It’s event season! At least I definitely always feel as if May, June and July are the busiest months with a ton of events going on. I’ve been quite slack in writing up the stuff I’ve attended and will be trying to catch up with that this week.

One of the events I look forward to every year is RegentTweet, a shopping day for bloggers to discover the different stores on Regent Street. It’s in its fifth year now, and so far I’ve been lucky to attend 3 of them. They’re always a lot of fun, plus you end up with lots of cool goodies from the various stores!

The idea of the day is pretty straightforward: each blogger gets a set of cards detailing the time and activity at a certain store. Sometimes it’s to pick up a goodie bag, sometimes it’s a taster session of food and drinks, other times it’s a competition or presentation. I remember one of the first years where you could easily do all the cards/stores in one day. Now? So many companies are participating, you really need to choose which ones you want to go to!

The RegentTweet basecamp this year was Brasserie Zedel. It’s a lovely underground restaurant and cafe; I’ve walked past this place so often, but never realized how big the place actually is! We all started here to register and pick up our initial RegentTweet bag and info, plus a handy gadget charging bar had been set up to make sure you could tweet and cover the day. We also got lunch here at their main restaurant: a nice steak haché with pepper sauce and fries (see image below).

That wasn’t the only food and drinks that we got to enjoy though. Throughout the day there were various restaurants and cafes that were providing lovely refreshments for us. I love the chocolate dipped strawberries from Godiva; so pretty and so tasty!

I also enjoyed the coffee art session at illy’s. Again I had no idea there was an illy’s in Regent Street (it’s just north of Oxford Circus), but I’m so going to come back more often! We got to see various techniques on how they made their coffee art; my favourite was the elephant you can see below. And of course we were allowed to have the coffees afterwards. I’ve always liked their ice coffees, but this is the first time I had their Neve Fondente: espresso with hot milk and cacao power topped with a layer of cold frothed milk. It’s hot and cold at the same time!

Another highlight for me was visiting the United Nude store. I adore their shoes: they’re so unique and pretty, but somehow also quite geeky. We got to meet their creative director, Rem D Koolhaas, and actually see their 3D printers in action. We all were allowed to choose a 3D printed ring or bracelet that had been created in that store. So cool!

There were so many other things to do during the day, half of which I think i didn’t get around to. Here’s the RegentTweet video showing some of the highlights:

At the end of the day we ended up with a ton of gorgeous goodies! My favourites: a crease-free (!) white shirt from Brooks Brothers, an espresso cup from illy, a £50 voucher from Banana Republic (I’ll blog about the dress I bought with it later this week), lipstick and eye shadow from Kiki and peppercorn shower gel from Molton Brown

Like all the previous years, RegentTweet was a lot of fun! Thanks to Regent Street and Sister PR for organizing it and inviting me along. I can’t wait to see what next year’s one brings!

I love visiting Bletchley Park. I’ve visited three times during Over The Air there and still get inspired every time I go (you can read about my first visit here).

This short film was prepared for Bletchley Park’s new visitor centre, sharing a personal perspective on Bletchley’s continuing importance by Megan Smith, VP Google[x]:

Via Chris Monk

I love Stitch. Ever since I saw Lilo & Stitch 12 years ago, he’s been one of my favourite Disney characters; I even got to pose with him at Disney World!

Add to that my love of Firefly and of course I neeeeed to get this tee:

It’s only $20 at Teepublic.

I’m not a fan of the song, but there are some brilliant optical illusions in their video:

It’s always fun seeing what is announced during E3: I can’t wait for some of these games to come out! I’ve haven’t had a proper I’m-so-addicted-to-this-game-I-don’t-want-to-do-anything-else stint for ages, but these trailers make me want to put a weekend aside for purely gaming.

I’ve chosen the trailers that I’m looking forward to the most here. What’s your favourite?

The Division

This looks great:

Assassin’s Creed Unity

I’m still playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, and it’s miles better than AC3. This next one is set in Paris and looks great… when was the Eiffel tower built? I’m still hoping they’ll do a London based one (my guess is a Victorian based one eventually).

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

I finally got around to playing Uncharted 1 and 2, but I still haven’t even started Uncharted 3 yet. Even though this is just a teaser, it really makes me want to go back to the series.

Rise of The Tomb Raider

I enjoyed the previous reboot Tomb Raider. It wasn’t a perfect Tomb Raider (not enough smart puzzles I found), but it’s interesting to see what they do next.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

So awesome. The Master Chief collection will be on an all-in-one disc for Xbox One and contains the full campaigns and multiplayer for Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4. I’ve only ever played Halo: Combat Evolved, and have been waiting for a remastered version of Halo 2 ever since. Finally!

I thought I’d do a quick post with a couple of awesome events I’ll be attending/speaking at soon. There are still tickets available for all of these events; let me know in the comments if you’re going too!

PrimeConf – Best of British

PrimeConf is a conference on the 13th of June at the Royal Institution, celebrating great British technology and technologists. Taking a countrywide approach they’ve invited guest speakers from around Britain to talk about what they know and what they do. They’ll will also be live streaming the event so everyone who wants to can watch regardless of location. Tickets are still available for £149.

FutureBook Hack

FutureBook Hack invites developers, designers and entrepreneurs to come together for a weekend of brainstorming and problem solving in a previously untapped sector: book publishing. The goal of the event is to bring fresh eyes to an established industry, to tackle the challenges facing book publishing, to adapt to a changing landscape and to help readers discover the perfect book. I’m happy to announce that I’ll be a judge and a mentor at this!

Woman Who Code

Women Who Code is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers by creating a global, connected community of women in technology. I’ll be speaking at their meetup on July 22nd about DDD: Disney Driven Development. The talk will be about Disney’s Four Keys of the Kingdom and how we can apply those principles to our work as web developers.

This has been making the internet rounds lately, but it’s too good not to share here:

Via The Mary Sue

I love the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney, so seeing it mashed up with Star Wars: awesome!

The tee is (as usual with TeeFury) available for just one day for $11. It’s designed by Karen Hallion:

This design was inspired by the Haunted Mansion ride at the theme park, which is my all-time favorite ride. The ballerina in the stretching room portraits always reminded me of the Princess because of her buns, so I decided to do a mash-up series of Star Wars and those portraits. This is the first in the series and I had so much fun integrating Star Wars elements into this design.

Ooh, I can’t wait to see what the other three Haunted Star Wars designs look like!

This is so adorable! I love my collection of geek jewellery and couldn’t help but order this one for myself.

It’s available from etsy store Land of Rapture (I’ve previously blogged about their Assassin’s Creed necklace) for only £9.78! If you’ve never bought anything from Etsy before, they currently are offering £5 off your first Etsy purchase if you sign up now.

You can even customise your necklace and choose exactly which of the following you want:

I’ve chosen the Green Mushroom, the Flower and the Star! I can’t wait till it gets delivered.

So excited about this! I love the look of this zombie series set in London. It reminds me a bit of The Tribe (did anyone else watch that as a kid?) but with zombies. And obviously adding zombies to anything makes things better.

To celebrate the release of the final book in the series, The Fallen, one lucky reader will receive all 5 books in The Enemy Series, courtesy of Disney Hyperion!

So what to do to enter the competition? Leave a comment behind explaining your Zombie Apocalypse Plan: what would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse? Where would you go? You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtag #missgeeky. The competition is open to everyone and it will end on June 9th.

About the series

When the sickness came, every parent, policeman, politician – every adult fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and hungry.

Only children under fourteen remain, and they’re fighting to survive.

A gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city – down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground – the grown-ups lie in wait.

To find out more, check out The Enemy Series on Facebook, or follow Disney Hyperion and Charlie Higson on Twitter.