Back in February I blogged about 5 Geeky Necklaces and ended up getting 2 of them for my birthday. My favourite one which I wear a lot is the Portal necklace from etsy store Land of Rapture.

I’ve been eyeing a second necklace from this store for a while, and now I’ve finally ordered it! It’s the Assassin’s Creed Crest one and I love how it looks:

I can’t wait until it gets delivered and I can wear it. It’s so pretty!

The store has a ton of other cool geeky necklaces and I was tempted to buy a couple of them. The necklaces are almost all between £9 and £12. Here are my favourites:

Star Trek Enterprise Diagram for $16/£10.48

Batman for $16/£10.48:

Companion Cube for $16/£10.48:

Zelda Cameo for $16/£10.48:

Kirkwall Crest for $17/£11.14:

ParaNorman comes out in the US at the end of this week and I’ve been given a goodie bag to giveaway to one lucky reader! It’s from the same studio that made Coraline and it looks like it could be a lot of fun:

Here’s what’s in the goodie bag:

• $25 Visa Gift Card for a night at the movies
• Adult T-Shirt
• Keychain
• Notebook
• Slippers
• Toothbrush
• Backpack

To enter the contest, all you need to do is email contest@missgeeky.com with your name and address and put “ParaNorman Giveaway” in the title. The giveaway will run until August 21st at 17:00 and is only open to residents of the United States.

About the Film

The new 3D stop-motion comedy thriller from animation company LAIKA, reteaming the company with Focus Features after the groundbreaking Academy Award-nominated Coraline. ParaNorman is, following Coraline, the company’s second stop-motion animated feature to be made in 3D.

In ParaNorman, a small town comes under siege by zombies. Who can it call? Only misunderstood local boy Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is able to speak with the dead. In addition to the zombies, he’ll have to take on ghosts, witches and, worst, of all, grown-ups, to save his town from a centuries-old curse. But this young ghoul whisperer may find his paranormal activities pushed to their otherworldly limits.

I can’t believe the London 2012 Olympics are over (well, the first bit at least: we still have the Paralympics coming up too). I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it all quite this much, but it’s been an amazing two weeks. Up until the week before the opening ceremony my response to the Olympics pretty much was: “ugh, public transport is going to be so screwed, I’m going to be a hermit for 2 weeks”. But then London transformed… the weather became awesome, the atmosphere around London became electrifying and everybody was suddenly so friendly. The Olympics were so much more fun than I ever imagined they could be and I’m truly happy that I got to witness London like this firsthand.

There were quite a couple of highlights for me, so I thought I’d do one post rounding all of those up. What were your Olympic highlights? Let me know below in the comments!

The Opening Ceremony

I think most of us were expecting a very cheesy opening ceremony, but Danny Boyle really delivered here. The Opening Ceremony was awesome to watch, even though I wonder how much it made sense for foreigners. I knew the 007 and the Queen bit was going to happen (and it was as great as I was hoping it would be), but I was surprised (and laughed out loud the moment I saw him) that they brought on Rowan Atkinson. I also loved the concept of the Olympic Flame Cauldron, having each country be represented as a part of the whole. Seeing that all come together was beautiful.

Opening Ceremony by Sum_of_Marc on Flickr

Women’s 4×100 Freestyle Swimming Relay

This was the first event I watched where I was screaming at the TV, rooting for my favourites to win. It was such a close race with Australia winning gold and Netherlands winning silver (but only by overtaking USA and China in the last laps). You can watch it here on the BBC (from chapter 18 on).

Watching SPORT! with friends

It was a lot of fun hanging out with friends (well, it’s always fun to hang out with friends) and to watch sport with them. I had friends over for dinner one of the days and we kept switching between three different sports, not being able to settle on just one. Then I also went with friends to Hyde Park Live and Victoria Live, which were a bit underwhelming the days that we went (although I got to go on a zipline, which was fun and terrifying at the same time). And of course going to see the Gymnastics and Volleyball with friends.

Playing Reserve-The-Ticket-Roulette and Winning

I thought ticket sniping for Barcamps and other geek events had prepared me well, but wow I was wrong. After seeing all those empty seats the first days, I of course was one of the thousands of people that attempted to get tickets. The ticketing website really sucks though; the flow of interactions and the bad copy makes users have the wrong expectations about the state of “their” tickets. It was frustrating as hell attempting to get tickets, but in the end I managed to get some! Gymnastics AND Volleyball!

Jessica Ennis’s 800m, Mo Farah’s 10000m

These were both amazing events to watch. Even though I’m not British, it made me proud of my adopted country. Seeing Ennis give it her all to end up first over the finish line, even though it wasn’t actually needed to win her the gold… it was really amazing. And then to see Mo finish the 10000m. The slow motion capture of that is just brilliant.

Olympic Stadium by interbeat on Flickr

Holland Heineken House at Alexandra Palace

This was a lot of fun, watching the Olympics with a hall full of Dutchies. See my blog post to see more pics of that evening.

Going to the Gymnastics and seeing Zonderland win gold

I still can’t quite believe that I got see a Dutch guy win gold! Zonderland’s routine was so spectacular to watch, and it was awesome just being in the crowd for that. I won’t rehash the entire day here again, I already wrote an entire blog post about my trip to the Gymnastics here.

Watching Volleyball

I still need to process all the photos I took that evening, but I think I got some great action shots. We got to see two Women’s Quarterfinals: USA vs Dominican Republic and Italy vs Korea. The first match was a bit boring; USA won 3-0 from Dominican Republic. The second game the teams were much more evenly matched; it was pretty exciting to watch!

Friendly London

Everywhere I went in London the past two weeks everyone was just super friendly. The awesome volunteers at both Olympic venues I went to were super friendly and helpful. The security at both venues was painless, quick and again super friendly. And almost everywhere you went someone had a smile on their face. I want Friendly London all the time!

Schwarzenegger tweeting about Boris Bikes

Feeling motivated to sport more

After watching all those sports on TV and in real life, I now really feel motivated to go out and sport more. I went running again yesterday for the first time in ages and it felt great. This time though instead of sticking to a schedule and looking at my watch every couple of seconds, I just ran as I wanted: balancing on small walls, jumping over steps, it was just so much more fun. I realized that what I really want to do is maybe some basic parkours; nothing too fancy, but I think it would be fun to learn the basics. Besides that I also want to see if with some friends we can hire a sportshall every (other) week and do a different sport each time. I like volleyball and basketball, but not enough to join a club for only that specific sport. Doing something different each week though? That could work.

So those were my Olympic highlights! What about your’s? What made the Olympics special for you?

It’s the final day of the Olympics! I started these Olympics posts two weeks ago with a Dress of The Day post, so I thought it would be fitting to do a final one on the day of the closing ceremony.

One of the best moments of the Olympics was watching Jessica Ennis win the 800m in the Heptathlon even though she didn’t need to. It was a brilliant moment and made me proud of my adopted country. During a Q&A session at the Omega House last week (wait, Omega have their own “national” house?!? *Goes to google* After some googling: it’s a special Olympics private members club in Soho) Ennis wore a cute pink Alexander McQueen skater dress:

If you want the dress yourself, I found it on Farfetch.com for £562.50:

Source: Omega

I’m loving this ad for Total Recall; I like how it’s an ad for the in-movie company and doesn’t mention the movie actually at all.

I’ve been seeing these type of ads for the past two weeks (as far as I’m aware there’s also a variant one with a yacht and two girls in bikinis), but each time I tried to take photos with my iPod Touch, they turned out horrible. Two days ago though I was on my way back from the Gymnastics finals and luckily had my DSLR with me.

I love the asterisk bit on the bottom. It’s a bit tricky to read from the photo, but it says: Side effects may include sleeplessness, headaches, memory loss, paranoia, delusions, schizophrenia, and possible death.

Brilliant.

I wonder though how many commuters just won’t get it (and how many won’t even bother reading what it says).

I’m enjoying the Olympics and the lovely weather in London. It finally feels a bit like summer! It’s the perfect time to go out and do stuff: go to Olympic events, have a picnic in the park or do a photo walk along the Thames. And what does every geeky girl need for that: a bag to hold all her gadgets!

For the past week I got to try out a limited edition Knomo bag: the Olympia tote bag. It’s specially designed to celebrate the London Olympics and Team GB, featuring the red, white and blue colours. Made from a “highly durable coated canvas exterior that is water/dirt-resistant”, it’s super light and so easy to bring along with you.

On the outside there’s large flat pocket that runs from the red stripe to the right end of the bag, with a smaller mobile phone sized pocket within it. It’s perfect for Oyster card and whatever gadget you need to access quickly. On the inside it’s pretty much one large zipped compartment with on one side a zipped pocket and some smaller gadget pockets. I love how Knomo designs their bags; the pockets and are always easily accesible and the right size. Rather than having the zipped pocket going down the entire length of the bag (and making you have to stick your entire arm into the bag to reach something), the pockets go about halfway down and are so handy to use.

For me it could easily hold the gadgets I normally want to bring along and usually struggle with in more petite bags: DSLR with 2 camera lenses, iPad, laptop (there isn’t a special laptop compartment, but I know there are people out there who prefer using their own sleeve and just want a bag that the laptop fits in). I wouldn’t suggest lugging all those around with you, but if you have to, rest assured that this bag can hold it all. I even tested to see if it would fit my picnic blanket and it does!

As I mentioned in a post last week, there’s still time to win one of these limited edition Olympia bags and it’s signed by Team GB Olympic Footballer Marvin Sordell! Plus you’ll also get £200/€250/$250 worth of products from the Knomo website. All you need to do is tweet a photo of your “Olympic London” to @knomo with the hashtag #MyOlympicLondon or upload the photo to their Facebook page.

I never expected to be this psyched for the Olympics; the past week has just been amazing! I’ve had friends over for dinner to watch sport. I’ve been with friends to Hyde Park to watch sport. I’ve visited the Holland Heineken House… to watch sport. And then two days I actually went to the O2 and Earls Court to watch real life actual sport. And it was awesome.

I managed to get tickets to the Gymnastics last week, after enjoying the men’s team finals on TV. Four finals: men’s parallel bars, men’s horizontal/high bar, women’s beam and women’s floor. Great! What I didn’t realize at the time though was that a Dutch gymnast (Epke Zonderland) had made it through to High Bar finals and that he was likely to win… Oh, and his nickname is the Flying Dutchman (obviously).

So on Tuesday I made my way to the O2 the North Greenwich Arena. I often go to the O2 the North Greenwich Arena, cause our closest Cineworld is there, but I’ve never actually been there before for an event (I have gotten stuck there accidentally during events though, visiting the cinema and getting stuck between Glee fans trying to getting home). I have to say everything was well arranged: the security check, picking up the tickets, getting into the arena, everything was painless.

The seats I got were the cheapest ones they had (at £50 per person), so we weren’t exactly sitting up close, but it was still great to be able to see it all live. Before the actual finals started they had a cool mini performance about gymnastics and how it needed agility, strength, grace and balance. They apparently showed this before each gymnastics event; I found a video if you want to watch the entire thing.

Then the finals started! First up was the men’s parallel bars, which was awesome to watch. None of my photos turned out great though; I was too mesmerized watching it all!

Second was the women’s beam finals, which had a fair bit of drama. So much balance, precision and strength is needed to pull off these routines; it’s a tough sport. A lot of the gymnasts messed up, loosing their balance, falling from the beam and getting points deducted. The gold and silver was pretty obvious, both going to China (Linlin Deng and Lu Sui). The bronze though initially was going to go to Catalina Ponor who had 15.066 points. In 4th place though was Alexandra Raisman from the US with 14.966 points, who contested that score. The judges re-evaluated it and gave her 0.1 extra, putting her on the same score as Ponor! Raisman had a higher difficulty score though (the overall score is an average of the difficulty score plus the execution score) and she ended up with the bronze!

Kseniia Afanaseva (ended up 5th):

Gabrielle Douglas (ended up 7th):

After that it was time for the high bar! I think it’s my favourite apparatus; it’s just so awesome to watch. There were 4 gymnasts before Epke Zonderland and each of them was amazing. But then it was Zonderland’s turn. WOW! His routine was absolutely stunning! If you haven’t seen his routine, check it out here on the BBC page. The crowd was also going completely mental during it; with every jump he made, the crowd cheered, each cheer louder than the previous one. The three jumps at the start are one of the hardest release combinations, a Cassina to Kovacs to Kolman, and Zonderland pulled it off. It was just so awesome to watch.

With such an awesome routine he of course got GOLD! Whohooo! I can now say I saw a fellow countryman get GOLD at the Olympics! He’s the first Dutch male gymnast to win a gold medal in gymnastics ever, and it’s the Netherlands’ first Olympic gymnastics gold medal since the Dutch women’s team win in Amsterdam in 1928.

Last up was the women’s floor finals. Again this was pretty great to watch live; the jumps and flips these girls can make are so impressive. This time Alexandra Raisman got gold (who ended up getting bronze on the beam), Catalina Ponor got silver (who ended up 4th on beam, edged out by Raisman) and Aliya Mustafina got bronze.

So that was my first Olympics event ever! It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m so glad I managed to get tickets for it. I had to make a mad dash across London after that though to go to my second Olympic event: Volleyball at Earls Court. More about that tomorrow!

The past week has been so awesome; I hadn’t expected to do that many Olympics related stuff, but my entire week has revolved around it. And it’s been great.

Last Sunday we visited the Holland Heineken House at Alexandra Palace, the official house of the Netherlands and its sporters during the Olympics. There are big screens to watch all the events on (with commentary in Dutch), Dutch fast food to eat, and a huge party with special guests once all the sporting events are over. Also each time an athlete wins a medal they eventually show up at the House and get their own special ceremony! Sadly the evening we went nobody won anything.

It was awesome to be there though. After watching the men’s 100m finals on the big screen, the entire place turned into a huge party. First 3JS performed on stage and after that DJ Sander van Doorn performed. To be honest, I had no idea who they were; I haven’t been following Dutch music since I left.

Here are the photos of that evening:

Awesome:

I came across this cute etsy store 4/Four Cards that does snarky printed cards. I’m featuring the four here that I like the most, but they’ve got a ton more on their actual store. I especially like the last one… mainly cause I know some people who could definitely use this card!