After almost 8 years of living in the multidimensional world of Business intelligence I am thrilled to announce I will be moving to display media for MSN in Seattle! 

This super exciting for me personally and a perfect fit for my family.  I will of course, continue to post news here, as well as reviews of my current video game romances and other tidbits of things that find their way to the top of my list of mentionables.

Kiss Kiss,

Dawngrrl

Every month I read the updates on the progression of the LHC ATLAS project with great interest and excitement for the promising events to come. It’s hard to imagine it’s completion and ultimately its success could be even more profound, but this month’s tragic news does exactly that. 

On Friday 30 November, a Turkish plane flying from Istanbul to Isparta crashed as it approached its destination, claiming the lives of all 57 people on board. ATLAS collaborators Professor Engin Arik, Research Assistant Özgen Berkol Dogan and graduate student Engin Abat from Bogaziçi University, as well as CAST experiment members Prof. Dr. Senel Boydag, Associate Prof. Dr. Iskender Hikmet and Research Assistant Mustafa Fidan from Dogus University, were on board.

My thoughts and sentiments to all their friends, families, and colleagues, and to the particle physics and ATLAS community at large. 

Such a terrible thing to happen to such extraordinary people on such a paramount project. 

Dawngrrl Gametart,

ATLAS supporter

Meet Vivian, my iPod Touch, I call her Viv!  She is the newest addition to my nerdy birdy portable media gadgetry collection.  It wasn’t more then a few months ago that I rolled my eyes at the idea of owning one.  I was completely unable to fathom a reason to include it into my already complex cacophony of cables and power adapters that were constantly getting tangled by my anally expulsive bad organization style.  That is until I played with Boy Genius’ sleek piece of electronic trim, and I fell in love at first Touch! 

From the moment I slid the unlock across it’s silky smooth screen and gave it a little “pinch” to zoom in on a photo, I knew I had to have one of my very own.  Thank goodness the Boy Genius is a very close personal friend of Santa Claus, because he got him to stick one under the tree in a pink box with a pretty pink bow! 

Viv and I have spent the last few days getting to know one another, and with out a doubt I love her madly.  HOWEVER, if I didn’t know that I had the option to hack it, or that come soon an SDK is expected to flood us Touch touchers with a myriad of application options, I would be asking “So, ummm that’s it?”, “Doesn’t it like do anything else, like vibrate or make coffee or something?” 

While the stock version (1.1.2 Firmware) comes with some of the standard apps you would expect, i.e., contacts,  calendar,  music, and web browser, it’s software is lacking in rudimentary ways that could only be explained by a mental mishap or a bad hair day for His Apple Majesty, Mr Jobs.  To explain: there is no task list, to do list, or notepad!  There is no card game, or any game for that matter!  Eeeekk, says the Gametart, a brilliant device like this and I cant jot down a quick grocery list?   Shameful!  The Vivian demands a plethora of games, webapps, photo editing tools, multi skinned notepads, to do lists, add ins, plug ins, and loop-de-loops.  So now what? 

I had initially decided not to hack the Vivian. I was going to be patient and wait, but she deserves a little variety.  Besides, my personality type is markedly deficient in patience.  It took a grand total of 30 minutes, downloads included, and I now have lots of games and to do lists making Vivian a full service gidget! 

So here’s the hack-to-do list for dumb blondes, or for very intelligent people of any hair coloration variety:  

Notes

I read a bunch of words about 1.1.2 downgrade not working for peeps, but I had no issue at all, in fact, I didn’t even get the expected 1015 error.

After your done, instructions will tell you to upgrade your Touch back to 1.1.2 through iTunes on the summary tab.  Don’t do it.  You’ll be back at square 1, so skip the last step unless your feelin lucky… 

There are lots of in depth tutorials out there for specific issues or details.  Surf man! 

Happy Hacking. 

Kiss Kiss,

Dawngrrl Gametart

For those you who read my tirade about a recent Newsweek Article that published essays on 11 women for their series on “Women & Power”, you may recall I was bent out of shape by the chosen examples.   Coincidently, I just attended a lecture given by Julianne Malvueax at a women’s leadership conference and, I walked out.    I didn’t do so by way of protest as much as simply not wanting to waste my time when there were so many other exemplary speakers. 

I think Julianne is an accomplished and educated woman, with degrees from MIT and recently appointed President of Bennett College for women.   She is a seasoned public speaker and does so with a charismatic nature and good sense of humor.    She’s proudly black and can speak well and true to cultural and racial issues, she’s a baby boomer so she has life experience, and she appears regularly on CNN and BET.  She has also hosted talk radio programs in Washington, San Francisco, and New York. As a writer and syndicated columnist, her work appears regularly in USA Today, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Ms. Magazine, Essence and the Progressive. A committed activist and civic leader, Dr. Malveaux serves on the boards of the Economic Policy Institute, Women Building for the Future - Future PAC, The Recreation Wish List Committee of Washington, DC, and the Liberian Education Trust.    I think her resume speaks for itself, she is without a doubt a woman with power both personally and professionally. 

However, I sit here as a woman, entirely offended at the precedent she sets to women every where by including jokes, comments, and innuendo about men in politics, random snibes and jabs at the chromosome complete populace at large.  This kind of crap facilitates the very thing that women are trying to overcome.  They want so badly to feel equal, and yet they stand up and shout about being better than.  

Tsk tsk, if you gonna get on a soapbox about being hypocritical, don’t be a hypocrite.

Kiss Kiss,

Dawngrrl Gametart

Apple’s newest fanboy, Philoking, recently pointed out what happens when you type “virus” into the search box of www.apple.com (without hitting enter).   With a chuckle, the world at large responds with “Golly gee Beaver, that Jobs sure is a hoot, huh?!!” 

Whatever apple guy.  

You know what, you’re hip and you’re cool and all, and truth is, I might bend over backwards at the Apple counter for an iPod touch, but seriously your “with it” genius doesn’t extend far enough to such repeated stoops.  It’s funny at first, at some point, it just gets old.  Act like Apple, an be original.

Kiss Kiss,

Dawngrrl Gametart