Can’t. Wait.

Sigh. I’m going to have “I’ve got no strings” stuck in my head for the entire day now, aren’t I?

Miss Geeky Elsewhere

• Meet The Disrupt Europe London Hackathon Judges: Yep, I’m one of the judges at this weekend’s TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. I’m looking forward to see what hacks people will come up with!
• For Ada Lovelace Day: the women who inspire us at FutureLearn: It was Ada Lovelace Day yesterday! I coordinated this post on the FutureLearn blog and wrote my own section about Paula Clerkin, who’s organising the upcoming Women In Tech conference at the University of Nottingham.
• 6 reasons we love our home at the British Library: I wrote this post 2 months back for the FutureLearn blog, but realised I had never shared it here. I love working form the British Library.
• TweetTracks: I attended and spoke at Hackference a few weeks back: a Friday conference followed up by a hackday in the weekend. I built TweetTracks, a Spotify playlist generated from your tweets, and it won the Best Contextual Experience Using the DataTXT APIs prize! More about that in a future post.
• WeddingLy.st: I created this hack at BattleHack last weekend together with Lily,
  Kevin and Ian. It was so much fun working with them and although we didn’t win anything, I really love our idea.
• My DDD: Disney Driven Development slides:

Interesting Links

• The Bézier Game: I’ve never gotten the hang of the Bézier tool in Photoshop; this game attempts to help you master it.
• IamA underwater archaeologist: Awesome reddit Q&A thread with underwater archaeologist Peter Campbell. After reading that, I wish I had his job.
• As A Father Of Daughters, I Think We Should Treat All Women Like My Daughters: “It didn’t always used to be this way. I used to only have sons. Things sure were different then. How merrily I used to drive down country lanes in my old Ford, periodically dodging off-road to mow down female pedestrians (you must remember I had no daughters then). Was what I did wrong? How was I to know? I had no daughters to think of.”
• Toothless by alicexz: Adorable painting of my favourite dragon:

• Cast as thou wilt: A look at who to cast for a potential Kushiel’s Legacy TV Show. I love the books, and it’s interesting seeing how other people imagine the characters.
• Tiny PMS Match: Fun Tumblr matching small everyday objects to their Pantone colours.
• Tampon Club: I was planning on doing something like this when I worked in a proper office, but can’t really at the British Library since we share our toilets with the public.
• Junior Designers vs Senior Designers: Interesting set of visuals to show the difference between the two.
• It Took Two Years To Make Final Fantasy VII’s Midgar In Minecraft: Woah. I’ve never wanted to play Minecraft before this, but woah. Here’s one of the screenshots:

• 2014 Ig Noble Prize Winners: my favourite has to be the “Response Behaviors of Reindeer towards Humans Disguised as Polar Bears”.
• 11 Must-See Agents of SHIELD Episodes You Have To Watch Before Starting Season 2: Want to start watching Agents of SHIELD, but don’t want to go through the entire (somewhat) boring first season? Here’s a list of which eps to check out.
• Collaborative User Testing: Less Bias, Better Research: Awesome post by my colleague Alla about the biases in user testing and how we deal with them.
• What It’s Like to Carry Your Nobel Prize through Airport Security: “And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’ ‘The King of Sweden.’”

I’ve been looking for cool art for our “new” flat (I’m still saying “new”, but I’m realising it’s been 8 eights months since we moved… woah) and I came across this piece by artist Jenni Sparks:

She was asked to create a map of London that subverted the idea of the traditional tourist map, and instead showcased the culture and personality of each part of the city, as well as the best places to go. It’s a bit tricky to see in the image above, but the map is full of cool details. Here’s a closeup:

The map is available form Evermade with prices starting at £75.

This video gives us an awesome look behind the scenes at the British Library showing the journey of a single book from its arrival at the library to the reader’s desk:

So cool:

Cirque du Soleil, ETH Zurich, and Verity Studios partnered to create this short film featuring 10 quadcopters in a flying dance performance. No CGI was used or needed in the entire thing.

The days are getting shorter, the weather is becoming colder. Meaning: time to bring out those warm winter dresses!

The latest one that has caught my eye is this black and white stretch knit dress from Karen Millen:

It’s a simple dress, but the black and white panels makes it elegant and interesting. You can get it from Karen Millen for £115.

This speech Emma Watson gave at the UN is so good:

Especially “If not me, who? If not now, when?” really resonates with me. It’s the thing I’ve kept telling myself this past year to push myself into speaking at more events.

Back in February after my birthday, I had this great idea to do a 30 Things While 30 List, cause I was too busy to actually finish the list before I was 30. Yeah, turns out: I haven’t gotten any less busier.

I started the initial list with only 10 items, so that I could focus on those in the first 4 months. Well, it’s 7 months further and how many of those 10 have I actually managed to do? 4. Meh. I suck.

Despite that though, I’m super happy I managed to do at least these 4 things! Here’s what they were:

#9. Run 10k

I actually ran 10k! I mentioned it here on my blog a couple of times, but a team of us from FutureLearn ran the British 10K to raise money for Computer Aid (you can actually still donate if you want to).

Now, I’ve never properly run before. I’ve tried to get myself into it over the past 6 years or so, but I never pushed myself to the point where I could actually run continuously for more than just a few minutes. This time around I stuck to a good training schedule and got myself to the stage where I could just run for 30 minutes straight.

I have to admit though: I didn’t keep it up and I need to build it up again. But it’s so so worth it. I definitely felt as if I had way more energy, despite doing these runs every other day.

#1. Visit Seckington

I’ve been living here in the UK for over 7 years now, and yet still had never managed to visit Seckington. I finally did. And got the obligatory camera shot:

#7. Go to a spa

I have to admit I made it a bit easy for myself and ended up going to a spa here in London for a massage and facial: the Elemis Day Spa in Mayfair. I so needed it though. I know I have terrible posture and I can just feel my back and neck tensing up too often.

#2. Play HintHunt

I got invited to a bloggers event last week for #LVLOVELIFE to try out HintHunt, the live escape game. The idea of HintHunt is that you’re stuck in a room and have to escape. Remember those flash games where you had to find all the items in a room and combine them in different ways to solve puzzles? That. In real life.

This was so much fun! I did the Zen room with 3 other bloggers and we managed to escape the room with only 49 seconds to spare. I don’t want to spoil the experience, so I won’t describe this in further detail, but I so recommend it to anyone. I now really want to do their other room too!

So what’s next on my list? Since I finished 4 items on it, I’m adding another 4 new items:

1. Visit Seckington
2. Play Hint Hunt
3. See Les Mis
4. Read The Prestige
5. Make my own ramen
6. Finish an online course
7. Go to a spa
8. Build something with Arduino
9. Run 10k
10. Visit an overseas city I’ve never been before
11. Blog about 5 recipes
12. Make boozy cookies
13. Build a pillow fort
14. Speak at a conference

Yeah, I’m cheating a little bit with that last item. I already spoke at DDD East Anglia last week and will be speaking at Hackference and FOWA soon, but come on! I need to check more off this list (plus it IS something I’ve been wanting to do for ages).

I’ve blogged about my love of United Nude’s shoes a couple of times now, and their new Autumn/Winter collection looks amazing. I keep getting compliments about my pair of Fold heels; they just look so different and pretty!

Here are my favourites of this year’s collection:

Fold Hi in Fantasy

Fold Hi in Riz Mustard

Eamz Ankle Bootie in Black

Fold Hi in Bang Bang

Check out the entire collection on the United Nude site. Which shoes are your favourite?

Cute EW video with a ton of celebrities warning about the dangers of binge watching TV shows:

I have to admit, I think I’ve binged watched most of the shows of those celebrities… How many show have you binged watched over the years?