][1]
+
+Hi! I’m Matthew Cengia. You can call me Matt, or my online handle, [@mattcen][2].
+
+You now have enough information to stalk me across the web, and find out all about me, but let me save you the trouble.
+
+I’m a Linux systems administrator and developer, open source software advocate, Open Knowledge Australia ambassador, and scout leader. I’m also polyamorous and bisexual, and I use he/him/his pronouns. All of the above are important to my identity, and each component may have be the focus of one or more blog posts in future.
+
+For years, I’ve considered starting a blog. I registered this account in 2012 in preparation for doing so, but I’m busy, struggled to decide what to,write about, if anything, whether to host it here or elsewhere, and whether it was really worthwhile to myself or anyone else. I’ve bitten the bullet and decided to give it a shot.
+
+So go forth and have a browse! Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, I’ll have had time to publish at least one post. Post frequency may be sporadic, but only time will tell!
+
+ [1]: /wp-content/uploads/2018/02/me-large.jpg ""
+ [2]: https://www.twitter.com/mattcen
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+---
+title: Contact
+author: mattcen
+type: page
+date: 2016-01-21T08:07:48+00:00
+geo_public:
+ - 0
+ - 0
+ - 0
+
+---
+The ideal way to contact me is probably by my Twitter account, @mattcen, but if that doesn’t work for you, please feel free to use the form below.
+
+\[contact-form subject='[mattcen%26#039;s mumblings’\]\[contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/\]\[contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/\]\[contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/\]\[contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/\]\[/contact-form\]
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diff --git a/content/posts/2012-03-20-upgrading-from-mac-osx-10-6-to-10-7.md b/content/posts/2012-03-20-upgrading-from-mac-osx-10-6-to-10-7.md
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+---
+title: Upgrading from Mac OSX 10.6 to 10.7
+author: mattcen
+type: post
+date: 2012-03-20T10:53:12+00:00
+url: /2012/03/20/upgrading-from-mac-osx-10-6-to-10-7/
+publicize_tumblr_url:
+ - http://.tumblr.com/post/183561807674
+ - http://.tumblr.com/post/183561807674
+ - http://.tumblr.com/post/183561807674
+timeline_notification:
+ - 1552992935
+ - 1552992935
+ - 1552992935
+publicize_twitter_user:
+ - mattcen
+ - mattcen
+ - mattcen
+categories:
+ - foss
+ - software
+ - tech
+
+---
+## Scenario
+
+Over the weekend I decided to upgrade my MacBook from MacOS 10.6 Snow Leapord to MacOS 10.7 Lion, for no particular reason other than “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. I encountered a few minor issues in the process, but it was mostly painless except that my Time Machine backups stopped working. This post details some of the issues I encountered and how I solved them.
+
+## Performing the upgrade
+
+Upgrading to MacOS 10.7 has been made quite easy. If you’re running Snow Leopard, you simply purchase Lion in the App store, and download the installer. Once the 3+ GB installer is downloaded and has begun, you can optionally [burn the image to a DVD or write it to a bootable USB key][1].
+
+Your next step is to actually perform the upgrade, which should be as simple as following the prompts for the installer. This will cause a reboot or two, after which the installation should be complete.
+
+## Fix anything that Lion changed against your will
+
+Lion has some different defaults to Snow Leopard, at least 2 of which I didn’t like. These two were:
+
+ * ### Inverted scrolling
+
+ Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the scrolling direction when using a trackpad was not good enough, and inverted it. This was a bit of a shock, so I went and inverted it. Depending on your setup, you may need [this link][2], or the [first point in this one][3].
+
+ * ### Remembering window and application state
+
+ In Lion, unless you specifically tell them otherwise, many applications will remember which windows and files they had open after you quit them, so that it can resume them later when you start it back up again. I didn’t like this behaviour, so I [turned it off][4]. The recommendation is apparently that you _don’t_ do this, but instead [disable it for specific applications][5]… or something.
+
+## Configure Time Machine (again)
+
+For those of you that don’t know, you can use a Linux server as a Time Capsule for Time Machine and therefore store your backups there. This required a bit of configuration for Snow Leopard, but for Lion, there were extra changes that needed to take place for it to work again.
+
+Lion uses a newer version of the Apple File Protocol (AFP), version 2.2, and this hasn’t been packaged for many Linux releases yet, as it’s either deemed unstable, or has been until recently.
+
+I followed [this guide][6] for how to reconfigure my Debian Squeeze server to talk to Lion, but instead of downloading the packages listed on the site, I manually downloaded the source code for Debian Wheezy and compiled it on my server. There’s a bit of information in the above guide’s comments about caveats with this (such as needing to install libacl1-dev on the machine doing the compiling, despite it not being listed as a dependency).
+
+The basic gist of how to get the sources compiled and installed on Debian Squeeze is:
+
+ mkdir netatalk
+ cd netatalk
+ wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/netatalk/netatalk_2.2.1{-1.dsc,.orig.tar.gz,-1.debian.tar.gz}
+ dpkg-source -x netatalk_2.2.1-1.dsc
+ cd netatalk-2.2.1
+ dpkg-buildpackage
+ # At this point you may be notified about unmet dependencies, such as:
+ # dpkg-checkbuilddeps: Unmet build dependencies: libdb-dev
+ # Install these dependencies, whatever they may be:
+ sudo aptitude install libdb-dev
+ # Then try again
+ dpkg-buildpackage
+ cd ..
+ sudo dpkg -i netatalk_2.2.1-1_i386.deb
+ # Again, at this point there may be complaints about dependencies not
+ # being met by this package. You should be able to resolve these by
+ # choosing one of the resolutions offered by:
+ sudo aptitude install+ And read Rosie’s blog post in the referenced tweet, which really reinforced my middle-class-ness, hitting particularly close to home because it referenced the GovHack Red Carpet awards in which I was involved last year. Rosie’s post also references the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union Conference from Tuesday, one of the sessions of which I caught the tail end of a video stream of, and was appalled by the circumstances the speakers have to endure. +
+ ++ Having now started to feel bad about the fact that I have spent a significant amount of time wasting my privilege by not using it to help people less fortunate than me, I’m letting this serve as a reminder that we should be always evaluating where we decide to focus our efforts to maximise value while still bringing us joy and satisfaction. +
+ ++ I am passionate about plenty of social justice issues, from queer and trans discrimination, to feminism, to openness and transparency, and I’m only starting to see the tip of the iceberg on issues of unemployment, poverty, class, and racism. I need to remind myself that I can’t efficiently give my time to all of these causes, but I can carefully pick my battles, and do my best to make a positive impact, while listening to and amplifying the voices of those I’m trying to help. +
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2016-09-07-appropriation-of-spoon-theory.md b/content/posts/2016-09-07-appropriation-of-spoon-theory.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c06c2d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2016-09-07-appropriation-of-spoon-theory.md @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: Appropriation of “Spoon Theory” +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2016-09-07T00:49:52+00:00 +url: /2016/09/07/appropriation-of-spoon-theory/ +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen + - mattcen + - mattcen +categories: + - activism + - feminism + +--- +In recent times, I’ve occasionally referred to how many “spoons” I have at my disposal. This mostly comes up for me in a context of interacting with other people socially, usually either in the context of going to an event where I’m meeting new people, or having a discussion with people (either in person or online) on something on which we disagree. As an introvert who attempts to avoid or avert conflict, these interactions often require a lot of energy or courage for me to participate, so often I’ll say “I don’t have the spoons for meeting new people today.” + +I was recently reflecting on the origin of spoon theory, and went to re-read the original blog post of the person who coined “spoons” as a term. This person has Lupis, and physically can only do a finite number of things in a day, often less than are strictly necessary to live a life equivalent to an abled person. + +This made me realise that my use of “spoons” isn’t the same as its original intended purpose, and caused me to reconsider whether using the term was devaluing it for those with disabilities like Lupis. It turns out I’m not the first person to consider this. Geek Feminism wiki says: “disabled people have asked that **the ‘spoons’ terminology not be appropriated by abled people**.” + +OK, so I’ve learned something new. I will make an effort from here onwards to stop using “spoons” to refer to my social anxiety or discomfort, and start hunting for alternative terms I can use. Possibly simply saying I don’t have the “energy” or “impetus” is good enough (though I’m open to suggestions for alternatives). + +I hope this post serves to inform others of the potential appropriation of “spoons,”, and causes people to question whether the term can rightfully be applied to their situation. + +EDIT: I did not write this post to tell people whether or not they are allowed to refer to their “spoons.” I leave that up to each individual. The main purpose of this post, I think, is to acknowledge Spoon Theory’s origins, and be mindful of our use of it, to avoid cheapening its value. There’s no easy solution, and it’s not a clear cut case; it’s just an interesting consideration. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2016-09-18-communicating-and-living-authentically.md b/content/posts/2016-09-18-communicating-and-living-authentically.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c489b6e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2016-09-18-communicating-and-living-authentically.md @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Communicating and living authentically +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2016-09-18T11:24:49+00:00 +url: /2016/09/18/communicating-and-living-authentically/ +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen + - mattcen + - mattcen +categories: + - communication + - polyamory + +--- +_NB: This post is dealing primarily with communicating feelings and emotions with partners/friends etc., rather than communicating/teaching objective information._ + +I have difficulties with communication. It’s true of all of us, I think. We sometimes can’t adequately find the language to articulate our thoughts, or, worse, we’re afraid to do so, because we don’t want to admit how we feel (either to ourselves, because it’s too painful to think about, or to others, because we’re not sure how they’ll react or respond). + +> Communication tends to be most difficult precisely when it’s most important. […] +> “If you’re afraid to say it, that means you need to say it.” +> +> –Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert, More Than Two, quoting Marcia Baczynksi + +The above is a mantra that I attempt to adhere to, but it’s hard. I think it gets less hard, slowly, with practice, but I am not sure if it ever becomes easy. There is, however, often an amazing sense of relief, a weight lifted from your shoulders, after saying something you’ve been afraid to say, regardless of the outcome. Yet, despite knowing, objectively, that it’s better for somebody to accept or reject you for being authentic, than for them to accept an inauthentic representation of yourself, fear of rejection is still a hard hurdle to overcome. + ++ 2016 was a struggle for many of us, with some pretty unpleasant stuff going on all over the world. To combat the feeling that 2016 was nothing but a huge trash fire, several of my friends have published lists of their 2016 highlights, and reading them really warmed my heart, as I felt so pleased for them having some wonderful experienced (there was much compersion to be had!). So, in return, here is my list of things that were awesome about 2016. I hope next year is half as amazing! +
+ +
+> This book is a love letter to the girls. It’s a letter to the bitches and the broads, the sluts and the whores. It’s to the troublemakers and the rebels, the women who are told they’re too loud, too proud, too big, too small. +>
+ +Men, you should read this book. This book is not written for us. We are not its target audience, because if the patriarchy is to be overturned, women can nor depend on men to help, let alone lead the assault. It pulls absolutely no punches while detailing all the ways that patriarchy is perpetuated, how men can be awful, and women are second-class citizens. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, at the _very_ least, stay out of the way an not make things worse, and call out bad behaviour when we see it. + +This book is eye-opening, and heart-wrenching, and I’d have it no other way. This book is not written for men, but you should read it anyway. + +**Everyone should read this book**. + +“This book is a love letter to the girls.” And, given everything in the world whose focus is on men, so it fucking should be. + + [1]: https://www.amazon.com.au/Fight-Like-Girl-Clementine-Ford/dp/B01JFFN64M \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2017-06-11-guys-isnt-gender-neutral.md b/content/posts/2017-06-11-guys-isnt-gender-neutral.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41261bd --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2017-06-11-guys-isnt-gender-neutral.md @@ -0,0 +1,71 @@ +--- +title: “Guys” isn’t gender neutral +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2017-06-11T12:30:38+00:00 +url: /2017/06/11/guys-isnt-gender-neutral/ +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen + - mattcen + - mattcen +categories: + - feminism + - politics + +--- +_I wrote this post because when I was looking recently, I couldn’t find a good article that communicated this point. Presumably my search-fu wasn’t working that day, because I’ve just found several, which I’ve referenced below._ + +The word “guys” isn’t gender neutral. + +I don’t know many people who use “guy” singular, to refer to somebody who doesn’t identify as male. Yes. I know that progressive, descriptive dictionaries like [Merriam-Webster][1] state that both “guy” and “guys” are gender neutral, while [Oxford][2] still states that the singular form is male. + +Yes, I know that many people treat it as gender neutral, even people who don’t identify as male. I am aware of plenty of women who will say “guys” when referring to a mixed-gender group. Some might even use it to refer to a group of all non-male people. + +I invite you to consider this, though. Just because _some_, maybe even _many_, people who don’t identify as men consider “guys” to be gender neutral, that doesn’t mean _everyone_ does. What if one person in that target group being referred to as “guys” _does_ consider it to be a gendered term, and as a result, feels othered by your language? What if your language, to that individual (and there may be many of them in any given group), tells them “I assume that this is a male-dominated group and anybody else is an anomaly who isn’t important enough to be recognised or addressed?” There’s a good chance that person isn’t comfortable raising this issue themselves, so you have no way of knowing how many people feel excluded by the word “guys.” + +I work in IT. Like many other fields, it’s male-dominated. If we want to diversify our workplaces (and who wouldn’t, given so much evidence that diversity is a Good Thing?), we need to stop using language that _may_ make people feel excluded or uncomfortable. In my opinion, it’s a needless microagression. + +So, let’s put aside the argument of whether or not _you_ consider “guys” to be gender neutral, and ask a different question: + +**If you knew that your language, this single word, “guys,” was making a person you’re addressing uncomfortable, wouldn’t you want to change it?** + +It’s _not_ that hard! there are plenty of alternatives: + + * folks + * people + * peeps + * y’all + * everyone + +Those are just the few I came up with off the top of my head. I’ve just done a quick search, and found [this blog post][3], which adds, among others: + + * friends + * team + * pals + +(check out that post for more), and that post references [Ways Men In Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist][4], which I’ve only skimmed, but which is an amazing resource and links to heaps of other amazing resources, such as [A Guy Is A Man Is A Guy][5], and [Geek Feminism][6]. + +If you still would like to be convinced that “guys” isn’t gender neutral, [A Guy Is A Man Is A Guy][5] offers three exemplary thought experiments: + +> Thought Experiment #1: Imagine a room full of men and women. Someone stands at the front and says, “I want all the guys to stand up.” What happens next? +> +> Thought Experiment #2: You are with a woman. You tell her you think she’s such a guy, a great guy, the smartest guy you’ve ever known. Note the expression on her face. +> +> Thought Experiment #3: You turn on cable news and the first thing you hear is someone saying, “Everyone knows it’s a guy’s world.” Picture in your mind what he’s trying to say. + +I love these examples so much. + +Now, back to the matter at hand: changing your language. Yes. It requires time and effort, to stop using “guys” as a collective noun for a group of diverse genders. I have largely settled on “folks” as my replacement word, and I still slip up after at least a year of trying. There are certain situations that I’m so used to saying “guys” in, that I have a lot of unlearning to do. But the important thing is that I’m _trying_, and after just a couple of months of conscious effort, 90% of the time, I was not using a term that some people may find exclusionary. + +So pick a new word to replace “guys” in your everyday vocabulary. There are plenty of them. It won’t take all that long to get used to if you keep at it, I promise you, and most people won’t even notice the change. + +But for those that do notice, it’ll mean the world to them. + +That’s all,$pyf|?u?'yB7pCNW~$y:yv;Kc*^<c,%U
+
++ The length I use has increased over time, as I’ve found less occasion to have to type these manually. There’s no way I want to remember a password like this, let-alone have to type it, fingers moving all over the keyboard, hitting Shift every second character. I don’t even want to contemplate having to regularly type something like this into my smartphone. +
+ ++ So after some deliberation, I took a leaf out of Randall Munroe’s XKCD comic +
+ +
++ +Their general response was along the lines of: “Oh. … OK.” which was pretty great as far as I was concerned. They’ve been really supportive! + +Back to that energetic person I met that first night at Open Knowledge. At some point, I’d heard them mention polyamory (a term I’d encountered in my non-monogamy research), so I told them I was exploring this idea, and they gave me heaps of references, including Archer Magazine, The Ethical Slut, Opening Up, and Polyamory Victoria (PolyVic) – a group which runs regular meetups to discuss Polyamory. I did lots of reading, and joined the PolyVic community, eventually going on to co-run that as well. + +In addition to the above polyamory/non-monogamy books, I eventually read More Than Two (that’s the book; also see [their website][1], but also see [this article as a caveat][2]), and 3 books on communication: Nonviolent Communication, Crucial Conversations, and Never Split The Difference. + +Even if polyamory wasn’t for me, I knew the communication and introspection skills I’d learn from considering it would be universally valuable, so I had no qualms about giving it a shot, with great success! + +In the midst of all this, I had had relationships of varying durations and [types][3] with people of different genders, starting to explore sex, intimacy, and romance. I also started to explore parts of the BDSM scene, which, despite not spending much time in, I definitely have an interest in, and I’ve enjoyed the experimentation I’ve done in that space thus far. I’ve also started clubbing and exploring events and venues associated with the “gay scene,” which has been a little daunting, but also fun. + +## Conclusion + +I don’t currently want to go into too many details of my sex life on a public post, but suffice to say, that from 2014 to 2017, I had crammed in a lot of theoretical and practical experience around communication, introspection, non-platonic relationships, non-monogamy, the queer community, sex, kink and the alternative/hippy community (in the form of alternative lifestyle festivals). + +I keep an open mind, and am regularly inquisitive of the status quo or unfounded assumptions that society should be a certain way; I think this was attitude was integral to my journey. + +So these days, I’m still doing the endless self-development thing. I’m working better on my communication skills, and pushing my comfort zone, going to events on my own, trying to meet new people, and get better at talking to strangers, especially those who I’m interested in or attracted to. That’s hard, but looking back on how far I’ve come, I’m reassured that I might get there one day. Who knows what the future will hold for me? + +## References {#references} + +Non-monogamy Books: + + * Archer Magazine + * The Ethical Slut + * Opening Up + * More Than Two ([please read this caveat][2]) + +Communication books: + + * Nonviolent Communication + * Crucial Conversations + * Never Split The Difference + +Websites: + + * PolyVic + * [More Than Two][1] + + [1]: https://morethantwo.com/ + [2]: https://polyamory-metoo.com/ + [3]: http://blog.mattcen.com/2016/09/20/do-you-have-a-partner/ \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2018-11-09-failures-in-productivity.md b/content/posts/2018-11-09-failures-in-productivity.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98ffcb9 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2018-11-09-failures-in-productivity.md @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +--- +title: Failures in productivity +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2018-11-08T22:34:52+00:00 +url: /2018/11/09/failures-in-productivity/ +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen + - mattcen + - mattcen +publicize_tumblr_url: + - http://.tumblr.com/post/179907294259 + - http://.tumblr.com/post/179907294259 + - http://.tumblr.com/post/179907294259 +timeline_notification: + - 1541716495 + - 1541716495 + - 1541716495 +categories: + - Uncategorized + +--- +This post is a form of procrastination. I’m not sure of its purpose, but it feels right to write it. + +Possible purposes may be: + + * To distract me from other work + * To foster some accountability + * To share my experiences in the hope they help others, if only be showing them they’re not alone + * To receive empathy from others + * To get feedback from others with similar experiences + +Whatever the case, here we go. + +I woke this morning before 6am. I was stressed about work. My productivity has been quite abysmal of late. For my full-time job, I’ve been getting around 1-3 hours of productivity per my 8-hour day, rather than a more ideal 4-6 hours. I’ve been struggling to focus on and be motivated by my work, and allowing myself to be distracted by social media and other non-work-related things. + +This is a recurring thing for me, and has followed me from previous jobs I’ve had. I go through phases where I am adequately, even incredibly, productive, but I always find that eventually I fall into bad habits again and my productivity plummets. + +I’ve wondered whether it’s because I don’t enjoy my work enough, or if I’m just not good enough at it or not a good fit, or because I have a disorder like ADHD that hinders my focus. This last thing is something I’ve been reluctant to entertain because I fear I’m just using it as an excuse (that said, I haven’t raised this particular possibility with my therapist), and everybody struggles with focus sometimes, right? + +I’ve tried various different methods of focus, including: + + * A piece of software that asks me, every 15 minutes “What are you doing?!”, to allow me to more accurately track my time (with the side benefit of being able to log this time in the work time tracking system for billing clients etc.). This is less successful at holding me accountable than it used to be, but I’m better with it than without. + * Keeping clear lists of tasks I need to do, and prioritising them. I’ve tried paper, [Google Keep][1], Gmail’s Tasks, and currently, [Trello][2], but I also have two ticket systems for work ([Jira][3] and [osTicket][4]), as well as my email, and between all of the above, I tend to find that I have more lists than I can manage and struggle to consolidate everything into a single list that’s digestible. + * Removing distractions from my work laptop by closing social media and chat apps. This can help, but requires self-discipline. I’ve eschewed technical methods of _blocking_ these apps, because I’m a techy and very few of these techniques would take me more than a few seconds to disarm, so we’re back to self-discipline, which I don’t seem to have in adequate supply. + * Working from somewhere other than home. This has had limited success, but motivating myself to leave and go to the library, a cafe, a co-working space, or a friend’s place is often a struggle. + +I’m also considering things like [Pomodoro Technique][5], and [Getting Things Done (GTD)][6], the latter of which I’ve bought the book on, but not made time to read yet (ah, the irony!). In a timely event, yesterday I got an email newsletter from Trello that linked to a blog post about our [penchant for switching productivity tools][7]. It was slightly reassuring, but also a bit disheartening; I don’t want to have to keep switching tools to keep my brain engaged; I want to just find something that works and be able to stick to it. + +This morning I have: + + * Done a little research on Pomodoro and GTD unsure if I’ll try either yet + * Checked social media + * Gotten up at 7am + * Showered + * Done a load of washing + * Had breakfast + * Cleaned the kitchen benches, sink and stove top + * Hung out washing to dry + * Cleaned my bathroom mirror + * Cleared and decluttered my desk (moving some stuff into stupid places where I probably won’t find it when I need it, and from where I’ll _eventually_, in the fullness of time, need to move it from to somewhere more sensible. But the key is that it’s out of my way and I feel better about having a clean) + * Started writing this blog post + +The above indicates I’ve been shocked into motivation by my fear that I’m not performing adequately, and needed some easy wins to ease my mind and get the ball rolling. + +So, the summary of this post is that I’m struggling with focus and self-discipline, and have done so on and off for years, unsure if it’s a disorder, insufficient passion/competency for parts of my work, or if I just need to suck it up and do the things I don’t necessarily want to do. I’m feeling inadequate and unproductive, which is a self-fulfilling prophesy, for which the only remedy I know is to just find a task and complete it in an attempt to boost my self-esteem and hope that sets me on a more positive cycle. + +I would prefer people don’t offer me advice without asking permission first, because I don’t respond well to this, however I _am_ interested in hearing from others who have experienced chronic failure to focus on work for a sufficient quantity of the day for their full-time jobs, and what’s worked from them. Maybe? I dunno. + +Brains are weird. And sometimes frustrating. + +Now it’s 9:33am and I’m late for work. I guess it’s time to just harden up, do some tasks and see how I feel. Here goes nothing. + + [1]: https://keep.google.com/ + [2]: https://trello.com/ + [3]: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira + [4]: https://www.osticket.com/ + [5]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique + [6]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done + [7]: https://blog.trello.com/how-to-stick-with-a-productivity-method \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2018-12-17-autism-assessments.md b/content/posts/2018-12-17-autism-assessments.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4e93203 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2018-12-17-autism-assessments.md @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +--- +title: Autism assessments (part 1) +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2018-12-17T11:57:10+00:00 +url: /2018/12/17/autism-assessments/ +timeline_notification: + - 1545047833 + - 1545047833 + - 1545047833 +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen + - mattcen + - mattcen +publicize_tumblr_url: + - http://.tumblr.com/post/181196316574 + - http://.tumblr.com/post/181196316574 + - http://.tumblr.com/post/181196316574 +categories: + - adhd + - autism + - mental health + - neurodiversity + - openness + +--- +_A few months ago, I wrote this as a comment on a Facebook post of mine. It’s easier to share with people in the form of a blog post, so here it is. I’ve also written a [follow-up to this post][1]._ + +For years I’ve struggled with things like non-verbal social cues, facial expressions, tone, etc. I was aware that these were traits of autism (which isn’t to say they’re only present in autistic folks). + +After seeing my psychologist for a few months, having said in my first appointment that I was concerned about this and wanted to understand better how to manage the traits regardless of whether or not autism was the cause, I eventually went to a _clinical_ psychologist at The ASD Clinic. They would have charged me $1020 for an ASD assessment (which includes a 90-minute IQ test followed by a separate appointment for a 2-hour life history to discuss developmental behaviours etc., and for which it could be beneficial to have parents/guardians/others who knew the patient growing up). + +I spent about a month on their waiting list (after filling out the referral form on their website) just to get a call from them, and when I did and they gave me the details, I instead opted for a consultation with a clinical psychologist there ($240) to just talk things through and do a bit of a self-assessment based on the symptoms/traits they said were typical of ASD to see if I fit them. The psychologist showed me a slide-show of many common traits that can indicate autism. This included things like dysgraphia (which can manifest itself as poor handwriting, which I have; I just assumed I wasn’t trying hard enough or it was a symptom of my left-handedness), sensitivity to certain sensations like mild breezes, very high or very low pain thresholds, over-stimulation in noisy or bright environments, struggles with eye-contact, poor reading/response to social cues, etc. I have experienced most of these. + +I am in the fortunate position that (a) I could afford these appointments and (b) don’t need a formal assessment for legal reasons/welfare etc. I personally was happy after the consultation that I didn’t need to do a formal assessment. The outcome was that the psychologist recommended a couple of online screening tests ([RAADS-R][2] and [AQ][3] from https://www.aspietests.org) as a general indicator for possible ASD. These are obviously very informal, but given I was just looking for peace of mind that I was _probably_ on the spectrum to help me feel OK about identifying as such and interacting with the community in that way, it was good enough. + +Further, I’ve had 30 years to learn how to _cope_ with the traits I’ve been experiencing. As a result, a formal ASD assessment may not be accurate; I may manage my traits so well that I’m deemed “not autistic,” even when I might have been deemed “autistic” were I tested 20 years ago. An assessment is subjective and not black or white, even though the result is a binary yes/no outcome. + +So, after the consultation and online tests, I’m comfortable claiming the label “autistic” in the knowledge that it will (a) help de-stigmatise autism and (b) allow me to feel more welcome in the community where I may find better support from other like-minded people with whom I may be able to trade useful coping mechanisms and resources etc. + +_If this post was helpful to you, you may also benefit from checking up my [follow-up post][1]._ + + [1]: https://blog.mattcen.com/2021/05/30/autism-and-adhd-assessments-part-2/ + [2]: https://www.aspietests.org/userdetails.php?target=raads/index.php + [3]: https://www.aspietests.org/userdetails.php?target=aq/index.php \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2020-07-01-social-media-alternatives.md b/content/posts/2020-07-01-social-media-alternatives.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2522094 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2020-07-01-social-media-alternatives.md @@ -0,0 +1,231 @@ +--- +title: Open Source, Decentralised, and Federated Social Media Alternatives +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2020-07-01T05:02:35+00:00 +url: /2020/07/01/social-media-alternatives/ +timeline_notification: + - 1593579759 + - 1593579759 + - 1593579759 +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen + - mattcen + - mattcen +publicize_tumblr_url: + - http://.tumblr.com/post/622413489750818816 + - http://.tumblr.com/post/622413489750818816 + - http://.tumblr.com/post/622413489750818816 +categories: + - activism + - communication + - foss + - openness + - privacy + - security + - software + - tech + - transparency + +--- +_tl;dr: Join me in exploring some alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, Slack, Zoom, Skype, etc. Only through trying them out and starting to develop a critical mass will we be able to free ourselves from these giant platforms that don’t have our best interests at heart._ + +When it comes to social media these days, we users are very definitely the _product_. We are bombarded with ads (or need to resort to ad blockers), censored for posting things that the platforms deem risky or not profitable (such as sexually explicit material or expressions about less mainstream parts of our identity), and at the same time are powerless to reliably get the platforms to remove content that is actively harmful. + +To mainstream social media, we’re just marketing opportunities generating ad revenue. We stay, mostly, because these platforms have the critical mass of people with whom we’d like to connect. But what if we decided to go elsewhere? + +OK, so I know that less mainstream or more niche platforms _don’t_ have that critical mass, and as a result are less appealing. But I’d like people to consider them nonetheless, because that’s the only way we’ll actually _get_ any sort of critical mass and have a hope of cultivating a social network on platforms where we have more freedom and agency. + +I’ll explain what I mean by “decentralised” and “federated”, and go into some examples of each. + +## What is a Federated Platform? + +A federated platform is one in which there is no single centralised authority or hub on which the system, platform, or network depends. The most prominent example of this is email. While most people these days have a Gmail address, we also have the option of instead using a Yahoo! or Hotmail address, or any other free or paid email service, or we could choose to host our email ourselves. (Incidentally, I personally pay for a [Fastmail][1] account because I’m the customer and not the product, and having worked for them in the past, I trust their security and values.) Regardless which email hosting provider you use, you aren’t siloed or restricted to communicating with others who use that email provider. A Gmail user can email a Yahoo! user, for example. + +The key takeaway here is that while there _are_ hubs through which communication and networking must occur, there are many of them, and you have a choice of which one you use, or whether you set up your own. + +## Federated Platforms and ActivityPub + +Many federated platforms support [ActivityPub][2]. Without getting into too much technical detail, in the same way the [SMTP][3] protocol allows different email services (Fastmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail) to talk to each other, ActivityPub allows some different social media platforms to talk to each other. + +So, for example, if I was part of a Twitter-like social media site for people who love ponies, and a friend of mine was part of a Twitter-like social media site for people who hate pineapple on pizza, ActivityPub would still let me, on my pony-loving site, follow and interact with my friend on their pineapple-on-pizza-hating site, without each of us needing an account on each others’ community sites (which is a relief, because I’m definitely pro-pineapple-pizza!). + +Not only that, but if I had a _third_ friend (I know; I’m so popular!) who was on a _Facebook_-like site for people who want to try water-skiing, and both my Twitter-like site and their Facebook-like site support ActivityPub, I could even mutually follow and interact with _them_, even though the sites we’re using run different software and have different focuses. I’d see their Facebook-like posts as Tweet-like things in my timeline, and they’d see my Tweet-like things as Facebook-like posts on _their_ timeline, and we’d be able to comment on each others’ updates from our respective websites. Pretty cool, huh?+ Hey Mum. I’ve started online dating. Why? Because I want to meet people and am bad at doing it in person! Anyway, I’ve got a couple of dates lined up. One is with a woman, and… one is with a guy. +
+
++ +I’d love for you to check out The NORMAL Guide to P-on-P Sex and let me know what you think! \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/2021-10-05-please-follow-me-off-facebook.md b/content/posts/2021-10-05-please-follow-me-off-facebook.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..56cf34e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2021-10-05-please-follow-me-off-facebook.md @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +--- +title: Please follow me off Facebook +author: mattcen +type: post +date: 2021-10-05T03:37:59+00:00 +url: /2021/10/05/please-follow-me-off-facebook/ +publicize_twitter_user: + - mattcen +publicize_tumblr_url: + - http://.tumblr.com/post/664173369707610112 +timeline_notification: + - 1633405082 +categories: + - Uncategorized + +--- +In light of recent news, and following my (regrettable and hopefully brief) return to Facebook, I made the below post as a comment on a forum I’m a part of, in response an article that had been shared about [Facebook putting profit before public good][1] (also: [9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower][2]). + +I decided that, despite a lack of polish, it was worth me re-publishing here: + ++ We can all agree that (unless you’re somewhere on the asexual spectrum), sex can be a lot of fun. But it’s also true that sometimes we all wish we had a bit of a cheat sheet – and that’s where a Normal Guide comes in handy.
+
If you’re someone who has a penis, and you’re interested in trying sex with another person with a penis, this is the guide for you*. We’ll cover sexual health and how to foster comfort and safety with a partner, as well as a bunch of useful tips and techniques, so you can focus on having a great (and consensual, always) time. So let’s dive right in! +
][1]+ Publications ++ +# Technology Proficiencies {#technology-proficiencies} + +## Languages {#languages} + + * Bash + * C + * CSS + * HTML + * Java + * JavaScript + * PHP + * Perl + * Python + +## Software & Tools {#software-tools} + + * AWS EC2/RDS + * Ansible + * Apache + * MySQL + * OpenLDAP + * Postfix + * Postgres + * Samba + +# References available upon request {#references-available-upon-request} + + [1]: /wp-content/uploads/2022/01/mcengia_resume_2022-01-21_1558.pdf + [2]: https://linkdigital.com.au + [3]: https://ckan.org + [4]: https://drupal.org + [5]: https://www.fastmail.com + [6]: https://www.inventtheworld.com.au + [7]: http://minecraft.net/ + [8]: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/ + [9]: https://www.factorio.com + [10]: http://www.cyber.com.au + [11]: http://prisonpc.com + [12]: http://www.rmit.edu.au + [13]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190923142733/http://www1.rmit.edu.au/courses/039990 + [14]: https://govhack.org + [15]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/66151944865/ + [16]: http://vicscouts.com.au + [17]: https://www.csiro.au/en/Education/Programs/STEM-Professionals-in-Schools + [18]: http://au.okfn.org + [19]: https://linux.conf.au + [20]: http://scouts.com.au/adult-program/scouts-australia-institute-of-training + [21]: https://www.rmit.edu.au diff --git a/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wp-1453361509933.jpeg b/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wp-1453361509933.jpeg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9658edc Binary files /dev/null and b/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wp-1453361509933.jpeg differ diff --git a/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mcfly-rejection.jpg b/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mcfly-rejection.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6cfd887 Binary files /dev/null and b/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mcfly-rejection.jpg differ diff --git a/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/51ldgxoxjfl-_sy346_.jpg b/static/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/51ldgxoxjfl-_sy346_.jpg new file mode 100644 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+
+Hi! I'm Matthew Cengia. You can call me Matt, or my online handle, @mattcen.
+
+You now have enough information to stalk me across the web, and find out all about me, but let me save you the trouble.
+
+I'm a Linux systems administrator and developer, open source software advocate, Open Knowledge Australia ambassador, and scout leader. I'm also polyamorous and bisexual, and I use he/him/his pronouns. All of the above are important to my identity, and each component may have be the focus of one or more blog posts in future.
+
+For years, I've considered starting a blog. I registered this account in 2012 in preparation for doing so, but I'm busy, struggled to decide what to,write about, if anything, whether to host it here or elsewhere, and whether it was really worthwhile to myself or anyone else. I've bitten the bullet and decided to give it a shot.
+
+So go forth and have a browse! Hopefully by the time you're reading this, I'll have had time to publish at least one post. Post frequency may be sporadic, but only time will tell!]]>]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>I got a bracelet. For the curious, from left to right: LGBTQI, bisexual, polyamorous. (From https://t.co/Z3qrYqsIQJ) pic.twitter.com/DfCdOCWBe0
— Matthew Cengia (@mattcen) March 4, 2015
]]>If you're into hackfests and #opendata, please read this. I'm guilty on most fronts here, so much to think about. https://t.co/8xS2itFZkc
— Steve Bennett (@stevage1) April 21, 2016
Over the last few of years, I've undergone a lot of changes, and taken some pretty huge steps in personal development. This post is an attempt to tell the story of how this all unfolded. Some of the details are a little fuzzy, but the general narrative is sufficient.
+ + + +Content note: Non-specific discussions about sex and BDSM; more detailed discussions of polyamory/non-monogamy, and bisexuality. Fairly specific mention of my realisation of bisexual/polyamorous/kinky identity and coming out. A pretty deep dive into my brain.
+
As of the start of 2014, I had led what I deemed a pretty ordinary, uninteresting (not to say unfulfilled!) life. I'd gone through primary school and secondary school without many noteworthy blips, except perhaps for the one that helped me realise the self-destructive nature of secrets, and the freedom of honesty, even when it means admitting you messed up.
+ + + +Being involved with Scouts since I was 8 taught me a lot of life skills, including teamwork, leadership, independence, event planning, and a slew of other awesome stuff. I took a break from Scouts when I turned 18.
+ + + +I spent 2 years studying an Advanced Diploma of Computer Science at RMIT TAFE, and then in 2008 I articulated into RMIT's Bachelor of Computer Science. That same year, I began my first ever job, lasting 7 years, and I re-joined the Scouts as a leader to get me away from my computer screen.
+ + + +And for 6 years, this was basically how things stayed. I finished my degree, and my life was basically work, scouts, hanging out with a small handful of friends, and having my introvert down-time at home on the computer etc.
+ + + +An exception to this was that in 2012 I started attending Linux.conf.au , an annual conference on Open Source software. This was where I started making a few friends in the IT space, but I didn't generally see many of them outside of conferences, because they were from all over the world.
+ + + +And that brings us to January 23, 2014, and this tweet from a Linux.conf.au contact:
+ + + +Not having heard of @OKFNau before, I did some digging:
+ + + +This sounded right up my alley, so I went. Being shy and introverted around new people, I was relieved when a very energetic human intercepted me on entry and made me feel welcome, introducing me to many awesome people.
+ + + +I had a ball, and kept attending Open Knowledge events.
+Now: I overcommit and volunteer far too much. For this, I blame my Scout leader; a fantastic person and role model with a penchant for doing too much, and whose commitment I aspired match until I realised not all adults are involved with 3 or more organisations outside their full-time job, and that's OK!
+It was only 6 months before I was co-running Open Knowledge events.
I'd hitherto not made time or space in my life for romantic, intimate, sexual, or otherwise non-platonic connections. I had not desperately needed or craved those types of connections. Sure, I'd been attracted to women before, but never enough to warrant overcoming the stress and anxiety of "making a move."
+ + + +I think Open Knowledge was the first time that I regularly interacted with people around my age, with similar values and interests. I realised I really enjoyed that sort of connection, and thought I was finally ready to also explore different, non-platonic connections.
+ + + +I wasn't necessarily attracted to anyone from Open Knowledge, and in any case the idea of saying as much terrified me. So I turned to online dating. "There's no stigma against this any more," I reasoned. After some research, I created an OkCupid account.
+ + + +OkCupid asked me questions that I'd never considered before:
+ + + ++ + + ++
- What is your sexual orientation? (Straight/Gay/Bisexual)
+- What is your monogamy preferences? (Monogamous/Non-monogamous)
+
I'd assumed I was straight, because I was interested in women and femme-presenting folks, and bisexuality hadn't occurred to me; nor had non-monogamy.
+ + + +Brief consideration revealed that I had the capacity to be attracted to men and masc-presenting folks too. In the past I'd recognised that some men were attractive, but only in a general and objective sense, as opposed to a personal attraction to someone. I also did a little research and decided that just assuming that monogamy is the right choice for everybody is a ridiculous idea. Society tells us monogamy is the norm, but it makes sense to question this, and make an informed decision either for or against monogamy; I chose the latter.
+ + + +Selecting "bisexual" and "non-monogamous," I completed my sign-up, and started chatting to people.
+ + + +Before long I had a couple of dates lined up, with a man and a woman. I mentioned earlier about how high school strengthened my aversion to secrets. As a result of this, I decided to come out as "possibly bisexual" to my parents. I lived with them, but was financially independent, and didn't really think they'd have a problem with this information, let alone a big enough objection that they'd do something as drastic as kick me out, like I'd heard other parents of queer people do.
+ + + ++ + + +Hey Mum. I've started online dating. Why? Because I want to meet people and am bad at doing it in person! Anyway, I've got a couple of dates lined up. One is with a woman, and... one is with a guy.
Their general response was along the lines of: "Oh. ... OK." which was pretty great as far as I was concerned. They've been really supportive!
+ + + +Back to that energetic person I met that first night at Open Knowledge. At some point, I'd heard them mention polyamory (a term I'd encountered in my non-monogamy research), so I told them I was exploring this idea, and they gave me heaps of references, including Archer Magazine, The Ethical Slut, Opening Up, and Polyamory Victoria (PolyVic) - a group which runs regular meetups to discuss Polyamory. I did lots of reading, and joined the PolyVic community, eventually going on to co-run that as well.
+ + + +In addition to the above polyamory/non-monogamy books, I eventually read More Than Two (that's the book; also see their website, but also see this article as a caveat), and 3 books on communication: Nonviolent Communication, Crucial Conversations, and Never Split The Difference.
+ + + +Even if polyamory wasn't for me, I knew the communication and introspection skills I'd learn from considering it would be universally valuable, so I had no qualms about giving it a shot, with great success!
+ + + +In the midst of all this, I had had relationships of varying durations and types with people of different genders, starting to explore sex, intimacy, and romance. I also started to explore parts of the BDSM scene, which, despite not spending much time in, I definitely have an interest in, and I've enjoyed the experimentation I've done in that space thus far. I've also started clubbing and exploring events and venues associated with the "gay scene," which has been a little daunting, but also fun.
+ + + +I don't currently want to go into too many details of my sex life on a public post, but suffice to say, that from 2014 to 2017, I had crammed in a lot of theoretical and practical experience around communication, introspection, non-platonic relationships, non-monogamy, the queer community, sex, kink and the alternative/hippy community (in the form of alternative lifestyle festivals).
+ + + +I keep an open mind, and am regularly inquisitive of the status quo or unfounded assumptions that society should be a certain way; I think this was attitude was integral to my journey.
+ + + +So these days, I'm still doing the endless self-development thing. I'm working better on my communication skills, and pushing my comfort zone, going to events on my own, trying to meet new people, and get better at talking to strangers, especially those who I'm interested in or attracted to. That's hard, but looking back on how far I've come, I'm reassured that I might get there one day. Who knows what the future will hold for me?
+ + + +Non-monogamy Books:
+ + + + + + + +Communication books:
+ + + + + + + +Websites:
+ + + + +]]>]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>I got a bracelet. For the curious, from left to right: LGBTQI, bisexual, polyamorous. (From https://t.co/Z3qrYqsIQJ) pic.twitter.com/DfCdOCWBe0
— Matthew Cengia (@mattcen) March 4, 2015
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Katherine, Mother of Corgwn (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid, Canberra Edition (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid, Canberra Edition (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid BA/BSc MBA (Computing) (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (she/her) (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>If you're into hackfests and #opendata, please read this. I'm guilty on most fronts here, so much to think about. https://t.co/8xS2itFZkc
— Steve Bennett (@stevage1) April 21, 2016
]]>If you're into hackfests and #opendata, please read this. I'm guilty on most fronts here, so much to think about. https://t.co/8xS2itFZkc
— Steve Bennett (@stevage1) April 21, 2016
]]>If you're into hackfests and #opendata, please read this. I'm guilty on most fronts here, so much to think about. https://t.co/8xS2itFZkc
— Steve Bennett (@stevage1) April 21, 2016
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>If you're into hackfests and #opendata, please read this. I'm guilty on most fronts here, so much to think about. https://t.co/8xS2itFZkc
— Steve Bennett (@stevage1) April 21, 2016
| Email: | mattcen AT mattcen DOT com |
|---|---|
| Location: | Melbourne, Australia |
| Other: | @mattcen (LinkedIn/GitHub/Twitter) |
I'm an enthusiastic polymath with a Computer Science degree and extensive sysadmin and communication skills. I crave variety, am passionate about social justice, and enjoy volunteering, teaching, and improving systems and processes.
+ + + +Jan 2018 — Jun 2019
+ + + +Feb 2017 — Oct 2017
+ + + +Jul 2016
+ + + +Jul 2008 — Feb 2016
+ + + +Jul 2009 — Oct 2009
+ + + +Apr 2018 — Jun 2020
+ + + +Aug 2016 — Present
+ + + +Jul 2008 — Present
+ + + +Mar 2016 — Nov 2019
+ + + +CSIRO STEM Professionals in Schools
+ + + +Aug 2014 - Dec 2014
+ + + +Oct 2014 — Aug 2017
+ + + +Scouts Australia Institute of Training
+ + + +2015
+ + + +2008 — 2010
+ + + +https://blog.mattcen.com/publications/
+ + + +In February of this year I left my 7-year-long position with Cyber IT Solutions behind. I needed a change, and really needed a holiday. I took a break for a few months, kept up most of my volunteering with Open Knowledge Australia, Scouts Victoria, and getting ready to run GovHack Melbourne, before going on an overseas trip to Europe for 3 weeks in May. (I visited London, Paris, Berlin, and Prague, for those who are curious; it was great!)
+ + + +After returning home, I continued with my existing volunteering and the planning for GovHack became more full-on. As such, I didn't actively seek any further employment, despite feeling that it was about time for me to do so. I did accidentally pick up some very casual work with Invent The World, which is absolutely fantastic and exciting, but unfortunately not enough to pay the bills on its own.
+ + + +My interests are many and varied, and are listed at the top of my résumé.
+ + + +So, if you've got any work that you think I might be interested in, or know somebody who does, please feel free to check out my résumé and either send me an email (address on my résumé), fill out my contact form or ping me on social media!
+]]>]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>If you're into hackfests and #opendata, please read this. I'm guilty on most fronts here, so much to think about. https://t.co/8xS2itFZkc
— Steve Bennett (@stevage1) April 21, 2016
]]>Dude...if you're blocked by me ON TWITTER, that's a pretty good fucking indication that I REALLY don't want to talk to you. Anywhere.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>Stood my fucking ground.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
I will not be intimidated, I will not be creeped on and I will not be made to feel frightened or angry.
]]>I have every right to feel same in a community that mostly welcomes me and behaviour of that kind is *NOT* cool.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
Communication tends to be most difficult precisely when it's most important. [...] +"If you're afraid to say it, that means you need to say it." + +--Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert, More Than Two, quoting Marcia Baczynksi+The above is a mantra that I attempt to adhere to, but it's hard. I think it gets less hard, slowly, with practice, but I am not sure if it ever becomes easy. There is, however, often an amazing sense of relief, a weight lifted from your shoulders, after saying something you've been afraid to say, regardless of the outcome. Yet, despite knowing, objectively, that it's better for somebody to accept or reject you for being authentic, than for them to accept an inauthentic representation of yourself, fear of rejection is still a hard hurdle to overcome. + +[caption id="attachment_367" align="alignnone" width="550"]
Pictured: George McFly (Back to the Future) looking horrified. Text: "I just can't take that kind of rejection"[/caption]
+
+A big part of my struggle is communicating my wants and needs, and acknowledging that I am entitled to have wants and needs, and that I have a right to ask others for these, just as they have a right to set boundaries around what they are and aren't prepared to offer. These wants and needs could be from anything as simple as "I need hugs", to slightly more complicated requests like "I want to see you more often", or "I would like you to occasionally be available to listen to me vent/rant/mope."
+
+These may seem straightforward, but I really hate the thought that I'm a burden on others, even though if I received such a request myself, I'd usually be happy to oblige, or respectfully say that I didn't feel capable of meeting that need right now, and maybe negotiate something else, all despite the fact that I tend to keep pretty busy. I make time for those I care about, and it shouldn't feel greedy or selfish to expect others to do the same for me, but it sometimes does.
+
+This post, and indeed, this blog, is an attempt on my part to live more authentically, by sharing my thoughts, explaining who I am, and how I feel, without necessarily expecting anybody to read or do anything about it. So if you're reading this, thanks for taking the time. I welcome constructive feedback, but reserve the right to ignore it.
+
+Anyway, basically, brains are weird, and feels are hard.]]>Today, a woman posted a story about a man (pictured in the post) who harassed
+and made visibly uncomfortable 4 separate women on a tram. This woman did her
+best to support these women, such as by sitting beside them, asking them if
+they wanted to move, and staring down the man. The woman was appalled that nobody else on the tram, and in
+particular, no other men, made an attempt to help. The post has since been
+deleted. I'm told it had many vitriolic comments, the man had
+been identified, he and/or his family were being harassed and abused in
+return, there were suggestions that the man had a mental disability, and
+that as a result, picturing him on a public post was inappropriate.
I shared this post to demonstrate my agreement that too often bystanders do nothing to combat this harassment. My shared post and its interesting and generally constructive comments were deleted with the origina.
+ + + +The following are tweets about a guy who is publicly nice to somebody, but then is creepy and unpleasant in private messages.
+ + + +I likened this to men who call themselves feminists, but exhibit anti-feminist behaviour.
+ + + +The discussion on my Facebook post came from two main perspectives. One side
+argued that men should use their privilege as being generally stronger, more
+assertive, more intimidating, whatever (FIXME: don't like some of these
+stereotypes), to step in and support women and others. The other side of the
+argument was that the woman who did help was in a good position to do so,
+because women aren't generally seen as threatening or confrontational, and
+interactions are less likely to result in physical violence, whereas if a man
+had helped, there was a good chance the situatation could have become violent.
I posted a comment in an attempt to clarify these and get everybody on the same
+page, because I believed that despite appearing to disagree, there were some
+fairly significant points on which everybody agreed, but which weren't being
+communicated clearly enough. Unfortunaty, despite my comment being present for
+at least a few hours before the post was taken down, I didn't get many
+confirmations that it accurately represented people's opinions. That said, I
+don't think anybody disagreed, either.
Provoking a physical confrontation is bad, but so is doing nothing, and some
+middle ground, like engaging the victim to distance them from the offender,
+subtly and non-confrontationally letting the offender know you can see them, or
+alerting driver/authorities is probably best.
NOTES: People from security background. Worried about the potential damage to
+the lives of people stepping in, both from physical violence, and the
+possibility that they'd be charged with assult even if they were just defending
+somebody. Suggestions that the "red line" is when the offender makes unwanted
+physical contact with somebody. Don't get all macho and confrontational; call
+the authorities, alert the tram driver etc. Alternative perspective: not
+stepping in until physical contact is initiated is being complicit in the
+harassment; allowing women to be made so uncomfortable and scared that they
+need to get off the tram to escape.
Also today, I was pointed at this TED talk about why violence against women is a men's issue, with which I strongly agree.
+ + + +]]>Dude...if you're blocked by me ON TWITTER, that's a pretty good fucking indication that I REALLY don't want to talk to you. Anywhere.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>I have every right to feel same in a community that mostly welcomes me and behaviour of that kind is *NOT* cool.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>Dude...if you're blocked by me ON TWITTER, that's a pretty good fucking indication that I REALLY don't want to talk to you. Anywhere.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>I have every right to feel same in a community that mostly welcomes me and behaviour of that kind is *NOT* cool.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>Dude...if you're blocked by me ON TWITTER, that's a pretty good fucking indication that I REALLY don't want to talk to you. Anywhere.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>I have every right to feel same in a community that mostly welcomes me and behaviour of that kind is *NOT* cool.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
++Men, you should read this book. This book is not written for us. We are not its target audience, because if the patriarchy is to be overturned, women can nor depend on men to help, let alone lead the assault. It pulls absolutely no punches while detailing all the ways that patriarchy is perpetuated, how men can be awful, and women are second-class citizens. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't, at the very least, stay out of the way an not make things worse, and call out bad behaviour when we see it. + +This book is eye-opening, and heart-wrenching, and I'd have it no other way. This book is not written for men, but you should read it anyway. + +Everyone should read this book. + +"This book is a love letter to the girls." And, given everything in the world whose focus is on men, so it fucking should be.]]>This book is a love letter to the girls. It’s a letter to the bitches and the broads, the sluts and the whores. It’s to the troublemakers and the rebels, the women who are told they’re too loud, too proud, too big, too small.
+
]]>I have every right to feel same in a community that mostly welcomes me and behaviour of that kind is *NOT* cool.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>Dude...if you're blocked by me ON TWITTER, that's a pretty good fucking indication that I REALLY don't want to talk to you. Anywhere.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
$pyf|?u?'yB7pCNW~$y:yv;Kc*^<c,%U
+The length I use has increased over time, as I've found less occasion to have to type these manually. There's no way I want to remember a password like this, let-alone have to type it, fingers moving all over the keyboard, hitting Shift every second character. I don't even want to contemplate having to regularly type something like this into my smartphone.
+So after some deliberation, I took a leaf out of Randall Munroe's XKCD comic
+ + +[caption id="attachment_662" align="alignnone" width="740"]
Pictured: A comic contrasting the struggle of memorising low entropy passwords like "Tr0ub4dor&3" with high entropy passwords like "correct hors battery staple" (CC-By-NC Randall Munroe, XKCD 936)[/caption]
+
+This, combined with a handy shell script, written by a past colleague, which assembles a password from several words from Linux's /usr/share/dict/words file, gave me a password that I just had to start remembering. I quickly set the password on my laptop, while storing it in my password vault accessible from my phone (which I could access with other, different passwords that I already knew and didn't need to change right now) for the inevitable moments I forgot it.
+
+I probably had to look it up about a dozen times, and about two dozen other times I had to sit at my computer for several seconds while I (a) typed my old password before remembering it had changed, and (b) remembered which words comprised the new one, getting it wrong the first couple of times. So all it all, it's taken almost a week, but I think I've got it embedded in my memory now. I still want to have a backup of it somewhere safe in case I have a lapse of memory, but I'm pretty pleased.
+
+There are still a couple of services that shared my old password that I haven't changed yet (a reason I was reluctant to publish this post yet, but decided wasn't a big deal), which I'll do shortly, after I'm a bit more confident in my memory. My main remaining question is whether I get ambitious and try to use different passwords for each of these services. I suspect that if I leave some time between changing each one, I'll be able to sufficiently remember them all, but it's a bit scary to think that I could forget one of them and then be completely locked out. I will consider this further.
+
+In summary: Passwords are hard. Brains are fallible. Computers are the worst.
+
+Tl;dr: I typed my very old workstation password into a work chat room and had to go through the pain of choosing a method to generate and remember a new one, then change that password in all the places I used it.]]>Thought Experiment #1: Imagine a room full of men and women. Someone stands at the front and says, “I want all the guys to stand up.” What happens next? + +Thought Experiment #2: You are with a woman. You tell her you think she’s such a guy, a great guy, the smartest guy you’ve ever known. Note the expression on her face. + +Thought Experiment #3: You turn on cable news and the first thing you hear is someone saying, “Everyone knows it’s a guy’s world.” Picture in your mind what he’s trying to say.+I love these examples so much. + +Now, back to the matter at hand: changing your language. Yes. It requires time and effort, to stop using "guys" as a collective noun for a group of diverse genders. I have largely settled on "folks" as my replacement word, and I still slip up after at least a year of trying. There are certain situations that I'm so used to saying "guys" in, that I have a lot of unlearning to do. But the important thing is that I'm trying, and after just a couple of months of conscious effort, 90% of the time, I was not using a term that some people may find exclusionary. + +So pick a new word to replace "guys" in your everyday vocabulary. There are plenty of them. It won't take all that long to get used to if you keep at it, I promise you, and most people won't even notice the change. + +But for those that do notice, it'll mean the world to them. + +That's all,
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
The Three Components of Appreciation NVC clearly distinguishes three components in the expression of appreciation: ++(That whole chapter on "Receiving Appreciation," and indeed the entire book, is a fascinating read.) + +So rather than a judgement of "you're awesome," perhaps instead one could say "I really appreciate this particular perspective you have on that topic; it's great to have somebody to bond with over this opinion; it makes me happy." + +This approach both gives the recipient of the complement a better understanding of what they're doing well so they can do more of it, and as a result, in my case at least, helps me to receive and appreciate the compliment more easily, because I feel I deserve it more. + +I am not saying I expect anybody giving me a compliment to go to this effort. In certain situations, I might ask for clarification, but I appreciate that people are busy, and despite them taking the time to compliment me out of the blue, they may not have time to elaborate. All I'm saying is that I will endeavour to be more specific with my own compliments in future, and occasionally might respectfully request the same of others, when I deem it appropriate. + +A respectful request might be phrased like this: "I appreciate you saying that nice thing, but would you mind taking the time to elaborate on why you think that? It would be far more valuable to me if you could give examples as to what I said or did, why it was valuable to you, and how it made you feel, so that I can (a) appreciate you're compliment more fully, and (b) use it as an opportunity for growth, to do more of the things that prompted the compliment." I realise this is very verbose, and depending on your relationship with the individual, it could be abbreviated as time goes on, but I think the above is one of the clearest ways to make this request without sounding self-indulgent or unappreciative. + +Tl;dr: give more compliments; we don't do this enough! In doing so, try to be specific as to what you're complimenting, and why it's worthwhile to you. This helps avoid judgements (which when used regularly can have diminished value). This can help the recipient receive the compliment more authentically.]]>+
+- the actions that have contributed to our well-being
+- the particular needs of ours that have been fulfilled
+- the pleasureful [sic] feelings engendered by the fulfillment [sic] of those needs
+
A follow up to Communicating and Living Authentically, this post is another reflection of the way I think and communicate.
+ + + +Words are tricky. Brains are weird. Feels are hard.
+ + + +If you were to ask many of my friends, they'd tell you that my communication skills are amazing. This is often a blessing. Being able to clearly and concisely convey thoughts with linguistic precision is a delightful skill to have, despite the significant quantity of emotional labour often required to dissect
+ + + +I'm bad with emotions though, esp. telling people my challenging feels about them while trying to reassure them so they don't think I'm attacking them or blame themselves.
+ + + +This disparity is confusing; gives the illusion of good comms so makes the bad comms look worse than necessary.
+]]>]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— The Kathy (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
A few months ago, I wrote this as a comment on a Facebook post of mine. It's easier to share with people in the form of a blog post, so here it is. I've also written a follow-up to this post.
+ + + +For years I've struggled with things like non-verbal social cues, facial expressions, tone, etc. I was aware that these were traits of autism (which isn't to say they're only present in autistic folks).
+ + + +After seeing my psychologist for a few months, having said in my first appointment that I was concerned about this and wanted to understand better how to manage the traits regardless of whether or not autism was the cause, I eventually went to a clinical psychologist at The ASD Clinic. They would have charged me $1020 for an ASD assessment (which includes a 90-minute IQ test followed by a separate appointment for a 2-hour life history to discuss developmental behaviours etc., and for which it could be beneficial to have parents/guardians/others who knew the patient growing up).
+ + + +I spent about a month on their waiting list (after filling out the referral form on their website) just to get a call from them, and when I did and they gave me the details, I instead opted for a consultation with a clinical psychologist there ($240) to just talk things through and do a bit of a self-assessment based on the symptoms/traits they said were typical of ASD to see if I fit them. The psychologist showed me a slide-show of many common traits that can indicate autism. This included things like dysgraphia (which can manifest itself as poor handwriting, which I have; I just assumed I wasn't trying hard enough or it was a symptom of my left-handedness), sensitivity to certain sensations like mild breezes, very high or very low pain thresholds, over-stimulation in noisy or bright environments, struggles with eye-contact, poor reading/response to social cues, etc. I have experienced most of these.
+ + + +I am in the fortunate position that (a) I could afford these appointments and (b) don't need a formal assessment for legal reasons/welfare etc. I personally was happy after the consultation that I didn't need to do a formal assessment. The outcome was that the psychologist recommended a couple of online screening tests (RAADS-R and AQ from https://www.aspietests.org) as a general indicator for possible ASD. These are obviously very informal, but given I was just looking for peace of mind that I was probably on the spectrum to help me feel OK about identifying as such and interacting with the community in that way, it was good enough.
+ + + +Further, I've had 30 years to learn how to cope with the traits I've been experiencing. As a result, a formal ASD assessment may not be accurate; I may manage my traits so well that I'm deemed "not autistic," even when I might have been deemed "autistic" were I tested 20 years ago. An assessment is subjective and not black or white, even though the result is a binary yes/no outcome.
+ + + +So, after the consultation and online tests, I'm comfortable claiming the label "autistic" in the knowledge that it will (a) help de-stigmatise autism and (b) allow me to feel more welcome in the community where I may find better support from other like-minded people with whom I may be able to trade useful coping mechanisms and resources etc.
+ + + +If this post was helpful to you, you may also benefit from checking up my follow-up post.
+]]>]]>Just on my way to @OKFNau drinks hoping to catch up with @kattekrab and @bendechrai #opensource
— Kathy Reid (@KathyReid) January 23, 2014
]]>All you Melb peeps doing #open: software, hardware, knowledge, science, art, food, whatever. Drinks. Thursday. http://t.co/uv89N5IlSx
— Open Knowledge AU (@OKFNau) January 21, 2014
]]>Dude...if you're blocked by me ON TWITTER, that's a pretty good fucking indication that I REALLY don't want to talk to you. Anywhere.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
]]>I have every right to feel same in a community that mostly welcomes me and behaviour of that kind is *NOT* cool.
— Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) October 8, 2016
Over the weekend I decided to upgrade my MacBook from MacOS 10.6 Snow Leapord to MacOS 10.7 Lion, for no particular reason other than "it seemed like a good idea at the time". I encountered a few minor issues in the process, but it was mostly painless except that my Time Machine backups stopped working. This post details some of the issues I encountered and how I solved them.
+ + + +Upgrading to MacOS 10.7 has been made quite easy. If you're running Snow Leopard, you simply purchase Lion in the App store, and download the installer. Once the 3+ GB installer is downloaded and has begun, you can optionally burn the image to a DVD or write it to a bootable USB key.
+ + + +Your next step is to actually perform the upgrade, which should be as simple as following the prompts for the installer. This will cause a reboot or two, after which the installation should be complete.
+ + + +Lion has some different defaults to Snow Leopard, at least 2 of which I didn't like. These two were:
+ + + +Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the scrolling direction when using a trackpad was not good enough, and inverted it. This was a bit of a shock, so I went and inverted it. Depending on your setup, you may need this link, or the first point in this one.
In Lion, unless you specifically tell them otherwise, many applications will remember which windows and files they had open after you quit them, so that it can resume them later when you start it back up again. I didn't like this behaviour, so I turned it off. The recommendation is apparently that you don't do this, but instead disable it for specific applications... or something.
For those of you that don't know, you can use a Linux server as a Time Capsule for Time Machine and therefore store your backups there. This required a bit of configuration for Snow Leopard, but for Lion, there were extra changes that needed to take place for it to work again.
+ + + +Lion uses a newer version of the Apple File Protocol (AFP), version 2.2, and this hasn't been packaged for many Linux releases yet, as it's either deemed unstable, or has been until recently.
+ + + +I followed this guide for how to reconfigure my Debian Squeeze server to talk to Lion, but instead of downloading the packages listed on the site, I manually downloaded the source code for Debian Wheezy and compiled it on my server. There's a bit of information in the above guide's comments about caveats with this (such as needing to install libacl1-dev on the machine doing the compiling, despite it not being listed as a dependency).
+ + + +The basic gist of how to get the sources compiled and installed on Debian Squeeze is:
+ + + + mkdir netatalk
+ cd netatalk
+ wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/netatalk/netatalk_2.2.1{-1.dsc,.orig.tar.gz,-1.debian.tar.gz}
+ dpkg-source -x netatalk_2.2.1-1.dsc
+ cd netatalk-2.2.1
+ dpkg-buildpackage
+ # At this point you may be notified about unmet dependencies, such as:
+ # dpkg-checkbuilddeps: Unmet build dependencies: libdb-dev
+ # Install these dependencies, whatever they may be:
+ sudo aptitude install libdb-dev
+ # Then try again
+ dpkg-buildpackage
+ cd ..
+ sudo dpkg -i netatalk_2.2.1-1_i386.deb
+ # Again, at this point there may be complaints about dependencies not
+ # being met by this package. You should be able to resolve these by
+ # choosing one of the resolutions offered by:
+ sudo aptitude installNow assuming you're doing this from scratch, you should be able to basically take the config provided in the guide I linked to without too many requred changes.
+ + + +I ran into issues because I was using a config file from the older release of AFP, and spend a long time trying to determine why it wasn't working before realising that I needed the 'tm' option in the AppleVolumes.default file to denote that this share is usable by Time Machine. After adding this everything Just Worked.
+ + + +So the process was more painful than I expected, and I suspect that if I'd known I'd have to jump through the above hoops to try and make the required changes in order to adapt (some of which I did until 3am Saturday night :S), I probably wouldn't have bothered forking out the ~$30 it cost for the upgrade, given that so far I've seen very little benefit. Having tackled the problems I considered major now though, hopefully others can benefit from my experience.
+]]>I was just chatting to someone about our mutual in each other, and what we'd be likely comfortable doing together. Because explicit verbal consent can be scary blah blah, so having a general shape of what's acceptable between two people helps
I asked them what they'd likely be comfortable doing with me, and they listed several things.
And I realised that knowing that somebody is likely comfortable with certain activities means that if I were to ask verbally if they'd like that activity, and they say "no", it's more easy for me to trust that they're just not into it in that moment, rather than to take it as a rejection of me more generally (which I know is not how I should interpret it in any case, but this makes that easier to internalise)!
I am an activist. or at least I try to be. I often feel like I'm not "enough" of an activist.With the way my mental health has been of late, I've not had the energy to do a bunch of the stuff I want to do, and indeed am reevaluating what it *is* that I want to do, but that's another post.
+ + + +Today I attended the Extinction Rebellion action of cibil dispbedience in Melblurne's CBD. A friend was attending, and the weather is lovely, so I decided to at least wander down; worst case I'd get some exercise, get out of the house, and spend some time in the sun. I realised once I got there that I had a bunch of uncertainty about events like this.
+ + + +I don't know how much of this is attributable to my autism, butI realise increasingly that in order to feel comfortable doing things, I often need to have a bunch of information about what I'm getting myself into. This event, for example., was an act of civil diobedience. This means, in practice, that it's not an event sanctioned by authorities, and that people who were blockading the thoroughfair )the purpose of the event) are potentially going to get arrested, and indeed I did see footage of several people being arrested. The police presence was quite impressive in size, in my opinion. I found out this morning after signing up to the event via their web form they had a 9am briefing for attendees to go through what was happening. I wasn't able to get into the city early enough to make it to this, and even if I was, I think going into a room of strangers would've daunted me enough that I might not have had the energy. But had I attended, I likely would've found a bunch of information that would've put my mind at ease.
+ + + +Things that help wase my mind are details of logistics, such as a schedule of what's happening when, and importantly, risk assessments. What will happen if people get arrested? What if, despite the intent of a non-violent action, a riot breaks out? If I get arrested, what are my rights, and what support will I have? Will I have friends there? Knowing people is a big deal for me, because I often don't have the energy to interact with strangers.
+]]>As mentioned in a previous blog post, I'm asolo-polyamorous. What that means to me is that my primary relationship is with myself, and I value a degree of independence and solitude. I donlt want to have a shared bedroom. for example. While I'm open to cohabitating with a partner, I want my own space, both for when I want quiet time alonee, and if I wantd to have somebody else sleep over. I don't want to become codependent on somebody else, . I wsa thinking recently though, that with the way I do relationships, there is a lot of flexibility, but also a lot of uncertainty and insecurity.
+ + + +By this I mean that I don't have agreements with partners around availability. If I need support for something during the week, and I'm not loving with a partner, who can I reliably ask? The answer, currently, is nobody. I In addition to partners, I have a lot of very close friends who I trust,, so I have no shortage of theoretical support, but this is all subject to availability of others, which hasn't been negotiated. If I'm having a tough time during the week, and neeed some support, there is basically nobody who I can guarantee will answer my message for help. I'm considering ways in which I can negotiate this within my relationships (both friendships and partnerships), but the idea scares me., because where I'm at in my life, and the commitments I have to volunteering etc. (which, admittedly, is dramatically reduced from what it was) means that I'm not sure if I'm comfortable committing to be available "on call" for somebody else, and I feel really uncomfortable asking them to do the same for me. My desire to give/receive commitment is at odds with my desire for independence and autonomy.
+]]>Why do we communicate? What, when you get right down to it, are the core objectives of communication? For me, communicating is about conveying information for the benefit of either ourselves, or others. What sort of information? Here's a non-exhaustive list:
+ + + +I was just chatting to someone about our mutual in each other, and what we'd be likely comfortable doing together. Because explicit verbal consent can be scary blah blah, so having a general shape of what's acceptable between two people helps
I asked them what they'd likely be comfortable doing with me, and they listed several things.
And I realised that knowing that somebody is likely comfortable with certain activities means that if I were to ask verbally if they'd like that activity, and they say "no", it's more easy for me to trust that they're just not into it in that moment, rather than to take it as a rejection of me more generally (which I know is not how I should interpret it in any case, but this makes that easier to internalise)!
I am a queer, bisexual, polyamorous, autistic, cisgender man. That sentence contains six labels that I choose to apply to myself.
+ + + +I often hear people complain that labels are divisive and counter-productive. I want to unpack the advantages and disadvantages of labels, and some useful ways to think about them.
+ + + + +]]>| Workplace accommodations for neurodivergent accessibility | PyConAU 2021 | Video |
| Getting started with Docker and Swarm | Linux.conf.au 2021 | Slides Video |
| Implementing Diverse and Inclusive Codes of Conduct | Linux.conf.au 2021 | Slides Video |
| Improving diversity and inclusion at tech (and other) events | Linux.conf.au 2018 | Notes Video |
| Preparing to be makers in a consumer-focussed world | Buzzconf.io 2016 | Slides Video |
| Intro to OpenStreetmap | OSDC 2015 | Slides Video |
| Create customized map layers with TileMill | OSDC 2015 | Slides |
| Scalable SOE deployments | Linux.conf.au 2014 | Slides Video |
| Open Knowledge Australia mini-conference | Linux.conf.au 2017 | Playlist |
| Open Knowledge Australia mini-conference | Linux.conf.au 2016 | Playlist |
tl;dr: Join me in exploring some alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, Slack, Zoom, Skype, etc. Only through trying them out and starting to develop a critical mass will we be able to free ourselves from these giant platforms that don't have our best interests at heart.
+ + + +When it comes to social media these days, we users are very definitely the product. We are bombarded with ads (or need to resort to ad blockers), censored for posting things that the platforms deem risky or not profitable (such as sexually explicit material or expressions about less mainstream parts of our identity), and at the same time are powerless to reliably get the platforms to remove content that is actively harmful.
+ + + +To mainstream social media, we're just marketing opportunities generating ad revenue. We stay, mostly, because these platforms have the critical mass of people with whom we'd like to connect. But what if we decided to go elsewhere?
+ + + +OK, so I know that less mainstream or more niche platforms don't have that critical mass, and as a result are less appealing. But I'd like people to consider them nonetheless, because that's the only way we'll actually get any sort of critical mass and have a hope of cultivating a social network on platforms where we have more freedom and agency.
+ + + +I'll explain what I mean by "decentralised" and "federated", and go into some examples of each.
+ + + +A federated platform is one in which there is no single centralised authority or hub on which the system, platform, or network depends. The most prominent example of this is email. While most people these days have a Gmail address, we also have the option of instead using a Yahoo! or Hotmail address, or any other free or paid email service, or we could choose to host our email ourselves. (Incidentally, I personally pay for a Fastmail account because I'm the customer and not the product, and having worked for them in the past, I trust their security and values.) Regardless which email hosting provider you use, you aren't siloed or restricted to communicating with others who use that email provider. A Gmail user can email a Yahoo! user, for example.
+ + + +The key takeaway here is that while there are hubs through which communication and networking must occur, there are many of them, and you have a choice of which one you use, or whether you set up your own.
+ + + +Many federated platforms support ActivityPub. Without getting into too much technical detail, in the same way the SMTP protocol allows different email services (Fastmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail) to talk to each other, ActivityPub allows some different social media platforms to talk to each other.
+ + + +So, for example, if I was part of a Twitter-like social media site for people who love ponies, and a friend of mine was part of a Twitter-like social media site for people who hate pineapple on pizza, ActivityPub would still let me, on my pony-loving site, follow and interact with my friend on their pineapple-on-pizza-hating site, without each of us needing an account on each others' community sites (which is a relief, because I'm definitely pro-pineapple-pizza!).
+ + + +Not only that, but if I had a third friend (I know; I'm so popular!) who was on a Facebook-like site for people who want to try water-skiing, and both my Twitter-like site and their Facebook-like site support ActivityPub, I could even mutually follow and interact with them, even though the sites we're using run different software and have different focuses. I'd see their Facebook-like posts as Tweet-like things in my timeline, and they'd see my Tweet-like things as Facebook-like posts on their timeline, and we'd be able to comment on each others' updates from our respective websites. Pretty cool, huh?
+ + + +
Collectively, apps and sites that communicate with each other via ActivityPub are said to be part of the "Fediverse" (a portmanteau of "federated universe"). Each site (be it a pony site or a pineapple pizza site) is often referred to as a "server" or, more commonly, an "instance," (as in, "an instance or server in which this particular software is installed") such that in this context, these terms can all be used interchangeably.
+ + + +Alright, without any further backstory, let's dive into some examples. Many of the federated examples I'm listing below support ActivityPub (i.e. are part of the Fediverse), which means that if you join a site that runs any of those apps, you'll be able to talk to people on any of the others (including me)!
+ + + +
Mastodon is a great alternative to Twitter. It has all the paradigms you know and love, with a few different names. Tweets are called Toots, and Retweets are called Boosts. Toots on Mastodon are usually limited to 500 characters, compared to Twitter's 280 characters, and you can also include Content Warnings on your Toots, which will hide the Toot's contents until the reader clicks on it (after they've read whatever content warning you provided), and will blur out any attached media by default too. There are even various services, such as Moa.party, which will let you post your Twitter Tweets to Mastodon, and vice-versa, if you wish.
+ + + +If you head over to Mastodon's home page and scroll down a bit, you can find a bunch of instances you can join to become part of the Fediverse, and communicate with anyone else who's also connected. I personally am a member of Aus.social, a Mastodon server targeted at Australian folks. My friend, Aurynn, has also recently launched Cloud Island, which is targeted at New Zealenders, but is also open to Australians.
+ + + +Cloud Island is a paid-for service (minimum $8USD/month, via Patreon), which helps to support the servers running the site, and the effort required to keep it going. It also has a well-defined and enforced code of conduct, meaning it's well-moderated, and the site is entirely hosted in New Zealand, which means it's pretty fast to access from Australia, and isn't hosted with a big cloud provider like Amazon's AWS (which I think is a Good Thing). You can find more information on the Cloud Island homepage, or the About section of its Patreon page.
+ + + +There are iPhone and Android apps that support Mastodon too. On Android I use Tusky. I don't have any recommendations for iPhone apps, but could probably hunt some down if asked.
+ + + +
Pixelfed is also part of the Fediverse, and has a focus on photos and pictures, in the same way that Instagram does. I've not played around with it a whole lot, but it looks like they're doing some really cool stuff. Head over to their list of instances if you'd like to join up and give it a shot.
+ + + +
If you really want something that looks like Facebook, from what I've seen, Friendica is your best bet. You can check out their list of instances, or maybe try to come join me over on Nerdica. Friendica shows information in Facebook-style posts and comments (even if the conversation happened on another platform like Mastodon — yes, Friendica is part of the Fediverse too!), as well as supporting things like Events; one of the main things I keep Facebook around for.
+ + + +
If videos are your thing, give PeerTube a shot. You can filter their list of instances on various criteria, post videos, and watch other videos (from your instance or others). PeerTube has the added option that, while watching a video, you can share bits of the video (using a BitTorrent-style protocol) with anyone else also watching the same video, to reduce the load on the server hosting it! Furthermore, if you find someone who posts videos that you enjoy on PeerTube, and you'd like to subscribe to them, you can do this from any platform that supports ActivityPub, and see updates on your platform of choice whenever a new video is uploaded!
+ + + +
WriteFreely is a really clean-looking blogging and writing platform that's also part of the Fediverse. This means you can subscribe to WriteFreely authors from whatever Fediverse platform you're a member of. If you want to give WriteFreely a shot, you could try out Write.As, from the folks who develop WriteFreely, or join another instance of your choice.
+ + + +
Element and Matrix work together to provide a chat service, both for one-on-one chats, and for group chat rooms. Matrix is the name of the server-side (the service you connect to in order to interact with others), and Element is the name of the client side (the app you run on your computer or phone to connect to the network). There are other alternatives to Element if you'd like to connect to Matrix with something different. FluffyChat is one of them. It's pretty cute and friendly, but I don't think it's quite as featureful as Element is just yet.
+ + + +
If you want to give Element/Matrix a shot, I highly recommend creating an account on matrix.org using their instance of the Element web app.
+ + + +Matrix are also doing some really cool stuff in an endeavour to support being decentralised, as well as federated. Check out their peer-to-peer Matrix blog post for more info.
+ + + +Matrix is also great as an alternative to Signal, with the advantage that all the software is completely open source (while for Signal, you're using the Signal servers, whose source code you can't verify), and doesn't require sharing your phone number with contacts. It does full end-to-end encryption, and has recently released a really simple verification tool with Element 1.6, meaning that if you've verified the Matrix identity of a friend in-person, you can be certain that you're talking to them, no matter what device they're talking to you from. It's a really smooth experience!
+ + + +Element also supports one-on-one video and voice calling, and, if integrated with Jitsi (mentioned below), can also do group video chats.
+ + + +A decentralised platform is one in which every participant is equal. There are no hubs that we need to interact through, and no contributor is more important than any other. The best example of this that I can think of is attending a social gathering in person. You might know some people there, and not know others. You find yourself in a group talking to some folks, one of whom is an astronomer. Later on in the event, you find yourself in a different group of people, chatting, and somebody mentions astronomy. At this point, you can mention that you were chatting to an astronomer earlier on, and potentially invite them over or connect them to this person later on.
+ + + +In this example, no one person holds all the knowledge from all the conversations in the event space, or is arbitrating and dictating who can speak with whom. Every individual at the event is a free agent who can communicate with any other person, and can share information from other interactions they've had. This is what I mean by decentralised.
+ + + +Decentralised platforms are still relatively new, and many of them aren't particularly polished, but here are a few examples:
+ + + +
Secure ScuttleButt is probably one of the more predominant platforms right now. It uses what is known as the "gossip" protocol, in the same way that I described in my example of different conversations at a social event above. I hear information from my friends, and then I can "gossip" that information to my other friends as an intermediary, without each of my friends knowing each other directly. This has the advantage that there is no single point of failure, and anybody can pass on a message from one person to another, as long as they're connected to both of those people. The disadvantage, though, is that anything posted to the ScuttleButt network is immutable (i.e. you can't edit or delete what you post), and, with the exception of private messages, all your posts are publicly visible. (Private messages can be passed on from one friend to another, but can only be decrypted by the intended recipient.)
+ + + +The other upshot of this model of not having any central servers are that you can make updates (e.g. a social media post) to your ScuttleButt journal from anywhere, even if you don't have an internet connection at the time, and then as soon as you're in range of a friend who also uses ScuttleButt, your devices can communicate directly (without needing to go via the internet), to share the information you've published, and then your friend can pass it onto others via the internet, or directly. This all happens automatically and seamlessly.
+ + + +Further to the above, if you receive updates from your friends, your device will download all of those, and you can read them offline at your leisure. This does mean that your cache of ScuttleButt content can grow quite large (gigabytes, in some cases), and you may need to set it up to delete old content once in a while, with the additional disadvantage that you then won't be able to pass this content onto others, or access it yourself unless you retrieve it again from a friend.
+ + + +To get started with ScuttleButt on your computer, I recommend downloading Patchwork and following the ScuttleButt Getting Started guide. To get started on your mobile device, give Manyverse a shot. It's worth noting that due to how ScuttleButt works, you can't have the same identity on both your phone and your computer, but you can easily cross-link unoffically by mentioning your phone's identity in your computer's profile bio, and vice-versa.
+ + + +I haven't really played with Aether much yet, but it's a platform that allows you to create and subscribe to forums on various topics. Like ScuttleButt, because it's decentralised, you basically download all the information to which you're given access, and then you share that with others you interact with. In order to keep the amount of information you download relatively small, the platform only allows sharing text data (though this data can contain links to other media such as images elsewhere on the internet).
+ + + +IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System, is a peer-to-peer file storage system. Their homepage likely explains how it works better than I, but in short, you and others store files you'd like to publish via IPFS, and then everybody who downloads those files becomes capable of sharing them with others.
+ + + +Briar is an Android-only messaging app that works via peer-to-peer access direct between phones, or over the internet via the Tor network. It's not particularly polished, and doesn't have a bunch of features yet, but is designed to be secure and private, and for basic messaging, it seems to work relatively well.
+ + + +Jitsi is one of the up-and-coming video platforms available these days as an alternative to Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, etc. It's completely free to create a video chat on their website Meet.Jit.si, and you don't even need an account for it! They're also working hard on getting end-to-end encryption up-and-running, and already have a proof-of-concept working! Meanwhile, if you're concerned that their server can decrypt your video messages, you can run your own instance of the server that you control! Jitsi can run completely in-browser, but also has desktop and mobile apps for all major platforms.
+ + + +As if having a single video conferencing alternative wasn't enough, Big Blue Button is another one! I've not played with this a whole lot, but it's also completely free, and seems to offer some more seminar-like tools that Jitsi lacks, as well as a collaborative note-taking space shared by everyone within a given meeting. Like with Jitsi, Big Blue Button can be installed on your own servers, so that you can control who has access to your data.
+ + + +There are so many more cool apps that I didn't mention here. All of the ones I have mentioned are completely open source, so the code for them is completely available for anyone to read, or install on their own systems so they're not reliant on servers controlled by anyone else.
+ + + +Of the services listed above, here are those that support ActivityPub and are part of the Fediverse, along with any accounts I have on them. I'm inactive on most of them except aus.social, so whichever platform you choose, that's the best account to follow:
+ + + +If you'd like to make contact with me on any of the other services I've mentioned, here's where you can find me:
+ + + +I know that switching away from our current familiar social media platforms that have all our friends on them is a big ask. I also know that some people think that the benefit of being able to easily connect with their social circle outweighs the detriments of giving your data to a big company, or of expending energy switching to a more free and liberated alternative and then trying to convince your friends to do the same so you don't feel so alone there. I'm here to tell you that getting started on some of these platforms really isn't that hard, and you don't need to give up Facebook or Twitter right away. It's easy to create a Mastodon account on Mastodon.online or Aus.social, and then use that to follow friends on those or other Fediverse platforms, either from a computer or smartphone. It's equally easy to install Element on your smartphone or access its web interface on desktop, to create an account on Matrix.org and use it to chat with friends and meet new people.
+ + + +All I'm asking is that you give it a chance and see how it works for you, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to start such a trend that we create our own brand new community of pineapple-pizza-hating or pony-loving humans!
+ + + +So, please join me. Let's give some of these other freedom- and privacy-respecting social media tools a chance, and see if we can build a new friend network away from the Facebooks and Twitters of the world!
+]]>Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.
+ + +";}]]>Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.
+ + +";}]]>Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.
+ + +";}]]>
This post is a follow-up to Autism Assessments (part 1).
After a consultation with a clinical psychologist a bit over 2 years ago, resulting in me self-identifying as autistic, which made me feel better about my various neuro-atypical behaviours and continuing to seek support and information surrounding neurodiversity, I started to realise that autism that may not be the only way I'm neurodivergent, and I sought out additional details about how my brain might work.
+ + + +For years I've struggled with concentration and focus, except when it comes to things that I really love doing, which I can hyperfocus on for hours on end, to the point that I lose track of time and forget to eat or sleep, sometimes. I've never been able to reliably time-sheet my work as part of my job, because keeping track of how long I've spent on a task is an exercise in futility unless I bog myself down in processes enforced by technology to remind me to check in every 15 minutes with a status update.
+ + + +The above, and a bunch of other little things, made me start to wonder if I also had ADHD. ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have quite a lot in common, and many people are diagnosed with both. After speaking to a large quantity of friends who also have ADHD (some of whom also have autism), I started to wonder if this was me too.
+ + + +Further to this, because of Melbourne's COVID-19-related lockdowns, I spent a lot of time at home with my partner and nobody else, to the point that I think I lost a bunch of resilience I'd built up to dealing with situations like overwhelming sensory input, to the point that, in the last 12 months, I've experienced what I've identified as at least two meltdowns, one at home, and one at a shopping centre, where I got so overwhelmed with noise, imagery, and thoughts, that I had to sit quietly for almost an hour before I could calm down enough to interact with the world again. Meltdowns are a classic autism trait.
+ + + +When I sought information about autism, I decided that a formal diagnosis wouldn't be very useful for me, because even if I did end up with a positive diagnosis, I'd almost certainly be diagnosed as "low support needs" (this used to be known as "high functioning autism", but that's not a good term for a bunch of reasons), which would mean that the few benefits I might get from a formal diagnosis, such as government support as part of the NDIS, would likely not be useful or applicable to me, so it was just as beneficial for me to self-identify as autistic and seek support in the form of therapy to help manage various autism traits.
+ + + +But, once I started thinking that I might also have ADHD, and after having tried all manner of mindfulness techniques, organisational processes, and other things in order to help me form some constructive routines and focus on things in my day-to-day life, none of which stuck reliably, I realised that if I do have ADHD, one of the few options that may remain available to me were to try some stimulant medication to help me focus. And the thing about stimulant medication, is that it's not available unless you have a formal ADHD diagnosis.
+ + + +So, after much deliberation, I started the long, slow process of seeking a diagnosis. I started by talking to my GP (general practitioner) about this, and they referred me to a psychiatrist who could assess me for ADHD. I called this psychiatrist, and they said that they'd seen on the information my GP had sent them that I also identified as autistic, and wanted to make the point that this particular psychiatrist doesn't have much experience with autism.
+ + + +I thought about this, and decided that, given ADHD and ASD are often related, and given I already identify as having the latter, seeing somebody who specialises in both is probably in my best interests. A couple of friends of mine highly recommended Dr Marged Goode, who specialises in both ADHD and ASD, so I booked in an appointment. Unfortunately, many clinics that do these assessments have long waiting lists, and this was no exception; I waited over 3 months for my initial appointment.
+ + + +Now, it's worth mentioning at this point, as mentioned in my initial blog post, that these assessments are expensive. We're talking in the ballpark of $1,000, or a little over, for a full assessment of both ADHD and Autism; obviously this makes these inaccessible to a significant portion of the population.
+ + + +During my first appointment, I spent a couple of hours chatting about my experiences and history, and learning about how Marged thinks about ADHD and Autism, and how their various traits fit together, by way of a diagram she drew on a board. Afterwards, she sent me a large amount of questionnaires that I and my family needed to fill out in order to gather enough information for an assessment.
+ + + +The paperwork I was given included:
+ + + +I was required to fill out all of the above questionnaires, while my partner and my parent were asked to fill out slightly altered variants of the AQ, EQ, BRIEF-A, and SRS™-2, and my parent was asked to answer a developmental history questionnaire. It took me an afternoon to answer the almost 800 multiple-choice questions, while my parent and partner had fewer than half that number of questions.
+ + + +Furthermore, I was asked to dig up any primary school reports for perusal. Marged said that because ADHD is present all our lives, its presence needs to be demonstrated in childhood for a positive diagnosis, and one of the ways to do this is to look at the comments (as opposed to the actual grades) on primary school reports, for things like "day dreams," "gets distracted," "has trouble sitting still," "misses deadlines," and "has great potential if only they applied themselves." Basically, anything that suggests inattention or hyperactivity. I personally had a few tell-tale signs in my own reports.
+ + + +I also opted to sit an IQ test. Now, this isn't strictly required for a diagnosis (and in many ways, IQ tests are unfit for testing one's intelligence), but Marged pointed out that often people with autism take longer to process information, and therefore may be perceived as less intelligent than they actually are, and people who aren't perceived as below average intelligence may actually be somewhat above average, but being held back by their mental processing speed. All this to say, if a test were to suggest that you have a high IQ (and if you are content to believe that an IQ test is an adequate representation of your intelligence) then perhaps you can take some reassurance that if people perceive you as a bit of a slow thinker, it's not because of your intelligence, but just because you happen to process things a little slowly. So, perhaps not a huge deal, but despite the extra $350 cost, I decided to give it a shot and see what the result was.
+ + + +I sat the IQ test a week after my initial appointment, and during that meeting I also handed in all the filled out paperwork from myself and my family, and booked the next available appointment, which, unfortunately, was another 2 months away. Prior to my next appointment, Marged would write up a report of her findings, that could be used as evidence of any diagnosis it revealed. The report was an optional extra (another $200) that I thought would be valuable.
+ + + +Then I played the waiting game, wondering whether or not I'd get the diagnosis I expected, or whether I'd find out that no, I don't have ADHD and/or autism, and therefore have to look elsewhere for answers as to why I struggle with various aspects of life (am I "not autistic/ADHD enough", in the same way that many people feel like they're "not queer enough" etc.?).
+ + + +Eventually my appointment came around, and Marged began by putting my mind to rest, flipping to the back of the 18-page report, and read the but that said yes, I've been diagnosed with both ADHD and Autism. *Wipes brow with relief*. We then proceeded to walk through the report in order, so I understood what it all meant.
+ + + +The report detailed the results of my various tests/questionnaires, and what they suggested about me. This included graphs of the results from the answers of me and my family members, and how those results compare to each other, and those of somebody who is considered "neurotypical". It then went on to summarise the outcomes of these results, and offer some recommendations for subsequent steps for managing my mental health, executive functioning, etc., and finished up with an appendix detailing how the questionnaires and assessments demonstrated that I fit the DSM-5's criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorder, and ADHD.
+ + + +So, I have both ADHD and Autism. My next steps include asking my GP to refer me to a psychiatrist to hopefully try some stimulant medication to help me focus, as well as continuing to try to form solid habits of mindfulness and exercise, and learning more about my autistic/ADHD brain from peers and experts online and in-person.
+ + + +Feel free to reach out if you'd like more information about the process I went through, or want to talk to me about your own brain, and I'll do what I can to respond constructively!
+]]>For the first time in my life, I'm living alone. And I've found that it works surprisingly well for me. I was worried that I'd crave human social interactions, or that I'd go down an ADHD hyperfocus rabbit-hole and forget to eat for the entire day (resulting in an inevitable and debilitating headache or migraine). But as it turns out, as an introvert, I'm actually rather enjoying having my own space, tempered by the ability to reach out to friends online, and am able to keep my kitchen stocked with enough food that I can prepare in advance so that even if I am hyperfocussing, I can usually muster the effort to heat up some leftovers and bring them back to my desk.
+ + + +What I am struggling with though, is the lack of physical human contact. I've not properly cuddled a human for months, and there are times that really gets to me. Several friends and family members have offered to be my bubble buddy if I need it, which is super lovely of them and I really appreciate it. But I've been very reluctant to accept these offers, and have spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why that is.
+ + + +I'm not monogamous. One of the reasons this works for me is because I don't want to be somebody's only partner to the exclusion of all others. That's a lot of pressure, especially as an introvert who often needs my own space, without the guilt of knowing that a partner needs some support and that I'm the only one they can get it from. I've realised this is at least part of the reason why a single "bubble buddy" is something that I'm worried about committing to. Because that means my bubble buddy would, if they were strictly following Melbourne's lockdown rules, be excluding physical contact with others so that they could share that with me. And I really don't need that kind of pressure.
+ + + +Now, one could possibly make the argument that if done carefully, having a slightly larger bubble, of say 3 or 4 people who are all only in contact with each other, might still be a manageable risk from an infection perspective, but even if I did believe that were true, I'm autistic. That's relevant here, because autistic folks often need support understanding what is and isn't socially acceptable or expected of them, and clearly defined rules are a big help in this endeavour, so we often cling to rules like a lifeline in order to be able to function in society. As a result, the idea of breaking the rules can cause a lot of anxiety because, aside from the potential societal or legal consequences, it puts us in unfamiliar territory.
+ + + +So, for the time being, I am going to continue to think through the whole "bubble buddy" thing, without making any commitments to anyone, as much as my body would really love it. Hopefully I can find a workable solution in the near future, or, being really optimistic, Melbourne's 6th lockdown will ease up so I can see friends without needing to limit my contact quite so rigidly.
+ + + +Take care out there, folks.
+]]>Depending on where you work, this content may not be safe for work.
+ + + +Earlier this year I wrote an article for NORMAL, a new sex education website and sex toy store. My article was about sex between people who have penises, and I'm really proud of how it turned out, and it's just been published! Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
+ + + ++ + + +We can all agree that (unless you’re somewhere on the asexual spectrum), sex can be a lot of fun. But it’s also true that sometimes we all wish we had a bit of a cheat sheet - and that’s where a Normal Guide comes in handy.
If you’re someone who has a penis, and you’re interested in trying sex with another person with a penis, this is the guide for you*. We’ll cover sexual health and how to foster comfort and safety with a partner, as well as a bunch of useful tips and techniques, so you can focus on having a great (and consensual, always) time. So let’s dive right in!
I'd love for you to check out The NORMAL Guide to P-on-P Sex and let me know what you think!
+]]>Content Note and Disclaimer: This post discusses (primarily queer) spaces that are specifically targeted at cisgender men, and, on the far end of the spectrum, spaces that specifically target people who aren't cisgender men (i.e. women, trans and non-binary people). I recognise I come from a place of privilege and that this post may not adequately account for that or empathise with people who aren't cisgender (cis) men, but I've done my best to be empathetic and considered in my commentary, and I hope that anyone who chooses to respond can do the same. Skip to the Conclusion at the bottom if you prefer.
+ + + +This is a topic that I've been dwelling on literally for years, but have refrained from writing about for fear that it will not be well received (it does sound like a #notallmen argument), or that people will think that I'm just another privileged cis white dude whining about spaces where I'm not welcome, despite the fact that most spaces are welcoming of cis white men, and I therefore have plenty of alternative spaces to choose from. Nonetheless, I think this is something I need to raise, so here we go.
+ + + +As a cis man, I have a lot of privilege:
+ + + +There are plenty of other ways that cisgender men have far more privilege than people of other genders, and I want it to be clear that I'm not disputing this.
+ + + +For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to use the term "gay spaces" to refer to queer spaces that are either specifically targeted at, or predominantly inhabited by, queer cisgender men who are (not necessarily exclusively) attracted to other men. Some of these spaces are exclusively for men, barring other genders from entry. This includes anything from dance clubs, to nude bars, to sex-on-premises saunas which, most nights, are open only to men (but may open to other genders on occasion).
+ + + +Gay spaces are plentiful both in person, and online. In some suburbs in Melbourne, Australia, it's hard to throw a rock without hitting a building which hosts gay events. Likewise, online, there are gay dating apps aplenty: Grindr, Scruff, Recon, Hornet, ROMEO, Surge, Jack'd, GROWLr, and others. Suffice to say if you're a stereotypical cis man who is into other cis men, there are plenty of ways to meet and interact with them.
+ + + +Conversely, when it comes to spaces that are targeted at, or at least welcoming of, people of other genders, there's rather more of a scarcity. As mentioned above, many of Melbourne's "gay spaces" actively exclude people of other genders. Often this is because gay men have a culture they're trying to retain that would feel different if other genders were there. In other cases, people of other genders simply don't feel comfortable or safe in these spaces, because they have a different culture, or because they'll feel out of place, or they don't trust the other attendees to be welcoming, inclusive, and honour consent.
+ + + +Whatever the reason, the fact is many non-cis-male members of the community want spaces that are targeted at them, where they'll feel comfortable, safe, and welcomed. And that completely makes sense to me. There are a handful of queer spaces in Melbourne that I'm aware of which go out of their way to include, and in some cases focus on, non-cis-male patrons. Bars, entertainment venues like clubs, and some of the aforementioned sex-on-premises saunas, which endeavour to cater to these folks on certain nights (with varying degrees of success).
+ + + +In an online context, queer dating apps not targeting cis men exist, but again, are few and far between. Bumble, Feeld, Taimi, Her, Lex, OkCupid to a degree, and probably others that I'm unaware of. Almost certainly not as many as there are "gay" dating apps.
+ + + +In my personal experience, gay spaces target a very specific demographic. They tend to target people who are traditionally masculine in how they dress, how they look, what body types they have, and what sort of attitude they have. And in some cases, these things are not ideal.
+ + + +For example, some gay spaces favour people who are conventionally attractive, which perpetuates often unrealistic body types (lean, lots of muscle, etc.) and looks down on people who don't fit this type.
+ + + +Also, cisgender men, by and large, aren't known for their consent practices. Many cis men I've met in gay spaces haven't bothered to ask whether or not they can touch me before doing so. Given some of these spaces are sex-on-premises venues, this is a big deal. I speculate that part of this is because historically, before homosexuality was decriminalised, gay men had to be subtle and use non-verbal cues to signal attraction and interest in each other, in order to offer plausible deniability of their same-sex attraction, and maybe that culture has not quite been phased out yet. Anyway, I digress.
+ + + +This is a problem online too. Many apps targeting queer cis men focus specifically on hookups. Nothing wrong with that, but often this means that if you're looking to actually have a conversation to get to know someone before getting naked with them, there aren't as many folks on those apps who have the patience for that. Many will also send non-consensual disembodied dick pics, which is kinda problematic. Dick pics are OK, but please ask first?
+ + + +I'm getting to my point, I promise. So for people who don't fit stereotypes of cis gay men, for example they don't dress in masculine clothing, aren't exclusively attracted to other men, aren't always looking for a hookup, prefer their interactions to include better communication and consent, prefer more diversity in their spaces, etc., those people may not feel comfortable or safe in spaces which presume most patrons do conform to those stereotypes.
+ + + +I am bisexual, and therefore am attracted to all genders, not just cis men. I also, to a degree, am gender-non-conforming, in that I don't always enjoy displays of hypermasculinity, or fit many of the gay cis male stereotypes. I have often felt very out of place in gay spaces, prefer a higher standard of consent that I've experienced in those spaces, and really enjoy a higher degree of diversity in the attendees of the events I frequent.
+ + + +There are some spaces targeting non-cis-men which specifically do not allow cis men to attend. This completely makes sense to me. Some people don't feel safe around cis men, because many cis men aren't good at consent, and aren't always welcoming of others. Furthermore, many people in the wider queer community simply aren't attracted to cis men, for whatever reason, and therefore don't want them over-running the spaces when they're seeking people they are attracted to. Again, this is totally fair.
+ + + +When it comes to these sorts of spaces, I definitely agree that a high percentage of cis men can reduce the diversity and safety of otherwise inclusive spaces, and I am supportive of spaces, both in-person and online, making clear at the outset that cis men are not welcome in that specific space. Sure, that may not go down well with everyone, but by and large, I'm OK with that too.
+ + + +What I struggle with, though, is when this restriction is not made clear from the outset, or its rationale doesn't make sense, and then people trying to attend those spaces are shunned by the rest of that community.
+ + + +Alright, we're getting to the bit where I'm particularly concerned about my tone and language.
+ + + +I've been known to attend sex-on-premises saunas in the past. As I've mentioned earlier, many of these are open exclusively to men most of the time, with occasional evenings where they are open to others; some nights target women only, others target male/female couples, and some target all genders.
+ + + +I don't really enjoy attending the men-only events at these venues. This is partly because I'm bi, and would prefer to be interacting and hooking up with more than just men, and partly because there's a completely different vibe at these venues when they're only open to men, as compared to when they're open to other genders. When they're open to men only, they're often less well lit, to give a more cruisy vibe, and several times I've been groped by men who haven't asked first; it's creepy. When they're open to all genders, they're often better lit, feel more welcoming, and the patrons, in my experience (noting that the experience of women and other genders may be different), practice slightly better consent.
+ + + +Unfortunately, the pricing structure and entry requirements for all-gender nights at these venues drastically deprioritises men. For "couples"or "swingers" nights, men must both enter and leave with a partner who is a woman. That means that as someone who happens to be part of a male/male couple, I'm not allowed in at all, unless both of us find female partners. We tried this once, and it was stressful because we had to coordinate for the women to arrive and leave with us at the same time. For other all-gender nights, men sometimes pay twice as much to enter as other genders. And this isn't even touching on the question of who decides what gender any given person is classed as for the purpose of entry; this policy could be super transphobic, depending how it's handled.
+ + + +I appreciate that these venues want to give non-men a chance to attend these spaces without them being over-run by men, but I think this disadvantages bisexual+ men who are desperately trying to find inclusive spaces to explore their sexuality with all genders in a way that is respectful.
+ + + +And now we're at the straw that broke the camel's back and prompted me to finally write this post.
+ + + +This week I was introduced to Lex, a "text-centered social app that connects queer lovers and friends... inspired by the personal ads in On Our Backs, a women-run erotica magazine." One of the cool things about Lex is that you can basically create a profile (no pictures allowed), and post an "ad" describing what you're looking for, which is visible by others in your area who also use Lex. This sounded cool to me, so I read through the details of the app (noting that it is "for queer, trans, gender non-conforming, two spirit, & non-binary ppl." I identify as queer, as well as bisexual, and, to a degree, gender non-conforming, so I felt comfortable signing up.
+ + + +So I signed up and created a profile, and filled out with significant detail, including a bunch of my interests, hobbies, values, and some suggested conversation starters. My profile was far more detailed than many others I'd read, and certainly more detailed than most profiles people use on other apps like Grindr and Tinder, which often don't have any text at all, or if they do, are just a handful of emojis or are stating what they're looking for (usually sex, often with a specific type of person, without any preamble of getting to know people). My point is I was trying to fit in with the ethos here. Next, I made my first post:
+ + + ++ + + +DEEP CONVERSATIONS
@mattcen
Seeking people interested in skipping the small talk and getting to know each other via text. Anything from our favourite hobbies, to things you're deeply passionate about, or what sex means to you. No pressure for anything beyond text. Let's play Q&A! Ask me about that or anything on my profile.
Afterwards I noticed a couple of other posts pop up near me. I won't quote them directly, since I don't want to out the people who posted them, but in short, one post was telling cis men to get off Lex, and the other was asking when Lex stopped being exlusively for women and gender diverse people, and expressed disappointment that this wasn't the case. These posts may not have been directed at me as a response to my post, but they did make me feel unwelcome.
+ + + +I am a sensitive human, and I like to think I'm pretty aware of my privilege and that I avoid taking up space that is intended for minority groups, so after some careful consideration, I deleted my post, deactivated my account, and deleted the Lex app from my phone.
+ + + +But I'm frustrated. Frustrated because I try my hardest to be respectful of spaces which priorities people other than myself (in this case, people who aren't cis men), while also trying to avoid many of the more traditionally "gay spaces" where I don't feel comfortable or welcome. I also did my due diligence to ensure Lex's policies didn't prohibit cis men, only to find that some of its users did.
+ + + +I have also done some work to try to improve the gay spaces where I and others don't feel comfortable, by talking to the organisers about their consent practices and how they could improve diversity and inclusion etc., but that is a slow process that requires a lot of energy and hasn't had any useful outcomes yet.
+ + + +It's also worth noting that for quite some time I've been questioning my own gender. I've always identified as a cis guy, but I contradict so many stereotypes usually attributed to men and masculinity that I've been trying to find a better way to describe myself, in order to find others like me. I don't feel like I fit the "non-binary" label, and am just now starting to consider whether "gender non-conforming" is a good fit for me, but my point here is that when spaces exclude cis men, they are also excluding cis men who are questioning their gender identity and may wish to use that space as part of their exploration, and that really sucks.
+ + + +I guess the overarching point I'm trying to drive home as sensitively as I can is that I understand that some queer spaces want to exclude cis men, and I understand why, but we are a diverse community, and some of us genuinely do fit better in these more inclusive queer spaces than we do in "gay spaces", while also, I think, respecting these spaces, their cultures, their consent practices, etc., such that we enrich them, rather than corrupt them, and I wish there were more of these spaces that were inclusive of all queer folks, but which also were able to keep cis men in line to ensure those spaces remained diverse, safe, and inclusive.
+ + + +I don't have the answers to achieving all this, and I really wish I had more energy to work on this problem, and perhaps contribute to the creation of such a space, but unfortunately I'm not able to manage that at the moment.
+ + + +Thanks for reading.
+]]>I really enjoy getting to know people, but sometimes it's hard to know how to keep conversations interesting, which is why I really love a game called Q&A. Q&A is a really simple game, created by Curious Creatures, and used as the main event of their Curiously Social Creatures (in-person), and Online Social (online, obviously) workshops.
+ + + +Curious Creatures haven't published the rules or prompts for this game, but have granted permission for me to share the details here as long as I appropriately credit them. So, below is a transcript of the getting started sheet provided at Curiously Social Creatures.
+ + + +Trust your intuition; there are no right or wrong answers. And you can never predict what's going to be interesting until you ask it. But if you're coming up blank for inspiration, then try one of these:
+ + + +In light of recent news, and following my (regrettable and hopefully brief) return to Facebook, I made the below post as a comment on a forum I'm a part of, in response an article that had been shared about Facebook putting profit before public good (also: 9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower).
+ + + +I decided that, despite a lack of polish, it was worth me re-publishing here:
+ + + +So this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart and makes me very ranty. I have blogged about alternatives to Facebook and other social media, deactivated my Facebook account for most of this year (only briefly reactivating this week, and already regretting it), and been trying to encourage friends to try alternatives for literally years.
+ + + +What with today’s (unconfirmed) news that Web Scrapers Claim to Possess and Sell Personal Data on 1.5 Billion Facebook Users on a Hacker Forum, and coverage of Facebook’s, Instagram’s and WhatsApp’s global outage, more than ever I’m trying to make it as easy as possible for people to find other platforms.
+ + + +For events, there’s a platform called Mobilizon, which has an Australian server, and for a more traditional Facebook-like experience (including an events feature, there’s Friendica, which has a bunch of instances around the world. I have an account on the Nerdica instance myself. Also, I think a lot of people forget that if you’ve got a Gmail or Outlook email account (or many other email providers), you’ve got a calendar, and you can invite people to events over email and get RSVPs from them as soon as they click “Going”; I’d love to see this feature used more.
+ + + +Both Mobilizon and Friendica hook into the greater Fediverse, a network of social media platforms that use a common protocol (called ActivityPub, and described in my blog post), which interoperate so that even between these platforms, you can still connect with your friends. My social media platform of choice currently is a Twitter-like one called Mastodon, and I have an account on the Aus.social, run by the same person who runs the aforementioned Australian Mobilizon server. And anyone with a Friendica account (for example) can follow my Mastodon profile and see my posts in a Facebook-like interface if they don’t like the Twitter-like experience of Mastodon.
+ + + +For chat, I use a protocol called Matrix, which is most commonly used via the Element chat client. It’s more secure than Telegram (has better encryption practices), and more privacy-respecting than Signal or WhatsApp (doesn’t require you to register with a phone number). It’s also a great competitor to Slack, and a bunch of other platforms, and, with some (admittedly sometimes non-trivial) tweaking or by signing up to a commercial service like Beeper (which I acknowledge can be a little steep at US$10/month when we’re not used to paying for messaging platforms, and I think they’re still working through their initial sign-up wait-list), one can use Matrix to connect to over a dozen of your other favourite platforms, and then uninstall most of those other apps from your phone.
+ + + +All of the platforms I’ve mentioned above and in my blog post (except, to a degree, Beeper) are free and open source, and are not run by big companies who treat users as the product and just sell our eyeballs to advertisers.
+ + + +The problem is that Facebook and other platforms take advantage of the fact that all our friends are on there, and so we all keep each other on the platform until enough of us decide to take the leap and try something else. See Facebook’s Secret War on Switching Costs for more info on that.
+ + + +And I get it. I came crawling back to Facebook last week too, after 10 months of freedom from it, because I miss people (and being socially isolated is making things worse). But I’ll be leaving again soon, because after losing several hours to doom scrolling, it’s doing me more harm than good. I nonetheless think that it’s worth the effort to encourage people to try these other platforms to develop further diversity in our platform usage, and mitigate against risks like Facebook’s outage last night.
+ + + +One of my ideas for this is to create “interest groups” that encourage people to try a new platform. This Discourse forum is a perfect example. A decision was made to move this community here from Facebook, and because this then became the place to interact with this community, people came here, and it worked. That’s a hard change to effect sometimes, but I think we have to try, because the current reality is not good for anyone except the big social media companies.
+ + + +Thanks for reading my rant.
+ + + +Happy to chat with anyone who wants to know more.
+ + + +(Also, sorry for all the long-winded sentences, parentheticals, and footnote!)
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