Rose tinted web?

So it’s Ada Lovelace Day today and I pledged to make a post. I have been thinking about this since I made the pledge to post “about a woman in technology whom I admire” and I have to say that finding a single female in technology to blog about is particularly hard. SO I am cheating more than a little…

Growing up in the 80’s the BBC TV Show Tommorow’s World was one of the main sources on technology and science and for me Judith Hann played a large part in making technology accessible and interesting and encouraging my own interest. It is my view that we need better TV and more presenters like Judith to get the British public( and the next generation of innovators and inventors) more interested in technology and science.

The first female recipient of the BCS Lovelace Medal, Karen Spärck Jones, is also worthy of mention for her work on natural language processing and information retrieval and became Emeritus Professor of Computing and Information at the University of Cambridge. I particularly like her slogan that “Computing is too important to be left to men” and agree that women often add a different perspective to computing. Lets hope that other women are encouraged by her example to do great things and win the medal.

In the end, however, I am coming to the conclusion that  gender should be non-issue. Raven Alder the Computer Security Consultant and “hacker” seems way ahead of me here and the whole gender debate seems to cheese her off.  Over my 12 years of employment so far I have had the pleasure of working with a female Head of IT, one or two engineers, several systems administrators and developers and they all share the characteristics of Ada Lovelace being extremely driven, very bright, resourceful and determined.  What makes these women tick is the intellectual challenge of working in computing and doing the best job they can. These characteristics are not exclusive to female technologists - I have found that the most capable female directors and “career women” have similar drive and also have to compete with men in environments and circumstances that are not entirely condusive to encouraging women to succeed.

Finally, I have to say, that if I had to credit those who encouraged me to persue my study of Computer Science or indeed my career in IT it would be my male university friends (including my husband) many of whom studied computing. They helped to convince me that computing provided a whole range of interesting and creative career options and this was why I chose to study an MSc in Computer Science (where I actually learnt some Ada and first became familar with the legend of Ada Lovelace) rather than an MPhil and Possible Phd in English Literature. The fact that many of my female friends thought this was difficult or strange only helped to convince me to prove them otherwise.

http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/rsc/

Oooo, controversial a recipe with skimmed milk - I was told that anything other than full fat wouldn’t work. No doubt this will result in a pudding war!

It did amuse me that the chemist involved admitted that much of the research had been done by his wife and daughter.

I am enjoying playing with StumbleUpon at the moment. Its a toolbar that you can download to your web browser which allows you to go on a magical mystery tour of websites on subjects you are interested in. The websites included on StumbleUpon have been recommended by other users and you can give them a thumbs up and thumbs down. It’s a nice way of getting to see something new.

I’m not overly keen on crystallized ginger, but for some reason I seem to find the Ginger People (www.gingerpeople.com) Ginger Chews rather moreish. I found them in an independent health food shop, but I think that you can get them in Julian Graves.

I am trying to workout which phone to buy. I have a rather aged Sony Ericson at the moment. I like the look of the LG Viewty

I am currently reading lots of different books.

Recently completed Coram Boy and The Blood Stone both by Jamila Gavin. Although written for children, they are well researched and imaginitive tales set in the past and highly enjoyable.

I am part way through The Unbearable Bassington by Saki, which is highly amusing set post WW1 - a tale about a character called Comus Bassington who just won’t settle down.

I am also reading The Games People Play  by Eric Berne. Interesting - challenges me to think about the games I may or may not be playing as well as those played by others.

I have also just picked up the latest Kathy Lette -  How to Kill Your Husband - very amusing from what I have read on the train so far. An interesting insight into the battle for equality between husband and wife…..

Cardamom

Originally uploaded by rosetintedweb.

I’m liking the macro function here !

View from a Bridge

Originally uploaded by rosetintedweb.

For purposes of comparison, this is the photo from the cybershot. See what I mean?

Maybe I just need to RTFM to see what I can get it to do.

Lindesfarne Castle from Gertrudes Garden

Originally uploaded by rosetintedweb.

This is a photo I took on my cannon SLR. Its interesting I got a new SONY cybershot for chrimbo and its great. Its compact and I can take it everywhere, but I the optics in the SLR are definitely better. Maybe film isn’t entirely dead!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6321351.stm

Well it seems that “we can be very confident” that human activity has contributed to Climate change.

I hadn’t realised that there was still any doubt that we contributed to it.

Its upsetting. Having grown up in the 80s global warming was a cause that most children were concerned about. We were also taught of the certainty of running out of Oil and Gas and alternative energy sources were our future…  

Why has it taken so long for this to be taken seriously? (I know that there are those who have interests in it not being taken seriously)

And can we expect our governments to do anything about it in time for it to have an effect?

How many politicians does it take to screw in an energy efficient light bulb?