There were 10 of us (8 gals, 2 guys) from a variety of backgrounds but all with the common thread of not really having much to do with code. Seb took us through some basic drawing commands (using HTML canvas, not that it made much difference what we were drawing on) and the first hour or so was spent making wobbly aliens. In fact, have a look at mine. (works best in Chrome). Better than that, I (mostly) understand what I wrote to make it happen. There was a lot of experimenting and happy accidents throughout the course. As an example, when I made that alien, I edited and re-edited several commands to work out why the circle I drew was the size it was, or why it was a random colour or opacity and then scribbled down lots of notes.

The thing that was so good about this course was not only was it very visual – you could see the results of what you had just done, then and there – but it was a great way to learn the building blocks of programming slowly, being able to ask dumb questions and finding others nodding along too. Being a nerdy child, I learned to code in Basic when I was around 5 and was pretty darn competent age 9 or so (before someone told me that girls don’t code and I was letting the side down). I was delighted to find the stuff lodged in the back of my brain – dusty and ignored for a couple of decades – were still relevant, things like loops and arrays and variables. Though the syntax and language was different the fundamental stuff seemed to be the same. Not that this gave me much of a head start, as Seb’s examples were really clear and almost everyone was ready to throw in their own ideas and tweaks in no time. Every new tweak elicited an ‘oooooooh!’followed by some frantic cog turning to work out why what had happened did happen.

This course doesn’t make you a fully proficient javascript wizard in two days but it does give you a working glossary of examples and ideas to understand what the hell your developers are going on about. I have a much deeper appreciation for the detailed eye required to create good clean code, and I’m much less impressed by people who can create wobbly aliens for show. And you can definitely go on from here to become a javascript whizz.

As for my next step, I’ve bought a book on Processing and I thought I might give Corona a poke about. That and my blog will soon have a big, blobby, random rainbow particle system for a background. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And just to show how easy it is, Seb made this adorable video:

Yup, this is yours truly. In my Bermuda shorts. And in the 80s they were everywhere.

Actually this is me on holiday, in a Caravan park, probably about 1988. Every photo in my album from that year, bar a Christmas day shot and a school play, has me in Bermuda shorts. So, clearly, despite their obvious hideousness I loved them. I mean, they probably had to peel them off me to get me in my costume for school. I bet I had them on underneath. Out of 18 photos of me in this year, only 2 were with no visible Bermuda-ing. Relly x Bermuda 4 EVA.

Except, here’s the thing. I bloody hated Bermuda shorts. Not in retrospect, I mean that I hated them at the time I wore them. I especially hated the pair above. I think my ‘arms pulled down in front of me’ stance was probably in some vain attempt to hide their hideousness. Even the dorky cardigan knitted by my mother seemed a better bet. So, if I hated them so much why am I wearing them so often in my photo album? This is a question of choices and context.

1) I was 8. And 8 year olds in the 80s didn’t choose their own clothes. They got what their mothers bought them, like it or not, and at this time if you wanted shorts you got Bermudas because that’s what there was to buy. And when my mother came to pack  the suitcase for our annual holiday I needed shorts.

2) All my pictures were shot on film. My parents were not photographers. They bought around 3 rolls of 24 exposures a year. One for Christmas, one for holiday and one for their kids’ achievements – plays, assemblies, choir trips etc. It should also be noted that my dad was exceptionally gifted at getting his thumb part way in front of the lens and never remembered to turn the flash on when it was dark. This meant that a disproportionate number of shots of me that made it into my book are taken outside, on a sunny day, on holiday. The conditions were optimal for my dad getting a picture of me and optimal for me to be wearing the aforementioned loathed clothing. The reason for taking various photos, ‘I should get some photos of my daughter to remember her when we were 8 and on holiday’ or ‘I should take some photos of my daughter while she is 8 and singing in a choir inside on a wet day’, were essentially that same but the context dictated whether my dad would be successful in getting a photo that you could put in my book.

Why do I bring this up? I have talked about my Bermuda short problem when clients are looking at analytics and data they have taken and are using that to try to work out what their users are doing the most/least/longest/fastest etc. It is easy to see the data form a beautiful line and get excited. I try and encourage people to look at their content and its related data and ask

What choices do your users have? Are they truly engaged or are they doing this because they have to – you have offered them no alternative? Have you packed their suitcase with ten pairs of horrible shorts?

What is the best context for success? How could you create content that works in other contexts? Is one context blurring your requisites for success by being naturally easier to work with? Can they take a picture on a wet indoors day as well as a sunny outdoors day?

Is the way you are capturing your data introducing bias? Is self-selection an issue (ie, with surveys)? Is one topic wildly more popular than another but measured on equal terms? Are you only taking photos three times but measuring a whole year’s outfits by it?

None of this is revolutionary thinking but I have found the Bermuda shorts analogy has helped people understand what I mean by different interpretations of the same data – data without context, and data with. To measure successful content, you need data and context. Otherwise, you are assuming that doing something a lot means that your user likes it.

I’ve seen a range of grumbling on Twitter today from chaps who think International Women’s Day is inherently unfair and not doing anything for equality. So, I thought I’d post some interesting titbits.

1) There is an International Men’s Day on the 19th November. As there should be. Men have plenty of gender-based issues that should be given more public awareness – things like childcare inequality, value within a family unit and men’s health issues to name just a few.

2) International means just that. While you may see your female co-worker doing exactly the same job as you and wonder what the fuss is about, Plan UK highlights the inequality for girls the world over, with their campaign Because I Am A Girl. Forced marriage, no access to education, childbirth while still a child and female genital mutilation is a reality for millions of young girls. Feel free to sponsor a kid to help them out of that situation. Plan will help you select an area of the world and the gender and age of your sponsor child if you like. This isn’t to say bad things don’t happen to boys, of course they do. But girls are traditionally less-valued than boys and are more likely to die before they reach their fifth birthday in many communities. They are often seen as a commodity to be traded, rather than people. And helping girls in this situation is actually the key to helping boys too. By educating young girls, they are more likely to remain healthy, will marry at a later age and for every year they are in education they are likely to increase their earning capabilities to pull themselves and their families (including their sons) out of poverty. Those sons will come to respect women, and will break the chain for their own wives and daughters. According to Plan UK, 75 million girls worldwide are missing out on this opportunity.

3) Of course, it isn’t all roses in the garden back home either. This Sunday, Celibate men will use their pulpit to decree gynecological health care cover for women to be a sin. This reinforces the message that sex is only for within marriage, and marriage is only for making babies, and that none of this ever requires any sort of medical assistance. (For those of you still wondering if there is a gender neutral campaign to support, you could do worse than to examine the Catholic Church’s stance on the abuse of children within its care. Systematic and Industrial Scale are two phrases that spring to mind. But women wanting to opt out of babies. That’s the worst.) Access to advice on reproductive issues, abortion and contraception is increasingly under fire for reasons of religious dogma and cost-cutting.

4) Contraception issues leads me in a round about way to the thorny issue of child care. Did you know, in the UK a chauffeured car is a business expense but child care is not (outside of the fundamentally flawed voucher scheme)? I can tell you from experience this makes running any kind of business hideously expensive. Most of my money goes on childcare. Without access to contraception, I’d have several more children by now (assuming my fertility holds up) and I’d be at home, unable to work because the cost of childcare would be too great – and frankly, I’d be too knackered. Sex is the glue that holds relationships together (sorry if that’s, er, too visceral an image). Those relationships are often what support a happy family life. If a family choose to have lots of kids and one, or other, parents wants to stay at home that is *fabulous* – but that’s a choice. Not because of a dictat from men who have forgotten about women.

5) The recent round of cuts in the UK impacts on women disproportionately, often because women are more likely to work part-time, contract or on lower-wage jobs around childcare, so much so the Fawcett Society launched a legal contest in the High Court. (If you don’t have children, ask yourself – do you know what to do with a 5 year old for six weeks in the summer if you’re needed at the office everyday? Nurseries are for up to 5. Summer schools are usually for only a week or two and not all kids are suited to them. People live further away from families now to be close to their jobs. The only option is to drop out of the career circuit and take a job with some flexibility – McDonalds is meant to be excellent for its flexible working policies. Yup, I wrinkled my nose too but those kids aren’t going to disappear.) I’m lucky to have work that means I can be flexible. And by flexible, I mean I can piss off a certain number of clients by saying ‘sorry, I’m not available for six weeks’ and hope they come back to me in the future, oh and also out of pocket for a month and a half.

6) And let’s just go back to your female co-worker, doing the same role as you chaps, there is an excellent chance she is on up to 20% less than you. There is some hope: in the UK, women in their 20′s are earning around 3.6% more than their male counterparts but if you account for money lost to maternity leave (women are likely to be the primary caregivers) or to being someone’s carer (ditto), she will likely earn significantly less across the course of her working life. Not least because a spot in the boardroom is still pretty unlikely for her, so much so the EU is planning to intervene to much ire from the business community. Interestingly, this was introduced in Norway and found to make for better business, as found by Agnes Bolsø’s independent research.

These are not exclusively women’s issues but they are all issues that impact on women, often disproportionately. Even if we only have one day a year in which the media, social networks, and you and I discuss them the impact of that is not to be undervalued. That’s why I like International Women’s Day.

Okay. You’ve promised to make cakes or cookies or something with the smallest humans in your domicile. And then you realise you have no eggs or icing sugar and you’re out of pink sprinkles. And it’s starting to rain.

FEAR NOT. I have a recipe that you can make with stuff that any sort-of-kinda pantry cupboard can scrape together. 3 things. That’s all.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you Marge. There are fancier biscuits to be made then this. But where the activity is as important as the outcome, these are fail proof. And like I said, 3 ingredients.

Fork Biscuits:

100g butter (margarine like Stork at a push), softened (30 secs in the microwave usually does it)

50g sugar (caster/superfine is great, but granulated is okay too)

150g self-raising flour.

Step 1) break the news that, for today at least, pink sprinkles are off the menu BUT you can make some easy biscuits and EVEN BETTER junior is going to be head chef and do most of the work.

Step 2) Put the oven on to 180 degrees celsius, or 160 for a fan oven. Err on the side of a lower temperature than higher. Find two baking trays and either grease, or (TOP TIP!) use some silicone baking sheets over them (sooooo much easier and less messy).

Step 3) put the butter in a bowl and get junior to give it a good stir round with a wooden spoon to make sure it’s really soft. And the sugar and mix the two together. I tend to cheat and use my mixer but then my kids have the attention spans of gnats.

Optional step: 3.5) At this point you can add a tsp of vanilla extract, or limoncello, and/or the grated zest of a small orange or lemon. Alternatively, add 25g of cocoa powder and reduce the flour volume to 125g.

Step 4) Add in the flour a large spoonful or so at a time and stir in. Then stick your hands in that bowl and get the clumps to form a lump of dough. You don’t need to overwork it, just check for lumps and dry patches.

Step 5) use a dessertspoon to scoop out the dough onto the trays. Aim for about 8 blobs on a tray, with lots of space to spread out.

Step 6) dip a fork into water, and press down ontop of each biscuit. This will create an interesting indentation. Be careful of over enthusiastic pastry chefs, who might enjoy the sensation of squeezing the dough through the fork prongs a bit too much – like the spaghetti hair playdough machine – as this will make the biscuits cooks a little unevenly.

Step 7) Bake for around 15 minutes until very pale golden, more if you think they need it. Allow to cool on the tray and then transfer to a wire rack. Or mouths open like small birds, as they so often are in my kitchen.

Trent Walton by Drew M on flickr

I’ve just got back from Nottingham, where I went to volunteer for a second year at New Adventures Conference. I joined the merry band of volunteers last year after Colly kindly invited me to come to the first event for free and I had a Skype conversation with him asking if there was anything I could do. After a little prodding, he said he would like a little help with registration (as I had done the honours at dConstruct for a couple of years) and there was some minor editing to do on the first newspaper if I had time to cast an eye over it. In the end it was quite a lot of editing, as we begin to read the articles back-to-back, and could see how we could bring some of themes of individual articles together but that early preview already told me that New Adventures (NA) 2011 was going to be a special event.

The day itself was amazing, hiccups around queues and the like aside (at one point we had a queue around the block in -4 when everyone decided to arrive at 9.30am!), and come 6pm pack up I was rolling up tubes of branding and already hoping Colly would put on another one. The moment he announced he was taking the plunge for 2012, I signed right back up for more editing and volunteering.

Volunteering at a small (ish!) conference gives you a unique perspective on what it takes to create an event. I saw speakers in the aptly named green room looking a bit sick as they walked towards the stage, and flushed and grinning as they walked back. I saw the Audio Visual team working away like pros. I saw Colly arrive at 7.45am on three hours sleep. I saw newspapers come out of their wrappers and ready to be devoured. I saw volunteers pull on t-shirts and gamely volunteer to swap shifts so everyone could see the talks they wanted to. I saw people taking seats, full of anticipation, chatting with neighbours and comparing notes on the night before.

I saw the amazing team behind the scenes at the Albert Hall conference centre making everything run like clockwork – including one memorable moment when towards the end of the day a couple of guys decided they might try their luck at nipping in and seeing if there was anything laying around to help themselves to. Know that your iPads and MacBooks were defended by one of the security team, who was clocking off at that point, and that he gave chase half-dressed! One of the scallies (to use the regional nomenclature) was half-way to the stage when he was apprehended. I almost wish he’d got there. Imagine 1 scummy thief vs 500 geeks. “Officer, it was the man in the checked shirt wot punched me!”

I saw attendees talking about what they had just seen on stage, about beer, about making stuff together, about being part of a community. I loved being able to give just a small bit back by volunteering. I was assigned the role of dealing with anyone difficult (Colly even had a one-off t-shirt printed just for me with ‘New Adventures in Fuck Yeah!’ on it to denote the level of kicking ass and taking names I was responsible for) but – light fingered outsiders aside – I had an easy, enjoyable day. Colly and Greg had taken a lot of the feedback from attendees, sponsors and volunteers last year, such as my request for first name registration to spread people out more alphabetically, and made it a reality. A special sort of reality that you only get with the attention to detail the two guys put in. Colly was putting in a good number of hours a day in the run-up to ensure as many people on the waiting list got tickets wherever possible, that signs were printed ahead of time, and that the volunteers had everything we could possibly need to do the best we could for attendees.

But, even as a so-called writer, I have to admit that words wouldn’t do it justice. I wanted to show people what it looked like, how special it was to be a very small part of – so, wobbily shot on an iPhone by me and edited beautifully by my husband, here’s NA 2012 from my perspective:

New Adventures conference 2012 from nicepaul on Vimeo.

As part of my happiness project, I’ve been pondering the direction of my life and the things that make me happy. I looked to what I do in my leisure time. I bake a lot, and make various army-catering-quantity sized meals for family and friends. I also read a lot of cookery books, which I wrote about in Contents magazine, in my piece The Gingerbread Project savouring the descriptions of each dish, even those I have little intention to ever make, and the notes the author brackets them with.

I play video games, especially adventure games like the Zelda series, and read critical analysis of video games and games culture. I’ve just got started with Skyward Sword (and I got Skyrim for Christmas – damn there goes all my free time!) plus I have Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap and Ocarina of time on my 3DS right now. I adore the Ace Attorney series and its offshoots. I like interactive fiction. I just recently watched the Penny Arcade Dungeons and Dragons live games and started to explore what Dungeons and Dragons is and how it works (not as a player, so much as an interested observer).

I read books. In the last few years, after a long absence due to overkill at university (hello English degree) I have got back into reading fiction and listening to audiobooks. Audiobooks especially force me to slow down and take in the breadth of a new world; my husband accuses me of skim reading every book I own, which I don’t, but the speed at which I read can sometimes detract from the beauty of the words laid out in front of me. After years of dodging the classics, after the aforementioned overkill, I recently bought a copy of Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature’s 50 Greatest Hits which starts with the Iliad and works in date order through to works of the twentieth century, via The Old Testament, Beowulf, Dante, Milton, Bronte, Tolstoy, Joyce, Kafka, Nabakov and many others.

I scrapbook. I write titbits of information about our family, I take pictures of where we go, I put books together of us as a family – who we are, what we do, what we are like. I am our family’s story keeper. I am our family’s story teller.

So, what is the connection here?

It is, I think, story.

I love narratives. I love when they weave strands and come together, knot up, fall apart and realign. I love the magic of people creating a world in their hand and building it for others to explore and to understand. Yesterday I read some hilarious cook’s notes on a failed Christmas pudding and the fallout from that, played a game where a hero must set out to fulfill a prophesy, and read the beginning of an epic war poem where two men are right now stood in front of their armies proposing a dual to settle their quarry while the gods have other ideas.

I started to write a piece for Contents that was about narrative, its history and its place in our everyday lives, but I realised I didn’t know nearly enough and I wanted to explore the topic with people that create narratives – not just in traditional novel form, or even in a published long form – but to come to understand what story means to  humans.

As such, I have created a new site (not yet live,  but it will be at http://tellingtal.es) in which I am going to explore the topic of story. I hope it will be informative. I hope it will encourage people to see story as a ribbon woven throughout their lives, connecting people and things together. Mostly I hope it will be fun.

I plan to do a series of video interviews, written interviews and explorations in different mediums. I plan to stick myself in all kinds of weird situations from archivist offices to battle re-enactment, tabletop gaming to a writing class, and share what I learn along the way.

Join me?

photo by: calsidyrose

Prepare

• Go to sleep earlier
• De-clutter, clean, organize
• See the whole thing
• Establish routines
• Think, commit and follow through
• To do list.

These are my Happiness Project resolutions for December. I’ve put them into a small chart on my iphone to check them each night and measure my progress. The idea behind these six resolutions is ‘Prepare’. I used to think I was a spontaneous, impulsive person – and certainly I like doing spur-of-the-moment things – but I’ve found that the busier I’ve got the more I like to have my life organized and ready. I’ve gone back to following the routines and ideas at flylady.net that I’ve used successfully before (not being a Born Organized sort of person, I do rather like the mollycoddling and positive testimonials). One of the tenements of the programme (because it is rather a 12-step programme for clutter addiction) is to go to bed early enough that you have the energy to tackle the things you need to do to make your life just run smoother. This is hard for me. One, I’m naturally a night owl although my kids are not. Two, it is a ton easier for me to get things done (like blog!) if I stay up later. Three, my medication has the effect of making me quite nocturnal. But I will fight on and prevail.

Declutter, clean and organize is the first step for preparation. We moved house a month or so ago but I was not actually here for the pack up and move (I was in Australia, as you do) and so I am decluttering on the other side of the move. Ideally, I want to get our ‘stuff’ right down to what is easy to maintain, find and actually use. I am reminded of that William Morris quote about keeping things only that you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. I am doing about twenty minutes decluttering most days, and so far so good. Plus, it had the added advantage of meaning I had space to put decorations up early for Christmas.

See the whole thing is a reminder to myself to ensure I have the full picture before I panic or make rash decisions. Have I checked the cupboards for what I have before I make a pantry list? Have I given all the receipts and invoices to the accountant for him to work out our tax? Have I done the preparation to have a good idea what my next move should be? Have I checked the calendar before i book myself in?

Establish routines. I have discovered that just like babies like routines, I do too! At least for housework and bills and what not. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit, and do that’s what I’m trying to do.

Think, commit and follow through. I say yes to a lot of stuff. Some of it, frankly, I shouldn’t. This resolution is to remind me to think about what I am saying I will do, the cost of that, the work needed etc. If I’m okay with that I will commit to it and then not procrastinate. I’m hoping, for one, I’ll say no to more things and the ones I do say yes to I’ll be more on the ball.

To do list I love to do lists. they make me feel in control and prepared for the day/week/month etc ahead. And yet I hardly remember to make one. So, each work day (and weekends where appropriate) I will make a list of my do-able tasks, and tick them off as I go.

• Be Relly
• Use it now
• You can do anything in 15 minutes
• Smile first
• Act like I want to feel
• Let it go
• Get to the root of it
• Think, commit, follow through
• Make stuff

In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin thought about what she could do to improve her happiness in part through an understanding of herself – acknowledging her personality, strengths and weaknesses. She came up with 12 commandments that fitted her project – guiding principles for me, as I’m not one for commandments really – that allowed her to test and measure whether she was doing something that might make her happier. She aimed to tackle both the bad and the good aspects and to encourage growth and progress throughout.

These are mine. There are nine of them. some are directly taken from Gretchen’s list because they fitted me well – like Be Relly (although of course she went for ‘Be Gretchen’), Act like I want to feel, and Use it now (although hers is actually ‘spend out’, as in don’t save it for a rainy day: use your best stuff.). Others are sentiments that i could do with committing too and reminders of life lessons I’ve already learned and try to stick to.

I’ll write a bit more about each of these in time but I’m happy that I have them down. I’m thinking about making some funky subway art style print with them to hang in my office and remind me.

I am about a year behind everyone else, as ever, but I just read this amazing book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. In it she spends a year exploring aspects of herself and commits to some resolutions that look at her personal happiness, as well as researching happiness on a bigger scale.

Recently she made a 30 second TV ad to demonstrate it:

It’s not just about kids or memories, or about any airy-fairy selfhelp bull shit while we are at it, but a conscious and imaginative exploration of taking oneself from content in an unthinking way to happy, aware and appreciative.

Throughout, she hopes that people will also embark on a similar process – and to that end she has also created the happiness project toolbox, a free site with ways of making yourself accountable and to meet with fellow happiness project subjects – she admits to becoming a ‘happiness bore’ such is the awareness she has to what creates and destroys a sense of happiness and well-being. I was about a third of the way through the book when I though, ‘hey, maybe I should do this’ and by halfway I was sold.

Tomorrow being the first of December, I figured why not jump in? It gives me a month run up on those dreaded January resolutions at any rate.

Okay, first up, I’m not someone who spends August 31st to December 31st thinking about ‘the holiday season’ and listening to Rudolph the Reindeer on loop (well, not until December 1st anyway) but I want to mention Christmas and, specifically, the buying of gifts.

I hear a lot about how Christmas is too commercial and just a cynical way to have us buy stuff we neither need nor want, for ourselves and others, yadda yadda yadda. So here’s what I’m proposing: Don’t buy commercial crap. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty certain my kids are going to end up with something from Fisher-Price they ask for, but for gifts for aunts, uncles, parents, friends etc I’m going to get them handmade or independent retailer stuff.

Some of it I will make myself. Most of it I will buy from Etsy.com, Folksy.com and Notonthehighstreet.com.

So, why am I telling you this? Because I think half the reason we end up buying the same shit shovelled in the shelves of the same shops is because that’s what is there is at the time we come to buy it.

Buying handmade stuff, or custom order prints or having things sent from overseas takes time and planning. Most people start thinking about shopping mid-November by which time the one-person-capacity makers are usually already full. And so the same old shit from the same old shops are it.

This year. Take a stand. Make a list. Browse Etsy stores and the like. Commission stuff from sellers. Most are very open to creating something that you want, a one of a kind treasure, and there is something for everyone from hard-core gamer to a lace-loving grandma, the newborn baby to your prop-forward grown up nephew.

Refuse to be part of the commercial machine you resent so much. Plan ahead and buy something unique – just remember, don’t wait until the carols are wall-to-wall audio in the shops. If you’re really smart, and get it all bought elsewhere, you might never need to suffer a pan pipes cover of winter wonderland ever again.