Peeny Leach is re-launching her LinuxChix site see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=104299

So if this sounds like you check out Linuxchix.

 Chess is a theme in my extended family (though I have no great skills in it), and through family connections, I chanced to be in Iceland on holiday when the Fischer-Spassky match was on in 1972. Thanks to my brother Paul, we attended one of matches where the excitement was palpable.  Watching the match was truly thrilling, surrounded by knowledgeable Icelanders.  

Today Fischer died in self-exile in Reykjavik , scene of his triumph, after some difficult years. Raymond Keen, grandmaster and Times chess correspondent said " He was the pride and sorrow of chess. It’s tragic that such a great man descended into madness and anti-Semitism." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3210620.ece 

Pride and sorrow - such is life! 

Thanks to my colleague David Kreps for passing on this cat video - very funny!

I just received this fascinating comment on my blog post at Emerge , scroll down to read all of Cristina da Costa's comment.

"Just a quick note about bearded women:

In Portugal we usually use the expression Thick Bearded Women to refer to women who are educated, hard-working, courageous and sharp in their decisions and actions. In other words, someone you don’t really want to mess up with, but that you kind of look up to; Sophisticated, independent women. "

What a wonderful concept - I shall aspire to be thick bearded.  I think Anne probably is, here is her story

Inspired by reading an article called Clear Thinking
 Saturday's Guardian newspaper, I have decided to out my untidy desk in an effort to reform myself as the article suggests.  Theo Theobald (is that really his name?) struck home with these words

"Your desk is at the heart of this. For many, it has become a metaphor for their whole working persona: badly organised, over-burdened, with no sense of order. At the same time it acts as both a badge of honour (look how busy I am!) and a shield to hide behind." 

Just look at the mess that is my desk at home (work colleagues can confirm my office desk is probably even worse).  To see it in its full-size horror with notes check it out at Flickr. 

So now I am publicly shamed, I just need to follow the 10 step solution

Ten-step detox

1. Clear the clutter. Instead of incrementally sorting through your drawers and desktop, start by dumping the lot somewhere else and only allowing the important things back.

2. Wipe as you go. Once the decks are cleared, keep them that way by reserving your desktop for live work, not pending.

3. Hydrate. Being dehydrated stops you concentrating. Once you've got a clear desk space, you can make room for a glass of water to keep sipping on; remember a little and often is the key.

4. Stop! Stop doing the things that don't matter and you'll have more time to work on the things that do.

5. Set your own standards. Organisational culture and peer pressure might turn you into a sheep. Be your own person.

6. Make a change a day and you'll get into the swing of accepting that the status quo never remains for long.

7. Stop self-sabotaging. You're the one who makes the work spin out to fit the time. Desist.

8. Volunteer for extra. Help someone else out and you'll find that you reap what you sow.

9. Curb your fear of success.

10. Do the daunting. Putting off tasks you hate takes more time and energy, than it would to get stuck in.

As you can see, in my usual methodical fashion, I started with no. 3.  Well, readers can I complete the 10 step program?

Will you help me? 

Share your own experiences with the detoxyourdesk tag at http://www.knowandnetwork.org (url corrected from orginal) and on flickr.com

The poster is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

My perosnal favourite was Expectation Failed - but then that is the story of my life.

Southern California - where else?

How about submitting a paper to this?

The Southern California Linux Expo is proud to announce their Second
Women in Open Source Conference. The conference will be held on February
8th, 2008 at the Westin Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport.
Widespread acceptance and participation by the user community has
established SCALE as a premiere Open Source conference in the Southwest. 2008
marks the sixth year that SCALE has been engaging and inspiring the open source
community. Our event is uniquely community-based and attracts a wide variety of
sponsors, non-profit groups, user groups, and attendees.
Continuing our efforts to encourage women of all ages to be a part of the
free and open source community, we invite you to showcase your work on Free
and Open Source projects. Join us in sharing recent free and open source
accomplishments, success stories, and advancements. Past attendees at this
event have included women in technology, teachers, and parents of young girls.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
● Free and Open Source Development
○ Kernel Internals and Enhancements
○ Unix variants: Tools and Appliances
○ Application development
● User Experience
○ Desktop Operating Systems
○ Tools for Multimedia
○ Free and Open Source Games
● Free Software and Open Source Advocacy
○ Encouraging women to be involved in the community
○ How to expose younger girls to

more 

Danah Boyd has blogged some good advice on online identities.

"Create a public Internet identity. I strongly recommend blogging, but even a homepage will do. Have a genuine all-accessible identity online that you're cool with grandma and your boss reading. Don't make it uber drab, but do provide context for who you are, what you do, what you're passionate about, etc. Think of it as a digital body and dress it up as if it were going into a job interview. Blogging is especially good because you can keep updating your identity over time in a way that shows that you think. It's much easier to get a sense of someone through their commentary on public affairs or life around them than through a static page.

• Say NO! to Facebook's public search option. Click "privacy" - "search." Under "Who can find my public search listing outside of Facebook?" uncheck both boxes. Be proactive about this. You might not think you care now, but having your Facebook profile at the top of a search for your name might not be what you want when you're looking for a job.
• Expect unexpected audiences. Your profile on Facebook and MySpace might be "private" but when you join the Los Angeles Network or when you accept someone who knows someone, you might find that the audience viewing your profile is not who you expected. Are you prepared for this? Make sure that profile says what you want it to say, even to those you don't expect. If you want to be a porn diva and make it in Hollywood, put up that slutty photo, but if you want to be a lawyer, you might regret that photo a few years from now. Of course, I'm sure there are porn stars who later became lawyers, just like there are actors who became governors.
• Write blog comments as though you're writing your own blog. The more popular a blog, the more likely the comments from that blog are to show up high on Google's lists. If you write inflammatory shit on those blogs just to piss people off, it will come back to haunt you. (It depresses me that a huge chunk of the comments on BoingBoing's new comment system are extremely negative.) Personally, I don't think that you should be anonymous on a blog. I think that you should stand by your name, but write articulately. And blog on your own blog so that the comments are not at the top.
• Treat video and audio just like text. Right now, video and audio aren't searchable, but they will be. Don't think that you can say or do anything you want on a video and it will never come up. That Neo-Nazi video you made and put up on YouTube cuz you thought it was funny will eventually be searchable and associated with your name. Are you really ready for that to appear at the top of a Google ego search?"

I think this such an excellent set of guidelines - positive about having a valued online identity and tips on keeping it in good nick.

She says

"But above all else, seriously, create a public Internet identity, maintain it, link to it, build it, love it, hug it, and call it George." 

On Know and Network, you can  increase your connection to others by completing your profile but restrict who sees what on your profile.  Why not experiment a little?  You'll be appearing in the tag cloud but only for those you want to see you.