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.

One thing I have done though is take a picture on my iphone of something each day and I’ll be putting them up here tomorrow.

Mary Jean Iron: Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return

Apparently the snow isn’t thawing until Wednesday at the earliest. Our nursery is closed, my children are way too young to entertain themselves, both my husband and I have a backlog of work. The house is full of toys and noise and pent-up energy.

Stressed doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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.

Animation Smash!

Last year I decided to read 52 novels, and I think I did just about do that (even if some of them were in my beloved audiobook form). This year my goal is to read some simple manga in Japanese, and work through a couple of Japanese videogames.

Right now this involves 2 dictionaries, a syllabary reference chart, pen, paper and a whole bunch of patience. Like an hour to understand one simple paragraph. Yeesh.

Actually, I’ve never really set myself this sort of rule. Never thought I could learn a new language but I really want to do this. I think that’s what makes the extremely s-l-o-w finger under the word reading still fun to do.

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

“When Santa and Rudolph ate their snack!”