web-goddess

Category: Computers

  • What Do You Know?

    A few weeks ago I got an email from the fine folks at Web Directions inviting me to speak at their next What Do You Know event. They put these on a couple times a year, and it’s basically an evening of short lightning talks around any topic tangentially related to the web. Never one to turn down an opportunity to flaunt/embarrass myself publicly, I accepted. The organisers were aware I’d done a geeky knitting talk in the past and suggested something along those lines. (As the Snook joked: my talk was pretty much intended as comic relief.) With all that in mind, my topic was: Granny Was a Hacker: Knitting as Computer Code.

    My slides are available here as a PDF that includes my speaker’s notes as well.

    I wrote the talk over two nights and then spent a day or two practicing it. On Thursday I actually got half a dozen co-workers to watch me go through it in a conference room as a final dress rehearsal. My biggest fear was actually having a coughing attack in the middle of it, as I’m still getting over a cold from last week. But I’m happy to report that on the night my talk went SO WELL! Adrenaline kicked in and I didn’t cough or um or even hesitate a little bit. I had been a little worried how the topic would go over, given that the audience was 95% male and probably skewed very technical. But it ended up being a massive hit. (The Snook hypothesised that it was an advantage that pretty much nobody there knew anything about knitting, thus it was equally interesting to everybody.) I had lots of people come up to me afterwards to congratulate me! Here are some of the tweets from the night.

    Watching @web_goddess slay the #WDYK audience with binary knitting, ‘creative mittens’ with QR codes, and more. Super fucking epic.

    — Lachlan Hardy (@lachlanhardy) April 3, 2014

    MT @Xavier_Ho: Thoroughly enjoyed tonight’s WDYK event by @webdirections. Tons of great ideas!

    — Kris Howard (@web_goddess) April 4, 2014

    Thanks again to Maxine and John from Web Directions for inviting me!

  • Photo post

    It's She Hacks night, so I brought my friend Ada Lovelace along.

    It’s She Hacks night, so I brought my friend Ada Lovelace along.

  • When I Moved Abroad | Mozilla IT

    When I Moved Abroad | Mozilla IT – Great analogy.

    “It is not sexist to have a women-only space in a community that’s so very male-oriented and has so many men in it. It is (arguably) a necessity if you want more women to be a part of the community.”

  • How to get your conference talk accepted – Chad Fowler

    How to get your conference talk accepted – Chad Fowler – Thinking about doing more speaking at industry events. I like it. It’s fun.

  • Shared today on The Old Reader

  • You Need a Budget

    In the past I’ve written about the Snook’s and my budget approach and how we used MoneyWell extensively. However, a few months ago we switched to something new and the time’s come for me to enthusiastically recommend YNAB instead. The impetus for the change is pretty simple: the Snook got a Nexus 5 phone from work, and MoneyWell doesn’t support Android phones at all. (And in their now-deleted forums, they basically said they wouldn’t ever.) So I went researching, and that’s how I found YNAB. I tested it out for a couple days, which was enough for me to happily plunk down $60 for a full license.

    While the basic concepts are the same as in MoneyWell, YNAB just makes some things so much simpler. The UI itself is easy to use and looks very nice. Setting up our initial budget for January was simple and quick. It’s cross-platform and works on Windows and Mac (with apps for iPhone and Android). Syncing from our various phones took less than 30 seconds to set up and works automatically whenever we put transactions into the app. It’s got a “reconciliation mode” that makes it easy to find missing transactions, as well as force a reconciliation when I just can’t work out where the last $10 in cash went. I used to spend a good hour each month with MoneyWell totalling up our wants, needs, and savings to put into a spreadsheet, but YNAB just does it all automatically. It also prominently displays our net worth on the budget screen, so when I input something frivolous like a $4 cup of coffee, I actually see that big number decrease. That’s a huge psychological incentive to cut your spending! The company has a great blog and podcast where they give you tips on using the software and on managing your finances. I love supporting a company that makes excellent software that actually improves people’s lives! (This is a totally unsolicited endorsement. I just think YNAB is awesome!)

    My only complaint about YNAB – and it’s a tiny one – is just that so much of the focus of the company and app is on getting people off the “paycheck-to-paycheck” cycle, and that’s not really advice I need. It’s incredibly important though and I’m glad they do it! I just want to see more advice for those of us that are past that step and wondering how to implement longer term financial planning. Like I said though, tiny complaint.

  • Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

    Only 90s Web Developers Remember This – The guys on my team were sharing this today as a bit of a funny joke. I laughed (“HA HA”) but really? I felt a little pang inside. This was my professional life for the 90’s. Damn, feels like a long time ago!

  • Fitbit Force recall

    Fitbit ForceWHAT?! “Fitbit halts sale of Force fitness band, issues recall due to skin irritation.” I’ve had my Fitbit Force since just before Christmas, and I totally love it. I haven’t had a single problem. And that’s kinda weird, because jewellery with nickel in it usually causes a reaction on me. But I wear my Force fairly loose, so maybe the fact that I get some air flow in there is helping. I’m definitely not sending mine back. I love it! I loved my One as well (which the Snook now uses*), but I underestimated how much of a difference the wristband form factor would make. I only take it off to shower or swim, and a full charge lasts more than a week. If you’ve got a Fitbit, feel free to friend me…

    * I actually lost my Fitbit One at the company Christmas party. Dejected, I ordered my Force and then contacted support to get them to remove my One from my account. (The reminder to sync on my dashboard was making me sad.) To my surprise, they offered to replace it! So I got a brand new one, which the Snook is now using. Amazing service. I’m a total Fitbit evangelist now.

  • A big step up…

    So some amazing stuff has happened in the past week. I mentioned last month that my job was going well and that I was taking on additional responsibilities. At the start of February I was struggling with the increased workload, so someone else was brought on to help with my team’s day-to-day stuff. It all came to a head last week when rumours of a massive restructure started swirling. I thought maybe I’d been groomed to move up a step on the ladder. Wednesday morning I found myself in a meeting room with the CIO, where she drew out the new org chart and then offered me a spot … several levels higher than what I’d been imagining. I was pretty floored. I needed to give them an answer ASAP, so the Snook met me in the city for an emergency pow-wow at lunch. Yes, the position came with a nice raise, but it was also a big step in terms of responsibility (and probably workload). It’s also my first ever opportunity to move into people management, something that I hadn’t been interested in before but I’d been learning a lot about from working with Jody. I just couldn’t turn it down. So I accepted that afternoon. My new title is TV Development Director, and I’m responsible for the entire TV side of web development at Mi9. IS THAT CRAZY OR WHAT?

    The week since the offer has been a rollercoaster. Unfortunately the restructure wasn’t as positive for some other people, which has meant a little bit of guilt over my good fortune. I haven’t had much time to meet with and support my circle of work friends, mostly because I’m trying to finish handing off my IM role as quickly as possible while getting up to speed on the new one. Sunday night a routine deployment for my team turned into a four hour incident that I had to manage via Hipchat from home. I’m having daily one-on-ones with the CIO and trying to figure out what the boundaries of my job actually are. There are a lot of holes on my team structure, so I also need to get involved with recruiting ASAP. I’ve had to draft emails to be sent to the entire technology team. Last night I left work at 6pm, which was my earliest night in some time! I’m really hoping things settle down quickly.

    But there are still high points. The CIO said that the reason she felt comfortable offering me the position after only eight months was that several people high up in the organisation had pushed for me to do it. A LOT of coworkers and friends gave me wonderful congratulations and feedback last week, both at work and on social media. And on the weekend the Snook took me over to Broadway to buy a new MacBook Pro, which I’d been coveting for some time but hesitated buying.

    So far 2014 is definitely looking up!

  • Photo post

    Dear Kristy: Congrats on your new role. Love, Snookums
    Dear Kristy: Congrats on your new role. Love, Snookums