International Jet Setting Lesbian Software Engineer

This blog is mainly private. I use it for communicating with friends. I occasionally cross post articles from my public blog when I think people on here may be interested by them. But if you want to see what geekery I've been up to; where I've gone to visit; events I have attended; and wot not you probably what to read my other blog.

http://www.cyberspice.org.uk/blog

Yes this year has been mad. My last post here was at the end of March. Makerfaire was over and I was preparing for The Embedded Linux Conference in San Francisco. Well I did come back from the US. Eventually. The intention was to go out for a couple of weeks but I ended up staying until May thanks to the Volcano with the unpronounceable name. I ended up working for two weeks from a Coffee shop in the Bay and I missed Whitby Goth Weekend.

When I arrived back in the UK it was head down to prepare for my tutorial talk at DPC in Amsterdam which was in June. The talk was okay but the tutorial went down really well. It was scary but a fun experience. Since then I've been working on a nightmare project but I'm finally feeling I can raise my head above the parapet again.

Anyway I will write long posts about my adventures over the next few days but the news that some of you might want to hear is I will be at Infest.

I know it seems as though I've dropped off the face of the earth lately. I've been very quiet on LJ and not been frequenting as many club nights as I normally do. Its because I've been working hard for this year's Makerfaire.

So when the organisers put out the request for projects last year I madly submitted with a list of projects and ideas I've been working on. They even more madly accepted me and since then I've been working on my projects for the faire. My projects were:

• Ethernet adapter for a BBC Micro Computer.


• Electronic programmable earrings.


• A knitted Cthulhu with embedded electronics.


• Temperature sensing hat.


• iPod handbag

Unfortunately I didn't get it all finished. I did however get the ethernet adapter, earrings and cthulhu completed.

Makerfaire was completely awesome with musical tesla coils, hexapods, safe cracking with a sausage, all sorts. Last year it was basically just a tent in the court yard. This year it was far far bigger. I met some old friends and made some new ones. There was a great community atmosphere and a lot of sharing going on. Newcastle's Life Centre did us proud and looked after us very well with tea and coffee on tap all day and very nice food at lunch and for dinner.

I was amazed at the number who came to visit. I think we matched last year's numbers by about half way through the first day.The BBC ethernet, earrings and cthulhu all seemed to go down very well. Some visitors were interested in the geek aspect and others in the craft aspect. Mixing seems to work. I had spoken so much on the first day that my jaw hurt by the end of it. I even ended up being interviewed by BBC Radio 5 for their Pods and Blogs programme. You can hear my dulcet tones on the podcast. I even managed to get out from behind the desk on occasion to see the faire for myself and photograph it. Many thanks to hippiegunnut and krysnys for taking over when I needed breaks.

This has been painted on the wood fence that surrounds a vacant plot next to my current office. The plot did have some old stone mills on it but the were torn down. Then the economy crashed and the site's been a hole in the ground since then.

I've been a bit remiss at posting my daily photos to LiveJournal. So here's a recent one and you can find them all on Flickr.

I cleaned the snakes' vivariums out. Although I check for poo regularly they're very good at hiding it. So I regularly change all the bedding material. It can smell quite horrible.

This is the Bradford Alhambra, a theatre in the centre of the city. Its covered in lights. I love lots of lights at night.

This is part of the building in which I current work as seen from the window by my desk. Although only 20 years old and recently refurbished at a cost of millions to the tax payer it will not survive beyond a few more months. Yorkshire Forward, the QUANGO who own it, are selling it to property developers who, in a public/private partnership, are building new student accomodation for the university. All the tech companies that work in the building are going elsewhere as are the jobs. Incidentally Yorkshire Forward also own the old Bradford Odeon and want to pull that down too.

You have to do something when you're in bed ill. I finished knitting my legwarmers. I love the multi-colour yarns you get these days. This project was chosen so that I could learn using double pointed needles and knitting in the round.



PS. Notice there's no Jan 15 photograph. Basically I was too poorly to take one.

This is basically a clone of Adafruit's BoArduino except made on stripboard. There are pins soldered on the bottom so that it can plug straight in to a breadboard. Unlike the 'proper' BoArduino it doesn't have the power jack (you connect using the two pins bottom left) or the 6 way ISP connector. The latter is only needed if you intend reprogramming the bootloader on the AVR chip.

While I'm announcing appearances I am excited to announce that I am presenting an Arduino workshop at Manchester Geek Girl Afternoon Tea this month at Madlab, Manchester's Hackspace in the Northern Quarter.

I will be bringing a long several Arduino-a-likes together with a variety of components and CDs of the IDE so that we can get together in groups, code and play.

Originally posted in Spice World