Just a few photos from last weekend’s BarCamp Nottingham. Ruby-Gem was doing a great job of looking sexy (also a great host as always)! As always wonderful to see friends and meet new folk! Good intro to Lace Making by Liz (HackSpace Nottingham member).

Nottingham hackspace is wonderful – great mix of workshops, social space and open spaces too. Thank you for having us and my masses of wool!

Also a big thank you to all of the sponsors – North 51, Esendex, The University of Nottingham Computer Science Department and The Brookson Enterprise Freelance Fair. Without them the event would never happen.

Yesterday I went to WoolFest 2011, up in Cockermouth.

It involved 5hours of driving, parking in a field and coming home to hungry cats, but it was fantastic!

From Krafty Koala I bought a new roll for my Double Point needles (owl themed), owl stitch markers, “Ash Cloud” Sparkle sock yarn, “Lilac Dreams” 4ply, “Gail” shawl pattern and “Scroll lace scarf” pattern.

From Yarn Addict Anni (the designer of the Trinity shawl) I got Twinkletoes sock yarn, “Elegance scarf” pattern and “Fame handwarmers” pattern.

From Laughing Hens I got some baby alpaca 4ply.

From Toft I got a wrist warmers kit (awaiting the pattern – she’d sold out of it by late lunch on day one!).

From Wingham Wool Works I picked up 3 500g hanks of Guernsey 5-ply.

From DT Craft and Design I got a Kool Aid dyeing kit.

I also got a Woolfest 2011 Project bag. Surprisingly this holds all of the above!

Last weekend was DigitFest 2011. I was there as a steward – helping to cat herding visitors to various events and joining in activities that I would never have done without it.

I drew on iPads. I painted with light (well I’ve done that before..). I saw Holotronica. I enjoyed beatboxing. I danced. I laughed. I met new people.

This is another from the series I took at Mitch Benn’s Ninjagig from a couple of weekends ago. Just thought I’d share it. Found it while looking through trying to cheer myself up (currently a little unwell).

Mitch tweeted back to Kian re:our lack of tickets offering to do a gig in our living room before his gig this evening. So, it was on. We started phoning around and tweeting about a gig at our house. Eventually it was confirmed at being put on at King’s Arms in Salford at 8pm.

Grabbed a little brother and friends. Got some dinner and headed on a Salford direction.

Once we arrived we had a chin wag with Mitch. Many, many friends arrived and got a few drinks, then the silliness and fun began.

Sean Fisher got a twitvid of “I’m Proud of the BBC”

At the end of the night I got a hug from Mitch and assurances that next time he’d play in my living room.

Last night was this month’s GeekUp Manchester. Due to a few issues with the venue (including GeekUp being double booked, shifted around at a drop of a hat, and last night being told as we arrived that they had a private party until 10:30pm!) we’ve moved to Pitcher & Piano, Deansgate Locks. That’s right, we’ve moved next door. Better WiFi, nicer snug, better lighting and less music!

I’ve put a selection of my photographs from last night.

So, at the Printworks Odeon, Manchester today I went to Guathon. I was there to see a showcasing of ASP.NET MVC2, Visual Studio 2010, .Net 4.0 and SilverLight 3 given by ScottGu. Honestly, I’ll leave folks with much more knowledge and with interesting things to say discuss those (although there seemed to be a few cool things that are coming in the new shinies)- I went along to photograph the event.

After the showcase I managed to get a quick photoshoot in (around Scott answering further questions about his various projects…).

Scott Gu
Single strobe (Canon Speedlite 580EXII with built in fill card used) camera left ~1-2ft off subject on the desk set @ 1/32th power.

The rest of the gallery from the Guathon.

The speaker was Lesley Allger from BAE Systems. She spoke about her various roles during her ~30 years that she’s worked with BAE Systems. From “shop floor” engineer to team management to head of her own team. She spoke of key mile stones which effected her time with the company and how she has learnt to manage geeks (and manage her own shiny lust!).

At the end of her talk she mentioned some of the company stats which illustrated how few women go from engineer to “executive engineer” (a broad term used for a specialist or project manager, I believe).

The discussion that followed the talk was broken up by diner – burgers, chicken, stuffed mushrooms, corncobs and veggie kebabs. Al of the food I had was lovely (definitely worth going there again!).

After food was consumed and drinks were had we continued discussing how to change the perception that women were only there to fill quotas. My personal opinion on this is that I think it really does revolve around getting into schools at an early point (say around Year 4 – Year 6 [8-11year olds]) and educating kids about what interesting things they could do – not just girls do art/beauty treatments/teaching and boys do science/tech/building. Doing workshops and activities that get kids involved could well be a good foot in the door to getting more women interested in the future.

I would like to add many thanks to BAE Systems for sponsoring the event and *squishes* to Ruby_Gem for organising a great night out!

Hope to see some of you tonight at Manchester GeekUp!

My gallery

Tomorrow (Saturday 2nd of May) is the final day of the photographic exhibition At This Space. I hope you all get chance to drop by and I really hope that you enjoy it.

This does however mean that I’ve lost about 6 months worth of work.  Everything I’ve done since about August (except certain shoots that have been printed off-site) is gone. This also includes my Project 365 which I was about 8 weeks from concluding!

In the past month we have replaced the scanner power pack, my laptop, the kitchen window and we’re in the process of sorting the other stolen things. Project 365 will restart on March 16th – my 21st birthday!

Also got a back-up solution being tested atm. Now time to get on.