BarCamp London

I've spent the weekend geeking out at the latest BarCampLondon in the lovely new offices of The Guardian by the canal at Kings Cross. Two days with lots of meeting people, talking about tech, food, politics, and anything else the attendees feel like talking about. I ran a session on Stalking for Beginners which was actually more about choosing and using an online handle. What does it say about you if you always use the same name for all services, indeed should you have your 'business life' easily associated with your 'free-time activities', and how can you stop that happening if at all. Unlike my previous BarCamp I actually went to a session in each timeslot on both days and enjoyed it immensely. If it wasn't for the too much sugar symptoms right now I'd probably be hacking code on some of the many ideas I've been sparked with over the weekend.

Ada Lovelace Day

Some month's ago, Suw (Charman-Anderson) suggested that there should be a celebration today of admirable women in technology, and invited everyone to pledge to write a blog about someone they'd chosen, alongside celebrating the life of the world's first computer programmer Ada Lovelace (1815-1852). Back, in the distant past of 1972, I was a schoolgirl in Hemel Hempstead, one of the over-spill 'new towns' around London built after the war. After I completed my GCE 'O'-levels I had to select the courses I would study during the final two years there in the sixth form. Initially I was only planning on taking two 'A'-levels (that being all which was required to get into university back then!) but in the end a third was added, and then I was told I "had too many free periods". I was given the option of either taking Human Biology 'O'-level, or taking the Computer Programming course. Well … as I'd not taken 'normal' Biology 'O'-level I quickly decided that I'd probably find difficulties in the more 'specialist' course (and, hey, it was something I would, ahem, "discover for myself" before too long!) so the programming course was the one I went for. Now you need to remember how long ago this was. 1972 was still the era of 'Big Iron' — large mainframe computers — and the web was some twenty years in the future. The teacher for this class was a young woman who had only recently joined the teaching profession and her 'qualifications' for teaching the course — the first year it had run at the school — were that she had spent that summer working for British Aerospace on computer programs designing the wings for Concorde! Her class of eager young sixth-formers numbered around 15, and she started out by teaching us BASIC (the acronym stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Each lesson covered one instruction of the language and each week we students would write out our code on sheets of paper pre-printed with line numbers and boxes; each character of our program being carefully written in the boxes. This was then sent off to Hatfield Polytechnic which owned a PDP-10 made by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp. The college staff would type in our code to produce a punched paper tape, and then process this to produce an output printout. The paper tape and output would then be returned to the school in time for the following week's lesson. After a few weeks of this I found that computer programming was something that 'clicked' with me and I asked the teacher to let me borrow her manuals so that I could go faster — I was finding the 'one instruction per week' rate until that point far too slow. Thankfully, she did, and I raced on. I also got the agreement of the school that I could leave the premises every Friday morning (when everyone else was doing PE) and head into town to the F.E. College as, I had learnt, they had a teletype terminal connected by a phone line to the machine over in Hatfield. Quickly I had moved into the modern world of time-sharing, and later I started using my moped to go to the polytechnic most Saturday mornings to use the terminals just outside the machine room. After another couple of weeks I ended up taking over the class. I'd already been helping my classmates and the teacher realised that she had fallen behind me! A few years ago I met up with an old schoolfriend via Friends Reunited and she recalled the course and how I'd ended up in charge with some fondness (she having since become a teacher herself - of IT!) Subsequently, whilst still at school, I taught myself FORTRAN and then successfully applied to Imperial College to read Computing Science. I've been in the computer industry in some form or another ever since. And all thanks to that young teacher. Sadly, very sadly, I cannot remember her name all these years on. But I still remember the effect she had on me and my classmates in involving us in the very new science — or 'art', is it truly was then — of computer programming. Thank you Teacher, where ever you may be. I couldn't have done it without you.

Baseball World

This morning I watched the final match of the World Baseball Classic between Korea and Japan. The second time this tournament has been played — the first being in 2006 — I'd argue that the quality of the matches throughout the three weeks between the 16 teams which started out really deserved the title of World Series more that the October match-up between the winners of the (US) American League and (US) National League. The final — which went to ten innings with some extraordinary pitching and hitting by both sides in what was a very close game — was edge-of-the-seat stuff. Because of the structure of the competition the two teams had already met in the Classic four times, each winning twice and losing twice; the only losses either side had during the competition. The tournament was also notable for having a 'maximum pitches' rule, limiting how long the starting pitcher could stay in the game, and also having a mercy rule for where a team is ten runs behind in the seventh innings (or by 15 in the fifth). Surprisingly, for some, this rule was actually used in a game between the USA and Puerto Rico — and it was the US team which was way behind. So, a thrilling match down to the wire and a great change from the not-so-serious Spring Training matches I've watched this month. For more information about this year's tournment visit the World Baseball Classic website .

Is recycling a good thing?

Twenty years ago a political advert appeared on billboards around the UK which went on — allegedly — to win the election a year later for the Conservatives. Now, the BBC and others are reporting that accountants BDO Story Hayward have done some research for the TUC and reckon that one in every 56 UK businesses will fail this year, a 59% rise on 2008. Further, the British Chambers of Commerce last week suggested that UK unemployment could reach 3.2 million — or just over 10% of the workforce — by the second half of next year. I can't help wondering whether the Tories would do well to just recycle the old poster and not spend money on new advertising …