Magda Stremeski

I used to own an iPhone 3GS. I upgraded to an HTC Desire HD and haven’t looked back. There were a number of reasons why I switched to Android:

• A disgust of Apple’s litigious nature
• Not being able to use the apps I wanted without jailbreaking (notably Grooveshark)
• Apple’s apparent inaction in fighting the terrible conditions reported at their supplier factories (although I fully admit that perhaps the same is true for HTC – we just haven’t heard about it yet)
• Android is open source
• Android supports Flash (although this is becoming less of an issue as HTML5 takes over)
• I’m a Google fangirl…

The only regret I had was that there were a few apps for iOS that weren’t available for Android. Instagram was one of them. Many of my iPhone wielding-friends would post very pretty photos online and I always sighed a little that I couldn’t make similar pics. There were Instagram alternatives around, but none of them seemed to have the range of filters – somehow, the Instagram pictures always looked best.

"Instagram, Tokyo, Japan" photo by Ari Helminen and used under a Creative Commons CC-BY 2.0 license.

Today, Instagram for Android was released. The Internet is abuzz with reviews, excitement and strangely, vitriol from iPhone users seemingly upset that Instagram isn’t exclusively for iOS anymore. But while I’ve wanted to take pretty Instagram-like photos for ages now, I won’t be downloading Instagram for Android.

It’s for a similar reason that I won’t use services like Posterous – I’m very hesitant to sign up for a sharing-focused service that insists on holding a copy of my content on their services. This isn’t paranoia about what they’ll do with my content (although it always pays to read the fine print), it’s more a sense of wastefulness and unnecessary duplication that stops me.

Posterous, for example, lets users blog easily (say, from email) and will automatically update any linked Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr (and so on) accounts with the latest post. Bewilderingly, Posterous will also update WordPress blogs. But why would I need a Posterous account if I already have a WordPress blog? I can email my blog post to WordPress – and then it will post a tweet and update my LinkedIn status. That’s my social networks taken care of (well, admittedly, not Google+, but then again, Posterous can’t do that either).

The same follows for Instagram. I already have two photo sharing services (and I’ve already been trying to cut it down to just one). If I wanted to share these photos on external social networks, I can already do that, either manually or with a script. Instagram is marketing itself as a photo-sharing social network – but I’d prefer to share with everyone by default – not just those with an Instagram account. Ultimately, I want to take Instagram-like photos, but I want to choose where I host them.

I don’t need another social network, another account, another login, another password to change periodically when I already have services that can be connected together to give the same outcome. Perhaps they aren’t as slick as Posterous’ autopost system, but I feel better about not having my details and my content duplicated all over the Internet. Even from an environmental point of view, it makes more sense to have a smaller data footprint – why have gigabytes of the same photos copied all over the Internet when you can have them in one place, and just link to them from others?

The reason companies like Posterous and Instagram insist on holding your content is obvious from a business point of view – there are huge amounts of valuable data to be collected based on who you connect with, who views your blog or photo, where they clicked in from, etc. Then, of course, there is the opportunity to place ads and generate revenue from user-generated content. I’d rather not be milked like that. Remember, if an Internet service is free, then chances are you are not the customer, you are the product.

"Instagram'd" photo by Darren Shilson and used under a Creative Commons CC-BY 2.0 license.

It’s been a while since I looked at Instagram alternatives. With today’s announcement, I was prompted to look again. I’m happy to see that the options and quality have increased. One Android app in particular caught my interest: Vignette. They seem to have a very nice range of filters and effects, but most importantly, the developers say this in the product description:

Vignette does not require an internet connection to process pictures like some apps, and does not upload your pictures to a central server like Instagram. Your pictures do not leave your phone until you choose to share them.

That’s reason enough for me to try them out. That is everything that I want from a content creation service.

I’ve been meaning to write a wrap-up on my NaNoWriMo effort for a while now but life has been pretty busy. In fact, I’ve since complete another 30 Before 30 goal, namely: seeing Singapore, a country I hadn’t visited before. But that post is for another time. Right now, I’m in Bangalore, India, recovering from the awesome Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, and the slightly less awesome stomach bug I had. I have a few hours to kill before my flight home, so I’m going to try catching up on blog posts.

So, I “won” NaNoWriMo this year! I wrote 50,005 words, meeting the 50k goal. My novel wasn’t actually finished at 50,005 words, but all the major plot points were covered, and there was only some filler left to write. Will I finish it? Well, maybe. It was plenty of fun to write and I learned a lot in the process – but quite frankly, it’s an awful novel. And even if I fixed it up, I couldn’t publish it, since it’s a fan-fiction and would be in breach of copyright.

The fan-fiction aspect makes me feel a little guilty. As some commentators have said, it’s lazy! And I’m inclined to agree: I had most of my characters and the universe they live in planned out for me. I did create some original characters and an island on which to play out the story, but the rest of it was Eiichiro Oda‘s work for One Piece.

I’m excusing myself on this occasion primarily because of my 30 Before 30 goal. I hadn’t written any fiction since high school and  none of the other story ideas I had were as well formed as my fan-fiction plot. Plus, this was the first and last chance I had to win NaNoWriMo before I turned thirty. Fan-fiction was the easiest way for me to write 50,000 words in thirty days – and it worked. Only 14% of the the approximately 250k participants achieved this goal in 2011, so it’s fair to say the odds were against me. It’s a little embarrassing, but fanfiction is what got me over the line.

My daily word count chart

Completing NaNoWriMo is hard – no doubt about it! My progress chart shows that it was touch-and-go for a while. Most of the writing was done on weekends, in 3000-4000 word chunks. There were also a number of interruptions, mainly in the form of medical treatment, that meant some days had no output at all. I also feel that I maintained a fairly normal social life, going out at least one night a week – although I’ve since been told things like “It’s nice to go out with you without you running away to finish your novel!”, so perhaps my social life wasn’t as full as I thought…

I wrote almost all of the novel in Google Docs on my iPad. This may seem painfully difficult to some readers but the trick is to write one-handed – the iPad on-screen keyboard is just the right size for one-handed typing. The way it handles Google Docs is still lacking, though. Word count features were disabled in mobile mode and desktop mode crashed frequently. But since I was reminded countless times that I should backup my novel, and because I wanted the freedom to write anywhere, writing on an iPad to a document backed up on the cloud worked well for me.

I’ve since heard a lot about software for novel writing (with useful features such as noting certain plot points to re-use later) which I might explore for future NaNoWriMos.

The Stats

The word count differences there are interesting. I learned that not all word counts were created equal. I’m just glad I picked up on this 4 days out from the end of November and not when I was finally submitting – thanks for the “procrastination tip” of testing your word count, NaNoWriMo team! Making up those extra 800 words in the last few days was crazy. I think the discrepancy happened because quite a few of my characters addressed others in the Japanese style, that is, adding a “-san” suffix to their names. My guess is that Google treated the hyphenated honorifics as extra words, while NaNoWriMo considered the name and honorific to be one word. The lesson there is to validate your word count against the NaNoWriMo counter every day.

Tips For First-Time Wrimos

Since NaNoWriMo ended, I’ve been told that I’m a rarity – a first-time participant that actually met the 50,000 word goal. There seem to be a few blog posts around about how to tackle NaNoWriMo (especially by the Office of Letters and Light, the organisation that runs NaNoWriMo every year), so I thought I’d describe what I think helped me win in 2011.

Have a well-formed plot before November
This is probably the number one reason for my success. The NaNoWriMo site says that while the novel should be written from scratch in November, prepared outlines and plot points are encouraged and can be written months before the event begins. I didn’t actually get around to writing down my outline before November, but I had been thinking about my plot for about six months. So I more-or-less had the complete story in my head, and it was just a matter of typing it out in thirty days. In hindsight, I wish I had written down a basic outline and some plot points, because I’m sure I had forgotten some of what I dreamt up before NaNoWriMo started. It wouldn’t have mattered for the word count, but I think my novel would have been a better story for some preparation.

Write every day
To reach the 50,000 goal, the daily target is 1,667 words. I didn’t strictly follow this rule myself – two days had no output at all, while another three or four gave only about 200 words - but even those extra 200 words helped my word count, and perhaps more importantly, it kept me thinking about my novel and my goal. Finding myself thinking about fictional characters in almost all my spare time was an interesting experience. Usually, if a project is occupying my attention for a long period of time, it’s related to work or my studies, for example: preparing for an exam for several weeks. But that is the real world. In November, I was focused on pure creation and imagination. All my spare time was thinking about a story; fleshing out details, wondering what would happen next, searching for the best language to describe a building or an outfit and – because of the fanfiction nature of my novel – gaining a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the One Piece universe. It was amazingly fun and I want to make sure I spend much more time on creative efforts like this in the future.

Tell everyone you know about your goal
Like any other goal you might have, you’ll feel more motivated when those around you know what you’re trying to do. They can also encourage you, or try and take external pressures off you – my friends understood when I turned down invitations to parties, for example. With luck, you might have the added bonus of finding friends who’ll try NaNoWriMo themselves (and getting more people to try something creative like this is always a good thing). On the downside, now everyone knows that I’ve written a novel and they want to read it! Not going to happen, people! It’s too awful!

Quantity, not quality!
This is a pretty common message to Wrimos but for good reason – it’s true. Don’t get hung up on whether what you’ve written is any good. Don’t edit. Do not edit! It takes up far too much time and will more likely reduce than increase your word count. Just write, write, WRITE! Yes, your plot will have more holes than a busted colander but that’s what the rest of the year is for! I was pretty good at avoiding editing for a while but I was definitely guilty of spending hours reading and re-reading what I had written, rather than using that time to write more. As you can see on my chart – any more editing and it could have meant failing to meet the word count.

What next?

So, now that it’s all over, what’s next? Well, to be honest, I haven’t even read my novel since NaNoWriMo finished. I want to “forget” as much of it as possible before I read it again, so I can have fresh eyes. I will probably finish writing that remaining filler and tying up the loose ends eventually. But then it’ll be safely stored away on a backup drive somewhere and forgotten completely until I find it accidentally in a decade’s time and cringe while I read my terrible writing!

I plan to write a lot more. I’ve really enjoyed this chance to focus on pure creativity. I plan to take part in next year’s NaNoWriMo too – I actually thought up the basic plot for my next story just after I had “won” this year’s event, heh. And the good news is: it’s not fanfiction! Until then, I’m going to read more novels (I have been reading almost exclusively pop science and business books for the last few years) so I can learn how to be a better fiction writer. It’s weird to think of it, but thanks to NaNoWriMo, I am now a novellist. I’d like to get to the point where I become a published novellist one day.

I wrote previously that one of my 30 Before 30 list items is to “win” NaNoWriMo. It’s described as “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon” which was probably all I needed to read to be hooked by the idea. I’ve signed up and am now one of the Wrimos.

NaNoWriMo is a creative challenge: write a 50,000 word novel from scratch in the month of November. Anyone who meets the word limit is considered a “winner”. The idea is to force participants to churn out content – quantity over quality – and not get caught up in editing or over-thinking whether it’s any good. Quite simply: it won’t be. It’ll be absolute rubbish. But by the end of it, participants will actually be novellists! They can worry about editing afterwards.

This November is my first and last chance to win NaNoWriMo before my 30th birthday. I’ve heard that very few first-time NaNoWriMo participants make the winners list. In fact, it seems to be low numbers overall: in 2010, only about 19% of participants met the 50,000 word goal. It’s going to be tough but I’m feeling pretty confident about winning. I’ve had a plot forming in my head for several months now and I seem to be churn out 500+ word blog posts without too much trouble.

Really, when I add my daily blogs, emails, comments, tweets and other social media posts together, I’m sure I average the 1600-odd words required daily to meet the target 50,000 in 30 days

Plus, this is going to be fun! Melbourne seems to have a good NaNoWriMo culture – the endless cafés probably help – and I know a few bookshops (including Of Science and Swords run by my friend Avi) that will be holding NaNoWriMo events. I’m looking forward to spending sunny November afternoons in Melbourne’s laneways typing away.

I’m going in prepared though. I’ll be spending the next day or two writing down the plot outline I have floating around in my head, and perhaps I’ll get a basic timeline down too. I’ll need to do a bit of research for a few plot points and I think that my storyline will be able to accommodate a few side stories, so if I need to top up my word count, I should have plot outlines for the side stories ready too. Overall, though, I’m feeling good about NaNoWriMo.

You know, before I decided that I would study and work in IT, I thought about journalism as a career. I’m glad I didn’t go ahead with it, especially now that I can see the state of both journalism and IT today. IT is a career that lets you be creative (including writing) but I still appreciate events like NaNoWriMo. It will be concentrated creativity: intense, caffeine-fuelled, sleep-deprived, inspired and potentially euphoric.

Literary abandon indeed.

Back in April, I wrote about the Grace Hopper conference and how I had hoped to be a guest speaker in Dr. Catherine Lang’s workshop about the Digital Divas program.

Well, plans have changed quite a bit since then and now, Catherine and I will be co-presenting (along with my colleague Alana George) at the Grace Hopper India conference in Bangalore instead!

We will present our paper Win-Win-Win: a partnership model that fosters links between Academia and industry while promoting computing to school students and then have a panel session where we field questions and brainstorm with the audience how we can encourage and support more women into IT.

This is my first time speaking at a conference so I’m pretty excited! I’m also happy that I’m heading back to Bangalore where I can catch up with my old ThoughtWorks University colleagues and friends.

Will you be attending Grace Hopper India this December? Let me know in the comments.

A colleague of mine recently mentioned that she had completed one of the items on her “30 Before 30″ list. The idea of a 30 Before 30 list piqued my interest and I’ve spent the last few days putting mine together.

What constitutes a 30 Before 30 list seems to differ slightly from person to person. I’ve heard of lists that were thirty concerts or festivals to see before turning thirty years old, while another was thirty new things never tried before before reaching thirty. Yet another was thirty things to stop doing before the age of thirty.

My list is thirty things I’d like to achieve before turning thirty. These are a mix of new experiences, physical challenges, breaking bad habits or reaching a new level in something I’ve already done.

I won’t be sharing all of them, but here are some from my list:

#3 – Make all my meals for a month
I can cook and enjoy cooking, yet I almost always opt for a bought lunch over a homemade lunch while at work. So I’m aiming to cook every meal I eat for a month. No buying meals, especially lunches.

#5 – Get a motorcycle permit
I’ve wanted this since I was a teenager, but stuff always got in the way. I WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

#6 – Sew myself an entire outfit
I’ve taken up sewing and crafting in the last few years. I want to see how good I am and try to make myself an entire outfit. It’ll give me the chance to have a more environmentally friendly wardrobe too, since I’ll be using organic fabrics.

#10 – Make a cheese
I eat so much of the stuff, I should try to make it sometime!

#14 – “Win” NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is a fun exercise in creativity. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Because it’s such a large amount of text in such a small space of time, the focus is on quantity, not quality. It encourages people to write, write, write and not to get hung up on whether it’s any good. Anyone who can meet the 50,000 limit is considered a “winner”. I’m looking forward to it.

#19 – Make a five-course gourmet dinner for 6
Should be fun Volunteers for the six spaces?

#21 – Visit a country I haven’t before
Completely selfish goal to find an excuse to travel some more!

#22 – Rollerblade across Singapore
I once heard about someone who did this. Apparently it only took them about 4 hours. Singapore is a small place! I also haven’t actually stepped foot outside the airport at Singapore, so this will probably tick off #21 as well, hehe.

#25 – Go skydiving
I used to think that I’d NEVER go skydiving, but now I want to try, heh. Never say never.

#28 – Climb Uluru
Pretty self-explanatory.

#30 – Visit Tokyo Tower
Despite the fact that I used to live in Yokohama, and have been back to Tokyo numerous times, I somehow never made it to the top of Tokyo Tower. But since I intend to spend my thirtieth birthday in Tokyo, I’ve decided to make this #30 on my list. Yay!

When I tick off any of the items, I’ll post about it here.

Back in March, Facebook changed their comments system so that the blue ‘Comment’ button was no longer visable. Instead, users had to press the enter key on their keyboards to post comments. To make multi-line comments, users were prompted to press Shift and Enter.

Amid general protests of Facebook trying to fix what wasn’t broken, suddenly iPad users started complaining that the Shift + Enter functionality didn’t work on their on-screen keyboards.

I’m one of those iPad users, and yes, the inability to make multi-line comments is extremely frustrating. But then I noticed another iPad-related bug in the last few weeks. It seems that iPad users can’t get any Facebook usability love.

When commenting on a status, I tried adding a link. When I pressed enter to post, the URL would be visible for a few seconds but then disappeared. The rest of the text remained intact. I’ve searched online but haven’t found any other comments about this bug – if you know of anything related, please feel free to leave a comment below.

I recorded a video of the bug in action:

There is a workaround, which is pressing the space key after the URL text. For some reason, this space allows Facebook to recognise the URL and parse it into a clickable link. It seems strange that Facebook can’t recognise URLs otherwise – even going so far as to deleting comments altogether that only contain a URL.

There is no official Facebook app for iPad yet. Hopefully, if and when that is released, that would ease some of these usability issues. Until then, Facebook should work a bit harder to test their “features” and updates in the iOS environment before releasing them.

Every year, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology organises the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing. This year, this event will be held in Portland, Oregon with the theme “What If…?”.

If flying to Portland sounds a tad too expensive, students and non-profit organisation employees can apply for a scholarship to cover the costs of attending. The deadline is fast approaching though – May 16th – so visit the website and get started!

I’m hoping to attend Grace Hopper this year. Dr Catherine Lang of Swinburne University of Technology will be co-presenting a session about the Digital Divas program in the K-12 Computing Teacher’s Workshop. In 2009, I worked in the program as an “Expert Diva” – in other words: a classroom facilitator. The facilitators worked with Year 8 girls in an IT classroom setting to show them how interesting and rewarding a career in ICT could be.

Given my past participation in the program, Catherine has invited me to speak at her session about my experiences as an Expert Diva. I’d certainly love to! Fingers crossed I can arrange some time to attend the event in November. I would be my first time at Grace Hopper.

Are you heading to Grace Hopper this year? Any tips for a first-timer?

On the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, ThoughtWorks Australia was named as one of just 98 organisations that are Employers of Choice for Women.

This list was compiled by EOWA – the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, which is an Australian Government statutory authority.

This is a great (and I might say, well-deserved) honour for ThoughtWorks but it also seems a little depressing that in all of Australia, just 98 organisations met the requirements to be considered for this recognition.

The full 2011 EOWA Employer of Choice for Women list can be read here.

Why did ThoughtWorks deserve this? Well, the official criteria can be seen on the EOWA website, but from my personal point of view, I feel like that “fairness” or “equal opportunity” aspect to women in the workforce is a no-brainer at ThoughtWorks. Of course people are remunerated and hired based on their skills, not their gender. Of course they should be free from harrassment. Of course, where possible, flexible working options should be available. And so on. But that’s not the most awesome part, because that should be the case everywhere anyway.

In my opinion, what makes ThoughtWorks stand out and deserving of this recognition is that – in an industry which was was never famous for its high female participation rates – Thoughtworks has genuinely and proactively tried to get more women involved in IT. We’re official and unofficial supporters of programs like Girl Geeks, Go Girl Go For IT and Digital Divas. We pay higher referral bonuses when women are hired. Our women are encouraged to network together and support each other. When I joined the company, I was one of two female recruits. We were chosen out of a shortlist that was 75% female.

IT/ICT is everywhere in our everyday lives. The user base for all these technologies is made up by every different kind of person imaginable. So it makes sense that the people developing these technologies are representative of those that use them. Women make up 50% of the world’s population. You can do the math to figure out what proportion of this industry should also be made up of women.

ThoughtWorks have cottoned onto that. It’s not an easy task – women often don’t consider IT as a career option. That’s why we’re trying to encourage particularly younger women to think about IT at school and university. But again, this is what makes ThoughtWorks stand out. They’re trying bloody hard.

Congratulations ThoughtWorks and well done to the staff that worked towards this amazing recognition.

This is another reason why I’m proud to be a ThoughtWorker

Twice a year, Thoughtworks Australia holds its Team Hug event – a weekend away for all ThoughtWorkers where we can present and discuss, network and have fun. Actually, there is a lot of focus on the ‘having fun’ part…and some of us are already getting in the spirit of silliness.

We were asked yesterday to fill out a spreadsheet and nominate who we’d like to share rooms with at the Hug, which this time is being held at Ettalong Beach in New South Wales.

But if you scrolled over to the right of the spreadsheet, suddenly, it was revealed….he who is always watching…

THE BATMAN!

Actually, I think we should take some inspiration from this for the Team Hug party theme…

Only 4 weeks to go!

Hope you all have a very happy, safe and prosperous 2011. I’m starting mine with a pay rise and a new apartment, so I guess it’s a good sign

Happy New Year!