I’m a huge United Nude fan, so when it came to choosing shoes for my wedding day, I just knew it would be a pair from them.

I went with their awesome Eamz design; it’s sooo different and awesome:

While they look cool, they were also quite practical: rather than having a pointy heel that could get stuck between cobblestones, the base of these heels are quite horizontal, making them much easier to walk in.

The shoes were £200, but they’re currently discounted at £159.

I bought this dress a couple of weeks back and it’s so nice! It pretty much ticks all the MissGeeky dress requirements: looks stylish, is comfortable, can be worn with different cardigans/blazers/tops and has pockets! As a nice little bonus it has the FutureLearn steps in them!

You can currently get the dress from Joy for £30.

My 2015 book challenge isn’t exactly on schedule this year. From the 52 books I’m supposed to read, I’m so far only on 21 (while I should be around the 30). I still got 5 months to go though, so I’m going to try to catch up!

The Martian – Andy Weir

I don’t remember who recommended this book to me (if it was you, please let me know!), but they described it as a science hackday in space. And it pretty much is: an astronaut gets accidentally abandoned on Mars and needs to combine all his skills of mechanical engineering and botany to survive. It does get a bit science and fact heavy at times, but I couldn’t put this book down.

It’s currently being made into a movie, but if you like the sound of it, go read the book first! And don’t watch the trailer: way too much is being given away in it. That said: I really like the casting – can’t wait to see it!

Santa Olivia/Saints Astray – Jacqueline Carey

I’ve enjoyed Jacquelince Carey’s Kushiel/Terre d’Ange series, so I was curious to see how this series would turn out. It takes place in the titular Santa Olivia, a dystopian desert town in a no man’s land between the United States and Mexico, and is about the coming of age of Loup Garron, a daughter of a genetically engineered soldier with super strength, speed and sight. I really enjoyed these books. I love Carey’s writing and instantly fell in love with these characters.

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

I never quite realised how much I am a child of the eighties. Set in a not too distant future, Ready Player One is about the most epic video game easter egg hunt ever, with millions of people searching for the hidden will of the 80s obsessed creator of the OASIS, a virtual reality world/game (which has basically replaced the internet). This book is just filled with references and easter eggs to all things eighties; I didn’t get many of the video game references, but it goes beyond that – movies, music, comics, it’s just filled with them.

The Witches of Echo Park – Amber Benson

I hadn’t read any of Amber Benson’s previous books, but saw that this new series might be a good place to start. I liked the characters and the backstory, but it didn’t feel like a complete plot. I get that it’s setting up the series as a whole, but I was expecting at least some conclusion to this part.

As I mentioned yesterday, I gave a talk at GORUCO, a one-day Ruby conference in New York. I did a 10 minute version of my Un-artificial Intelligence talk, trying to explain some basic concepts of human learning through machine learning:

I’m not a huge flower fan, so I decided quite early on that I didn’t want a traditional bouquet for my wedding. I mean flowers are pretty etc, but for someone who doesn’t deal well with keeping plants alive (and who has said in the past that getting me flowers is like the worst present ever), it just felt like having flowers as a bouquet would seem wrong. Via Pinterest I came across the idea of using book pages as flowers instead, and I completely fell in love with that!

I got my bouquet from etsy store theepapergirl, featuring pages from Alice in Wonderland:

I love how it turned out! And it definitely felt more me than having a traditional bouquet. If you look closely you can see some of the character names from Alice in Wonderland!

I had several conversations with Lindy from theepapergirl to pin down exactly what I wanted, and she was super helpful and patient with answering all my questions. They have several listed books that you can choose from, or for $10 more you can have a book of your own choice.

Check out theepapergirl for more options!

Oh wow, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last blogged here! The last 2 months have been insanely busy, so before going back to my typical posts I thought I’d do a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to

Got married!

Back in May I got married to Cristiano! It was an awesome day, and I loved the little geeky touches we added. I’ll be blogging about the various things we did in separate posts.

Speaking at events

I somehow ended up doing my Un-artificial Intelligence talk 4 times within 2 weeks. I love giving that talk though, and it’s great to see the conversations and discussions that come out of it!

• 20th June 2015 – GORUCO: A one-day technical conference aimed at highly motivated programmers. Watch my talk.
• 18th June 2015 – London Web: The meetup where people listen. We cut back the noise and focus on people who can teach us, interact with us, and help us learn from being around other like-minded people.
• 13th June 2015 – OpenTech 2015: OpenTech 2015 is an informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, experience and democracy.
• 11th June 2015 – EmberLondon: a monthly meetup for anyone interested in Ember.js and building ambitious web applications.

Athens, Venice and New York

Cristiano had to be in Athens and Venice for BattleHack (an awesome global series of hackdays to find the Ultimate Hackers for Good), so I got to travel along and do some sightseeing. Next to that I got selected to give a talk at GORUCO in New York, and since it was cheaper to fly back a bit later, I got 2 extra days in the city! I’d never been to any of those cities before, and I love wandering around and exploring them.