So a few days ago a friend sent me a URL to a really bizarre but interesting site on robots!

Big Dog Robot

And with any luck next week I’ll have on loan for a few weeks a baby dinosaur robot (Pleo) which we are going to name Miranda… I’ll be blogging about her or maybe even doing a short video series about her as we train her up and see what she can do.  I’m always curious about these things especially when they have a learning algorithm in them.  It will be interesting to see how realistic it is.

A week ago I had the opportunity to speak to the marketing director of Ugobe who make the Pleo, they also made the Furby.  The details of that interview will be up on GirlyGeekdom so watch out for that blog post… Lots of info in it including details on their up and coming developer site.

Time for me to get back to those e-mails and finishing off the Pleo blog post

Posted: August 3rd, 2008 under Gadgets, blogging.
Comments: none

So yesterday when I had a whole pile of e-mails in my inbox and I got the following e-mail to my London Girl Geek Dinners e-mail account… Lets just say it annoyed me enough to warrant this blog post!

“A friend of mine hs just realised the clients he is meeting tomorrow require aspx skills, do you know any one with aspx and vb skills who is any good and might be available for some work? Thanks.”

So why did this annoy me so much?  Lets see… first off it’s short, to the point, they couldn’t even be bothered to refer to me by name.  They didn’t apologize for wasting my time and giving less than 12 hours notice.  They expect me to jump and respond as well suggesting that they think their time is more important than mine! They didn’t give the details of who they were sending the info to, just their own private yahoo address, which means they could be anyone including an agency person themselves, and it is so preposterous that I would consider sending details of a contact to an unknown person from an unknown company grrrrr…

If someone actually wants me to do something for them at the very least they need to be considerate, friendly, understanding and identifiable.  I’d love to know what friend put them up to this and what recruitment agency they worked for… That way I’d know what agency NOT to give my CV to!

It’s e-mails like this that do good recruitment agencies a bad name.  If you know someone in your recruitment agency that works like this, stop them doing it RIGHT NOW!!!! And no I won’t be recommending anyone… in case anyone asks…

OK rant over… it’s not often that I get this annoyed by things but back handed recruitment agency tactics are not something I like or tollerate.

Posted: July 31st, 2008 under mindsplats.
Comments: 3

I guess you could call me a bit of a climbing nut at times, or maybe a big kid.  However recently I’ve been neglecting the monkey within, and it’s about time I got back to it.  I always smile when I’m getting my climbing kit on… Why?  Well every time i get ready I always get really quizzical looks from people. Usually when they are looking at my shoes.

The shoes (which I love) are the Mad Rock Mad Monkey shoes shown in the picture.  They are actually children’s climbing shoes!  Yep you heard me right, I wear kiddies climbing shoes… But why?  (Because I’m a big kid at heart!) Well for a start I have wide feet.  Most other brands are incredibly (and I do mean like really, really!) uncomfortable.  And yes I know climbing shoes are supposed to be tight… but not that tight!  Anyway these shoes are the only ones so far that I’ve fallen for completely.  They are like slippers rather than shoes… They have a flexible base and very soft suede top.  The rubber us uber-sticky and is actually much harder wearing than you might think at first.  They are great for technical climbing especially those little delicate fingery routes.  I wouldn’t recommend them for heel hooks though… If you want to do that you really need a sturdier middle section.

They come is a range of childrens sizes, up to a 4.5 (UK sizing).  My ordinary daytime shoe size is a 5 but for these shoes I have 2 pairs… a very snug 2.5 which is great for those really delicate climbs, and a much larger 3.5… Interestingly I would be drowning in a 4.5 and really I find the 3.5 is a bit big (unless I’m jumping down from a bouldering problem and then I’m glad for the extra bit of room).

Over the years I’ve struggled to get hold of these shoes with so many high street suppliers not stocking them in the larger sizes but these days I know just the place to go and get them!  Bowldro! They have them in all sizes and at a great price.  You could pay a lot more than that in most shops!  Anyway I thought I’d share one of my little climbing secrets. :)  My favourite climbing shoes.  I just hope Mad Rock don’t stop making them or I’ll be on the prowl for a large quantity to keep me in climbing shoes forever!!!

Something I have noticed is that a lot of software engineers seem to be into climbing… I wonder if anyone on my twitter feed or who reads this site is also into climbing…. What is it that they find so fascinating with the sport and why do so many climbers also do an engineering style role….

Posted: July 8th, 2008 under Climbing.
Comments: 7

I quite often get asked how I manage to do so much and run the Girl Geek Dinners.  Well I thought maybe it was about time to de-mistify the way I do things.  It’s no real secret that I like my mobile phones and that I have a full time day job whilst running the Girl Geek Dinners.  And those that know me reasonably well also know that I’m into my sports and geeky hobbies.

So how do I do it?  Well first things first I time box things to some extent.  So from 8:30 - 4:45 mon - fri is time boxed to work!  Nothing else can, or will get in the way of that.  During that time, work is my priority.  Nothing else.  As such everything else must fit around this. So what about the rest of it.  Well since I finish work at a reasonable hour and don’t live far from the office I don’t take much time out for travelling and as such that is minimized.  When I do travel I tend to at least have my mobile phone and a notebook with me.  The notebook is for jotting down ideas and planning things.  The mobile is for syncing plans with my diary.  Outlook is one of my key organization tools.  I use it more and more outside of work.  It plans when I am at events, when I need to have done important things by… it reminds me when I have things due and when they are over due.

I am an advocate of OneNote and Evernote… I transfer notes between the two quite regularly.  I have a tablet pc which I use for taking notes when I don’t want to type or when I’m formulating ideas.  I don’t write ideas a draw them as mind maps… seeing the links and intricacies between things.  I then take those and put them into a plan which is pretty much a list of dates.  I then write my todo list for that plan with deadlines against the items on the list to then meet the main goals of the plan.

When I’m trying to have quick conversations I avoid e-mail.  Instead I’ll go for picking up the phone, skype, gtalk, msn or Twitter.  And from time to time when forced to I’ll use Facebook.  I’m generally not a Facebook fan, just because I don’t get out as much information as I put in… and by that I mean if I put in stuff on Girl Geek Dinners I don’t tend to know when someone has updated something on there or asked a question.  So I prefer blogs for that really.

On the note of blogging… I go through phases with blogging.  I write things in sets usually.  Not generally around the same subject either.  Just 3 or 4 posts on random stuff that interests me.  I then decide which blog it is most suited to and post date it for a day or a week and off it goes.  So although I write not so regularly, the posts spread quite evenly between sites.

I get a huge number of e-mails in and this is what takes up most of my time out of all the different things I do.  E-mails are the one thing I really despise at the moment.  I filter them as they come in.  I mark them up based on content for quick reponses where possible and get responses out as soon as I can.  At times I send out blanket responses stating that it may take a few days to respond to your e-mail.  And generally that makes things managable. I’d love to be able to get rid of e-mail completely however it’s a useful conduit with the ability to attach anything and send to anyone so I don’t think it’s going to disappear altogether any time soon. (unfortunately)

As for finding time for hobbies, I tend to try and have the weekends to do sport and such.  And spend every other evening on doing something fun (for at least part of it!)  And I do count blogging and designing stuff as fun!  The things written about here today are only a small part of a much larger picture of how I manage information.  I’m sure it would take a lot more than one post to cover it all!

I’m sure many of you have other ways of approaching information overload and hectic social lives, so feel free to share any tips and hints, especially any that you have with outlook…

Bonus Tip: Xobni - very good for finding contacts and e-mail trails when you have a busy inbox!

Posted: July 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized, mindsplats.
Comments: 1

So a while back a friend of mine Alex Woodroffe had a chat with me about blogging and Web 2.0 he was asking about how he could get it working with the company he’s working for (SmartfundIT) and how it would benefit their company. Well so far they have managed to get the blogs up and running. there’s some interesting posts now starting to come through both from Alex and the rest of the team over there.

I do hope that some conversations get started with SmartFundIT as they sound like they are getting the hang of things with conversations around SaaS and Green IT.

I have a feeling that Steve Clayton and Steve Lamb will be interested in what is going on on these blogs and they seem to be an interesting site to watch!

I hope that SmartFundIT start engaging with the blogosphere and starts going to a few of the technical entrepreneurial events as I think they will learn a whole lot more about the tech industry and current trends. They seem to be moving in the right direction! Good on Alex for getting them to give it a go!

Now one thing I will say is that I am in no part working for SmartFundIT. But I will disclose that I am a friend of Alex’s.

Posted: May 5th, 2008 under blogging.
Comments: none

So today I had that wonderful experience of dealing with the difficult situation of needing a dentist whilst being on an NHS waiting list to register… There are thousands of people on the list and I suspect many have had the same situation as I had today.  Toothache…. one of those really nasty pains… what joy… Unfortunately for me my wisdom tooth was coming through and caused an infection.  Bad wisdom tooth… I would have thought it would know better.

Well I was stuck waiting on this waiting list for over 2 months just to get an appointment to confirm registration.  But whilst waiting found myself with this evil infection and needed some antibiotics, I knew what was wrong and what was needed to fix it.  I call my dentist (8:30am)where I’m on the waiting list and they tell me that they don’t have any spaces til August!!! Yep you heard me right.  No appointments at all… So I make an emergency appointment with my GP (Call made at 9:00am)…. no problem til I see them (2:00pm)…. They agree there’s some sort of infection but say that they aren’t allowed to treat it… and give me the number for NHS direct!  Grrrr…. so then I walk out and call NHS direct and explain to them what the crazy situation is… they then look up their system and say that they have an appointment on their system for 3pm (it’s now 2:15pm)… So I rush over to the dentist (which ironically is the one I’d called earlier and was told there was nothing til August!!!).  No problem at all!   So all in all I had the stress and hassle of a system that just doesn’t fit!

When I spoke to the dentist he didn’t really understand why the doctor couldn’t have prescribed the antibiotic, after all it’s the same drug.  The dentist just wants to get his waiting lists down and do his job and then silly things like this crop up!  Things that stop them getting to help people in a systematic manner.  Instead they end up fire fighting the problem which only gets worse as more people cut the queue and emergency spaces are left blank (yep there was at least one of those today!!!)  It’s things like this that annoy me!  Systems that are made to fit the people rather than the other way round.

Fortunately for me the NHS system has already considered my problem to some degree but I suspect very few people actually know that they can call the their local NHS helpline for Hampshire you need to call 0845 050 8345 and ask how to sort out an emergency appointment.  It turns out that there are usually spaces put aside at some dentists for emergency NHS patients in different areas and they can arrange that for you!  It’s useful to know especially when you need to get rid of the pain and the shortest waiting list is around 2 months!

Developer Vs IT Pro -  Another classic example of where people don’t fit into systems… Recently I was fortunate enough to sign up to the Microsoft Launch event in Birmingham.  However I had that difficult problem of choosing which box to tick…. Developer or IT Pro… now how is someone with technical skills in multiple areas supposed to choose?  After all I have SQL Server skills and software programming skills… I work as part of a small team and we all have multi-discipline skills… So to me the idea of splitting skills and a title don’t work.  I wanted to go to sessions on both tracks… But there was no option for such a thing.  To me this is another classic example of a set of people being forced to (mis)fit a system.

The outcome of such things is always tension between the people and the system that they fit into.  Whether you are talking NHS or trying to sign up for a technical event with Microsoft.  The answer for Microsoft is simple, don’t assume you know your audience, assume anyone signing up would be interested in any of the topics and let them decide for themselves in advance which sessions they go to at an event.  Then choose the room placement based on the popularity of the subject being spoken.  To me that seems quite logical.

I’m sure there are many more examples of this and I would imagine that this issue will get worse over time with more systems being created to fit assumed work-flows and not properly researched.  I also expect that systems will go out of date and over time will no longer fit the process that they are anticipating.

Feel free to share your experiences.

Posted: April 7th, 2008 under mindsplats.
Comments: none

Hello!  I’ve had many blogs in my time from my NextGen Developer Blog through to my GirlyGeekdom Blog however I’ve stopped writing on the Next Gen one and Girly Geekdom is a place for all things girly and geeky.  This particular blog is different to both of those.  It will be my place for anything that I find interesting, exciting or just something I want to write about.

In the past I’ve started blogs like this and dropped them but this one I’m hoping to be a little more consistent with as I’m looking after the hosting of it myself.  So this does mean that I get all the fun and the pain points that go with it.

Since it’s my first wordpress blog I’m happy for people to recommend plugins to me and so on.  I’ve added a few but am open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to many online conversations!

Posted: February 23rd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

I made a few comments yesterday about news and rumors…. someone was asking why news is always old and why we hear about it before we hear about it first on social networks before it gets to major news sites like the BBC. My immediate response was that it was because before something can be considered news it has to be quantified, verified and evidence sourced. By that time if it’s real and true it has already gained traction through the various rumors on social networks.

Other random stuff… Keynote conferences such as MIX08 is a waste really if the organizers pre-release the announcements. Those who have paid for the privilege of being there end up walking away disappointed as the rest of the world knew before them what was being announced. For most it’s worth saving the conference money and buying some good technical books on the subjects announced!

Posted: February 5th, 2008 under mindsplats.
Comments: none

Over the past few months I’ve been favouriting a few of my Tweets on Twitter. The most interesting suggestions and tips that I have favourited are as follows:

• welshcathy looks interesting - free online file conversion site http://www.zamzar.com
• robinwauters FeedFire is really great for scraping RSS feeds from sites that offer none - http://www.feedfire.com/site/index.html
• eve11 Earlier today joined www.paperbackswap.com on a recommendation. But hey looks like Twitter works just as well
• neilco @girlygeekdom Forget Mindstorms… go for the real deal: http://tinyurl.com/2hfn48

All useful in their own special way… feel free to add your own!

Posted: February 5th, 2008 under Twitter, mindsplats.
Comments: none

More of a note to myself about what sort of things inspire me to write new blog posts:

1. Beautiful pictures.
2. Interesting and thought provoking articles on subjects that interest me.
3. Poorly designed or architected products or services.
4. Pain point.
5. Suggestions for improvements.
6. Positive things that I see happening around me.
7. Events that I think people could or should be involved in.
8. Calls for speakers.
9. Cool gadgets.
10. Great deals on conferences and tech products.

I’m sure there are more things than this list but it’s a good start.

Posted: February 5th, 2008 under Inspiration, blogging, mindsplats.
Comments: none