all asleep and are just waking up. It’s that so many of us were already starting to think about these questions when, one last time, Leia inspired us with her own journey. When Carrie Fisher inspired us, one last time, with her journey. The question now is how do we honor that in our own lives, to show our gratitude for her facing and fighting demons of all shapes and sizes?

This is going to take some time…

Someone on Twitter reminded everyone that Kenny Baker also passed away this year. He passed away in August. Erik Bauersfeld, who played Admiral Ackbar, passed away in April. This hasn’t been a good year for Star Wars people.

Coding and the Evolution of Math Education

Every time someone posts one of those visual algebra problems on Facebook, my mother and I get into a discussion about order of operations. When she was in school, PEMDAS wasn’t a thing they taught. You just solved problems moving left to right. By the time I got to elementary school, teachers were drilling us about our dear Aunt Sally. I’d been teaching algebra for a few years when it finally occurred to me why the order of operations was even a thing (and why it was more likely to produce a correct answer than simply working left to right regardless of the operators).

Similarly, I learned in high school to describe translations through words or some really bizarre shorthand that never seemed to carry over to other math classes. But when I finally had to teach translations to middle schoolers, they were learning a uniform notation that actually made sense to me. They learned to craft a statement that would tell every single point in whatever they were moving where to go to keep the shape. In short, they were learning to write algorithms. (I was so jealous of them. *grin*) Thankfully, I had some computer science classes and random attempts at coding under my belt at that point, so I was able to help them understand what they were doing and why. (Seriously, A’ = (x+3, y-2) would have been a million times easier than all the garbage we had to write.)

At the time, it struck me as pretty cool, because taking a logical opportunity in math class to introduce students to thinking algorithmically has some benefits. First off, it gives them exposure to algorithmic thinking. (Exposure is always a good thing.) It shows them a situation where algorithmic thinking can be useful. And for those students who might move on to code in school or on their own, it gives them an opportunity to start thinking about how to craft efficient code.

All of this was rolling around in my head this morning while I was messing around with Santa’s Village, Google’s interactive Christmas countdown calendar. A couple of days have had coding games using the visual coding tools that are starting to show up more and more in children’s toys and apps. (Seriously…how cute is this coding caterpillar?) I’ve never played with visual coding tools before, so it took a moment to see how what I know about coding translated into these brightly colored blocks. But I caught on quickly and beat the coding games.

What struck me most (once I moved on from how cool it would have been to have things like this to play with in between learning to write lines of BASIC and lines of Turbo Pascal when I was a kid (I’m a little old. Heh.) was how it presents the idea of programming. Each action is a bit of code displayed as a puzzle piece. How you put the puzzle pieces together dictates how your little elf moves. If there is a more efficient way to move your elf, the game lets you know and then gives you an opportunity to find it. (For those curious, it will display the javascript you created for that level, creating the mental connection between the puzzle piece and the actual code for those ready to explore that.)

It was certainly far less stressful than searching through a hundred lines of code looking for that one forgotten semicolon when you’re still learning how to read code. *wink*

But that’s how it works. I learned a long convoluted way to present translations, only to teach a much more efficient, meaningful method years later. I learned to just sit down and write lines of code. Children younger than I was when I wrote my first BASIC program (and I was in elementary school) are learning,”This tile does this. When I connect it with this tile, they do this and that.” And they’ll continue to grow and learn this way of thinking until they’re presented with an opportunity to actually write the lines of code, or read the lines of code, or find other ways to apply that algorithmic thinking they learned through play and visual means.

As a funny side note, I’ve talked a little here about kids learning algorithmic thinking and then finding non-coding ways to apply that to the world around them. The last computer class I took focused on object-oriented programming in C++. A few years later, I took that mindset to develop some interchangeable educational programs for a museum. You really never know where or how you’re going to end up using what you’ve learned. That’s why exposure and general practice are so very useful when learning a skill.

Considering Portal Science Fiction

Earlier this month, Writing Excuses set a prompt to take one big idea from two favorite books, and mash them up into something new. What quickly came to mind was the locative art in Pattern Recognition and tessering in A Wrinkle in Time. And then the question became: How does anyone do anything with those?

As I sat there thinking about this over breakfast, I realized that in a way they’re kind of the same thing. Sort of. We have locative art today. Artists and performers are doing some pretty impressive things with it. We just call it augmented reality. Have the appropriate app on your phone or tablet. Go to the designated place (at the designated time, if necessary). Look around through the app to see the art or performance that’s been installed there to experience it. It’s not really there, and is only visible through the tool…like looking into another world through some sort of portal (if you’re into science fiction and fantasy…).

Tessering is a child’s primer to quantum mechanics. I’d been obsessed with the ant in A Wrinkle in Time for eight years before I read the Shiva paradox. And the moment I read that, I knew I was looking at a variation of the ant crossing the skirt hem. (Not bad for a fifteen year old drama queen. *wink*) In the books, tessering is moving across space and time by folding both as necessary to allow you to take the fewest steps. You’re moving across planets and planes as simply as one would cross a room (barring two-dimensional and frozen planets. Always take along Aunt Beast!)

Stepping away from tessering into the greater realm of quantum mechanics, you eventually get to the mathematical theories that are enabling physicists to seriously consider the nature and reality of shifted planes in the same space (which is murder on the whole “two separate instances of matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time” thing). So, while you may not be tessering when you engage in augmented reality because you aren’t literally going somewhere, you are experiencing a shifted plane of sorts, an alternate reality.

It’s not a mashup. It’s a weak rationalization at best.

What’s really funny is that I’m now thinking about the fact The Chronicles of Amber is on my list of favorite books. Tessering. Walking to/from Amber into the Shadows. Really not different. Seriously, how long have I been obsessed with portal stories?

What’s even funnier? Portal stories are typically a fantasy thing. But so many of my favorite portal stories are science fiction, and don’t necessarily directly involve a portal, just the idea of long-distance travel in short time.

Something to keep in mind…

Don’t Be Boring

I used to tell this to my students to goad them into exploring or doing something. It even worked sometimes, which was impressive given that I was teaching teenagers. 😉

A post shared by Rebecca Thomas (@kirylin) on Oct 31, 2016 at 9:08am PDT

 

I’ve taken to posting encouraging quotes on my Instagram accounts early in the week, in part to encourage others, in part to motivate myself.

I’m in the process of leveling my to-do list, revamping things in an effort to reconnect with myself and my work. (It sounds fairly cheesy, but I was getting in pretty bad shape here.) And I came across this quote (because I’m the kind who scribbles random quotes into her notes and tasks) that reminded me of conversations I’ve had with too many people:

“I’m bored.”

“So go do something.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you enjoy doing? What projects do you have going?”

Blank stare.

A million snarky statements of disbelief pass through my mind. “Surely there’s something you’ve always wanted to do. Read? Something?”

Melodramatic sigh. “That sounds like a lot of work.” Flop.

“Right…”

 

It sounds like I’m saying you don’t have a right to sit around and do nothing. And I’m not. You should take the time to do nothing. Your brain needs it if you’ve been doing things for a while. It needs that breathing space.

But if you haven’t been doing anything and you’re bored and you can’t think of some way to get yourself un-bored, you simply aren’t trying.

How does being bored translate to being boring? Simple. If you’re bored, you aren’t doing anything. And if you aren’t doing anything, you really don’t have anything to talk about or to contribute usefully to a conversation. And that’s pretty boring.

Just remember to not hurt yourself or other people while trying to get un-bored.

 

Cross-posted from my Imzy community. (This is an experiment to see how I feel about cross-posting these.)

The “Fake” Fan and the Enduring Fandom

A couple of weeks ago, an Instagrammer I follow in part because of her charming Harry Potter shots was the victim of a troll bashing her for having a large collection of Harry Potter memorabilia despite having only discovered the books a couple of years ago, claiming she was a fake fan. (We won’t get into how not Potter that behavior is.) The Instagrammer in question is a college student (and I’m fairly confident the troll is younger than at least the very first book), most likely born within a year or so of the first book being published.

It got me thinking, because I was just barely born into a world without Star Wars in it, and then had to work with people who had no idea Episode 1 was released many years after Episode 6. And then I taught kids whose idea of  Star Wars consisted of Clone Wars. And now there’s the new movies. As I wasn’t quite two when Star Wars itself was released, I can’t make any claims to remember the world before it, but it was an integral part of my entire childhood. It was the same for others who grew up around that time.

Those discovering the Star Wars movies today are experiencing a different fandom than the one I grew up with, mainly because they’re growing up in a time that’s nothing like the time I grew up in and fandom cannot escape the effect of the society around it. Does that make them fake fans for coming to the series later on? No. Of course not. I look at the little girl who’s fallen head first into a fandom that existed before her parents were born, and think it’s super cool that she can run around pretending to be Rey the way I ran around pretending to be Leia when I was her age.

Harry Potter is the same way. The first book is just over twenty years old. So many children have been born in those twenty years, and are coming to Hogwarts for the first time. And they’re falling in love with it, and the fandom, and the general culture. As long as those books are in print, they will gain new fans who didn’t even exist when the series began. Does that make them fake fans? No, of course it doesn’t, no more than the girl cosplaying Rey is. With a long-running, long-lasting fandom like that, the newcomer is just as valid a fan as the one who’s been there for years.

That’s both the blessing and the curse of the fandom that spans generations (and there are so many out there) – There will be the elders who have been around since the early days; there will be the newcomers who just stumble in one day and never succeed in stumbling back out. And they’re all there because they love the fandom, and they all celebrate the fandom in their own way. In a way that’s often culturally appropriate to when they discovered the fandom. There’s plenty of room for everyone. Trolling newcomers is just ridiculous and against the spirit of fandom.

Writing Fan Fiction When You’re New to the Fandom

So, I’ve spent a lot of my free time this month marathoning Critical Role from the beginning, finding all sorts of little gems I’d either missed or forgotten about, and reading the fan fiction. And right around the time I got to Episode 45, I came across a fanfic written in response to all the fanfic that have Vax mercilessly punching Percy to a literal bloody pulp. The writer, admittedly a relatively new fan, had written their kinder, gentler version because the trope bothered them, and they just couldn’t see Vax going after Percy at all.

As I type this, there are sixty-seven episodes of Critical Role. It takes roughly 260 hours (Thanks, critrolestats!) to marathon them. So, a new Critter (a Critical Role fan) is forgiven for not necessarily wanting to go back and catch up. On the other hand, a new Critter wanting to write what they believe to be canon fan fiction without doing a little research (even if that research is just turning to another Critter and asking, “Why are people so obsessed with Vax punching Percy?”) should probably stop themselves and just go ahead and put in the time.

Maybe it’s the fact I came across this fic while watching Episode 44 that made me scrunch up my nose at the author’s complete unawareness of the punch or the events that led up to it, but that single punch is canon (and an amazing show of restraint on Vax’s part).

I used to have this problem when reading Yu-Gi-Oh fan fiction where it became obvious rather quickly that someone had written a fanfic, not of the original story, but of someone else’s fanfic. Yu-Gi-Oh had been around for a few years before I started reading the fan fiction, and so there were cases where the fanfic of a fanfic ran layers deep, and had problems not unlike what happens when you run a copy through an old mimeograph machine, and then run that new copy through the mimeograph machine, repeating the process several times. The copies eventually contain some of the same elements, but are faded so far as to be unrecognizable next to the original.

Being a newer fandom, Critical Role doesn’t have that deep of a problem yet, but moments like these are a sign of things to come. It’s odd to be in a position to watch it begin. But to the new fan wanting to jump in, I still say connect with the original first so you won’t find your “original” story has unnecessarily reinvented a wheel.

Working Against My Own Sensibilities

I’m not a fan of horror. Really, I’m not a fan of gore. It’s amazing how many things I’ve walked out on because the gore level got to be too much for me.

There’s a funny story from my college days about the great debate over whether or not I could handle Independence Day. My friends (who were pretty good at sorting out what I could and couldn’t handle) literally debated for days over whether or not I should be warned away from it before they finally decided I could handle it. It was over a year before I finally saw it, and could’t for the life of me figure out what the problem was until I got to the alien dissection. If you’re familiar with the movie, you know that’s not a terribly gory scene, and yet I walk out on it every single time I watch the movie because I can’t handle it.

Even stranger, two of my favorite manga/anime are Descendants of Darkness and  Death Note. There’s absolutely no question both are gruesome, and yet I sit and listen to them with some regularity. I’d love to say that’s probably how I survive the gore in both stories, but I made it all the way through both manga (such as Descendants of Darkness is). So… Yeah… I can’t explain it.

I point this out because I’m in the process of announcing my newest audio drama project and trying to find the right wording to warn people about what they’re walking into. Despite having done other audio dramas with similar concerns regarding gore, this is the first time I’ve felt compelled to warn people. And I’m having to think about it in terms of, “How would I want to be warned that I might not be able to sit all the way through this?”

A project I willingly auditioned for and worked on…and I’m trying to write my own trigger warning.

Because it’s compelling audio fare, horror is a popular genre for audio dramas. It makes sense from a purely academic standpoint. The tension. The ability to cheese it up or dial it back as necessary for the show. There’s just so much you can do to really create the right mood and pacing. But it also means that if I want to continue working in audio dramas (which I enjoy), I have to suck up a bit of my inherent unwillingness to set foot near horror and gore and just try to not involve my very vivid imagination in what I’m doing. (I fail at that regularly…)

It’s an interesting push-and-pull. One that I have the hang of on the voice acting side, even as I fight to not run out of the room. And when it’s clear from the audition notes that the show is probably going to be way too much for me, I usually avoid the audition altogether, just to make my life easier.

But it’s funny to think about in the grand scheme of things.

Revisiting Meaningful Glyphs: Emoji

A few years ago, I wrote a surprisingly popular post on language as a series of meaningful glyphs, citing a cartoon that employed this in a subtle way. At the time, I compared it to learning any language with an alphabet different from yours, because alphabets are a set of glyphs that really only hold meaning or significance to those familiar with the alphabet.

I’ve also written about the more visual (less text-based) language more and more companies are starting to use on their websites and apps that often force the user to determine what the company meant with a particular image. (My favorite to this day is the Archive button in Gmail, which didn’t read as “archive” at all until a mouseover tool tip was added.)

These days, we have the ability to speak entirely in images (if your phone supports it. Mine doesn’t, which may be a good thing.) Once nothing more than a few keystrokes cleverly strung together to look like something (@-,-‘—), emoticons have now graduated to a growing series of little images. Emoticons are still in use and have their place, but they’re often rendered into little graphical faces. It’s now all about the emoji.

As I mentioned, my phone doesn’t natively support emojis, and that’s probably for the best. Because for all my love of staring at foreign alphabets, emoji often don’t translate for me. A friend posts a row of images containing a car, a tree, and a wine glass, and I have no idea if she’s off on a wine-tasting trip in a nearby town in the woods, or if she is trying to relax with a glass of wine after wrapping her car around a tree.

Emoji aren’t just an alphabet; they’re a graphical language. It becomes more difficult to understand what the person leaving the message wanted people to know, because an emoji may mean one thing to one person and something else to a different person, or a person may use the emoji to mean one thing in one context and another in a different context.

It’s a whole new level of language that opens itself to more creative expression while at the same time failing to simplify communication between speakers. And it’s a bit too much for this girl. Sorry. But it is interesting to watch it it play out.

Lessons Learned From Reconnecting With Journaling

Like so many little girls, I grew up with a journal hidden somewhere in my living space. Okay, mine might actually have been sitting out wherever I left it last. Still is. The point is, I’ve spent most of my life with a notebook in my hand, documenting life, working on ideas, trying to keep track of things.

But last year, my life took a pretty hard hit, and like so many other things my journaling stopped being useful. It wasn’t that I stopped journaling. It’s more that it became nothing but a to-do list of those things I was doing just trying to keep sane when sanity just wasn’t to be had.

I came into 2016 hoping to put 2015 squarely behind me quickly, and that meant getting my to-do list under control and actually serving my various projects. Which really meant getting my journal and my daily habits going again to help focus my day. But it hasn’t been the easiest path.

I started hearing about Bullet Journaling and gave it a look. While it isn’t for me, it has made me realize that my journal is not only my notebook, but also my digital life management tools. And it has inspired me to be more conscientious about how I rebuild my journal. My daily habits have been restructured into Tiny Habits to support my personal and project goals. (I also identified some daily habits that were nothing but time sucks and kicked them to the curb.) I also now have a better weekly review process that is already helping me find and change what hasn’t been working in my weekly routines and work habits. It’s proven to be a good start.

Some of the Bullet Journaling community are exploring merging GTD and Kanban into their journals. While GTD has not historically worked for me, I looked into it again to see if that had changed. I even found a system that converts Evernote into a GTD/Kanban workhorse and started cleaning up Evernote. It turns out my brain still does not do GTD, and Evernote is nothing more than a cabinet in my workflow. But it’s a more organized, more relevant cabinet now, so I consider that a win.

The Bullet Journaling community is a very visual group, which I’m not. But in the spirit of giving it a fair chance, I’ve started adding color to my paper journal in the form of tick boxes shaded with colored pencils, and I’ve discovered washi tape to add a bit of personality to my pages. The tick boxes have turned out to be invaluable. In only three weeks, I started seeing at a glance where things weren’t working, and what really needed to be tracked. (I also started scheduling my colored pencil pattern so it creates pretty gradients on my page.) I’ve made some great improvements in my study habits, inspired by the sudden discovery I’m more likely to keep up with audio materials than text materials, and I’m doing a much better job of keeping up with my daily reading.

One of the stranger side effect of falling in with the Bullet Journaling crowd has been joining #rockyourhandwriting. As I said, many BuJo enthusiasts are very visual people. They doodle. They handletter. They’re really kind of cool. But this hashtag simply invites participants to work on their daily handwriting as they respond to a prompt. I’ve been wanting to create blocks of text in my graphic design for a while, and this has proved to be just the nudge I needed.

I don’t know if any of this was interesting. Maybe you’ll read this and consider looking into Bullet Journaling or GTD to help organize your work and keep you moving forward. Maybe you’ll check out #rockyourhandwriting and come write with us. Maybe you’ll stop following this blog. But for the first time in three years, I feel closer to being in control of what I get done.