Alison Young

This is just a quick post to make the transition all official. Such a small and otherwise unremarkable post as this is actually the first post I’m making from http://alison-young.com which is exciting for me.

For the meantime you’ll be seeing the WP Classic theme while I get things finetuned in the Ali theme. I’d prefer to have a potentially aesthetically unpleasing theme that’s complete over my aesthetically pleasing but fragmented theme. Please be patient, I’m working quite hard on this currently and using a combination of current self-taught and years ago university-taught skills to get things done. This may not be the most efficient method but certainly the most educational and interesting.

Update: following a couple more hours at tweaking the CSS I’m more satisfied with how things look now overall. Still puzzling over why the header seems to be approximately 2px to the right of everything else and also wish to adjust content order in right column in addition to applying text colour scheme from plan. To keep things rolling I’m switching focus from format to content for a while to give my mind a break after a day of deciphering and interpreting CSS.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending both Sydney and Canberra BarCamps over the recent weeks. Sydney BarCamp3 occurred over the weekend of the 5^th and 6^th of April and was held at the UNSW Roundhouse. Canberra BarCamp1 was held on Saturday the 19^th of April in the ANU CSIT Building. Because I’m cheating in a way and posting 2 entries in one I’ve sub-headed my comments from each BarCamp.

Read the rest of this entry »

After reading these posts from Fifikins and Lu I’ve been inspired to compile my own list of 100 things that you may or may not know about me. I’ve tried to come up with things that majority of readers probably don’t know already and also things that I’m relatively comfortable with everybody knowing given that this is a very public medium.

Here we go!

1. I love to write and sometimes feel I can express myself better in writing. I’m a verbose writer, this isn’t going to be a short read.
2. I’ve never liked beer and only this year have started to develop a tolerance/taste for wine. Despite all claims to the contrary, you can do a uni degree without becoming a beer drinker. My preferred alcoholic drinks are spirits and liqueurs.
3. I’m quite competitive. It’s usually all in the spirit of healthy competition, not necessarily a bad thing if used carefully. My old Personal Trainer was particularly gifted at using this compulsion of mine to progressively improve my performance against my past achievements.
4. If you’re making coffee I’ll have a skim milk latte with no sugar. I haven’t had instant coffee since the late 1990’s and will opt for tea or nothing before instant. Having said that, I love tea and the T2 Monk Pear blend is my current favourite.
5. I am most motivated and inspired when surrounded by people that I believe are smarter than I am.
6. I like my natural lip colour and rarely wear lipstick. This is also because I like to wear colourful eye makeup while still keeping my overall look fairly neutral.
7. I enjoy my own company as much as that of others. If I’ve had an overly social week I crave some time in solitude. I am happiest when I can strike a balance between time alone and time spent around others.
8. I’m a Virgo who was born on the cusp of Leo. Belief in astrology or not, it does sum up my personality. Easy-going, perfectionist and friendly most of the time but get me fired up about something and you’ll certainly hear about it.
9. I love to drive. This inspired my love of taking road trips both by myself and with excellent company. Living close to the CBD of Sydney has meant I drive little and I get cravings to jump in my car and take off somewhere. I usually indulge these cravings when I have days off and a yearning to go and explore somewhere.
10. I will do almost anything for my friends, I’ve been known to put their wants and needs before my own. Fortunately, I also have friends that do the same for me. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night following the Sydney BarCamp 3 Unorganisers meeting I unveiled the ’secret BarCamp project’ I’d been working on for the last few weeks. At an earlier meeting we were talking about the idea of having Mikons but they weren’t quite right for us. Instead I had the random idea to come up with a list of things that people can identify with and then just write a one or two letter ‘code’ for each thing on the bottom of your name tag. The others thought this was quite a novel idea and it was suggested maybe doing it in a table, which led to the suggestion that we modify a periodic table. Bingo! Since I had no other tasks I offered to take on this project with a fellow unorganiser, the lovely JodieM. The project took flight.

JodieM found a periodic table online and created a shared GoogleDoc that we could work from. Then as tends to happen she got busier and I got less busy. This resulted in most of the element ideas coming from my side and taking suggestions from others. It was easy to come up with the things that I could relate to but more than a few times I was concerned that I’d missed something glaringly obvious.  I ran my ideas past a few people during the development stages and was pretty happy with the spread I’d created. Hopefully not too much of some things and missing other. A moment of quiet humour led to me add ‘Ni’ for Monty Python and that has by far been the most commented on ‘element’.

The finalised table (for now)  is able to be viewed here.  It’s been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License . I’d love to see it used in other BarCamps as I think it really does embody the whole BarCamp spirit and other geeky networking events. There are way more elements than space on the table which is no bad thing as it lets each group update the table and add the elements that mean the most to them. I’ve also deliberately left the space at the bottom blank. The element list is going to be printed up and put next to the table. On the day the bottom spaces can be filled in by Sydney BarCamp3 attendees with what they’d like to add.

I’m pretty excited that it’s been so well received. It’s also the first project that I’ve CC Licensed which is also exciting, for me at least. A couple of people have mentioned that it’d be a cool t-shirt idea. I think so too and may look into doing a run sometime. Keep an eye out here and on my twitter timeline for more details.

Thank-you to everybody for their feedback!

Catherine hit me with a White Rabbit so in the spirit of sharing I’m going to play along.

The rules:
1- Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2 – People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3 – At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4 – Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Things:

1. I enjoy problem solving, puzzles and challenges. I adore cryptic crosswords and sudoku in particular.
2. My personality type is ESTJ which kind of explains a lot, but not everything.
3. I was once proposed to.
4. If given the choice between dark, milk or white, I’ll take dark chocolate every time.
5. Tutoring is the most self-fulfilling job I’ve ever done and would do it again in a heartbeat.
6. I made a resolution a couple of years ago to fly somewhere at least once every 12 months for as long as I can. So far so good.
7. I’m something of a clutz and tend to drop things or trip often.
8. I often knit while watching episodes or movies at home to occupy my hands. Not only is it the ultimate in stress reliever but I find it difficult to just sit and watch something, especially if I’m alone.

I’m tagging:
~ Lauren Watson
~ Monnie
~ Fiona Henderson
~ Michael Specht
~ Della Misner
~ Donna Brown
~ Tony Buttafuoco
~ Lauren Hewitt