FROCKTOBER IS OVAH! (Well, not quite.) 31 days, 31 different dresses. Here’s the breakdown:

12 self-made
4 Heart of Haute
4 Sportscraft
4 Op Shop
2 Target
1 Gap
1 Old Navy
1 Myer
1 Wild Seed
1 Hawaii

I just hit my Frocktober fundraising goal! My total is currently sitting at $1055.60. So far 20 people have donated towards ovarian cancer research: Zena, Svet, Kara, Bernie, Dave, Nigel, Sam, Varun, M-H & Sandra, Donna & David, Sue, Fiona, Eileen, Damana, Jess, Gem, Sera, and Tiny. Thank you all so much! Ten more days to go…

For the curious, I’ve just counted and so far 11 of my 21 #frocktober dresses this month have been sewn by me! So my wardrobe isn’t quite as insane as you might think. I mean, it is, but I can excuse some of it on the grounds that I MADE IT MAHSELF.

Tonight I went along with a dozen of my co-workers to PaniqRoom, an escape room here in Sydney. I’d heard of them before but never done one. The idea is that you’re locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to escape before a clock runs down (sort of like a real life video game). My team tackled the “Abandoned Military Bunker” challenge. We had to find a secret file, disable a bomb, and unlock the door in under 60 minutes. Apparently it only has a 40% success rate, and the record is held by a couple who finished it with only two hints. (There’s a phone you can use if you get stuck and need some help.) Obviously we were all gung-ho and quite sure we’d solve it easily. After some instructions from our host (basically telling us what not to touch and that we didn’t need to smash anything), we entered and the game began!

I didn’t know what to expect at first, but I ended up loving it. The first 5 minutes reminded me of Finders Keepers. We all ran around like crazy investigating the room and digging into things. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but there were lots of puzzles, codes, and keys. At one point, we opened a box and were confronted by a game that I’ve played thousands of times, and THIS WAS ME. We made fantastic progress for about 40 minutes before getting stumped and having to resort to a hint. Then we got one more hint 10 minutes later that pointed us towards the final stage. We ended up escaping with about six minutes to spare.

I highly recommend PaniqRoom. The staff were great, and the puzzles were interesting without being too hard or random. Well worth a visit!

Told the Snook I’m going to Classy Coding this weekend and he responded with some absolutely brilliant Wodehouse-inspired pseudocode:

if (chum.isSpiffing()) {
 chum.greet("What, what?");
 THE_DRONES.goToWith(chum);
}

City Of Sydney Pledges No Resident Will Be More Than 800m Away From An Outdoor Exercise Station – Very cool. And Chippendale is specifically mentioned! I wonder if they’ll put it in the Peace Park or over on the green by Central Park.

Forest Walks Lodge, Tasmania: Walking the wild forest trail in northern Tasmania – Lovely review of the lodge we stayed in last November.

An Introvert’s Guide to Better Presentations — Medium – Following on from that last post, here’s Matt Haughey talking about how he prepares to give talks. I don’t think he’s as much of an introvert as he thinks he is. I have the exact same thoughts when I’m about to get up on stage. It’s unnerving and scary to have that many people look at you, regardless of how much of an extravert you are.

I took Matt’s advice recently and purchased the Beyond Bullet Points book. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but it’s already made a difference in how I approach giving talks. It’s quite heavily oriented around PowerPoint, but it’s pretty easily to ignore that stuff and focus on the approach to crafting a narrative for the audience.

Will the Real Introverts Please Stand Up? – Beautiful Minds – Scientific American Blog Network – Fascinating article. It seems that extraversion is more about “reward sensitivity” than gregariousness. I definitely get a dopamine rush from giving talks. (I was on a high for several hours after my talk at the Dream Collective Career Summit last week.)

This is particularly interesting: the 10 behaviours most uniquely predictive of extraversion (out of a list of 400):

1. Told a dirty joke.
2. Planned a party.
3. Entertained six or more people.
4. Told a joke.
5. Volunteered for a club or organization.
6. Tried to get a tan.
7. Attended a city council meeting.
8. Colored my hair.
9. Went to a night club.
10. Drank in a bar.

Uh, other than going to a city council meeting, I’ve done all those. (I’ve pretty much given up on tanning though.)

The Eloquent Woman: Use a script or transcript to manage your speaking speed – Really good advice, and something I will be trying myself. I always worry that I speak too fast when presenting.