The Nerd's Eye View

As you can imagine I have a bit of egg on my face due to being a week late (which I'm sure Ada Lovelace would not have stood for at all, being English and a mathematician to boot, as well as a Lady). But when I realized this day was actually so closely past, I couldn't resist the urge to put up a quick post about it. For those of you who know me well, you know I'm a big supporter of women in the sciences and frankly the more the better. There's something about walking into an engineering building in any college in the world, that changes the enterer (is that word?) from whatever gender they are into an Engineer, and that's a lovely thing. So kudos out there Women of Science! and don't let the bastards grind you down!

Post-script: Just want to thank Shaenon Garrity, creator of Narbonic and Skin Horse (for getting me into mad science ladies), and Sydney Padua, creator of The Adventures of Babbage and Lovelace for teaching me about Ada Lovelace and opening the door to a real discussion of women in the sciences. Ms Padua is also an accomplished animator and general art bad ass, so check her out talking about graphic storytelling and just random Babbage anecdotes.

Check out more about Ada Lovelace day at Finding Ada.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yeah, I don't write. I know. Anyway, I'm here in San Diego "on business". My employers at LiteBrite Co have decided to send me to an industry conference/trade show and in my quest to make myself indispensable I said yes. So here I am at the convention center, which is quite familiar due to the times I have spent here at San Diego Comic-Con (yes, nerd, proud, let's move on). In a sense it's pretty much the same. Booths all over the place, nerds wandering the aisles, some dressed well, some dressed like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. The only thing that really stands out, or at least stands out most, is the large number of people who look like they don't belong here.

Before charges of elitism come flying this way (yes, elitist, unapologetic, let's move on), I am not simply judging a book by its cover. I am judging a number of books by their collective covers, statistically. By that I mean, that we all know that engineers have a tendency to be either slobs, or at the very least careless about their appearance. So a few unkempt fat guys wandering the aisles of a trade show is not a big surprise. What is a surprise is the guy in the wife-beater with the large facial tattoos who is there with his girlfriend (also sporting excessive body ink). That was second look worthy, but owing to my desire to not die by shanking at a technical conference it was not worth an iPhone pic.

So what is it about the youth of San Diego? Are they really that into fiber optics? Perhaps. My cynical nature, though, begs to know whether or not this is some sort of convention tourism. I mean, do people honestly just come to conventions of any type in hopes of picking up some plastic bags full of crappy swag? And why doesn't this happen in San Francisco? Mind you, it's miserable around here and we may or may not have the sheer volume of conventions that San Diego does; either that or our youths are less industrious. Either way, it's a weird thing to see a couple of thuggish kids in Michael Vick, football jerseys conversing with a thick-waisted mid-level marketing guy about optical components.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like most nerds, I am a big fan of comics, although I like to pride myself for evolving past stories of spandex-clad do-gooders cavorting around the city, with a quip and blow for equally colorful miscreants.

aside: That introductory sentence was almost entirely inspired by the prose of Stan Lee - thanks Stan!

So like the evolved nerd I am, I have instead been reading comics that talk about people, their lives and all that David Copperfield crap that I'm sure you all hate.

aside: That sentence was entirely lifted from Catcher in the Rye - thanks JD Salinger!

At any rate I ran across a comic entitled "Y, the Last Man" which follows the exploits of the improbably named Yorick, a "lovable" escape-artists/slacker who rises one morning to discover himself (and his pet monkey) literally the last man on earth. That is to say that all the other men have died mysteriously and only women are left. The world turns into the sort of "womyn's land" different from the one envisioned by separatists in the 70's. Now, I'm really not going to sit here and argue about whether or not the disappearance of men would lead to a heaven on earth or what have you. I will say that the book is interesting, though poorly drawn and with somewhat weak dialogue at times. But it's interesting...

You know what else is interesting? That one of the characters on Lost was reading Y the Last Man in Spanish in a scene, the same week that a Y the Last Man poster is on the eponymous hero's wall in the show Chuck.

WTF people? What's with the full court press on this comic? Could a movie be in the offing? Does Hollywood like getting women to complain? The answers are mostly yes, here. While the comic is not - mostly - some adolescent fantasy of being the last man alive to service a world of women, it is also not a different adolescent fantasy of how awesome the world would be if women ran the show. There's a lot of room to screw it all up, most of which has been at least traversed by the authors of the comic, but Hollywood does have bigger budgets. Gosh, this post went somewhere entirely different from where I thought it would.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just got introduced to this comic, XKCD. It's nerdly and a bit clever, with simple graphics, though it can be a bit unsophisticated at times. Hell, I saw this and I was pleased as punch:

link courtesy of Butta Phat

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I do.

Nerd friends, the Watchmen has been adapted into a movie and I for one am going to be first in line to see it. It's a great graphic novel, and probably one of the first to question the whole "superhero" genre and find it wanting. Check out the trailer here and don't bother telling me I am a dork - I already know.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As you may or may not know, I am a devotee of comics and webcomics in particular, and webcomics with a twisted sense of humor in specifically particular. The Achewood strip from the other day is too hilarious for words. I think I was on the floor for the lines:

"He was like the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass"
and
"Oh my god just like the greats he protected his family by fighting under a Soubriquet Rouge"

Gold, Jerry, gold.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)