Burningbird's RealTech

Virginia DeBolt has posted another in her series on Women in Technology, this one about Maria Webster from .51. It's a terrific interview, and appreciations to Virginia in her effort to promote more awareness of women in tech.

Maria is an Über geek, with interests that cross the lines from computers to electrical engineering, ham radio, to physics, and all points between. And Tron, which reminded that I hadn't seen this movie in years.

Not sure what to wear this coming Friday? Here are my suggestions for Halloween party costumes, based on stories flying around the technology weblogs this week:

• Dress all in black, with a long white, butcher paper strip wrapped around you with with a URL in big bold letters. When asked, tell people you're a namespace.
• In the same all black clothes, this time take shiny pieces of aluminum foil and fashion into angle brackets (< >). Tape or otherwise attach sets of them, angle part pointing outwards, on both sides of your head, torso, and other body parts (use discretion). When asked, tell people you're dressed as well-formed XHTML. This is a particularly scary costume in Redmond, Washington.
• Show up late, demanding attention. Be loud, obnoxious, and disdainful of everyone around you. When asked your costume, say you're dressed as...wait, this one is going to get me into trouble, isn't it?
• Stay home, and when people asked why you didn't show up at the party, tell them you were dressed as Twitter.
• Dress up as the semantic web: carry several Stick-it notepads with you and slap metadata notes on everything and everyone. Do not expect to get invited back to the same party, next year.
• Glue cotton balls all over your body and go as a cloud. To differentiate yourself from an atmospheric cloud, carry a large ball and chain.
• Dress in an expensive suit. When asked, tell people you're the RIAA. When playing Musical Chairs, take all the chairs. And then sue the host.
• Take two large pieces of cardboard, spray paint a dull aluminum color and put a white Apple logo in the center of one of the pieces. Add a bright orange sale sticker, printed with "$800.00", to the top of the piece with the Apple logo. Strap the two cardboard pieces together and wear like a sandwich board. When asked, tell people you're a fat, cheap Macbook Pro.
• Ladies, forget Sexy Kitty, or Naughty Maid. Try Sexy Coder, instead. Wear a skintight, white body leotard with your favorite source code printed in tiny, black letters all over it...except introduce one bug into the code. Tell people to find the bug.
• To dress up like Vista...no, no. There are some costumes that are just too scary.

And yours?