Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=777
Oct
22
My family put up with me and my crazy hobbies again this weekend and helped me make a short. I wanted to play around with my GoPro Hero2 mini-camcorder and the Final Cut Pro X editing software and the whole uploading to Youtube shebang. Don’t watch it full screen. Uploading to Youtube kills the video quality.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=771
Aug
23
J.M. McDermott and I did a bit of an email back and forth. In addition to being a great writer with a very approachable style, he is a fun guy to hang out with in person.
Oh, and I will be at Worldcon in Chicago next weekend. I am on a few panels and doing a signing on Saturday. And of course, the magical Night Bazaar party (in Suite 2576) on Friday night. Be there, be square! Eat some bugs and get some schwag!
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=766
Jul
19
Of course, the two-fold irony is that:
I’m still gonna wear the shirt, though.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=746
Jul
10
(I meant to do this last week to celebrate the release, but I am easily distracted and I live surrounded by lots of shiny objects so I completely forgot about it.)
The Acknowledgments page. Shocking but true!
It’s the Acknowledgements page. I know, you thought you’d get a spoiler. Well, OK, I’ll give you one: There is lots of smooching at the end so brace yourself.
Just to explain a little bit about my Acknowledgements:
And here is a picture my friend Rusty took of a local Barnes and Nobles with my book on the shelf:
My actual response to his posting this on Facebook was: "Rust. You... You are one magnificent bastard. OK Internets, pardon me for a sec: OMFG! It's there!!! In a frickin' store!!!! Like I'm a REAL author! IT'S RIGHT UNDERNEATH EFFIN' HYPERION! I can't breath. I'll be in my bunk. OK. I'm OK. I'll just go lie down now."
Because I’m mature like that.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=732
Mar
01
Because she’s so darn cute in those coveralls. And who doesn’t want to be a spaceship grease monkey? Competency is captivating. Aptitude is attractive. Skills are sexy. Plus, she’s self-taught. You’ve got to love a girl so into her geek thing that formal schooling would only slow her down.
Nerdy inability to get dressed up in clothes that do not burn the retina? Check. Still cute? Check.
And it doesn’t hurt that she’s a character on the show every nerd has been obsessed with since five seconds after it got cancelled by the dastardly villains at Fox. If you aren’t aware, it is now officially time for us to shut up about Firefly. I almost got beat up by a normal the last time I brought it up. Then there was at least fifteen minutes of: “God, I wish you people would shut UP about Firefly. blahblah,etc” I wasn’t listening, but it really interfered with my space cowgirl daydream time.
But the real reason that Kaylee is a well-written fictional nerd is that, despite her obvious geekiness and somewhat overly direct method of communication, she’s usually cheerful and totally in touch with her physical side. So many times, people who value and aspire to intellectual pursuits are depicted in fiction as physically inept, grouchy and sexless. They are the whiny nerdy weakling, the awkward never-touched-a-ball dork, or the cranky poorly-dressed girl who wouldn’t know how to find her erogenous zones with a map and a mirror. This is manifestly not the case and kudos to Jewel Staite for playing Kaylee in such a refreshing manner and a big round of applause to Joss Whedon and his crew for writing such a great character.
Started the sexy on: 500 years in the future (or 2002, depending on the way you think about these things)
Turn-Ons: Strawberries, spaceship engines, ruffles, synchronizers
Turn-Offs: Guns, grouchiness
Do you have a nerd to nominate?
Please email me with relevant street cred, bragging rights, photos, etc.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=701
Feb
23
He made trippy cats to cure AIDS!
Nightlight cats want to know where da rave ats.
Just when you think those guys at the Mayo clinic are only resting on their well-educated rumps, using what is left of the medical grant money in America to buy themselves another Porsche, along comes Dr. Eric Poeschla. First of all, he and his team have come up with some very promising paths in AIDS research and then he went and made glow-in-the-darks cats. That’s just cool.
And having an actual justifiable scientific reason for inventing a nightlight cat? For the win! Those wacky California medical researchers. Now, if he can just come up with one of those Star Trek tricorder things Bones was always using…
Started the sexy on: Who cares? Dude made glow-in-the-dark kitteh! He can haz cheeseburger!
Turn-Ons: Infectious diseases, gene therapy, curing AIDS
Turn-Offs: Stem cell research bans, reduced research budgets, PETA
Do you have a nerd to nominate?
Please email me with relevant street cred, bragging rights, photos, etc.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=697
Feb
16
Music For The Masses, Brought To You By Math and Tim Westergen
Pandora - you hear what you want to hear
In 1999, this man had over twenty years of experience in the music industry. He wanted the world to have easier access to music like the music they like. To that end, Tim Westergen and some buddies created the Music Genome Project, a database of music that translates each song into a vector with four hundred attributes. They then use what we believe to be (proprietary) machine learning algorithms to create a relational database of music. Pandora is the slickly designed user interface for that database, allowing users to quickly and easily create personalized radio stations that feed the user a continuous stream of music based on their rating it thumbs up or down.
Using math to find you new music to love? That’s good nerdiness right there. Plus, most nerds neglect the user interface. Not so at Pandora where you can painlessly listen to music you’d never have time to find or ever hear on the radio, then download the cds or find local concert dates. Without them, I’d never know I have a thing for Tom Waits.
Started the sexy on: December 21, 1965
Turn-Ons: Rocking out, sharing songs, promoting new musicians, quantifying what exactly is so awesome the Tron soundtrack
Turn-Offs: Paying too much for music, The Man telling you what you can hear
Do you have a nerd to nominate?
Please email me with relevant street cred, bragging rights, photos, etc.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=665
Feb
11
So, it looks like I’ll be going to three conventions this year:
Should be fun!
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=661
Feb
09
Sitting in front of a Sourceforge sign and behind a Mac. Truly a complicated individual.
He was the founder and, until last year, the Head Nerdo of Slashdot. Their slogan says it all: News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters. This online news site has been thrilling our synaptic connections since 1998, back when the only way to find out about the Internet was by reading the man pages.And we are very sure CmdrTaco knew his way around a man page.
That was back when the Internet was just a BBS with an ego problem, FidoNet hopped up on too much caffeine, a dos application that dreamed of getting in with the Apple crowd, back when ‘apps’ were ‘applications.’ And it was awesome. Sure, it’s way cooler now, but shut up before my nostalgia smacks you with a cassette player.
Anyway, not only does Slashdot offer science, tech and geeky news in an open-source format but it taps into that primal obsessive-compulsiveness of the nerd world (Gather ye round, oh mini-geeks, and let me tell you the tale of the day I was first post!) by leaving their forums wide open and letting lively, snarky, occasionally troll-infested debate ensue. It inspires whole new vectors of awesomeness.
Let us all do the happy slashdot dance now. (Imagine people everywhere doing the Muppet dance to the Imperial March while repeating Slashdot until you want to punch the whole world in the face.)
According to his webpage,since leaving Slashdot, Mr.Malda has been using his vast intellect to slob around the house, watching anime and playing D&D. Live the dream, man!
Started the sexy on: May 10, 1976
Turn-Ons: Linux, Perl, anime, photography, OMG Ponies!!!
Turn-Offs: flamebait, trolls, Windows, the suggestion that Han did not shoot first
Disclaimer: This post was created using information found on the Internet. The above person was not involved in the production of this article. Therefore, some of the information may be inaccurate. If you are the above person or you feel you have more accurate information concerning this post, please feel free to email me. After I am done swooning and/or giggling like a schoolgirl, I will be happy to update the above information.Do you have a nerd to nominate?
Please email me with relevant street cred, bragging rights, photos, etc.
Permanent link to this article: http://katystauber.com/wordpress/?p=636
