Making things

Somehow, I got asked by Rob Phillips to contribute to his project on "Making Things". I had to take a photo of a thing I had made, or was making, and jot a few words about why.

I suppose he will distil something from dozens of such inputs. If you want to contribute yourself, I expect he'd be glad to hear from you.

My photos were of the sea, a hive stand, some honey, a posting like this one, a computer program, die Frau, Oliver, a script, my German dictionary, a plant, some cider.

Amguedddfa

Welsh is one of the very few languages in which words may be spelled with the same letter "three in a row":

(Actually, "Amgueddfa" means "Museum", and "Amguedddfa" is a misspelling).

3 things about women in IT

I read a request for blogposts on "Women in Tech". Here are three observations:

1. The percentage of women taking A-level computing in the UK was never >50% (quiz question - in what year was this exam first sat?), but this already low proportion took a significant dive around 1984. Now why's that?
2. In 2008 I gave the welcoming address to the inaugural Lovelace Colloquium for women students in Computing. This was the only time I have been in a full theatre and been the only man. As someone present said to me: "Now you know how it feels".
3. In our household, the gender divide of computer scientists is 50:50. This system works pretty well.