Last Sunday I had a great day with friends attempting to sledge with cardboard boxes in the park near Alexandra Palace. We weren’t that successful, cause it turns out: cardboard boxes make very bad sledges. Despite our utter failure to go fast, it was a lot of fun!

My favourite photo is of me pretending to go fast:

Here are a couple of other photos of that day:

I’ve always been a geek. I’ve always been a girl. Neither of those two things will ever change.

I’m not really sure why, but I’ve stayed away from blogging about being a girl in the tech/game-blogging/movie-blogging industry, leaving it to those that can write more eloquently than me. But I shouldn’t. I still experience weird situations that leave me puzzled as to why they happen, and I should be blogging about those.

Throughout my entire life I’ve had to prove that I am a geek, encountering men and boys that didn’t believe a woman could know about or would be interested in geeky stuff.

I remember being seven years old, having just discovered a new TV show: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. At school, I overheard a couple of boys discussing the theme song. They couldn’t remember the lines, though, so I jumped in and sang the entire song for them. They were so baffled that a girl would watch that show that they didn’t believe those were the real lyrics.

I remember in high school being told that math and physics were too difficult for girls. That I should choose something more appropriate like biology or history.

I remember being at university, studying Computer Science and finishing a tricky assignment which the student assistant had just approved. I was quite proud of myself until I overheard that same student assistant say to another student “If SHE can do it, you definitely can.”

I hate that those things happened. I regret that I didn’t have more guts at the time to turn around and say “You. Are. Wrong.” But those experiences made me who I am today. My response to all those things was to be the best I could be — and to prove to everyone that I was smart enough to do anything a guy could do.

All of the above events happened more than ten years ago, so I can forgive most of those remarks and hope those people know better now. But these type of things STILL happen. I still experience prejudice just because I’m a woman.

A couple of times now at Forbidden Planet, a massive comic and sci/fantasy book store in London, I’ll be browsing and guys will approach and hit on me. The hitting on random girls at bookstores is a separate issue, but why do almost all of them start with “Are you buying a present for someone?” Seriously. You don’t think that just maybe I’m there because I’m interested in it myself?

At tech events, I’ve noticed that what I wear really makes a difference. If I’m wearing a geeky T-shirt and jeans/shorts, everything will be fine. When I’m wearing a pretty dress and nice makeup though, then the comments start. I’ll be at a hackday and someone will ask “Are you doing the marketing for this team?”. Or I’ll be at an event for bloggers and someone will assume I’m one of “the PR girls”.

A few months ago I was at a PR party and I met a girl who was wearing the standard geek uniform of jeans and a t-shirt. She remarked to me that she wished she had put on a dress — but she had to go to a Facebook developer event earlier that evening, so needed to wear jeans and t-shirt or else not be taken seriously. Do we truly still work in an industry where it matters what we wear? Are jeans and T-shirt our industry’s suit and tie, and are we really ignoring those that don’t conform to the industry’s uniform? Whatever happened to geeks allowing you to be whoever you wanted to be?

From what I’ve experienced so far, the games industry is a whole lot worse. No, let me get that right: the game blogging industry. At almost every game blogging/press event I’ve gone to, I’ve had male attendees (bloggers/PRs/game developers) stare wide-eyed at me and exclaim: “OMG. You’re a girl. Girls don’t like games.” They’ll either try to dissect how this strange creature got into gaming or disregard everything I’m saying. I can’t get over the fact that some people still don’t realize that, yes, girls play games too. And, yes, we like the same games guys like too. Girls are part of your readership/consumer base/target audience. Don’t ignore them.

All these incidents happend to me within the past year. I tend not to react, to “ignore” them, but actually? They annoy the hell out of me. And I’m not the only one that they happen to.

So I’m going to write about them more. And I want to hear from you all what you’ve been through.

I am “Miss Geeky”. I am a geek. And I am a girl. I’ll have moments of extreme geekiness, but I’ll also have moments of extreme girliness. I like makeup and pretty dresses and jewellery, and me liking those does not make me any less of a geek. I will not change what I like or what I wear purely to fit in and conform to people’s idea of the “geeky girl”. I will write more about this stuff, because everything I’ve talked about here shouldn’t be happening. Geeky girls have always been around. Just because you didn’t notice us doesn’t mean we weren’t there.

And it doesn’t mean you can ignore us now.

Happy New Year, everyone! I had a great New Year’s eve at a friend’s place, celebrating with board games, champagne and general awesomeness. I know I’m one day late with this blog post, but I still thought I should do a short post with some New Year’s resolutions.

1. Book Buying Ban: It turns out I’ve still got more than 100 books on my To Be Read “pile”, mainly cause last year I ended up buying quite a lot of second hand books. So this year: a book buying ban. For the next year I’m not allowed to buy any books of new series/authors. I am allowing myself to buy some books though: 12 books, all 12 of which need to be specified within the next week and need to be books of existing series.
2. Read 52 Books: Looking at my GoodReads stats of the past year, I only read a measly 26 books. Not too bad, but at that rate I’ll finish my TBR pile in 4 years… I also should put away the books I absolutely can not get into; maybe not necessarily get completely rid of them, but at least put them in a box to revisit in a few years time.
3. Watch 26 “Old” Movies: I’ve got some serious gaps in my movie history. There are some great movies out there, that I’ve managed to miss completely and I really should catch up on them. I tried doing a 52 movies list  a few years back, so I thought let’s make it a bit simpler this time around. I’ll do a blog post later this week which movies I’ll be doing.
4. Write more Book/Movie/Game Reviews: I read/watch/play quite a lot, way more than what I write about here on MissGeeky. I should do at least one proper review per week, and a roundup post at the end of each month covering whatever I couldn’t write about individually.
5. Work Out More: An obvious one. I started running again at the end of November, but with all the Christmas stuff and cold weather I kind of stopped with it. I should really try to run at least once a week. Plus I want to go trampolining again!
6. Blog more about recipes: I love some of the recipes I’ve been using lately, most of them tweaked in my own special way. Who wants to try out my katsu curry recipe?
7. Visit Seckington: I’ve been living in the UK for almost 6 years now and I still haven’t visited the town Seckington. Who’s up for a day trip?

Sounds doable, right? Did you make any NY’s resolutions? Let me know in the comments.

I’m always quite wary about posting sponsored content on my blog. My stance on it though is: if it fits with something that I find relevant for this blog, I’m happy to write about it. In this case it’s a campaign for the British Red Cross and it came at exactly the right moment.

A crisis can happen anywhere, and to anyone.

Two weeks ago when visiting my sister’s place, my dad fell down from the top of the staircase. The stairwell was narrow, steep and high and my dad pretty much bounced backwards head first down the stairs. Earlier this year I had done first aid training, but at that moment I blanked out and couldn’t remember what to do, besides calling an ambulance which my sister’s boyfriend was already doing. I kept going over all the things I had learnt, but it’s stressful when it’s family. After the ambulance arrived, it took my dad to the hospital, and we spent the rest of the day there waiting for test results to come back. Everything turned out fine, except for some small broken bones in my dad’s hand.

Everything turned out fine, but a crisis can happen anywhere, and to anyone.

The British Red Cross help more than a million people in the UK every year. They support them in emergencies, provide care in the home, teach life-saving first aid skills, and do a ton of other services. I’m glad I did the first aid training course; even though I wasn’t that helpful this time around with my dad, who knows when what I learnt might come in handy.

If you want to learn more about the British Red Cross or more about their first aid courses, check out their website.

Disclaimer: this article is sponsored by the British Red Cross. All thoughts and opinions are my own though.

I’m really enjoying the Olympics so far. I wasn’t expecting to be this excited for it, but I’ve gotten quite in the Olympic spirit, rooting for both Australia and the Netherlands (and maybe even a little for Team GB). I’ve mainly watched the swimming events from the past two days (the Women’s Freestyle Relay was awesome), and I’ll need to catch up with some of the other sports. I’m now also regretting now trying harder to get tickets; it would have been so good to see some of these events in real life!

For me the Olympic atmosphere properly started a couple days ago on Wednesday. A friend saw on the National Theatre’s site that they were doing a “Fire Garden” exhibition and thought it would be a good plan to meetup with some friends, have dinner and watch whatever the “Fire Garden” was. It was gorgeous weather that day, so of course the Southbank was completely packed with people and of course all the restaurants had large queues. Instead of queueing and waiting to be seated in a overly hot restaurant, we had the brilliant plan of picnicking in Jubilee Park and ordering Wagamama’s takeaway. I’m amazed I’ve never done that before! It was so much more fun and relaxed than actually sitting in a Wagamamas.

After a great dinner, we all realized we were still hungry and had at least an hour to kill till the Fire Garden. So we ended up crossing the river and getting ice cream at Gino’s. I still prefer Lick for the more unique flavours, but Gino’s do really nice traditional Italian ice cream (the website says they even have Bacio flavour which I didn’t notice that night).
With our ice creams in hand we walked to Trafalgar Square to sit on the stairs and enjoy the atmosphere. You could really feel London buzzing that day; everyone was excited for the Olympics and you could sense that excitement in the air. Cristiano made a couple of great pictures:

After sitting there for a while, we slowly made our way back to the Southbank to see what the Fire Garden was. Turns out it the name was exactly right: it was a “garden” of fire to celebrate the Olympic flame coming to London. It looked awesome! I didn’t manage to walk through it though; the moment I got close to the path my eyes teared up completely.

Pretty, right? So fellow Londoners and non-Londonders, are you feeling the “Olympism”? What Olympic events have you seen so far?

This Sunday, the 15th of January 2012, it will be five years ago that I moved to London. It will be five years ago that I showed up here with only a single suitcase to start a one year student exchange at Imperial. It will be five years ago that I was that shy, scared girl that I remember I was.

My plan was to finish my masters that year, and then to most probably go back to the Netherlands and find a job there. I remember wondering at the time about the 2012 Olympics and thinking that by then I wouldn’t be living in London anymore. Somehow I got a bit distracted along the way. What was supposed to take only a year, took me 4.5… oops. I never thought I would become the perpetual student.

I don’t regret it though. Within these 5 years I’ve done stuff, I never thought I would do. I started this blog, which has led to so many cool experiences, giving me the chance to meet awesome people and to cover awesome events. I attended GeekDinners, BarCamps and HackDays, learning to present, to code, to not be afraid to talk to people I don’t know. And then I also started organizing those events, allowing me to give something back to the community who had taught me so much.

They say that with every choice you have to make, the universe diverges and creates the realities of both choices. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder: what if? What if I had finished my degree within that first year? What if I got a job after that first year? Or had moved back to the Netherlands? Would I still have gone to GeekDinners, BarCamps and HackDays? Would I have met the same awesome people? Would I have done all those things that I never thought I would do? Would I be the person I am today?

I don’t think I would be. Part of me regrets not having finished my degree sooner, but I don’t regret all the things I’ve done and learnt instead. I don’t regret the wonderful people I’ve met and the amazing friends I’ve made.

This Sunday, the 15th of January 2012, it will be five years ago that I started the beginning of the end of my student life.

This Sunday, the 15th of January 2012, will be the last day of my student life.

This Monday, the 16th of January 2012, I will be working at EmberAds. Working with some of those awesome people I mentioned: Baz, Caius, Cristiano and Dom.

Part of me is scared, most of me is really excited. One thing I know though:

It’s going to be fracking awesome.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally done it. I’m finally done with my master’s. Yay!

I moved to London 4.5 years ago for a one year exchange at Imperial with the idea to finish my master’s within that year. Things didn’t exactly go according to plan… with me getting distracted by this blog, organizing events and a ton of other stuff. Part of me regrets not having finished sooner, yet on the other hand if I had finished sooner, I don’t think I would have gotten the opportunities to some of the cool things I’ve managed to do these past four years. This year though I realized I needed to finish what I started and put everything else on hold: no more blogging, no more event organizing, no more distractions. And it worked.

So for the past couple of months I’ve been focusing on my research: facial expression recognition for posed versus spontaneous smiles, creating parts of a system that can recognize between a “fake” and a “real” smile. The psychology research about facial expressions is so interesting, and it’s amazing how much our brains are capable of.

Last Thursday I had my final presentation and defence. I wasn’t that nervous for the presentation; I’ve been to enough BarCamps by now, that I don’t get too stressed anymore presenting in front of strangers. But the defence… eek! It was a one-on-one with my graduation committee where they drilled me on all aspects of my research. Some questions were easy-ish, others were tough. Super tough.

In the end though I passed. I got a 7 for the final project (not completely sure what the UK equivalent would be, a B, I think?) and I’m happy with it. The perfectionist in me wishes I got higher, but I’m mainly glad I’ve finally finished. I can’t call myself a Master of Science yet (or as my sister said: Master of Computers), not until I’ve actually had my graduation ceremony.

So: YAY! Soon I’ll be a Master of Science!

On a less positive note: I left a glass of water next to my MacBook on Friday night, and woke up to discover one of the cats had accidentally knocked it over… all over my laptop. I brought it into the Apple store yesterday, and the logic board needs to be replaced. Damage: £300. Ouch. Guess I should start looking for a job…

Yay, it’s my birthday today! And it’s a bit of a geeky one, I’m turning 3^3. I’m not sure why but I still get stupidly excited for my birthday.

I really wanted a simple birthday this year. My plan originally was to got out for sushi tonight with a Keynoir voucher from last week, but that got cancelled yesterday (it was a £30 voucher for £75 worth of food, but apparently the restaurant was being evil, so Keynoir refunded the voucher). So instead I thought I’d take it nice and easy today: sleep in, then watch TV and movies all day.

Yeah, no such luck. Today of all days, they’ve decided to work on our main building entrance, stripping the paint, smoothing the walls and other annoying things that make too much sound. Our apartment is next to the main building entrance, and our bedroom is adjacent to the wall and foor they’re working on. So I got woken up this morning by the lovely sounds of drills and whatever those machine are called that they’re using. It’s been going on since at least 10am and they still haven’t stopped.

To make matters worse, I’m waiting for a couple of things to be delivered today, so it’s not as if I can flee the house. Plus, I only just discovered that the dust and rubble of whatever is is they’re doing has been trickling under our front door into our hallway, leaving everything dusty and messy. <sarcasm> Yay, just what I needed today!</sarcasm>

Sorry for complaining, but I just wanted some peace and quiet today! Ah well, they should be gone by tonight.

Thanks to all my readers for sticking with me the past 4 years. And thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday (be it in real life, Twitter or Facebook)! I’ve got two giveaways at the moment for a copy of the zombie tale Feed from Mira Grant and a ticket to the London Funding Conference, and there’s still time to enter both. Plus I’ve got a couple more exciting giveaways coming up, so stay tuned!

So… yeah, my cunning plan of blogging more while in San Francisco didn’t really pan out. I’d like to blame it on the stupid sucky wifi (which really was stupid and sucky), but it was really me just being too lazy and attempting to enjoy San Francisco. I haven’t replied to most of my emails or done any work since the Monday I left; it’s actually felt like a proper vacation!

San Francisco though was an interesting experience. Somehow with how some people described the US, I always imagined I’d have the same reaction to it as I had with London: that after a couple of days I could imagine moving and living there (I had the same with Paris and Rome actually, but the language thing has always stopped me from actually really wanting to do that move). But that didn’t happen. While it’s great to visit, both San Francisco and Silicon Valley don’t feel like something for me. During the trip I really realized how much I love living here in London.

So: happy I finally went on holiday for the first time in 4 years! But also happy to be back home!

I’m in the Netherlands for the next 3 weeks (reason behind the lack of posts here the past week) cat and house sitting while my mum’s on holiday in Indonesia. I was only gone for 2 days, when Cristiano tweeted “Is alone as @mseckington is in NL for 3.5 weeks. Realising I more and more want a cat.” And someone responded with 2 cats that needed a new home…

So we now have adopted 2 adorable brothers! Meet Casey:

And meet Dusty:

Casey is apparently settling in fine (as the below photo shows), while Dusty is still a little bit shy and quiet.

I can’t wait to meet these cats in 3 weeks time, although I love spending time now cat sitting Tasha, who you’ve seen in previous posts. Expect more photos soon!