Ada Lovelace Day - Patron Saint of Lady Nerds! {16/31}

This post is brought to you through the power of Blogtoberfest 2012

Today is Ada Lovelace Day – a pretty amazing woman – she was Byron’s daughter and worked very closely, totally ahead of her time, with Charles Babbage, the grand-daddy of computing.  She was an amazing mathematician with great vision and a fabulous wildness about her.

Her story is amazing and inspiring and makes me kind of wish I’d been her. 

If you fancy a totally marvellous rollicking read, then I really recommend The Bride of Science by Benjamin Woolley …

If you’re not that bothered then you can still read a bit from the Guardian, here.

Or you can take part at FindingAda by nominating a woman in science/mathematics etc. who has inspired you.

 I’m seriously thinking about nominating Lynne@ Lily'sQuilts for her fantabulous Quilt Math series – binding here and sashing here so far …

If you’re just feeling totally lazy, click pic below to go to the directory of stories and read what others have written:





There’s a load of things happening to celebrate, all over the world.  There are some great links there …

In other news, it’s Tuesday and that means a pile of marking heavier than my weekly shop.  I know this because I foolishly juggled both on the way home.

How is your inner nerd?  Do you embrace it/her?

Or do you register absolute zero on the nerd scale?

(I bet everyone scores something, or you wouldn't be (a) blogging or (b) quilting ... )




Don’t forget to enter my Blogtoberfest giveaway (link below) …

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You still have until the end of the month to enter the giveaway for 12 FQs of Blitzen from Basic Grey.

This giveaway will run for the duration of Blogtoberfest – that is, until midnight 31st October UK time - I’ll announce the winner as close to November 1st as I can, to give you plenty of time to make a little something for Christmas.

International entries welcome!

Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2011 - Sat Sept 3rd -

Wow!  This looks interesting: gelatine watches, mechanical hats, fire breathing robot horses? Oh My!

Lots of nerdy mad inventor stuff  ... and crafting too! *swoon

Part of the Brighton Digital Festival, which runs right through September ... man, it's going to be a crazy month!

Brighton Mini Maker Faire runs in the Brighton Dome foyer, all day, Saturday 3rd September - free entry, but I guess making things will cost, natch.

Welcome to Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2011 from BuildBrighton Hackspace on Vimeo.

Calling All Quilting Nerds - Bletchley Park Quilt Competition - yes, really.

Bletchley Park is holding a Quilt Exhibition in February 2012.

It’s organised by the Quilters’ Guild (of the British Isles) and it was featured in British Patchwork & Quilting, and on a Yahoo! quilting group, but as I don’t spend any time with either really, I missed it.

Sadly, the deadline to enter the “Secret Messages” Category was April.  I would have loved to enter that,


BUT there’s still time to enter the ‘Open’ Category Quilt Competition.  The deadline to send in your application is November 30th, with final submission of quilt on 31st January.

Here's some background info ...






You can download the application form here:


“You may take your inspiration from the parklands, architecture, exhibitions or collections to be found at Bletchley Park. We are looking for quilts that reflect the history and work of Bletchley Park."

Here’s a little nerdy inspiration (click pic to go to my set on flickr)




And a little outside inspiration (click pic to go to my set on flickr):




Bletchley Park is a really fascinating place.  Eisenhower said that without Bletchley Park and its cryptographers, WWII would have lasted another two years.  The stories of the people who worked there are fascinating and poignant.  The place itself is magical. 

The echoes of genius reverberate everywhere you wander …

So, what’s stopping you?  Are you up for a challenge?  I love a challenge :)  … I had my brainwave today and now I just have to work out how to make it real!

11 01 11 - It’s My Binary and I’ll be Nerdy if I Want to …

Yay!  Nerdy heaven!  1111 ... mmmm nom nom ....

It’s actually my birthday too which makes it even nicer, apart from the whole time slipping ever onward thang …

I got back from work to a little parcel I’d ordered before Christmas, from Sew Mama Sew  - Yay!  Perfect Timing!   

Some fab Patty Young Sanctuary - Citrus Scrub & Zen Garden, the wonderful grey and yellow Wishes, from Night & Day 3 by Robert Kaufman, and the lovely teal scissors from Cosmo Cricket … 

Tonight will be spent relishing an early night and nursing a hot toddy to fend off the evil and most common cold that is threatening to rain on my parade.

Night all …

Let’s Cut to the Chase Chaps {Novumber #2}

Yesterday, while we were identifying all those machine bones, my mind wandered to thoughts fantasies of efficient cutting.

There was nothing for it.  I took the icy plunge and forked out more pounds sterling for yet another rotary cutter – I’ve posted before about how pants I am at cutting.  

Turns out it was my bloomin chocolate teapot of a rotary cutter to blame, not my inability to learn a new skill, after all.


Who Knew? 

Once I had my new sultry little vixen Olfa to compare it to, I realised that the blade and screw/washer combo simply didn’t match up.  It was a dud.


This explains precisely why the blade never cut anything properly, no matter what I shoved at it, other than my longest fingernail (and even then I had to finish it off with nail clippers). 


All that angst I could have been chanelling elsewhere!


Now I glide across my fabric like a champion figure skater and am learning not to be so bitter that (despite what feels like a million entries) I have not yet won an Accuquilt Go! 


Yay! Things are looking up!  That’s two things on my Novumber list already showing a sliver of improvement.

… anyway, enough of all that !

-  check out this nerdy chocolate! - 

- click pic for more yumminess -  (in the US)

My {Nerdy} Creative Space #10 {Blogtoberfest #30}

My creative space this week has been spent entirely in the ether, in an attempt to have a bit of a template clean up and to organise my nerdy world a bit.

I’ve been wanting to change things here for a while, but haven’t had the time to sit and let my inner geek play with deeper stuff like code.  

I was so utterly physically exhausted after my trip to Cardiff & Bristol with 30 students (very slow walkers with no traffic sense!) that it seemed the perfect time to knuckle down and zone out in front of my screen.

I’ve embedded the links to where I found the nerdy tweaking tutorials/resources to save you time searching for this stuff.  If you want to cut to the chase they’re also in a little list at the bottom of this post!
So, first some blog de-stashing:

• Out goes the polka dot template from Shabby Blogs - lovely as it is, it was doing my head in a bit – I feel the need for more white space! They do have some lovely templates, buttons and winkies though.
  
• <-- In comes a third column to keep things tidy
  
  
• In comes a ME ME ME page - tab at the top - to keep the sidebars free for NOW stuff!
  
  
• In comes a new coloured tag/label cloud (using this great RGB colour chart – my top tip is to choose 2 colours that contrast strongly because then you get a better range of colours for frequency)
  
  
• In come much more flexible comments from intensedebate – I first saw this on The Coffee Lady’s blog and really liked it - now I can reply to your comments inline with them, rather than under the latest comment – or directly by email.  You can either embed it as a widget (which is easier but may make your page load more slowly) or straight into the template code (not that tricky – but save your template first!)

Talking of Dashboards - I use the Blogger In Draft dashboard – I never knew it existed but it’s so much better than the standard one, if you haven’t tried it … settings and stats are easily navigated through.

I’ve been experimenting with widgets that let visitors post links, so far I’m quite happy with this one at inlinkz, but I’m going to try this one at Linkytools next for more blog-hopping opportunities.

I’ve changed my Blog Reader - Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always used Google Reader and I love it.

 
But with my current state of dodgy internet connection and less time in the evenings because of work or being on the go, I really need a reader that I can use offline.  

It took a while, but then I found Feed Demon …



Yay!  Love at first sight – you can get it to “prefetch” all your unread items (you can customise this really well so that it even saves links) and then you can read at your leisure … 

If, like me, you’re subscribed to what looks like the entire interweb, it takes a while to fetch, so my next geeky task is to start tagging the blogs I follow so that I can further tweak the Demon …


And finally, I’ve changed how I write my blog – for good!
My daily blogging through Blogtoberfest left me increasingly frustrated with how New Blogger resembles New Labour with all its broken promises … so, I’ve been trying out Windows Live Writer for the past couple of weeks – you may have noticed how much better the pictures are ‘sitting’ within the page, and how much more consistent things like line breaks are? 

I can’t tell you how much it sticks in my craw to rave about a Microsoft product, but rave I must! It’s a quick and easy download, you can import your blog theme (and all the tags) for accurate previews, WORK OFFLINE, save locally and upload to draft or publish, including publishing in advance. 


It allows you to do so much more than the conventional Blogger interface. Tables are a doddle, as are pictures, videos, hyperlinking and colours.   

I love it to pieces and I thank all the people out there in the Blogolopolis who gave it a go and good reviews for me to follow suit.

Honestly, if you just try ONE THING, give it a go! You won’t look back and you’ll soon forget all that awful clunky action on Blogger. It also has a word count! 

ahem … 846 words – time to stop!


So, that’s the end of my geeky nerdy round up – *phew* Thanks for sticking with it and I hope you find something useful!  Here are all the links again, without my gabbing:

• Shabby Blogs – templates, buttons & blinkies
  
• Coloured tag cloud
  
• RGB colour chart
  
• Comments from intensedebate
  
• Embedded links with inlinkz
  
• Embedded links with Linkytools
  
• Blogger in Draft dashboard
  
• Offline reader from Demon Feed
  
• Windows Live Writer

I’ll be back with some yummy sewing stuff to see out Blogtoberfest in style … 

In the meantime, why not take the new comments form out for a spin with your top nerdy/blogging tip, or tell me what you think of my new look?