Ever since Cristiano got his Crumpler bag (Warm Shower) a couple of months ago, I’ve wanted one of these handy bags for myself. Besides normal messenger bags, Crumpler has a great line of cleverly designed laptop bags. Perfect for a geeky girl with a lot of gadgets, right? Well, at that time almost all the designs were more focused on guys. I tried a couple of them out, but none of them ever really felt right.

Now though, Crumpler has released a couple of bags, clearly aimed for the geeky girls out there. The Cheesy Chick is a laptop bag, perfectly sized for a 13″ laptop with a padded laptop compartment and a separate removable laptop sleeve. It comes in four different colours: roadkill red, espresso, seeded mustard and dull black.

The Cheesytina is of a similiar design, but has space for a 15″ laptop. The pouch on the front is also bigger, but for the rest the bag is pretty much the same as the Cheesy Chick (what’s up with the Cheese names by the way? Girls like cheese?). It also comes in four different colours: black, oatmeal, washed dark grey and bordeaux red. If you’ve got a laptop bigger than 13″, this is the way to go.

Another 13″ laptop bag is the Fuzzy Runway. Just like the Cheesy Chick, it’s got a removable laptop pouch. The main compartment though has a zipper closing and there’s a zipped pocket on the front. This bas also comes in four colours: oatmeal, black olive, dirty brown and black.

I fell in love with these bags the first time I saw them and they’re exactly what I want. With each of them, even when your laptop is in it, there’s still enough space for all your gadgets and other girly stuff. And they’re not too bulky to lug around with you. Besides that, if you don’t want to carry your laptop with you, the laptop sleeve can be removed and you’ve got more space for other stuff. Handy, right?

Although it’s not a laptop bag, another Crumpler I like is the Boiler. It’s a small glamma bag, as Crumpler likes to call it, perfect for your basic carry alongs and gadgets. Besides the larger compartment in the middle, it’s got two zipped pockets on the sides. The Boiler comes in five colours: black olive, dark olive, silver, red and dark purple.

There are more bags on the Crumpler site, but these ones are my favourites. I’m still trying to decide whether I should get the Cheesy Chick or the Fuzzy Runway; they both look great and meet all my requirements, although I find the colours of the Cheesy Chick better.

By the way, there’s finally a Crumpler Store in central London (in New Oxford Street). It’s smaller than I expected, but then you don’t really need that much space to showcase those bags, do you? If you want to see some real life Crumplers, it’s definitely worth checking out. For buying these bags though, you’re better off at Amazon or other online shops; most of the time you can get them a whole lot cheaper.

I linked to this project about a week ago, but We Tell Stories is interesting enough to dedicate a complete post to it. The idea of We Tell Stories is to tell Six Stories by Six Authors in Six Weeks inspired by Six Classics, with each story using a unique presentation form. It’s created by Six to Start in partnership with Penguin Books and at the end of the six weeks there will be a contest to win 1300 (!!) Penguin Classics.

The first story The 21 Steps came out two weeks ago and is written by Charles Cumming. It’s inspired by The 39 Steps, but you haven’t had to read that to understand this story. The story is told through Google Maps, showing the places the character goes to and giving the reader the ability to follow his journey.

The second story came out this week and is called Slice. It’s written by Toby Litt and is inspired by The Haunted Dolls’ House. It’s about a girl named Lisa, nicknamed Slice, who had moved to London with her parents to separate her from bad influences. Her story is told through her blog, her parents blog and their Twitter feeds (Slice and her parents).

The next four stories will each be coming out in the next four weeks and I’m curious to see what type of form these will be in. So far it’s been interesting to see these different type of methods of storytelling and it gives the stories a whole other perspective.

Besides the six features stories though, there is a cleverly hidden seventh story with more ARG elements, inspired (of course) by Alice in Wonderland. The first clue that there was a seventh story is through this blurb when you sign up for the Google Group:

Over six weeks, six authors will write six stories designed for the internet, from Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid to prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French.

The six authors featured on the We Tell Stories site are: Charles Cumming, Toby Litt, Kevin Brooks, Nicci French, Matt Mason and Mohsin Hamid. So what story was Naomi Alderman working on? It’s also interesting to know that Alderman was the lead writer for Perplex City, a previous ARG the founders of Six to Start were involved in.

If you want to catch up on the seventh story, check out this forum. A lot has happened already, but I don’t think it’s too late to join all the fun. I know I’m going to try and figure it out! Let me know if you’re playing too; it’s always good to join forces.

Interesting links for March 29th:

• Six Earth Cities That Will Provide Blueprints for Martian Settlers [Colonizing Mars] – Yes, we need to study these cities very closely. The experience we gain while building these cities, will help us so so much when we colonize Mars.
• Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds – A couple of these pranks are funny, but I can’t help but wonder is this all they could come up with? What are nerdiest pranks you’ve pulled off?
• 59 Of The Coolest Toilet Signs Around The World – Some of these I had seen before, but there are a couple of cool designed ones between them.

I’m doing this the wrong way around, aren’t I? First blogging about an event from yesterday and then about an event from two days before that. Heck, if I have time, I might even blog about Barcamp Brighton 2, even though that’s been already two weeks ago.

Anyhow, last Tuesday I made my way to the 18th Girl Geek Dinner, this time held at The Knights Templar. The main theme was SEO (search engine optimisation) with all speakers supposedly talking on this subject. Juddith “deCabbit” Lewis held a great talk explaining the basics of SEO. It was actually an hour long presentation she uses for her clients, cut down to only 15 minutes. I would have liked to hear the full talk, cause that would have been so much more interesting than the stuff that came after that.

The second talk was from Sheila Farrell about Semantic Markup and Organic SEO. I don’t want to be too harsh, but seriously all I remember from this talk was “tables are bad, tables are bad, it’s geeky to use tables (??), but tables are bad”. The third presenter was McVitte, the CEO of Texperts, talking about the mobile search perspective. Texperts is a mobile search SMS service that allows users to text a question to a (human) team of experts who text the answer back. The talk was okay, but wasn’t as technical as I was hoping it would be.

The food was sponsored by Latitude and as sponsors they were allowed to give a small 5 minute business talk. I have to applaud them though for foregoing the marketing pitch and just wishing us a good time. We need more sponsors like that! There was more than enough food (mainly fried finger food) and by the end most platters weren’t even finished. The wine on the other hand went very quickly, although most people only had one glass. I shouldn’t complain; it’s better than having to pay yourself.

The main problem with this event was the venue. While The Knights Templar is a great pub, it’s not quite suitable to hold an event like this. We were in two small upstairs rooms, but upstairs meant half a level higher in a sort of balcony overlooking the rest of bar with all the hassle and noise reaching us. Yeah, that’s not that great when you have an event with speakers.

Next to that, the two rooms were connected with a small dark doorway and the presenters were forced to stand somewhere in the middle, so that people in both rooms could kind of see them talk (actually from where I was sitting I didn’t see anything). The rooms were supposed to fit 50 people, which might have been able if everyone was standing and all the tables were moved aside. As it was though (with everyone sitting at the tables) there wasn’t that much space at all; I barely left my seat only because there wasn’t any room to maneuver around.

It wasn’t the best Girl Geek Dinner I’ve been to, but as usual it was great fun meeting up with some old friends and some new friends. The next Girl Geek event is going to be a joint Geek Dinner and Girl Geek Dinner event with a surprise mystery speaker on April 26th [Upcoming]. Before that though is another Geek Dinner event on April 7th with David Terrar with a talk about creativity and the current education system [Upcoming]. So set the dates in your calendars, people, and I’ll see you there next time!

The idea of a London Girl Geek Coffee had been spinning in my head for a couple of weeks, but I never had the time or effort to actually organise it. While talking to Emma during the Girl Geek Dinner last Tuesday, she took matters into her own hands and on the spot created an event on Upcoming for two days later aka: yesterday.

So yesterday in the late afternoon the first Girl Geek Coffee took place at the Starbucks inside the Espirit on Regent Street. It was a small gathering with 5 Girl Geeks, including Emma and me, showing up. For a good two and a half hours we chatted and sipped our Lattes, Mochas and Espressos. The topics covered a wide range of things, from TV shows to university life to geek chic clothes (I’m thinking of cutting up conference swag T-shirts and turning them into minidresses).

The coffee was lovely, but the location this time wasn’t that great. It’s normally quite nice (I’ve used it as a work cafe a couple of times), but now they had turned up the heater quite high and it was just too warm to sit there comfortably. Next to that there was another group (of about 6 people) who decided to meet up there and they were as loud and as annoying as you can get. Next time we’ll have to find another location (if you have any suggestions, email me).

All in all, the first London Girl Geek Coffee was a succes and we’re definitely going to hold more in the future. I’m thinking we should hold this event every other week, so the next one would be Thursday over two weeks (April 10th). In the future we’ll have an actual Girl Geek Coffee site (maybe something together with the Geek Dinners, Geek Werewolf and I’d like to see Geek Poker), but for now if you want to join us keep an eye on this blog and Upcoming for the next event.

Episode 47: *swoosh*

These fanmade videos are awesome! They feature characters from the video game series Dead Or Alive and Final Fantasy battling each other and all I can say is: WOW!

The second one is 11 minutes (!!) and is even cooler, with more characters and effects:

I know my video game lore: do you? Who can name all the featured characters from these clips?

I’ll dive right in by saying that so far this is the best movie I’ve seen this year. Now I know 2008 is far from over, but I have a feeling that by the end of this year Son of Rambow will still be in my Top 10.

Set in the early 1980’s in England, Will Proudfoot is part of the Brethren religion and has been kept away from watching movies, listening to music and making friends with outsiders. After seeing a bootleg version of Rambo (First Blood) at school terror Lee Carter’s house though, Will is completely blown away and Lee gets him involved into making a sort of sweded version of the movie. Add a busload of French exchange students, a flying dog and an evil scarecrow and you have a pretty damn amazing film.

Son of Rambow is the movie I was hoping Be Kind, Rewind would be (yeah, I didn’t like BKR, if enough people want, I’ll write a review). The sweding is great, but there is more to the movie than only those parts. The story is so sweet and there are a couple of brilliant moving scenes. It’s also full of funny moments; I was giggling throughout the entire film.

Will and Lee are superbly portrayed by newbies Bill Miller and Will Poulter. I was surprised to see that both of them haven’t been in that many other films (Poulter in none actually), but I’m guessing that after this films is released that’s going to change. I also loved Will’s innocence. Especially at the start of the movie there are things that he’s doing that at first glance you just don’t understand. Then when you find out, you just can’t help but find it cute.

I also have to give a special mention to the visual effects and sound effects. There aren’t that many (it’s not that type of movie), but when they are used it works so well. For instance, at the start of the movie a group of kids run by, but from the sound of it they seem more like a giant stampede. Then next to that Will’s daydreaming is brought to life in a very unique type of way (I won’t explain how otherwise I’ll ruin it).

This is a definite must-see cinema movie. In contrary to most other movies, Son of Rambow is worth every penny and you’ll come out of the cinema with a smile on your face. By the way, stay seated till after the credits. There’s a little extra you won’t want to miss.

[rating: 4.5/5]

Episode 46: “It’s a deeply intense moment in our lives.”

I came across this video while searching for more info on the new Joss Whedon internet musical Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. To my surprise, there’s already a fan site up and running: Doctor Horrible (then again I shouldn’t really be surprised, should I? I’ve even fallen in love with series without having seen anything of it yet). On their site they had this little gem of a video. It’s a clip from the Megan Mullaly Show of an interview of the cast members of How I Met Your Mother, where Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segal sing one of the songs from Les Mis.

Yesterday I finally took some time to hang up a couple of posters, some of which were lying around for months. The two big posters were both of Heroes, which I got from Cristiano for my birthday. One of them is the “main” poster of the show; the one with the faces on the bottom and the clouds and the skyscrapers. You know, this one:

I don’t think the image works that well when you see it like this “on screen”, but as an actual poster it looks pretty impressive. The second poster is (in my eyes) extremely cool and as far as I can tell it’s quite difficult to find. It’s the cover of the fourth 9th Wonders, the Heroes webcomic, featuring Claire coming out of the flames:

Next to those large posters, I got a couple of smaller ones. A few months ago I managed to get some promotional posters (Fearless, Aeon Flux, Ratatouille and Transformers ) for about $2 at the London Film and Comic Con. Now I finally put them up:

I love the design of these small ones and am hoping I can find more of these in the future. I’ve got a couple of awkward pieces of wall that desperately need to be covered. Here are some overall shots of how the posters are:

Yes, that’s a Spiderman 3 poster there. I bought it before the movie came out and haven’t got around to replacing it with something better (aka almost anything else). There are two particular sets of posters I’ve got my eye on, but I don’t have that much space in my room. Maybe someday later when I got a place that’s bigger than a single room. Anyhow, the first set contains Battlestar Galactica propaganda posters, including the cut-off edges:

The second set is of a similar vein, but this time they’re travel agency adds from Firefly:

I’ve fallen in love with these posters and every time I come across them I want them even more. Each of them is so different than the others, but still you can see that they form a set together. And don’t you just love the “Visit tranquil Miranda”? So Santa, Birthday Bunny, Tooth Fairy, could I please have these for my next Christmas/birthday/wisdom tooth removal?

Episode 45: “Oh, Danny Boy. Oh, Danny Boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.”

I know a couple of other blogs that posted this video for St. Patrick’s Day, but it’s just too funny to not mention it here. My three favorite muppets (The Swedish Chef, Animal and Beaker) singing Danny Boy: