Like the fancy calligraphy addressing a wedding invitation, the hand-drawn type is now a luxury item, much like typed print used to be not so long ago.

Read all about it at SpeckyBoy: The Beauty of the Hand-Drawn Typography Trend in Design

(If you’re not reading this on my blog go there now or this post makes no sense.)

Trying to reverse this trend, awhile back I moved my “office” out of my bedroom and into our den. Our family PC is in here as well, and the room is doorless, opening out to our dining room and the rest of the house. The counter-intuitive idea was that real life going on around me would pull me away from online distractions, and I’d be forced to focus more when I actually sit down to work. The lack of a door has been an issue at times, especially when I need to talk on the phone, but all things considered this has worked out pretty well. I’m also feeling less isolated.

I have a chunk of time when the rest of the family is at work/school to get the concentration heavy stuff done, and because I know this time is limited I’m less likely to wander off into “research” that doesn’t directly have anything to do with the task at hand.

So things are better, but could be better still. And as I’ve thought about this I’ve realized that I’m routinely pulling my brain off the rails by glancing over to my left. To my left is a second monitor. I’ve been using two monitors for over three years now, beginning when I replaced my PC with a MacBook and attached it to a full size monitor. The idea, of course, is that I can have more screen real estate for all the visual elements I’m working with. But when I really, really think about it, the second screen rarely serves a purpose other than “home for Tweetdeck.” When I glance to my left, it’s to read up on Twitter.

Now, some (you?) may say just don’t run Tweetdeck all day. Yes, that could be a solution, but I do get great value from Twitter so I’m simply not willing to take such a drastic step (you could say if not for Twitter I wouldn’t be in business.)

So instead I’m going to try going back to one monitor. My current computer is a 24″ iMac so it’s not like I’ll be suffering for screen space. That plus using the Spaces feature which in effect gives me as many monitors as I could possibly want means I won’t really be downgrading. I’ll run twitter on a hidden Space, get the benefits of having it run all day, but not be so easily distracted by it as I am when it’s always there, to my left.

It’s another little change that could hopefully have a big impact. And my second monitor already has a new purpose, to replace the just-died one that was attached to my old MacBook, which is being used as a second family machine. Happy solution all around, I hope!

(a bit ironic that I was just asked to do a presentation on just this topic but can’t due to scheduling- this will have to suffice ;).)

This dubiously accurate nomenclature of “women in tech” places the entry-level PR girl at a startup in the same monolithic group as 50-year-old engineer at IBM. This is unfair to the women who do real technology work; it’s doubly unfair to women as a gender, as it smashes the “tech” label onto anything related to the Internet. Does having 50 male engineers and 50 PR women at tech companies mean we’ve acheived gender equality? Hardly, but it does make it more difficult to correct the true imbalance: There are not enough women doing real technology work…

…We are misguided to demand more women in tech when there simply isn’t an adequate supply of competent technological professionals to support gender parity. Women in tech begins with little girls playing with science- and math-related toys, and it takes much longer than just a few months or a few years to undo the sociological mores of a few millenia.

(the bold is mine)

photo by Elizabeth/Table4Five on flickr

But then instead the pink aisle at Toys R Us grew into 3 aisles, the Legos became warring “Bionicles,” special video games were developed for girls (it was assumed all other games were for boys.)

No wonder girls don’t pursue tech careers, and it’s such a loss to us. Women approach and solve problems differently than men (gross generalization, but I believe it to be the case) and with greater access to and interest in tech at a young age who knows what could be unleashed? I hope more young voices like O’Dell speak up.

Go read the rest of Jolie’s post.