It’s Geek Mental Help Week from Monday. You can get involved.
I believe that talking about mental health issues and sharing our experiences—not just those of people who suffer, but also those who live with and support us—can help everyone. Whether you struggle with your own mental health or care for someone who does, you can help others to understand how you cope. Geek Mental Help Week is all about sharing those experiences.
Petra has always been the strong one. She was the best friend that Chloe could have possibly had. Little wonder then that Chloe’s death continues to hit her so hard.
I still can’t fully comprehend it all nor do I have any idea how to learn to move on. All I know is that ever since the day I found out, I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster. I go from being in shock, to being sad and angry, or completely numb.
Petra is getting help now. That’s good. She’s also writing about what she has been going through. That’s brave. Very brave.
She is one of the best human beings I know.
A genuinely amusing alternative history of programming languages.
As the year draws to a close, I find myself casting an eye back on the past twelve months. There are two events that stand out for me:
I learned a lot at both events. I think there’s enormous benefit in getting together with your peers for days of intense geekery—it’s quite the learning experience.
Looking ahead to next year, there’s one more such event on the horizon.
Aaron started up Retreats 4 Geeks last year and kicked it off with an outstanding week in the woods with Eric. From March 25th to 30th Aaron and I will be leading Retreat 4 Geeks on Progressive Enhancement. Here’s the best bit: it’ll be taking place on a horse ranch in Clark, Colorado.
I’m expecting an intense three days of hands-on coding bookended with some fun outdoor activities. Based on my experiences this year with these kinds of in-depth, focused gatherings, I think it’s going to be pretty special.
If that sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, you can register your place now. Everything—except your airfare—is included: excellent food, luxurious lodging and multiple days of learning and practicing progressive enhancement and mobile-first responsive design. And if you need any assistance in convincing your boss to fork out for the event, there’s a handy factsheet you can download, print out and leave in convenient spots around the office.
So …maybe I’ll see you in the Rockies?
Roll up, roll up! Get five nights food and lodging at a fantastic luxury horse ranch in the Rockies in March.
Oh, and myself and Aaron will be running workshops on progressive enhancement for you during that time too.
One more alternative to lorem ipsum.
Wired Magazine break with tradition by publishing a halfway interesting article (though you’ll still need Readability or Instapaper to make the experience of reading it bearable).
Geek Calendar is a celebration of the nerdishness of contemporary British life. It's also a project to raise money for libel reform.
I’m somewhat fascinated by the divisive spin on fandom taken by Twilight fans—you know; the whole Team Edward or Team Jacob debate. I wonder what it would be like to take the same approach to more important issues…
Get those T-shirts printed!
The secret, however, is knowing when to stop. I do not want to see “I’m with Team HTML5” vs. “I’m with Team Flash.”
Best. Robots.txt file. Ever.
Sending a cease and desist letter to an obvious parody just makes the parody even funnier.
Scroll to the bottom to see a nice robots-into-zomies effect.
I need to get some RSS pillows.
I'm not sure I can resist ordering one of these T-shirts featuring crime-fighting duo Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.
Geek girls of Brighton: don't miss Natalie's CSS talk in The Eagle on March 4th. Nat is the best front-end developer I know.
The first ever Last.fm hack day is taking place in London on December 14th. I'll be there.
Mimi Ito talks to the BBC about the findings of a report into teens geeking out online.
Rob's story of Air Guitar Championhood is in issue no. 2 of Fray magazine: Geek.
User-agent: zombies Disallow: /brains
Cast your gaze upon this video footage of a talk entitled Science Fiction as a Literary Genre by Neal Stephenson. Alas, there is no transcript of the talk but there are chapter markers. If you’re pushed for time, skip ahead to the part marked vegging out and geeking out
. There, Stephenson makes an important distinction between the two; a distinction that was missed in Clay Shirky’s otherwise excellent speech Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.
Shirky distils his observations of passive and interactive activities into a general principle:
It’s better to do something than to do nothing.
But Stephenson makes the case that both activities have their place. Sometimes switching off your brain and wallowing in low-brow entertainment can be refreshing, even cathartic.
That said, while I agree that vegging out is not something to be dismissed, geeking out is clearly the more important of the two ends of the activity spectrum. In a commencement speech to Caltech students, Radiolab’s Robert Krulwich stresses the importance of scientists geeking out to non-scientists to battle the forces of ignorance. Tell me a story,
he implores.
For us workers on the Web we have plenty of opportunities to geek out in virtual environments like mailing lists, Twitter, IRC and instant messaging but there’s still nothing to beat the enjoyment of geeking out face to face. I feel very fortunate to live in Brighton where there is ample opportunity for in-the-flesh geek gatherings. The town has a strong whiff of what Kevin Kelly calls scenius.
But for pure geekout overload, nothing beats a gathering of the tribes. That means BarCamps and conferences.
There are some geek gatherings in the offing that I’m particularly looking forward to. In just under a fortnight, I’ll be heading out to San Francisco for An Event Apart. This will be my second AEA—my first was in Chicago—so I guess I must have done something right. If this one is even half as good as my first experience, it will be wonderful.
By the way, if you’re thinking about heading along to the conference, tickets are still available. If you decide to register, use the code AEAKEITH to get fifty bucks off.
Then, just a couple of weeks after An Event Apart San Francisco, Brighton will be hosting the annual geekgasm that is dConstruct (followed immediately by BarCamp Brighton on the Saturday and Sunday). There are still a few tickets available for dConstruct but they’re going pretty fast.
I’m all set for An Event Apart but I still haven’t prepared my talk for dConstruct. I’m starting to feel the pressure. I’ve made a start of trying to get my thoughts out of my head and onto post-it notes as a first step but that has thrown the magnitude of my task into sharp relief. There’s so much material I want to cover and I want to do it justice. If I succeed, I think I can deliver an entertaining 45 minutes of geeking out. If.
I really should get on with preparing that talk. Maybe I’ll veg out with some mindless entertainment first.