Author: Kris

  • Tech Lead Journal

    If you haven’t heard enough of me talking about financial independence yet, I was recently on an episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast. Check it out! 🔥

  • Big Day In at UTS

    Big Day In at UTS

    Another day of volunteering for Girls Programming Network! Alex and I are at UTS for the Big Day In, giving out lollies to students who can crack our cypher and telling them about STEM careers. 👩‍💻

    #womenintech #stem #dei

  • Typewriter Cake

    Typewriter Cake

    Every year I think he can’t possibly top himself, and then he does! This, of course, is the Typewriter Cake from the Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book. He experimented with two new recipes for this one: Golden Vanilla Cake and Ermine Icing. It’s STUNNING.

    And I think we can all agree: plus 100 Husband Points for the deployment of the Pride and Prejudice quote! 🩷

    How it started:

    The beginning

    Carving:

    Carving

    The end result:

    Me typing on a cake

    Kitchen’s a wreck though. 😂 Still worth it!

    Rodd in our messy kitchen

  • Google are breaking my mittens

    Sonofa. Twelve years ago I knitted a pair of “self-replicating mittens” with a QR code that pointed you to the pattern for the mittens, and I entered them in the Sydney Royal Easter Show. I was pretty proud of my cleverness. In the blog post where I talked about making the mittens, I said:

    I wanted my code to be as simple as possible, so I needed to use a URL shortener to mask my intended address. I settled on using Google‘s, reasoning that it was likely to be around the longest. (Though who knows these days, right?)

    You can guess what’s happened, right? Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available as of August this year.

    Bastards are breaking my mittens. Perhaps I’ll have to add some embroidery. 😠

    A knitted pair of mittens with a QR code. "404" is written over the image in red marker.

  • Birthday prezzies

    Birthday prezzies

    It was a lovely surprise to receive some birthday gifts today from friends! Do they really know me or what?! ❤️

  • Jane Austen’s 8-bit Adventure

    I was recently reminded of the existence of Jane Austen’s 8-bit Adventure and put it on my Steam wishlist. Well, Steam emailed me yesterday to say it was on sale for $2.90 AUD. Nice! I’ve spent the last half hour playing it. Had to switch to a Bluetooth controller as my keyboard skills definitely aren’t up to a platformer anymore, and even then the controller is giving me arthritis claws. Fun though, if you like old-school platfomers!

    Jane Austen's 8-bit Adventure screenshot

  • AWSKRUG Women in Cloud

    A screenshot of a Google Hangout showing a number of Korean women

    I had a lovely time tonight presenting via Hangout to the members of the AWS Korea User Group “Women in Cloud” group. The organiser is my friend Dahye, and she said her goal was to increase the percentage of women giving technical talks in Korea. She shared with me ahead of time a survey sharing some of their questions and concerns, like making sure they picked appropriate topics, didn’t get a shaky voice when they presented, and how to deal with men asking “gotcha” questions during Q&A. While some of them speak a little English, they used the Cuckoo AI Interpreter and apparently it did a great job of translating my words into Korean in real time. At the end they all wished me a happy birthday! They are such a lovely, welcoming group, and I hope I inspired them to do more public speaking.

    A title slide from a presentation entitled "Tech Voice for Women - How to do public speaking with confidence"

  • Early mark

    Q&A: Where did the “early mark” come from? HUH! I never knew that. I definitely say it, so I must have picked it up from Rodd or other people in NSW.

  • Portraits of a City

    Four people in chairs on stage in front of an audience

    After our walk yesterday, we had to quickly freshen up (and tend to our wounds!) before heading back to the State Library’s “Portraits of a City” event. Inspired by the current Peter Kingston exhibition, curator Mathilde de Hauteclocque brought together a panel of three artists whose work has often depicted Sydney: Vanessa Berry (of the Mirror Sydney blog and book), Reg Mombassa (of Mambo clothing fame), and Michael Kelly (painter and printmaker). Mathilde led them through an interesting discussion about how an artist thinks about capturing a place, as samples of their work (and Kingston’s) played behind them. Reg was clearly the draw, as his work is by far the most well-known. He was the least reflective about his work though, admitting that his first impressions of Sydney (as a 17yo Kiwi immigrant) was that it was “too hot and dirty.” His artworks invoke the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House simply as handy iconography for “Australia.” The other two artists were much more personal in their approach. Vanessa seemed to consider herself as more of a writer than an artist, but I loved her hand-drawn “maps” of the Sydney of her youth. They had a real DIY zine vibe. (We were especially tickled by the inclusion of Alex Cordobe’s Pizza.) Michael also seemed to feel a responsibility to capture parts of the city before they disappeared, and we got to see some lovely examples from his sketchbooks. After the discussion we headed up to the Library Bar for a well deserved drink!

    Artist sketchbooks showing drawings and watercolours of Sydney

    Two people talking a sunset selfie on a rooftop