LornaJane

2009 was a funny year. I started it with a trip to South America, returning to a job I'd held for a year and was starting to feel settled with. I had grand plans for the year, for myself, my home, and my career. And at the end of the year I can honestly say I achieved absolutely none of these.

Its not necessarily a negative thing - I did some absolutely great things in 2009, its just they weren't the things on my list. I spoke at a number of conferences and other events, and finally started to feel like I had something to say! The highlights were presenting at tek (because I finally started to feel competent at conference speaking), and PHPNW - where its my home conference which I organise and I knew exactly the session I wanted to bring. I wrote it, brought it, and the session was really well-received. I am definitely not finished with speaking nerves, but I know that if I can get up there and be properly prepared - I have something to give to my audience. Already I'm lined up for quite a few speaking events in 2010 and I'm almost more excited than nervous (almost). Everyone told me the nerves would get better with time - they just omitted to tell me how much time.

In 2008 I was surprised to find that I had written 195 blog posts in a year. I did many more interesting things in 2009 and basically worked a lot more, so I knew I'd be blogging less. This is the 119th post of the year though so actually I did pretty well, all things considered. I'm pleased that I've managed to keep writing even through the busy times of the year. I usually post a screenshot of my stats but they're not that interesting this year to be honest, they're holding fairly steady and since I don't track who reads my feeds, it would only be a guess anyway. The blog was mostly a replacement for me remembering things - and it hasn't changed a lot in the 4 years I've had it really!

One thing that I will mention which turned into a bit of a feature this year was that I actually started taking photos of things other than knitting! I think it started with our trip to Peru in January, and also the experience of having my own camera, with nobody else but me to see the results. I'm taking more photos than ever and just replaced my little camera so that's pretty exciting - my photos are on flickr if you're interested.

All in all, 2009 was the year that didn't go to plan - I'm mostly happy about the net result and I think perhaps it was time for me to get a reminder that a master plan isn't always a good thing. So I'm going with the flow for 2010 and wondering what the coming year has in store; at work and in my wider technical activities I know I'm going to be very very busy and this sadly means I'm stepping away from some of the activities and committments that I've enjoyed until now. Above everything else I am hoping that 2010 holds success and good health for us all!

I'm halfway delighted and halfway cringing to announce that the phpwomen calendar is now on sale. This was a project organised by my friend and colleague Johanna Cherry, who saw an opportunity at php|tek 2009 to photograph the majority of the core PHPWomen members all in one place and turn it into a fundraising calendar.

If you're expecting something "Calendar Girls" then you'll be disappointed. We are all clothed in the pictures!

I won't share photos from the calendar itself, if you want to see those you can buy your own, but perhaps to give you a hint I'll share an outtake of myself:



I must confess that I was rather agitated when the photos were taken - as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the risk of being seen as just my physical appearance is ever-present, and I normally try hard at unremarkable, unrevealing clothes with very little makeup and a pair of jeans. Hanging out in the lobby at the hotel during a technical conference in that dress and those shoes was significantly more terrifying than delivering three sessions during my first trip to the US as a speaker (which, considering the problems I have with speaking nerves, is saying something). Even after I saw the photos I was kind of unhappy with the whole experience, although I loved the outtake linked above!

Fast forward 6 months and I had dinner with Derick Rethans, who took the photos in the calendar and arranged the printing, and he showed me the prototype he'd had printed. As I sat and turned the pages, I started to understand why this is so important. The women in these photos are some of the leading lights in the community - respected developers, some of them core developers, key community people, and speakers. Yet I saw them as the women they are ... and suddenly remembered that actually, it's acceptable to be both smart AND beautiful.

So - get your calendar and remember all year that beauties can also be geeks! 10% of every purchase goes to PHPWomen, and we will use those funds to support our women and grow more leading lights like these.

I'm a keen gamer, or I thought I was - but I'm also female and very busy, which apparently is outside the expected criteria. My preferences are typically for platform style games (Zelda) although I'll play pretty much anything that's easy on the eye and doesn't require superhuman powers of hand-eye co-ordination. I lose interest in the games where you walk around shooting people but I can compete with (and sometimes win against) my colleagues at Mario Kart.

This year, there have been a few games come out that I really liked the look of, some of which I even own. However I only actually played one of them for any length of time. This isn't because the games weren't good, but mostly because they can't be played in small enough chunks of time. While I am perfectly well aware that the target market for games is probably single men with long stretches of spare time - that's not me. I love all things nintendo and have both a Wii and a DS, and will happily play on either when I can find the time. BUT "time" for me is 20 minutes, maximum, and not every day (sometimes not even every week).

If your game doesn't allow saving at will, or as a minimum, quit regularly, then its likely that I'll get frustrated and stop playing. Last time a Zelda title came out (my absolute all-time favourite), I had just moved to a new town, had a flat I could clean in an hour, and a job where I clocked in and clocked out. This year, there's a new title, and I don't know when I'll even buy it, or how much I'll actually play of it if I did. The recent Mario DS title required you to *complete* 5 levels before saving, never mind play them. I loved the game, but my lifestyle didn't allow me to get far. The Metroid titles for Wii had exactly the same issues - I like the game but if I can't pick it up and put it down, it just doesn't get a look in. On completely the other end of the spectrum was the Professor Layton game, which was puzzle based and could be saved almost at any point!

So, it turns out I'm not a gamer any more, because the game design doesn't cater for those of us with real lives ... when will the manufacturers learn that actually normal people play games too?

A very quick entry today to mention a site that I've been using a LOT lately and I know I will be relying on for large quantities of travelling right through November: Accessible UK Train Timetables. It has up-to-the-minute information, including platform numbers, and you can bookmark queries for the next train between two points along with some other very cool shortcuts.

A site like this, which presents information very cleanly and I can easily use off my phone, is an excellent example of a good use of published data and I'm very grateful to them for this resource which really helps me when I'm out and about!

Recently I was working (I work from home) and I heard a really loud impact noise, like a football being kicked really really hard against something. At the moment my desk is in the attic, I looked at the cat, but he was asleep in the same room as me and hadn't even looked up at the noise. I set off down the house, wondering if I needed to shout at next door's kids for kicking the ball against something ... and then I saw this



I'm pretty sure that wasn't there earlier - this is my landing window so you walk past it all the time. A pigeon (I'm guessing) must have flown right into the window. I got a fright - but I can't imagine how the bird felt!

With increasing numbers of speaking engagements, I've decided that its time to add a dedicated page to this site just to list talks I've given and wil be giving, and link through to slides, blog posts, and perhaps some photos of me speaking (not sure about that last one). So if you're looking for material from a talk I've given - take a look at the talks page, you can find everything there.

I've added all the past talks of note (made much easier by my tendency to blog and tag all these experiences!), let me know if you have any questions or comments!