So Twitter is shutting down Vine. And to be honest, I’d never really explored Vine at all. It just wasn’t a thing I ever had time for. But then I found the Metafilter thread about it, and people were sharing their favourite Vines… and these ones made me laugh out loud SO HARD. We’re talking tears. (Make sure you have sound on!)

• Duck army
• When Mom isn’t around
• Your bra strap is showing
• Rare footage of me going to school every day
• When you don’t know how to use a toilet
• THIS DOESN’T EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE

“Dress for Success has been outfitting disadvantaged women for nearly two decades. Can clothes really open up a whole world?”

I love this. What a great organisation. I was just inspired to see if there’s a local chapter in Sydney, and there is! I’m going to donate some cash to them, and instead of taking old clothes to the Op Shop in the future, any good things are going straight to them.

Last month I went to a talk with my friend Amy called “How to Find Balance: Mindfulness to strengthen focus, clarity and productivity”. A panel of experienced meditation practitioners told us their stories and then walked us through some exercises. It was great, and I walked away energised and ready to start making meditation part of my daily routine. And then I promptly forgot about it and never did any of it.

BUT today I found this handy 2 minute “Meditation 101” video which has renewed my inspiration. (I also really like the animation and voiceover!) So I’m going to create a “Meditate for 5 minutes” task on my To Do list and commit to doing it every day. (Thanks to kottke for the video.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqoxYKtEWEc

Oh wow. The fashion designer Vivienne Tam took inspiration from NASA for her Spring 2017 Ready-to-Wear Collection. There are NASA logos all over the place! I particularly liked these embellished slip-on sneaks, and if they’re available anywhere, they will be mine.

Vintage Classics UK got a designer from Marimekko to design covers for a new run of Virginia Woolf’s books. They’re gorgeous! (Link courtesy of Girls of a Certain Age.)

Just discovered musicForProgramming(“task“); – “a collaborative series of mixes designed for listening while programming (compatible with other activities)”. OOH, this is excellent. I am bookmarking this one.

So, I had kind of a big week last week. Understatement.

It all started a couple weeks ago. On July 13, I got a tweet from a guy named Jon Yeo saying how much he liked my Ignite talk from last year. I told the Snook excitedly, “Ooh, he’s the organiser for TEDx Melbourne!”

I replied thanking him, and pointing him to the updated version I did at SydJS in April. He said, “If you are ever in Melbourne, we would love to do a version of it for our event.” Pretty nice! I told him I’d let him know.

Buoyed with confidence, I decided to take a step I’d been thinking about for a long time. I emailed someone in the local tech industry that I admire, asking if she’d be willing to discuss possibly mentoring me. She wrote back and said yes! We scheduled our first catch-up for the morning of August 2.

Then on July 19th, TEDx Jon sent me a DM saying “Would you consider doing a 5min version for TEDxMelbourne on Aug 3?” I just about fell over. He asked me to send him my phone number, and he rang me a few minutes later. We had a very quick chat, but the gist of it was that yes, he really was serious and wanted to fly me to Melbourne in two weeks to deliver my 5 minute talk at TEDx. On his side he had to scramble to fit me into the program, and on my side I had to book plane tickets, update my talk again, and start rehearsing.

While that was happening, my friend Daphne mentioned that she thought my talk would fit in well at PubConf, an upcoming night of lightning talks that was part of NDC Sydney.  (Daphne was giving a conference talk at NDC.) She emailed the organiser Todd Gardner and introduced the two of us. On July 20, Todd wrote back to excitedly offer me a spot on the PubConf lineup on August 5th. So suddenly I was giving two talks in one week!

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REVEALED: There really was a creepy fifth housemate lurking in cult British TV show The Young Ones | Business Insider – Okay, that really is kind of creepy.

I gotta say – the Snook and I are pretty damn good at holidays. We saw so many friends and family on this past trip, and we even snuck in some touristy fun things and downtime. My final tally was 8 flights across 22 days, touching down in six different countries: Sydney -> Singapore (quick layover) -> London -> Reykjavik -> Boston (quick layover) -> Detroit (drove to Chicago a week later) -> Los Angeles -> Auckland (quick layover) -> Sydney. And now I’m home with two giant suitcases full of laundry and two very affectionate cats…