Memoirs of a Roadie

Behind The Mask

Posted on 23rd August 2009

Last week it was noted that Why The Lucky Stiff had disappeared from the internet. There have been several thoughts regarding his disappearance, and some very strong reactions too. It strikes as very odd that rather than concern for someone, several have resorted to anger and made matters worse by now digging deeper into his personal life.

While I don't know _why, and I'm not part of the Ruby community, I have been aware of him and even read his Poignant Guide some time ago. He came across as a very creative and interesting character and I'm sure he was a credit to the Ruby community. He appears to have written alot of interesting code and been very good at promoting Ruby, both online and at conferences. So to me it seems strange to read some the "investigation" work going to try and understand why he has disappeared.

Some have suggested something serious has happened, and perhaps he had implemented a Dead Man's Switch, while others have summised that with having his birth name "outed" publicly recently, he just felt the intrusion into his personal life was too much. Whatever has happened I think it's sad that there seems to be lots of negative reaction to the situation. Of all the comments and articles I've read, only John Resig's Eulogy to _why seems to be in anyway a thought provoking hope that all is well the person.

Several people believe that he has taken it as a personal insult that someone has decided to research his birth name, and then publish it publicly. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but it did make me think about how people treat those of us with an unusual online identity, that we happen to use in person too. One person struck as rather insensitive, as he acknowledged that after discovering something about _why's personal life, _why had asked him to keep it private. With the current wave of discussion, that person saw fit to announce it to the world, so they could show a bit of one-up-manship.

In all the time I've known of him, I've only ever known _why by his pen name, and like many others have never felt the need to know his birth name. In the Perl community there are three prominent characters to use an unusual identity both online and in person. chromatic, Abigail and myself. While I've been told the birth names of chromatic and Abigail, I've long since forgotten them as to me their pen names are who they what to be identified as. For myself, I've never gone to great lengths to hide my name, but my pen name is how I prefer to be known. My birth name is for my family (although even some of them refer to me as Barbie) and the tax man.

Once I sent a mail from a work account that included my birth name, to a friend in the Perl community. I received a reply asking if I could send from my personal account in future, as seeing my birth name had confused the hell out of the recipient and took a little while to suddenly realise it was me :) Another friend on discovering my birth name by way of a slip up online, felt the need to alert me, so that i could hide it. It seems some people actually quite like me having an unusual identity.

My pen name actually came about back in 1983, long before I ever got to use the internet, and was extremely useful when I was a Roadie. People remember an unusual name, and I know for a fact that I got asked to crew several gigs because tour managers and the like remembered me by name. I'd like to think it was also that I did a good job too, but that first impression of being introduced as Barbie was rarely forgotten. In all that time I was a roadie (1984-2005), no-one ever really put any effort to discovering my birth name. Some asked, but many more have been more interested in how I got to be named Barbie. Occasionally I've explained that it is my birth name and that my parents were rather eccentric. Amusingly some have even believed that.

However, Barbie is very much my public identity, and that's something that I'd rather keep. It has some very positive benefits for me, as it has helped me to get several jobs, and has often been a good introduction for some. My private life is not something I write about a lot, mostly because it's private. I talk about Dan, Ethne and Nicole from time to time as they are part of who I am, though others guard even that part of their life very carefully. In _why's case, this was something that he didn't seem to want to promote, at least not in the context of his _why persona. Respecting someone's privacy should be an obvious thing for any human to understand, though sadly there are some that feel that no-one has a right to a private life.

Does discovering someone's birth name really make any difference to how you see that person? The only reason I can see for anyone making something like that public, against the wishes of the individual, is to begin a character assassination. As I see it, _why may well have therefore taken steps to ensure that if people cannot respect his privacy, then why should he respect what they think about all he has given them. To some it is a tantrum, to me is purely about having had enough with the world that the persona of Why The Luck Stiff touched, and wanting to walk away completely and utterly, leaving no trace that it ever existed.

As I say at the beginning, I don't know the reasons for the disappearance, but I do hope that the person behind the persona is okay.

Open Your Eyes

Posted on 3rd March 2009

Thanks to a twitter post by Simon Phipps this morning, I read with interest a blog post by Patrick Finch, entitled Mozilla and Cybermentors. Mozilla are getting actively involved with the UK charity BeatBullying and their CyberMentors programme.

It's unlikely that anyone growing up hasn't suffered some form of bullying. It comes in all shapes and forms, and while for some of it may be minor or only last a short time, for some it can have devasating effects. A colleague recently took his own life, because the traumatic and abuse he suffered through primary and secondary school, even over ten years later, was still something that affected his life and personality, and was something he felt he could no longer cope with. I personally was first bullied by my 3rd year junior teacher. Yes you read that right a teacher, and I was just 9. It isn't just children that can be cruel and spiteful, adults can too. While I would dearly love to name the teacher in question, I have no proof beyond my word, and even now feel powerless to do anything about it, much as I did back then. Many children who suffer from bullying feel exactly the same way. Even if they told, who would listen and who would even believe them?

As Patrick points out in his post, many young people are growing up never knowing how we used to keep in contact with our friends, without using the internet or mobile phones. We play out so much of our lives online, that it shouldn't be a surprise that a recent Harvard University task force concluded that one of the biggest risks to children on the internet, isn't from sexual predators, but from bullies. The difference between the school yard bulling and cyber-bullying, is that the former is pretty much contain within a small sphere and often there are adults and peers who can deal with it and stop it. On the internet anyone can hide behind their relative anonymity and victimise just about anyone they choose. As it isn't within school grounds, teachers are often unable or ill-equiped to deal with it.

As such, the Cybermentors aims to be a way for youngsters experiencing bullying online to tell someone about it. Mozilla are offering to support 10 members of the Mozilla community to be trained as Cybermentors, who can then spend at least 2 hours a week for 4 months, helping children to cope and deal with any bullying issues. All credit to Mozilla for supporting this, and hopefully other companies will also be willing to help fund training for individuals to act as mentors.

A few years ago the GetSafeOnline campaign was initiated to help make parents and youngsters aware of the potential dangers on the internet. Identifying ways to protect themselves from viruses, phishing scams and spam, as well as unwanted websites, chatrooms and the like. While this programme is different in that it's targeting a very specific danger, it is still all about keeping the internet safe for everyone. I personally value efforts such as this, rather than the sometimes heavy-handed and misguided attempts by governments and self-appointed puritans of the internet to protect children from percieved threats.

I really hope BeatBullying and the Cybermentors programme gets a lot of internet and media exposure, as the more children are aware of it, the more chance they have of coping with it and not suffering mental anguish for the whole of their (possibly short) adult life. If you're a member of the Mozilla community, and think you can spare the time, please read Patrick's blog post and get in touch with him.

It's My Life

Posted on 4th February 2009

The twitter phenomenon has grown rather well over the past few months. I have started to use it more in the last month, and I note that a number of people I'm friends and acquaintences with have also been using it quite a lot. Which is nice, as although some use it to just tell everyone what they are doing now, others use it as a blogging tool to have a quick rant, or ask followers a question. Occasional conversations and idle banter make it quite a fun way to keep in touch with firends and people you like to talk to, plus there are the useful links to news items, etc. that people post.

Every one of my followers I either know personally, or have had contact with them online several times prior to twitter. Of the people I follow (discounting project/news feeds), only Stephen Fry and Henry Rollins I don't know personally. Seeing as they are well known personalities they expect to have a lot of followers, Stephen has recently reached over 100,000 followers. But I'm not a celebrity or well known personality, yet I'm starting to get twitter requests from people who I have never met, or know anything about. That's not to say that they are random people, as those are usually easy to spot and can be ignored, but are followers of and/or followed by other people I know. I have my twitterings protected as I really don't like the idea of people I don't know, randomly trying to follow everything I say. Not that I have anything necessarily personal to say, but to me I feel my whitterings have a limited personal appeal and are really only of interest to those that actually know me.

With that said, you could argue that I am well known in the Perl community, and indeed I am. But from that perspective people are really only interested in my projects, most specifically CPAN Testers. However, those projects I blog about elsewhere, and are not a regular part of my tweets. It feels awkward to actively block people from my twitter feed, so I usually leave them in the queue, hoping that I eventually meet them, or have someone else mention them, so I can get a reference as to who they are.

I wonder how others feel about random people listening in on their musings? Does it feel like an intrusion or do you feel you are reaching people with what's going on in your life. Do you use it as a way for others to keep tabs on what project you're working on, or do you like the idea of people being interested in you?

Twitter has certainly been a strange success. It's kind of like a global IRC, with a channel that you create. It's reached outside of the geeks that started to use it, and with the success of Facebook and the status updates, people who would never have thought to put their lives on the internet are now doing so. At the moment, outside of Japan, they have no revenue model, so it will be intriguing to see how long that can last, and whether any future changes turn off the new adopters of the service. I'm sure we'll hear a tweet or two about it when it does.

Light Of Day

Posted on 25th August 2007

Back last year, I went to LUGRadio Live and was extremely impressed, as most people were, with the plasma screens around the building, particularly with the imagery they were displaying. It turned out that Aq had written it as a quick PHP/HTML hack. It certainly did the job and impressed me so much that I asked if I could use for the YAPC::Europe conference we were hosting in August. Aq was delighted.

The original code was written in PHP, but seeing as I don't do PHP, I rewrote the whole thing in Perl. I simplified some of the HTML and CSS, but essentially it was still the same concept. We lauch the code for YAPC::Europe and again people were suitably impressed.

Since last August I've been meaning to package up the code and release with a proper Open Source licence. I asked Aq whether he minded me using the Artistic License as used with tradional Perl libraries, and he was happy to release it. So here it is ... The Plasma Application.

All being well the guys in Vienna might be using it for YAPC::Europe 2007, but we'll have to wait and see.

Who Are You

Posted on 20th July 2007

So I've been banned from Facebook.

They claim I can't use a fake name, but have failed to appreciate that they are a social networking site. In addition what is a "fake name". Barbie is my pseudonym, I've used it for over 20 years in both my careers in the music industry and the IT industry. Using a combination of 'perl', 'barbie' or 'birmingham' will bring up pages of me on Google. Most people in the companies I've worked for in the last 15 years have all referenced me as Barbie, including most CEOs, Managing Directors and board directors. Some have never been introduce to me with my birth name.

I find it a bit odd that a social site would try and impose their way of thinking onto anyone who doesn't fit their idea of who everyone should represent themselves online. I do understand that they might want to retain my birth name should they need to take any legal action for something I may write on their site, but I do not want my birth name to appear publically, just because they feel that everybody who uses their site must give up areas of their privacy.

I've emailed them to explain that Barbie is a true identity, and legally I am entitled to sign cheques and the like as Barbie. It is my professional pseudonym and for my last 3 jobs it has been stated from the outset that I am Barbie in the interview.

However, Mark has highlighted another issue with their system, that affects those that have names made up because either us westerners can't pronounce their true names or their language characters are not something westerners know how to pronounce. Are they going to be banned too?

The email I received stated that I have to provide a full first name (no initial) and a full last name. I can have a nickname providing it is derived from those one or both of those two fields. Why? I honestly fail to understand the logic of that. Many people I know have nicknames that are completely unrelated to their birth name and I find it difficult to understand why a social website wants to insist on what I call myself.

Are they a secret government site with covert reasons for knowing everybody's birth names? Somehow I don't think so. Do they have ideas far beyond what the rest of the world expects of them, quite probably. Will they reinstate me, probably not.

I hope they learn to understand their audience and not impose such silly restrictions on something that is essentially about connecting with friends and colleagues. They all know who I am, and I'm pretty sure every single one would vouch for me. Pity then that the people at Facebook have some draconian rule that they feel they need to enforce on those of us who don't fit their profile.