Dad tried to teach me BASIC when I was young, maybe 8 or so. I caught onto the syntax pretty quickly, but I had no interest in working with it; to me, interesting computer programs were Number Munchers and ClarisWorks and Kid Pix. They had a UI and could clearly be used for something fun and/or useful. In BASIC, I could make sequences of mathematically-significant numbers. Bo-ring! So, *obviously*, I wasn’t going to be a programmer when I grew up.

Except, at the same time, in elementary school I was creating huge, elaborate games in HyperCard and HyperStudio. I took a summer class on HTML at age 11 and promptly built a personal website full of animated GIFs and thunderstorm photography. As I know now, I was *totally* going to be a programmer, at very least on the front end. But at that time I didn’t see any of the stuff I liked as coding! Coding meant mathematical curiosities and text-based toy programs.

This perception largely continued through college. During my sophomore year I decided to take the first two CS courses (5 and 60) for fun, mainly because my friends at Mudd had taken them and raved about the professor. Prof Ran was, in fact, amazing, and I was glad I took the classes for background’s sake. But again, it was all context-less toy programs–a Towers of Hanoi solver, a command-line-based Connect Four player. The “coolest” thing we did was write a Centipede clone (I added the SkiFree yeti to my version as an additional obstacle :D) that you could host on your student website via a Java applet–and all the applet code was provided in whole without explanation. Additionally, it appeared that my chemistry curse (that everything that could go wrong did, and even if nothing could go wrong, the laws of physics themselves would break to make my experiment fail) applied to CS as well, given the number of weird errors I encountered in the homework that not even the TAs could figure out. Since our grades were predicated on turning in compiling, working code at midnight (late submissions got zeroes), my worst grade in college ended up being CS 60. So I took that as a signal to give it up.

Instead, I took all the front-end / digital media classes offered in my home campus’ art department. Disappointingly, though, those were almost entirely Dreamweaver and Flash-based, with only an elementary coverage of HTML and CSS and no scripting at all. I ended up spending all of “Intermediate Web Design” flailingly trying to teach myself PHP, since I already knew more code than the art professor who taught the class. There simply was no course offered that covered the wide space between CS and art, no ‘How to build a dang web application.’ Obviously there *had* to be connections between functional code to the UIs I was accustomed to, but I had no idea how engineers did it and no way to learn. So I pretty much gave up on the discipline.

Basically what revived my interest was having the opportunity to work on OpenHatch. Getting thrown into web app development and all the associated languages and tools–Python, Django, git, Agile, bash and other command line nonsense–all at once? Yeah, it was a lot. But Python out of context is just a toy. Django out of context is plausible, but hard. Git out of context…wouldn’t've made any dang sense. So sure, I couldn’t remember half the git commands (Asheesh eventually made a wiki page for me :P) and I had to look up how to restart the Django development server practically every dang time. But I made do, and I learned it, because the context totally freaking motivated me to. Because *finally* code had a purpose–it was clear, finally, how it could be self-expressive and useful to me. Learning these tools meant I could help make OpenHatch exist. Like, fuck yes.

Obviously, other people don’t feel the same way about coding and CS that I do. (If everybody did, there would be no CS majors!) Lots of people appreciate the beauty of code and of pure CS problems in themselves. Which is awesome. And I do too, to some extent. But I don’t research the history of masterpieces or do experimental art–I draw pretty things. I never studied music theory–I sing. The routine conflation of English literature and writing coursework (NOT the same thing, DAMMIT) makes my brain explode. Asheesh once gave a talk on “Debian for shy people” and often talks of “programming for shy people” generally. I happen to be not just shy but practical, too. And it took intense personal mentoring via OpenHatch and integrated non-traditional-CS ‘how to build a web app’ curricula via IOLab and Rails Outreach for Women for me to finally feel empowered enough to call myself a programmer.** Just a shy, practical one. :)

* Fun story from my dad: When I first saw After Dark, it was running on Mac OS System 6, with an add-on that made the control panel a hierarchical menu. Even at age two, I could mouse through it and turn the screensaver on myself. Then Dad installed the System 7 beta, which turned the menu into a folder, so the control panel would no longer pop over to the right when you clicked on it. Nonetheless, I apparently instantly figured out to release the button to open the folder, then double-click on After Dark (when before it would have been a single click). Dad passed along to the System 7 developers that the graphical cue of a window appeared to be enough to get users to do the right behavior–at least, two-year-old users. (I (today) told Dad that Apple should’ve used me in their ads–”So easy a two-year-old can use it!”)

** It also helped that in my new grad program, everyone seems to think of me as being super-technical. Like, sure, I guess I had more experience with this stuff than many of my classmates going into 206 last semester. But me, “technical”? It feels as if Velma were “the hot chick” in the Scooby-Doo gang–bizarre, though also awesome. Imposter syndrome, engage! :P

I’m still not at a point where I really, truly *like* how my body looks, but I’m at a point where that aspect bugs me less than my elbow problems and fitness level (specifically in climbing). Found that fact weirdly comforting today, despite my overall frustration with being injured. (STILL waiting on the new insurance card so I can make an appointment to have my elbow looked at! And my own research suggests that this damn thing won’t heal for at least 3-6 months!)

My first open-source software patch was made September 30. Today, October 10, was my first case of stereotype threat related to coding directed at me. Given the kind of sentiments that are common in FLOSS as a whole, I was probably overdue for some idiot saying something. It still disrupts your head a little bit–you’re trying to summarize your work and get shit done, but some arse has set up a big neon flashing arrow that points at you and says “LOOK! A GIRL.” It’s just a mite distracting. >.<

The incident didn’t go down *quite* as depicted. Yet again, I’m grateful that OpenHatch, the OSS project I’m involved with, has a high concentration of fellow lady coders and male allies who are awesome and totally rock. I didn’t even hardly have to respond. :)

Diaspora is raising money via Kickstarter, which will enable the four-person team to work on this full-time this summer. I encourage you to contribute. In the meantime, I hope they choose to release their code and find ways for the community to contribute in non-monetary ways as soon as possible.

For instance: Diaspora currently uses a picture of a dandelion as their ‘logo’. Nice photograph, but photo =/= logo. So I spent the afternoon futzing around with Photoshop and came up with this:

I emailed them it a few minutes ago, we’ll see if they like it or not.

Mandelbrot Set, you’re a Rorschach test on fire

You’re a Day-Glo pterodactyl

You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire

You’re one badass fucking fractal

The above is the best quatrain, in my opinion, in Jonathan Coulton‘s ample music catalog. Thus, I made this:

and submitted it to TopatoCo’s Jonathan Coulton-themed t-shirt design contest. I would totally wear it. Hell, I’d make four shirts, one for each line of the chorus, if they’d let me. And wear ‘em all at once.

Then I came home from work and this happened:

Yeah, I’m going to hell. But with all the news lately of Google moving Google.cn to Hong Kong and withdrawing from China’s censorship rules, it was inevitable. If something along these lines hasn’t already been put together, by someone who sucks less at Photoshop than me, I would be very surprised…

Edit: Hm, there’s this graphic from a Wired article about Google’s withdrawal that’s sort of similar. More colorful, less simple.

Well, instead of working on my webcomic, I spent the rest of the day drawing a thing, which I shall call “Associate Designer versus Zombie Army”:

A larger version of the drawing is now my computer desktop image. :)

Man, I wonder if anyone’s put together a Left 4 Dead scenario inside a graphic design studio…

And before everyone and their mom says it again: no, just because Chia is blonde and curvy doesn’t mean she’s supposed to be me. She is actually based on two ladies who will remain nameless. Indeed, unlike last time, most of the Zebulon characters are inspired by real humans. But so long as I don’t actually say who is based on whom, hopefully no one can get mad! Mwahahaha.

Game mechanics. Game mechanics. Game mechanics. Say it three times fast.

Is it so terribly awful that most of our discussions of game mechanics over the last three months were punctuated by tittering? I’ve been saving this illustration for WEEKS.

Anyway. Actual discussion of game mechanics and how it applies to OpenHatch coming soon!

Been awhile since I drew comics; figured I should get back into the swing of things.

It’s based on a dream Nelson had a couple weeks ago. I thought the idea was adorable so I had to illustrate it.