I went to the footy last night Norwood v Port. For those overseas this is Aussie Rules football in the South Australian League. During quarter and half time kids and adults flock onto the oval to kick a footy around (in picture). It was a good game, close at times so exciting and enjoyable. Norwood (my team) won!! It was a good, very cheap night out. $3 ticket to get in and $4 for some hot chips (fries). I think it’s funny that it cost more for some hot food than it cost to get in the gate 🙂

Today I’m meeting up with a group of OLPC enthusiasts who’re working on the XO. I’m not a hacker but I can teach and write so I want to make my contribution that way.

Living in Adelaide is great because there’s so much more I can do!! Not just entertainment but being part of these groups.

This afternoon or tomorrow I’m going to an Easter Art and Craft Fair with traditional Russian food, crafts and displays!! There’s more info about it here: What’s On in Adelaide has a big list of what’s on. There are sooooo many things on it’s hard to choose. There’s an international kite festival at Semaphore but I won’t be able to get to it but it would be great to go to. I love kites.

Teen Challenge Chapel on Sunday arvo!! I’m really looking forward to it. It’s great each week, inspired worship and word. Good, solid, practical teaching! Since I’ve been going there’s been something helpful and relevant to me and my situation each time.

There’s Earth Hour 8:30pm tonight. It’s about turning your lights off for one hour to ‘vote earth’ by raising awareness. I’ve got plenty of candles because I collect different candles and candlesticks and candle holders and I make candles too. I’ll probably take photos and may blog or facebook too. If I’d been more prepared I could’ve had a party oh well maybe next year.

There are many more things on but I think I’ll keep it to this for now 🙂

Here’s my Ada Lovelace Day blog post.

Professor Barbara Liskov has won the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2009 A.M. Turing Award, one of the highest honors in science and engineering, for her pioneering work in the design of computer programming languages. Her achievements underpin virtually every modern computing-related convenience in people’s daily lives. Every time you exchange e-mail with a friend, check your bank statement online or run a Google search, you are riding the momentum of her research. She is only the second woman to win this award.

Barbara was the first U.S. woman to earn a PhD from a computer science department. Her early innovations in software design have been the basis of every important programming language since 1975, including Ada, C++, Java and C#.

I admire Barbara because she was working in computing when very few women were. She helped form the foundation for todays computing. In her interviews she speaks about there being very few guidelines for computing work and research. She says of one of her early jobs she was handed a Fortran manual and told to start work.

I just want to say congratulations on winning the award!

Links to find out more:
Science Friday podcast or listen online – it’s very well worth listening to!!!!!! interview
Wikipedia article
The Technology Chronicles blog
MIT News Office Interview

Also if you Google “Professor Barbara Liskov” you’ll get a lot more.

Even though there are only a couple in this shot there seem to be more ducks and other water birds around.

The banks are much greener now and the green goes much further up from the banks too.

The water level has risen from the bit of rain we’ve had!!!

Under OG Road bridge, Felixstow, Adelaide, South Australia.
The contrast between the beautiful river, the concrete pylons and the graffiti dismays me but also interests me in the starkness of the contrasts, the colours, the clash of beauty and “ugliness”.

I started learning crochet last Thursday night and I don’t think I’m doing too badly. I can actually read a pattern as well as doing the stitches. I’ve done some granny squares and a few geometrical shapes and I’m going to do more motifs and shapes to put on garments as well as handbags and I’d like to crochet handbags and carry bags too. Later on I’d like to make ponchos, cardigans and the like.

My current assignment for college is to embellish a recycled garment either something we already had at home or buy something from an op shop. The embellishment has to be something we’ve learnt in the course so far – hand embroidery, freestyle machine embroidery, couching, sandwich fabric, or machine embroidery on solvie disolvable plastic and attaching this to a garment. I’ve bought two garments a rather hideous maroon top and a nice black long sleeved plain shirt. The maroon top has potential but it is the riskier of the two options as I would need to pull it apart and remove the parts I don’t like, embellish it and remake it. I don’t know that I can do all that yet. The black shirt would be much more straight forward to embroider or overlay couching or something like that on the cuffs, down the front or around the bottom. I think we’re required to spend a minimum of 25 hours on it, I’ll have to check that. If I’ve got the time and the maroon top goes okay I might do both of these. This is for my Cert II in Visual Arts and Contemporary Craft-Textiles.

This is my practice writing for offering my services as a training writer 🙂

If you require customised computer training notes then I can help.

I have a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment as well as ten years experience teaching computing in adult education settings using both the Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems and related software. My specialty is beginner courses. I have written the training notes and outlines for all the courses I’ve taught – Basic Computer Skills, Introduction To Office Computing, Internet & Email, Introduction To Email Using MS Outlook, Introduction To Presentations Using MS Powerpoint, Introduction To Word Processing Using MS Word, The Ingots-Bronze and Silver Ingot.

What I’ll need from you:
-course topic or software to be taught
-a list of outcomes
-projected age range of students
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-preferred duration of course
-student’s previous experience with computing in general and with the specific software being taught
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Contact me for further information.

etc.

If anyone’s got any constructive feedback I’d love to hear it! One thing I’ve picked up straight away is that it needs to be shorter.

I’ve designed some t-shirts which are for sale on Cafe Press Please drop in and have a look. Here’s what some of the designs look like.

The t-shirts have a variety of positive statements of spirituality, compassion, hope and love. In larger and smaller sizes I hope there’s a size for everyone.