JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

I’m not a Mac-fanatic, but I like to watch Steve Jobs speak. But I didn’t think twice about his style or appeal until I started giving my own presentations. Somehow I’ll try to find the video version of his MacWorld keynote (I can’t even access the website at the moment). Here are a few links that have helped me understand presentation style.

When Ted and I were discussing the upcoming keynote, he showed me the Guardian article Behind the magic curtain, a fascinating peek into the preparations behind Jobs’ presentations written by Mike Evangelist who is now blogging and writing a book about his time at Apple.

Darren Barefoot mentioned Presentation Zen’s : Gates, Jobs and the Zen aesthetic which helped me understand why I like the Apple presentations.

In the comments on Darren’s post, Derek Miller left a link to his Commentary About Power Point and Presentations.

Liz Ditz pointed me to 43 Folders: Your best tip on doing presentations which leads to some interesting places if you try to follow all the trails…

or at least a programming book

In the same week that our Squeak programming book arrived from Amazon, Jill at misbehaving.net pointed to statistics on kids and women in computers, ending her post with the admonition: Buy your daughters computers!. That same week also Nat Torkington noted my desire for interviews with hackers and posted a series of stories describing how people got started in programming. Here’s the start of his story:

When I was a kid in New Zealand, my parents were dirt-poor, with my Dad subsistence fishing. While Mum was pregnant with my sister, they saved and saved, and in the year of my 8th birthday I got not only a little sister but also a Commodore 64. I began playing games, and rapidly learned programming. I was fascinated by text adventures and platform games, and still have a warm spot in my heart for Infocom, Manic Miner, and Impossible Mission.

I’m grateful for Nathan’s enthusiasm and I’m grateful he got the ball rolling, so to speak – glimpse at Technorati to see other bloggers who shared their stories too. Ted posted his experience. I hope more continue to tell how they became interested in programming. And, of course, as the mother of three daughters, I’m especially interested in hearing stories of girls growing up and learning to program.

As for our girls, they have switched to Squeak since I wrote my post, thanks to Todd Blanchard’s suggestion in my comments. When the book arrived, Abigail embraced it, reading it aloud to me as we drove around town. For an afternoon or two, Michaela and Abigail have programmed the robots, using instructions in Stephane Ducasse’s book. The interface was more fun than the Python one they were using.

Abigail’s stopped hugging the book, but I do hope she and her sisters continue to enjoy programming. Then again, I thought the comment left on my post by Elliot Lee, a college student and cousin of ours, was astute:

Is it about getting children interested in what their parents are interested in? Somehow, computers are something I developed a passion for not because I saw anyone else interested in it, but because of the nature of computing itself and the way it was so conducive to things I personally loved: creativity, logic, design, gadgets, toys.

Most of all I want my daughters, like Elliot, to have a passion for discovery, creativity, logic and design, and to love learning, whether it is Squeak or Python or a language or book yet to be written.

Postscript:

Brian Bailey’s Teaching Programming to Kids post and comments feature more ideas, including game-making software.

Thanks to Nathan Torkington, my daughter is in love with a Tamiya robot horse she’s named Truggy. It all began this fall when I read Nathan’s post on O’Reilly Radar describing how he and his six-year-old son built a robot together. So when time came for Santa to go shopping, she looked for the same Remote Controlled Insect robot but couldn’t find one available. Instead three animal robots arrived at our home: a galloping horse, a beetle which can go backwards and around objects, and a jumping kangaroo. The robots were more complicated to assemble than I had imagined but Ted seemed happy to spend some time putting them together for the girls. Abigail’s happened first on Sunday night, Christmas Day, and she was delighted to see her robot galloping across the floor when Ted finished it after dinner. Before going upstairs to bed, she kissed her horse goodnight. Then Ted assembled the beetle and the kangaroo. The girls are enjoying racing them and watching the beetle turn corners under the sofa. Thanks to Nat and his family for sharing their example – I hope we can encourage each other by sharing how we help our families fall in love with technology (and each other too!).

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

But I can try to cherish and recognize what I have now.

Last Tuesday I had planned to go to the January East Side Weblog Meetup 7 pm at Crossroads Mall. Trying to combine multiple goals into one ferry trip, as a matter of efficiency, I had multiple missions on my agenda beginning at 10:30 am when we left our house. Perhaps that was my first mistake.

By 5 pm I was frustrated, exhausted and suddenly ravenously hungry. After accomplishing my first two goals of the afternoon, I had planned to stay and shop at Crossroads Mall until the Meetup time, but I was beginning to wonder whether I could last that long. I had a number of dilemmas and didn’t know what to do.

My coat zipper broke in December, leaving me without functional outerwear in the middle of winter. Many stores have already put their coats on clearance, favoring swimsuits instead. I had hoped to find a coat at Crossroads, but was soon disappointed by the selection and the absence of stores I had somehow believed were in that mall. Unwilling to venture into rush hour traffic, I felt stuck, all of us hungry and tired already, with two hours to go.

As I began to feel famished, my cell phone rang. Beth Grigg, who had seen my post and knew I would be in town that night, offered to get together. I decided to take the risk and leave the mall. An hour later, I met her at Bellevue Square, where I talked her into watching my kids while I shopped for a coat. I appreciated the chance to talk to an adult and the opportunity to find a companion in the midst of my stress. I found what a friend she is to me. Thanks, Beth!

Our next stop was supposed to be Crossroads again, where we’d find the Meetup folks. However, as we were driving away from Bellevue Square, one of my daughters declared she had lost her hat. I’d be lying if I said I reacted well to this announcement. This was a hat she and I had made together from ballet-patterned fleece she’d chosen at the store (see photo of the hats on flickr here). People were constantly commenting on the cute hats the girls had, including earlier that same day. And now one of them was gone.

Another daughter then said she had lost a prized notepad she had been carrying on the way to the car. So I returned to the parking lot and we retraced our steps in and out of Bellevue Square. No hat. No notepad. Nowhere. I called one other store we had visited. The next day I called information at both malls. No notepad. And no hat.

Perhaps it seems silly that the loss of a hat would hit me hard. But as I explained, we had made this hat together. Perhaps it was pride. My own sense of accomplishment and identity as a Mom. Or perhaps it was frustration at the details I had forgotten to notice. One more reminder of how I miss the mark as a Mom.

Finally we head back to Crossroads. We arrived just as everyone was beginning to leave. I’m sorry I missed Tommy Williams, Alex Barnett and others. Anita and Jack stayed, as Jack took the girls and his grandson R—- on the rides together with our combined pot of quarters. I was glad we had come and I was grateful for the warm welcome we received despite our very tardy arrival.

Yes, as Anita said in her post, it had been too long. In fact the girls didn’t quite remember who Jack was. Later I learned, they somehow weren’t sure whether he was Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor or Jack : “All those beards confuse us!” We’ll have to come more often! And bring more quarters!

It was a relief to me to end the draining day on a note of fun, watching the girls laugh, our youngest holding onto R— on the horse ride. Again, I found what friends Anita, Jack and R—- are to us. Thanks for rescuing our night!

Tuesday I realized that when I give the girls a gift, I have to let go of it. If I give my girls hats, I have to be prepared that they may lose them. Whatever I give to the girls, I have to know that they might lose it no matter how much it means to me. That’s what a gift means. That’s what motherhood means. Giving and letting go. With grace and patience and love. And forgiveness.

We lost a hat. I lost my temper. But I gained a deeper understanding of gifts, how precious they are, and how much I should enjoy what I’ve been given while I have it. Including these years of mothering small children. 🙂

I wish Tuesday had been a better day. But in the midst of the loss and exhaustion, I found friends who were there for me and my kids. In hunger, we treasure what we have. My emptiness was filled with gifts. What a surprise! And what grace these friends had for us. Thanks. (and to think that these gifts began with little links on blogs…I remember how I met Anita and Beth, each through a link one day…)

While visiting the Post Office on the island, I noticed a tree blooming with fragrant pink blossoms. I don’t know if the end of December is an appropriate time for this tree to begin blooming. We have had some unusually warm weather in recent weeks, following our heavy frost and snow in late November and early December. Seeing the blossoms brings me hope that our darker days are disappearing. The best part of winter is the arrival of spring!