I’m not big on the positive discrimination that comes alongside pushing ‘Women in Tech’ but we are underrepresented and often sidelined. Childcare is still an issue as Tech jobs often have a certain 24/7 element because, Companies House aside, the web and other engineering dependent services are always on. We don’t quite have equality yet. Not least because there is still a daft pervading assumption that geek culture and booth babe culture share a big chunk of the marketing attraction Venn diagram.

Anyway, this post isn’t about that. This post is about my mum.

My mum was one of the first people, and certainly one of the first women, to work a computer for a commercial enterprise. Back in the day (the early 70s in fact) she worked for a large printing company and used a computer the size of a room, with punchcard programming, to file the payroll. This was still at a time when women were not allowed to work nightshifts alone and so she had to use a gender-ambiguous abbreviation of her first name to sign in and out. She alone knew how to operate this 2k behemoth. Pretty cool, huh?

And yet when she had me she pretty much had to leave the company because, well, that’s what you did. I think that’s such a shame. My mum would have been a rad geek. She is, really. She has always encouraged my geeky tendencies buying me a computer, a Texas Instruments cartridge run thing, when I was 5 and helping me learn to play chess with it. Later when she got me a BBC Micro, she helped me read Usborne books on Basic and typed in programs for me explaining what the code was doing. She helped me write my first text adventure. She can still touchtype like a pro.

She bought me video games when ‘girls didn’t play games’. She helped me defeat the bosses on Mario 3 on the NES we borrowed from our neighbours. She bought me a gameboy. She encouraged me to use a wordprocessor program to learn how to type. She was supportive when I came home from uni with a request to get a PC with internet access and put up with hours of me hogging the phoneline, at 1p a minute, to chat with friends on IRC.

I met my husband via the internet. I talked to my friends virtually. I found my social circle. And even when the Daily Mail said the internet was purely for sexual predators to find young girls she didn’t do more than warn me to be careful.

And I never thought any of this was different or odd. She always encouraged me. And now I’m a proud geek – gamer, twitter addict, flickr nerd, writer, blogger. It’s no exaggeration to say I wouldn’t be doing this, on my laptop, sat in a random office if she hadn’t said ‘We’ve got you something new to play with. It’s a computer.’ back in 1985.

I have not scrapbooked in so so long. Right now my stuff is all over the house and really I have no time for this but I also know that if I make no time I’m never gonna get to it. Thing 2 is 9 months old and I haven’t done a *single* page about him. I’m all for not worrying about being ‘caught up’ but at some point he’ll be old enough to notice if I don’t do something about him ^_^

And yet I have stash so much stash. Must make, or sell. That’s the deal here.

Toby has been out on my sledge with Daddy. I am working, albeit from under the comfort and warmth of my duvet. Next door have had their baby girl ahead of schedule (and the snow!). The last Christmassy thing for me to do is to put together my scrapbook album for this season.

by El Fotopakismo

So, this year, I’ve decided that I shall really work at learning Japanese. I know it’s the trendy language to learn and that I’m just jumping on the big ol’ bandwagon, but hey, it’s mine and I’ll ride it.

So, learning kanji and learning a decent amount of vocabulary are my aims for this year. I have some modern textbooks and resources, I have Remembering The Kanji and a slidepack, I have a playlist of Japanese music and radio shows. Now I just need the gumption and to make the time for it. I really want to do this so I shall have to move it up the priority list, starting today.

I’m going to update my progress here to keep track of what I’ve worked on.

Goodbye for now

Every year I knew Christmas was over on the 5th January. I know 12th night is the 6th – a big thing in France I think – but you see, we would almost always be back at school by now (as the kids are this year, snow aside) but also the 5th is my mum’s birthday. She would always have the decorations down to make space for her cards on the mantelpiece and, even now, to me the 5th is Christmas done and dusted and time to return to ‘normal’ life. I like that Christmas overlaps the old year and the new but now is time to sort the recycling for collection, put the wrapping paper away for another year, and pack away the decorations.

I took all the shinies down over the last couple of days and dragged our tree (still looking pretty good!) to its frozen end outside the house ready to be chopped up and used by the city parks. Our cleaner very obliging vacuumed up the trail of pine needles it left in its wake. I spent yesterday sorting laundry and today I’m back on client work.

Yep, Christmas is over and 2010 is here. I’m excited. Bring it on.

But clients are starting to clamour. My attention is being called upon. Back into the fray I go.

“Toby, what was your favourite bit of Christmas?”

“When Santa and Rudolph ate their snack!”

2010 by redstamp

So, as I get older the wonder of Christmas (wonderful though it still is) is replaced with an excitement at the New Year. I posted about it a day or so ago, of sorts, but I still don’t understand why NYE gets the fuss. I’d much rather celebrate January 1st. The New Year is a time for me to think about new opportunities and I’m looking forward to embracing them, making changes, trying to form new profitable habits, setting new goals.

And I know it isn’t just me. Whole spades of twitter friends have said they are glad to see 2009 go and ready to embrace 2010. It’s a raw new world out there, sometimes amazing and sometimes terrifying, but I’m all set to tie up loose ends and look to pastures new.

Watch out, 2010. I’m sincerely ready to kick ass and take names.

This evening I do have one last festive fun task left, and that’s to make a gingerbread house for Toby and Jemima to enjoy decorating tomorrow. Which reminds me I must Google for a good frosting recipe. Something akin to supaglue to stand up to the handling of two preschoolers, I think!

Make: 2010

My one little word for this year is Make. I will go into details in another post but I hope to embrace the phrase ‘Get excited and make things!’ this coming year, including writing things (for work and pleasure).

I was also pointed by Ali to 6changes, a simple concept for introducing new habits in baby steps. I haven’t picked all of mine yet but my first couple are going to have to overlap due to deadlines:

Learn 2000+ kanji – starting Jan 1st
Write a book on microcopy and self-publish – starting February
Eat healthily – starting pretty much straight away with drinking more water, but properly kicking in, in March.

In terms of fun projects for 2010:
scrapbook more
learn to crochet properly
take a lofi (iphone or holga) pic everyday
plan a kickass 30th birthday
save for my trip to Japan
learn to drive
spend as much time as possible immersed in Japanese language studies
cross stitch, especially for Christmas next year
learn to use my new mixer
play with my camera and learn some new tricks – maybe do a course
sew some more with my machine
learn to play the piano
bake more fun things

Obviously there will be stuff that gets in the way or changes up but I think most of these are in the spirit of ‘making’.