Adele's Aerie

After seeing recent articles about the new Google or Gmail account signup process now including G+ automatically with both... I remain mystified... previously, it had been my understanding that the age requirements and identity requirements for a Gmail account and a basic non-Gmail Google account were quite different from the age and identity requirements for a G+ account. Have the TOSes changed for the various Google services to synchronize age and identity requirements, coinciding with the change to the Google account creation process?

Additional references:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399151,00.asp
http://techland.time.com/2012/01/20/want-a-google-account-now-youre-automatically-signed-up-for-google/
http://www.slashgear.com/google-pushing-google-and-gmail-on-new-sign-ups-20210244/
http://lifehacker.com/5877927/how-to-sign-up-for-a-google-account-without-being-forced-into-google%252B-or-gmail

(cross-posted to googleplus)

I'm not attending Burning Man this year, but I'm kicking in on a few interesting projects:

Not yet funded... if you think it's interesting, please consider kicking in a couple bucks!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dalumba/roadside-temple-a-burning-man-art-installation


Already funded, yay!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/738988983/the-ba-gua-labyrinth-0


And because I had such an amazing time helping out with last year's Temple...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1098029929/the-temple-of-transition-burning-man-2011-0
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1098029929/the-temple-of-transition-burning-man-2011

The nickname naturedance has been my handle/username on a number of websites over the years, and it is synonymous with my legal name, Adele Shakal, which the name associated with my G+. To me, naturedance is a synonym and a nickname, not a pseudonym, and since it's always been associated with my legal name, it's no big deal to add it in the nickname field on the G+ Profile.

HOWEVER, I have plenty of other reasons to need a pseudonym, which I seldom-to-never discuss online using my legal name.

I put the following posts and comments in that Adele Shakal G+, but I want to put them here, too, since Dreamwidth is the social website I feel most comfortable on. I detest Facebook and G+ has more technical functionality, but I am not thrilled with Google right now.


From today:
With pseudonymous use now apparently considered a TOS violation here (despite the counter-indication and/or hypocrisy of http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-be-who-you-want-to-be.html), I'm left with only the technical feature-gap between G+ and FB to keep me here, because huge portions of my social network are pseudonymous (and are therefore not on FB, and are now discussing leaving G+).

Diaspora is looking better and better. (https://joindiaspora.com/)


Also today:
As I said in https://plus.google.com/u/0/105500543639944007050/posts/5HwnahTSuj6 (and sent as feedback), I understood "works best" to mean that both pseudonymous and identified use of G+ was perfectly acceptable. I still steadfastly maintain that http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271 is unclear because "works best" is ambiguous at best, and disingenuous at worst.

It is very disheartening to watch Google go down this road. Philosophically I don't want to be spending my time and energy on a social network service/product that does not grok the pseudonym issue. And it feels obvious to me but maybe I need to say this explicitly here: there's little reason for me to spend time on a social network which excludes marginalized voices in general, and excludes significant portions of my social groups specifically.

+Liz Fong , thanks for all that you do. I'm really appreciative, and a little in awe, of your presence in these matters.


From July 7th:
Clarification is needed from Google regarding the accepted uses of G+, and I am about to send feedback regarding this issue. I figured I'd best post this in my own stream to send the feedback from here.

References:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-be-who-you-want-to-be.html
http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271

On that second link, it says "Google Profiles is a product that works best in the identified state"... and there's a big difference between [something working best one way (Identified) and also working OK in another way (Pseudonymous)], and [something only working one way (Identified-only)].

I took "Google Profiles requires you to use the name that you commonly go by in daily life" to mean that both Identified and Pseudonymous uses were fine on G+ (as long as the pseudonym is one the person actually uses daily, and as long as it did not include two different languages or the disallowed characters), and that Identified use was viewed as optimal.

Is Google+ intended to only be an Identified mode service, exclusively? If so, then I believe the language on that page needs to be clarified ASAP.

Also, if G+ is intended to be used exclusively in Identified mode (which would be a huge mistake, in my view), then I believe it would be reasonable that anyone who has joined G+ pseudonymously will of course expect a graceful exit path out of G+ be made clearly available (without disruption to other Google services they/we may be using, especially Gmail), following clarification of that page.

Additional references:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=09855e7fbb13e027&hl=en
http://www.technologyquestions.com/2011/06/01/gfail-sorry-but-i-cannot-use-1-because-i-dont-meet-community-standards/

An additional reference I don't want to lose the link to: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

And another additional reference I don't want to lose the link to: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/07/08/anti-pseudonym-bingo/

Updates, followups and additional links:

http://geekfeminism.org/2011/07/08/social-networking-requirements/

From +Fox Magrathea Circe :
https://plus.google.com/113892479804684135897/posts/FSsd9ePQZi7

From +John Hardy :
https://plus.google.com/104013835962992611989/posts/iCMNPViRZMw
https://plus.google.com/104013835962992611989/posts/RUiCgtGnuPK
https://plus.google.com/104013835962992611989/posts/22zpasgxdEt
https://plus.google.com/104013835962992611989/posts/hvvsNJRBtpL
https://plus.google.com/104013835962992611989/posts/e31QKiSuJ6M

Google+ may or may not kill Facebook, but if the engineers can get Google+ working with Google Apps for the corporate setting? I don't see a purpose to using MoxieSpaces at all.

A few weeks ago, thanks to a generous gift from my Dad to get me started on my Altadena garden, I began germinating some Carmen pepper seeds and also some Viva Italia tomato seeds.

Then I attended the TomatoMania! seedling sale at Descanso Gardens this weekend and purchased four more tomato seedlings as an experimental adventure...

( Cue the enthusiastic gardening babble about these varieties... and startlement, at the potential height of some of these plants! )

I think next year I may have to try growing Vorlon tomatoes, and perhaps some Green Doctors.

I discovered those two intriguing varieties via these blogposts:
http://www.plantertomato.com/2010/12/new-tomatoes-for-2011.html
http://www.plantertomato.com/2010/12/new-tomatoes-for-2011-part-ii.html
http://www.plantertomato.com/2010/12/new-tomatoes-for-2011-part-iii.html

In addition to spending more time in my new http://myfolia.com/gardener/naturedance account, I'm going to check out http://idigmygarden.com/forums/ when I have more time, and will also consider subscribing to http://rareseeds.com/magazine/ as well.

http://fashionintel.com/2011/02/24/altadena-urban-farmers/

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2011/02/community-gardens-empty-raymond-avenue-lot-becomes-growers-haven.html

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-urban-farming-20110310,0,3691966,full.story

This is an older LA Times article from 2009, but the http://growfriend.org website still looks like it's alive and kickin'. Cool!
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-share20-2009jun20,0,1628042.story

This is a reminder to myself to visit this part of the Tujunga Wash in a couple months after my schedule calms down, to see what's become of the waterway-reclamation project described in this 2009 blogpost, and also to check out the books by the blog's author: http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/2009/03/24/harvesting-urban-drool/

"Because everyone loves a home-grown tomato!" http://hyperlocavore.com/

I've signed up for a free account on http://myfolia.com/, which is a social networking site for gardeners. I'm still just finding my way around there, but there's all kinds of tools for tracking planting, growth and harvest and sharing knowledge with other people growing similar plants in similar zones. Very interesting!


Of course there's http://altadenablog.com/ which is Made Of Awesome. :-D I've been reading it for the past year or so and it's a big reason I'm moving to Altadena. In fact I've set up a DW feed so I can follow it on my DW Circle: altadenablog_feed.

Other blogs I've started reading lately:
http://www.lafarmergirl.com/ (This is a co-worker's wife's blog, and I set up a DW feed to follow it at lafarmergirl_feed)
http://www.rootsimple.com/ (rootsimple_feed)
http://woodandbones.designsimple.com/ (woodandbones_feed)
http://hometown-pasadena.com/ (hometown_pasadena_feed)
http://athinkingstomach.blogspot.com/ (athinkingstomach_feed)

The Arroyo Lowdown for event news:
http://www.facebook.com/TheArroyoLowdown#!/TheArroyoLowdown?sk=info
http://www.facebook.com/TheArroyoLowdown

Arroyo Time Bank:
http://www.facebook.com/arroyotimebank#!/arroyotimebank?sk=info
http://www.facebook.com/arroyotimebank
http://www.arroyotimebank.org/

Altadena Urban Farmers Market:
http://www.facebook.com/AltadenaUrbanFarmersMarket#!/AltadenaUrbanFarmersMarket?sk=info
http://www.facebook.com/AltadenaUrbanFarmersMarket

:-)

Later, I'm thinking maybe these might be nice:

In-Season Produce Exchange:
http://www.facebook.com/RIPEAltadena?ref=sgm#!/RIPEAltadena?v=info
http://www.facebook.com/RIPEAltadena
http://www.ripealtadena.com/

Altadena Heritage... I think this is like a historical society type group, with urban planning activism:
http://www.facebook.com/AltadenaHeritage#!/AltadenaHeritage?sk=info
http://www.facebook.com/AltadenaHeritage
http://www.altadenaheritage.org/

Two other interesting articles I turned up on the way to all of the above links:
http://hometown-pasadena.com/creative-types/melkon-khosrovian-organic-spirits-maker/
http://hometown-pasadena.com/creative-types/private-knives-ben-abbott/

Coronado Butterflies

A couple weeks ago I enjoyed a "Rails and Trails" local Sierra Club daytrip to the Coronado Butterfly Preserve. We took the train from Los Angeles to Goleta, hiked about 3.5 miles of sidewalks along the roadways of Goleta to the Preserve, enjoyed a few hours there, then hiked back (stopping for snacks/dinner along the way) to catch the train, and so home by that evening.

Seeing the coast from the train to Goleta was lovely, and of course the thousands and thousands of butterflies were so beautiful. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous trip.

I managed to capture some (admittedly slightly wobbly) video of some of the clusters of butterflies.

Carrizo Plain De-Fencing and Exploring

This weekend, I took part in a volunteer work-day at Carrizo Plain National Monument, getting rid of old barbed-wire fence on Saturday, and then exploring on my own on Sunday. It was a great weekend!

I took some photos today as I explored... I've posted them as a photoset on Flickr.

For more info about Carrizo, please see:

official BLM website for Carrizo Plain

Friends of Carrizo: Volunteer Opportunities

Nature Conservancy webpage about Carrizo Plain

Wikipedia page about Carrizo Plain

Happy Father's Day, Dad! :-)

From the New York Times: In Sweden, Men Can Have It All
From Yahoo News: Playtime with Parents May Shape Gender Roles

And a bit of nostalgia:
http://www.heathkit-museum.com/
http://www.nostalgickitscentral.com/heath/heathkit.html
http://ww_heco.home.mindspring.com/
http://www.vintage-radio.info/heathkit/

http://www.bricklink.com/
http://www.brickshelf.com/
http://www.brickset.com/

I've talked about this technology before with various people, but I don't think I've posted the links for safekeeping here...

Johnny Chung Lee has some amazing stuff, including Low-Cost Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards Using the Wiimote. One of my fantastic co-workers (who likes to tinker and build robots in his spare time in addition to being a formidable project manager at work) tried it out according to the instructions provided at the website below, and seeing that little IR pen in action, mere years after I'd priced out interactive corporate-style whiteboards and determined that they were way out of our price range for a couple of projects... well. Yeah. The resolution wasn't absolutely precise, but it certainly did work. Bottom line: Technology is only useful if it is actually in the hands of real people, and being used. And lots and lots of people have Wiimotes in their (our) hands. :-)

http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/
http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/